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iPod's Two-Year Anniversary
the terminal of Geoff Goodfellow writes "Two years ago this month, Apple Computer released a small, sleek-looking device it called the iPod. This Sunday's New York Times Magazine has a long article on it: The Guts of a New Machine."
I know everybody is going to come on here and praise the ipod, but if I recall correctly, most slashdotters (even the mac zealots) bashed the ipod when it was launched. Slashdotters not infalliable? That's unpossible! ;-)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
One thing I've never quite understood about iPods: in the recent TV adverts, we are shown happy iPod owners moshing to loud music. I'm wondering whether one can actually jump around to this extent, without the iPod's drive heads nosediving into the platters? Anyone willing to try?
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
after reading your link, it still remains true that the guy had made that film first and then recieved the webhosting offer in exchange for a plug for the guy's batteres.
Also it remains true that Apple won't sell you a battery for the thing and it will cost you a load of cash to get it fixed, but thankfully for 3rd party sources you can swap out the battery for a mere $50.
You're kind of just attacking the messenger, but for all intents and purposes, the point is moot.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
I think Apple's current roadmap and processor line is pretty impressive, especially now that it's backed by someone who actually can produce: IBM.
I do agree though that it's time for Apple to wow us again. I think it's time for Apple to give us a TIVO iPod with Color LCD. I can't fathom where there's innovation elsewhere that the mass public and not just Apple users want to see...
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
The video is bullshit. Its makers were looking to get attention, nothing more. "iPods's Dirty Secret: The Truth"
hey apple why White?
... do your ipods get all grubby looking with that white finish?
.ogg too hell yeah.
ipod owners
or did apple ship little white gloves with the units to avoid this 'grubbiness' problesm.
Oh yeah my G/F is seemingly the only girl in the world who thinks the ipod looks stupid. As such I'll be getting her an Iriver iHP-120 for xmas.. Oh yeah and it plays
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
Hey, there's a clever idea: make the removable faceplate of a car's stereo the thing itself: the mobile MP3 player.
Two birds, one stone!
1) The battery. Ignoring the "dirty little secret" brouhaha (what, you thought batteries did *not* have a finite lifespan?), the plain fact is that specialized, proprietary batteries are annoying. Your priorities may be different (hey, them's the breaks, to me and to Apple) but I'd happily settle for a reasonably shorter battery life and even a slightly thicker waist in the iPod if in exchange it would take rechargeable AA or AAA batteries.
:)
;))
Device-specific batteries have advantages sometimes (allow sleeker shapes etc), but AA (and nearly as much, AAA) batteries are available everywhere in alkaline form, and easily gettable (in Western countries) in lithium variety. Better yet, both rechargeable AA/AAAs and the chargers that charge them (can I say 'charge' a few more times?) have gotten considerably better in the last few years. This is one reason I like my Nikon 990 camera over the later ones in the same series. I can carry extra batteries for cheap
2) No ogg vorbis support. This may not apply to you, but 99% the compressed music I have is in the form of oggs, ripped for convenience from my CD collection. If the iPod adds a firmware upgrade which allows ogg decoding (I've heard mixed reports on the feasability of this wrt current iPods, but a chip upgrade in a later series could do it even if the pessimists are right), I'd probably get over my disdain for the battery and shell out for one.
Obviously, this is just a rant, since Apple is unlikely to give the iPod AA/AAA batteries, and makes more money selling ITMS music in AAC than they'd probably make by adding Ogg Vorbus Support as a bullet point on the features list. However, these two factors, singly and apart, do make other players more attractive. (Like the Rio Karma; same battery lameness, but Hey, plays ogg
Now, when will low-end MP3 players at Target add ogg to *their* bullet list of features, though? (Part of) all I want is to listen to some books while driving, without changing CDs (or buying an overkill CD-changing car stereo).
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
You're not paying attention. Not only is this the two year anniversary for when the iPod was introduced, it is also the two year anniversary when all previous products were erased from Maccie (and Slashdotter) memory. Whenever Apple comes out with something (and it's always a copy of something that already exists), everything previous doesn't exist and everything subsequent is supposedly a copy of the Apple product. Every new mp3 player is falsely labelled "yet another iPod copy."
the one thing apple does diffrent then the rest of the it world is that they sellan experience, not a machine, not a os but an experience. in many ways they are closer to disney or macdonalds then ibm and dell...
this is why they gloss over stuff like hardware specs when they try to sell something and give the gui and user experience har hard beating to make sure its perfect.
in many ways apple products are perfect for the general user that wants a pc thats as easy to use as your average tv, stereo or video/dvd recorder...
sure they stuffed a BSD kernel under the hood but that just means that they can scoop the cream of the open source world, hook the power users that was looking at linux or one of the BSD users and still get people to buy theyre propriatary hardware...
no, give me linux and a joe blow mainboard.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
The iPod competitors so far have lacked the interface and/or small size to be navigable with one hand. It will be interesting to see what Apple comes up with next. Can drive sizes keep going up and be useful? Do we need a 200 GB iPod?
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
That's completely true.... I just got a G5 last weekend after owning my iPod for about 4 months. I convinced my boss to buy it for me (we are an all-mac company and I am the I.T. Manager) and traded him my old PC for it (who he is giving to his father-in-law).
All in all, the iPod i bought really made me salivate for a computer that matched its elegance, logical design and stable, worry-free performance. Bye bye, Windows-flavoured PC... (I love *NIX but I've never had the time or interest to spend days and days configuring my computer to do even simple tasks like recognize and use all of my hardware, thus I've just casually ran Windows at home for years).
JUMP JUMP JUMP JUMP JUMP JUMP JUMP JUMP IRRIGATE
That's not true. Until Nov 14, 2003, Apple wanted $255 to service iPod's with dead batteries. PDASmart, the $50 source you refer to, didn't source the battery until June 2003, 20 months after the iPod's introduction. The battery has a lifespan between 1 and 2 years. That means that there are people out there on the wrong side of the Bell Curve who have shelved their iPods because they didn't think paying Apple $255 to replace a battery on a $400 item was a fair shake. May not be a problem to you but ask those people why don't you?
What's really stupid about this is had Apple:
- Made it easy to change a battery and...
- Sourced the battery from the beginning.
nobody would have been complained.I had an original 5gb iPod bought nearly 2 years ago, sold it to a friend, who gave it to his girlfriend, and it's still functioning strong!
GPL Deconstructed
Odd...after looking at the site you posted and combing their forums, it appears you are incorrect. Vorbis won most of the listening tests, especially at lower bitrates (which is more common on a portable device).
Also, note that the reason Vorbis came about was that the people who own the patents on mp3 were starting to become real asses and it looked like the future of mp3 encoders and possibly players on linux was in danger. In addition, mp3pro is considered the next generation audio standard (although there are many unnecessary competitors) and even it has been shown to be inferior to Vorbis.
And again, Vorbis is, and always shall be, free.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
I simply had to make a blog entry commemorating all the wonderful remarks. (A disproportionately large amount of the "bashing" actually came from people who are, or were, or at least claimed to be, fans of Apple.) I wonder how many of the people named therein have since gotten iPods?
But I thought using uncompressed audio was a bad idea, battery-life-wise. However much longer the hard drive has to spin to give you the same length of music, your battery will be spent that much sooner, right? I mean, I don't have an iPod, so I can't test it, but I'd be surprised if you got more than a couple hours out of the battery, listening to WAV or AIFF.
Why doesn't the iPod have those things?
The iPod doesn't have those things because even without them, people are still buying it. That's really all there is to it.
Popular opinion and plain old word of mouth (amplified by excellent, if cheesy, marketing) have proven that the iPod doesn't suck. In this day and age, that guarantee is worth a hell of a lot more than most realize.
Sure, the iRiver might have more features, but is the software as good? Is the interface as good? Could my mom use it? My grandmother? My daughter? My dog? Is the sound quality good? Are the supplied headphones good? Is it going to fall apart in six days? Weeks? Months?
The thing is, the iRiver might be better in every way. But I'm sure the iPod is good.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.