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iPod Jr. Rumors Become More Substantial
sdimbert writes "Rumors of a new, smaller, "iPodJr" have been floating around the Rumor Sites for a few weeks (as well a here at Slashdot). But now, the rumors have gained credibility and become more substantial. London's Evening Standard reports today (30 Dec 03) that "Apple has announced a cut-price mini version" of the iPod, "costing 65 [~115 USD], which will be able to store 800 songs." Despite the assertion that Apple "announced" the product, there is no mention of it at their official News Page or their product page for the iPod."
When you can get me a DVD recorder/MP3 player that fits in my pocket, costs $100, and is super simple to use via iTunes, then sure, I'm all over it.
What is so wonderful about iTunes? I don't want to use any program to transfer songs to my MP3 player. I want it to mount as an external drive so I can transfer any song, MP3 or otherwise, onto the player. I don't see a reason to use iTunes. You certainly shouldn't encode with it. LAME is a far superior encoder.
The Archos and many other players do this. Although a $120 HD MP3 player is a killer deal, the current iPods are just beat out in features by the competition. A 20gb Archos AV 120 is slightly cheaper than an iPod, and it has a small but high resolution color LCD display. It can play back divx and xvid files at near dvd quality. It can even record divx video through RCA or composite. It also has TV-out. Quite a bit more features than the iPod. It also mounts as an external hard drive
I'd take a mini-dvd based MP3 player any day over an iPod. It would be tiny and hold a few hundred songs per disc. Transferring songs would be easy enough with Nero or something. I'm surprised nobody has done something like that.
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