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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."
Google it.
I want the fire back.
Hey, it's also the Two-Year Anniversary of when I started paying for my iPod, which continues to this day.
There was no battery problem. A battery dying in 18 months was an extremely rare exception, and Apple charges $100 for a new battery, not $250, and you can get a 3rd party replacement for $50.
apple recently dropped the price to 100$ for battery replacement. there are 3rd party replacments that are as cheap as 50$ also.
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
Which i am sure you have been heard by now, is filled with bull...
Seems like the makers of this "film" have some secrets of their own:
Dumb kids.
Young, stupid and camera owning...a dangerous combination...
Not least because it's adding a huge amount to Apple's bottom line. Its helped apple through a dodgy period whilst they were moving their users to a world class OS and struggling with a slipping processor roadmap. They need a new killer device soon though I predict that this xmas is going to be the peak in iPod sales so I home January's Macworld (or the next year at least) brings something twice as cool. I'm sure Apple won't disappoint. (Well I hope at the very least).
There certainly is a customer service problem. They should tell their idiot customer service employee(s) that. I know, all the 1337 geeks on /. know how to search for a replacement at DigiKey, but when someone calls the company up and asks about a battery replacement and their customer service department tells them, "the iPod is worthless, it would be $250+ to fix it, throw it out and buy a new one," there is a major problem with that company's customer service.
"No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." - CmdrTaco
Here's a website with a nice counter to the dirty little secret. Not only has his ipod (and mine) lasted longer, but he has links to Apple's $99 replacement and 3rd party $49 replacement batteries.
When iPod harddrive spins up, it's usually in the end of the song. That means that the risk of it spinning up in the middle of a song with you jumping around like crazy is pretty small.
My iPod has fell a couple of times to the floor while playing, and nothing happened. I heard from my cousin that some Apple salesmen even threw an iPod against a wall... or was it floor to demonstrate it. But if you're unlucky with the harddrive spinning at that time, it's propably not going to take that. Anyways, don't try this at home!
I demand the Cone of Silence!
The hard disk only spins briefly so fill the 32MB cache. (Or is it 64? Not sure.) After that, music plays from the cache. Even so, I've dropped my iPod while the HD was spinning, and after a brief heart attack, discovered it was still running fine.
(Phew.)
There is a hefty RAM buffer into which data is loaded, and then the disk spins down. This is how the iPod conserves battery life.
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 -- Mathematics is the Language of Nature.
Ummm did you click on the link? Have you been brought up to date on this issue? Do you know the whole story?
Doesn't sound like it since if you did then you would know the "message" as you put it was totally ignorant of the TRUTH.
I think you should calm down a bit and read the Neistat Brothers Side of the story
It explains pretty well, that, prior to the video becoming popular, nobody was willing to offer information about the existance of Apple's "99$ Battery replaceent program" , Not even Apple !!
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
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
I know that this article was written for people who aren't technical types, maybe folks who first heard of "MP3's" just last year, but the difference between the iPod and the MP3 players that proceeded it are more numerous than suggested.
Here's a story that makes a point...
Some Apple employees loaded Mac OS X Server onto one of the early iPods and connected it to a desktop Mac. Then, they booted to it. It ran.
I hope that all the folks who always seem troll on Apple product, saying that all they do is slap on some pretty exterior, jack up the prices, and market, market, market, will think for a moment and appreciate the depth of this product.
And I don't even own one.
--Richard
This is a secret? Pretty much anyone who did their homework going in knew that before buying. Those that didn't surely found out in time to take advantage of Apple's very liberal replacement policy.
Anyway, the third-gen iPods have a different battery (the lithium-polymer technology in the original one apparently was not ready for prime time) so the 1.5 year limit thing no longer applies. And they've got a battery replacement service now also.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Slashdot is not a person. It is however something akin to a rorschach test.
War is necrophilia.
Apple wasn't the first to make hard drive MP3 players. The first one I recall seeing on the market was the Creative Lab's Nomad Jukebox (haven't got an exact date on the very first one), in 2000. It had to be out at least a year before iPod. Apple and everyone else pretty much took that idea and ran with it. iPod is a good device especially when paired with iTunes but, it's not without its limitations, as pointed out in this CNet article , five reasons not to buy an iPod , already posted on /.
Me, I've got a Rio Nitrus, which uses the Cornice Storage Element and it's a nice fit between the bulkier hard drive players (like the iPod) and the solid state players that have less storage. If Apple really wants to take the lead they should help Cornice to up their drive capacity (like to 20 Gb) and sell it in a smaller iPod that has a replaceable battery.
I think I think, therefore I think I am.
Taking the music off it is cake.
Second - it locks itslef ot one instance of itunes. That's because it's behavior is to synchronize with itunes, not just to copy mp3s to it.
Third, it's flat and sleek..which means it fits in my pocket nicely. nothing jutting out.
As for "a discman is better".... if you are happy with your discman, and some cdrs, power to you... it makes sense for the reasons you say.
I travel.. and I don't like to carry a binder full of cds around with me, nor do I like swapping them. All those little things like CD wallets and whatnot add up when you are travelling.
My ipod fits in a shirt pocket, and has far more tunes on it than your discman.
Your discman will be stolen just as easy as an ipod.
That said.. it's a luxury item.. nto a must-have. If you use it the way it's intended, and especially if you already use itunes to sort all your music, it's a pleasant device to use.
It's clear plastic with a white undercoat, like the previous iBooks.
And it's smooth, you can just wipe it off.
In short, it doesn't seem to get dirty or grubby.. not like you would think.
For that matter, neither does my iBook.
Turns out these guys are not even remotely interested in solving the problem. They're in it for the publicity.
The inciminating email exchanges that prove it.
Also...
http://depot.info.apple.com/ipod/
(Official Apple iPod battery replacement for $99)
http://www.ipodbattery.com/ ($49)
http://pdasmart.com/ipodpartscenter.htm ($69)
I think you should read about what young and dumb kids sometimes SAY and what the DO...
t
http://das.doit.wisc.edu/neistatsdirtysecret.tx
Then tell me they did not produced a one sided piece of biased fluff that they purposely have not corrected.
from the link:
I offered to mirror the Neistat brothers' iPod video after their original webhost apparently pulled out, with one condition: that they link to, or otherwise inform users about, Apple's official $99 iPod battery replacement, since the video, as it stands, is incorrect: the iPod's battery is replaceable, and, on top of it, there's an official Apple program for $99.
They agreed to provide this information, and said they had no problem telling users how to solve the problem. I, in turn, provided webspace and bandwidth for them. The bottom line: after two days of lies and false starts, and milking my institution's generosity by providing almost 100,000 downloads and 0.7 terabytes of data transfer, they NEVER posted any information about how to solve the problem that they promised to post. Their agenda seems clear, and that's sensationalism, melodrama, and attention. The full email exchange is here:
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
I suspect that there is a small group of techies who have bought iPods, and then gone on to buy their first Macs. I bought a Windows iPod and was very impressed by it, and my positive thoughts on it's design helped influence my decision to buy an Apple powerbook 12" a few months later - my first Mac. At least one of my coworkers also bought an iPod and a few months later bought a Mac. So I think the iPod might be introducing Mac design ingenutity to people who otherwise wouldn't have bought Macs.
I have blog like everyone else
I have a 10Gig iPod now for a year and a half and I use it exztensivly during my runs (up to 2 1/2 hours long). No problems, works fine.
Occasionally it locks up but that is only very briefly.
Love it.
M.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
It's definately possible. The iPod Linux project showed that the iPod can decode oggs in 80% realtime under Linux with an unoptimized Tremor decoder. The official firmware presumably has less overhead than Linux, and a little bit of decoder optimization would definately make it fast enough.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
i guess it's a sign of the immense success of a product when you forget that it was only introduced no more than 2 years ago... once a product feels like it's been there forever and it somewhat doesn't easily occur to you that a while ago it didn't even exist and no body heard of it, that is when it become a part of the popular culture.
kudos to apple; and also for the fact that 2 years on no one seems to have been able to bring to market a better product.
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?
2) It's not Apple's fault that you chose to rip your CD's using a compression format that most of the industry (and most users) has chosen to to adopt. Ogg advocates are starting to sound like Betamax owners from around 1990 or so.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I can tell one thing for sure about Apple. They have brilliant marketing
In recent years, Apple has become much more aware of what customers want. They've always made interesting technology, but they haven't always understood what customers wanted to buy, and they haven't always understood how to present their interesting technology in a way that appeals to customers. Steve Jobs is masterful in both these areas, and we have him to thank in large part for Apple's resurgence.
And you think that AA or AAA batteries will SAVE you money in the long term, perhaps?
The iPod has to run a hard drive and power a bunch of other things with batteries, and these things typically take a lot of power to run. So, pretend that it takes 4 AA batteries to run the iPod. Here, it's $4 for a two-pack of AA Energizers, so that's $8 to run your iPod. Since they're not rechargable, it only takes about 10 packs before the cost of buying one of the third party replacement batteries (I'm working in Canadian money here, BTW) is cheaper.
If you want to buy rechargable batteries, you can buy NiMH batteries with a charger for about $50CDN. These will last at least as long as the built-in battery, but the recharging is somewhat less convenient. Admittedly, the convenience of being able to carry spare batteries just in case can be a match, if you use it that much (and we assume that 4AAs last as long as one charge on the iPod battery).
I think that it's probably better to have an internal, non-swappable rechargable battery, personally.
As for Oggs, I used to have everything ripped to ogg, but I've switched to AAC, since I really like iTunes. (I know that there's a plugin to listen to oggs with iTunes, but it's REALLY bad under windows. It works great on my Mac, though). If you're using iTunes, re-ripping your library isn't so bad.
If you read your own quote you would notice that the parent talked about not evolution or revolution, but innovation.
The whole thing about the iPod isn't that it is a massive leap forward in technology, its that it is so perfectly refined. The design is so pure, they didn't set out to make the most money, or sell the most players, they set out to make the best player. Thats the innovation, making a product as close to perfect for the consumer, not just churning out a mass market money spinner for the company.
well, at least not even significant minority. As far as quality concerned, Vorbis is mediocre to say the least. There was enough tests done in this respect. Check hydrogenaudio.org for more information. It is also not well supported. Remember how slashdotters rejoiced when there was the announcement that BBC has adopted vorbis as its streaming protocol. I don't remember any news on slashdot when BBC dropped it, primarily because of lack of any decent support.
AAC is the state of the art compression technology, and it is *standard* part of MPEG4 protocol suite. it is a natural extension and improvement of MP3. Remember my words: you'll see more and more vendors jumping on AAC bandwagon. Ogg Vorbis? Don't expect a lot. may be a few, like Karma.
Actually, the guys who made the Quicktime video hardly seem interested in the truth of it all. This article links to an interesting experience someone had with them. They don't seem to care about the truth of the issue, to the point that they are spreading disinformation and know it.
Boom Shanka
I hate to resort to definitions, but inovation can be defined as follows:
A creation (a new device or process) resulting from study and experimentation
I wasn't referring to the iPod itself being an innovation, but to the unique design mentality applied to it. When designing the iPod it is obvious that Apple looked at existing devices saw the flaws and designed the iPod to not only correct these flaws but also address the essential usability ideals that previous (and most subsequent) players ignored.
They avoided the normal approach of looking at an existing product, seeing how it works then making a clone. Maybe adding a feature here or there in order to differentiate it from the pack, but essentially adding features for the sake of another bullet point in the advert. Not looking to see what consumers actually want from such a device and addressing those areas.
Apple is in fact now falling into this trap, instead of relying on the iPod competing on its own merits they are adding PDA functions piecemeal with updates. Of course this isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as these add-on features continue the ethic of usability.