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Mix Wi-Fi and Portable Digital Audio, Get Aireo
Midwestern gadget freak writes "What do you get when you mix Wi-Fi and digital tunes? The Aireo, which syncs with a PC over a high-speed wireless link instead of a cable or dock. It packs in other features not found in an iPod, but has a measly 1.5 gigabyte drive and won't work with any of the top music-download services. Its maker isn't a household name, but Best Buy will sell the things in a few weeks."
The summary says it has a measly 1.5 gig hd. Yes, some MP3 players of 20g or 10 or 40, but 1.5 is still a lot for many many songs. Hours on end to be truthful. If you frequently have time to update with your computer, I can't imagine 1.5g being a limit.
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Did they just design the thing before the new 4gb mini drives came out, or could they not get a deal on them? I mean, with a 4gb drive, they could at least compete with an ipodmini on capacity. Right now they are in that awkward place between memory based and drive based players-- too heavy to jog with, but too little to store your whole collection.
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Crudely Drawn Games
Once again, a contender enters the field with completely different hardware specifications, obtuse pricing and little forecast on who will be dominating the field in 2004 and 2005. From my point of view, it is an innovation of merit, wireless access to your computer, on the fly playlists and a iPod mini-esque agenda to annouce, but... 1.5GB is the bare minimum I would believe for an audio prepherial.
Apple and HP should't lose too much sleep over this devices redeeming wireless factor, the fact it isn't a household name is becoming irrelevant as more consumers become aware of competing technologies but because it doesn't play buddies with iTMS or even Napster 2.0 is distressing, especially as the music download services enter maturity
But still, cool technology, useful placement, wrong time
Kudos to it
Apple has incredible marketing. I have never seen any mp3 player advertised except the IPOD. Well, actually I've seen magazine ads for Creative Muvo. But advertising for the IPOD is everywhere. The masses will go where they are told.
I would like to salute the ashes of american flags, and all the fallen leaves filling up shopping bags.
This post sounds like and advert, same copy as the site and everything...
Just a few small points.
1. How does it get 'wireless' power? I assume it needs a power cable to charge the battery. Maybe incar?
2. With a mac the ipod syncs when it is docked, so the list would be.
a. get ipod from car
b. dock ipod
c. sleep
d. put ipod in car
3. Its a bad idea to leave valuables in the car
4. The thing that cracks me up most is the 'Pick your playlists' bit. With only 1.5GB vs 15GB in the same price ipod (which has 10x capacity but is 'overpriced'?) many will need to pick the mp3's they want in the software for this thing, more so than any ipod user.
5. FM transmission is cool, but way lower quality then a wired connection
6. Syncing over wifi to a car is going to take a long time, 11Mb/s max, prob 1-3Mb/s in reality, bit slower than the 400Mb/s of firewire.
Just my 2 cents,
I don't think this is an 'iPod Killer'. The phrase iPod killer assumes that the development of the iPod will stand still at the current stage of development, which it obviously won't.
I think if Steve Jobs has any brains at all, wireless will make its way into the next iPod. I don't think that video (rumoured to be in the next iPod) is a killer app on portable units, but I could be wrong. I can see a future for video combined with wireless - the possibilities are endless here, especially with vehicle mountings.
That said the Aireo is certainly a nice unit. The original postings saying that a 1.5 gig drive is a disadvantage is completely wrong. When you have wireless, you have unlimited storage - it is just remote to the device.
The only thing the Aireo will have to overcome is the iPods strong branding. Kudos to the Aireo for being the strongest contender yet!!!
you have to assume that almost everyone either has or will have soon, at least 1.5 GB of music. so, if you have more than that you _still_ have to sit down at your computer to tell it which albums/artists you want on the thing.
Ogg is like beta. Technically superior, but (almost) nobody cares.
..don't panic
Firewire 400 Mbit/s (or 800 if you have the later type)
Wi-Fi 11 Mbit/s (or maybe 54 if you're lucky enough to get it to work).
I daresay if wireless synching becomes popular they'll put it in the iPod soon enough.
Wireless synching is a good idea, but you still have to plug the thing in to charge. In that sense, it hasn't gained any physical advantage over any other player. The interface for the iPod, especially on windows, sucks ass. If plugging it in automatically synched it and it automatically un-docked itself when done it would be every bit as good as the Aerio. Now... If someone could just figure out a way to charge these gizmo's wirelessly we'd be set!
And that's not a troll. The market for portable music players is already crowded with 'almost-there' devices. iPod is slick but doesn't play OGG. Neuros plays OGG and has MyFi (the two things I look for most) but the interface is kludgy and it doesn't work with OS X. The iRiver has OGG capability but no MyFi. All have much larger capacity than this device. Why would I be interested in this if I'm already not buying the competitors' products that are already on the market with better specs? Seriously, why would you bring a product like this to market?
Nope, not this device. ipod will get killed by the same thing that kills everything in this category: a cheap, "almost as good as", blister-pack device that retails in the $30 to $60 price range. Remember the "walkman". Every junk electronics manufacture jumped on its success and drove both price and quality down until everyone had an "equivelent". This is the nature of this market. The battery and price of the ipod almost guarantees this transition within the next couple of years.
Bizarre isn't it. Just cos it's an MP3 player, everyone's looking at it from an iPod perspective, but if you look at it as a WiFi server, then it's pretty much the first one there.
I've seen speculative products from Toshiba and Sony (I think Sony's was BlueTooth), so it'd be nice if this got to market - I'd buy one just for its wireless server capabilities. Damn cool for work backup and code transportation!
It's the best product out there right now. It wins on:
*ease of use (syncs and charges effortlessly with mac/pc)
* player UI (you can find any one of 10,000 songs in less than 10 seconds, while driving... so I hear)
* ease of music procurement (iTunes is a great mpeg3/mpeg4 ripper and it also hooks into the very good iTunes Music Store)
*good looks (other mp3 players look like a robot's diseased ear that fell off)
* cool accessories (there's a ton of iPod goodies out there, from car chargers to boom boxes to FR transmitters to...)
Just my opinions, but sometimes things do well in the market not only because of marketing, but also due to actual quality and resultant word of mouth.
~jeff
This device is not revolutionary. It's evolutionary. It doesn't "reinvent" or "redefine" anything. It takes a good idea (portable music player) and adds build in FM transmitter and 802.11 song download.
Those are two very useful features, but I'm not about to throw away my $300 mp3 player to buy this one.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Quoteth the raven:
:-)
Just my opinions, but sometimes things do well in the market not only because of marketing, but also due to actual quality and resultant word of mouth.
Just a minor nitpick... Marketing is the most frequently misunderstood word in business. It has a technical definition just like HTTP & CD ROM (DRM sucks... First to work that in!) do. Marketing includes both advertising & sales; nothing can do well in the market without sales.
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try looking for stuff like this.
For practical purposes, this thing has comparable capacity to one of those mini-iPods: it can hold far more songs than you can play on one charge, but it is far too small to hold one's entire music library. This really looks like a nice evolution of the disk-based player and technically like a great improvement over the mini-iPod.
The fact that it doesn't work with "major music download services" isn't surprising either: major music download services are proprietary and they are trying to create and leverage monopolies. Their creators have neither the interest nor the engineering skills to support a large number of clients--it's both easier and financially more interesting to them to tie their services to players running their own software.
Of course, if I pointed out that if Apple released this, people would be falling all over themselves saying how innovative the company was, I'd get modded down instantaneously by Apple's mod-squad, so I won't point that out.