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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."
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Great new possibilities for music pirates as well as for RIAA detectives..! ;-)
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Let's give a warm welcome to the iPod killer, Slashdotters. SoniqCast was just selected as a finalist in the TechTV "Best of CES" award. This thing is cool as shit -- it's the world's first-ever portable wireless WiFi MP3 player. It won the "Best of CES Portable Audio" award at the 2004 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.
I got to play with one of these, and I can assure you that this thing is totally badass. It automatically and wirelessly moves music from your PC to the player. With iPods, which some feel are overpriced and suffer from poor battery quality, getting music onto your MP3 player involves the following steps:
Get iPod from the car or wherever it's at
Start up iTunes software
Pick your playlists
Dock the iPod
Stand around by your PC for a while
Undock the iPod
Put the iPod back in the car or wherever you want it
With this Aireo gadget, you don't have to do any long process like that. It automatically does content refreshes via wireless. You don't need wires, you can use the built-in FM transmitter in your car to listen to music on your car stereo, and it's all at a very reasonable price for such a cutting-edge piece of technology. My friends at Best Buy say that it will retail for $299.99 and include some great discounts inside the package (free iTunes/Napster downloads, perhaps).
You Linux hackers will be happy, too. Aireo includes an internal hard disk drive. I'm sure it'll only be a couple months before this thing's completely hacked and works flawlessly with Linux, BSD, OS X, and perhaps even Solaris machines.
The model I tried out came with a carrying case, headphones, an AC power cord/charger, USB cable, installation guide, SoniqSync personal preferences play list manager, and owners manual.
I don't work for this company or Best Buy, but I love music and computers, and as such I think this thing is really neat. Imagine the sexual possibilities of playing some Marvin Gaye off my Aireo on my car stereo while I tongue down some chic in the backseat!
Background: 28/M/Bi-Sexual; Owner of a Linux company; MBA Harvard 2003; B.S. Comp Sci MIT 2000
Does enjoying "It's a small world" mean that one is likely a pedophile? I'm just asking because I have this friend who really likes it (as in "gets sexually aroused by it").
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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Or do I have to press alt+print-screen+b and choose Windoze XP?
When a female asks if you want to see her Aireo and doesn't lift up her shirt
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Why is it that the iPods are still the #1 seller? Is it brand name recognization, or is it just that maybe Apple's product is better in the long run?
Wireless is, for me, nice but not essential. The real killer feature which this has in my view is its ability to play OGGs up to a nominal bitrate of 180KB/s. This, combined with its 8Gb of musical capacity at 128KB/s, make this the perfect music player who find OGG much easier to use than AAC, FLA, MP3 and WMA. It also allows me to store even the longest Yes albums on a single device!
Ron dies in chapter 9 of book 7.
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.
====
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
I like this thing. I don't need 40 gigs or 80 gigs or whatever when dealing with a portable music player. I want it to be small and I need more storage than 128 megs. 1.5 gigs is pretty good. I also don't care if it doesn't work with any of the music services. I don't want that DRM'd crap. Until they get things right I can find all the music I need on P2P. I dissapointed that there biggest sell point is that it is wireless. But I guess I-pod wins design and lots of other players are smaller so you go with your strengths. What is the price I didn't spend enough time looking to find it.
I would like to salute the ashes of american flags, and all the fallen leaves filling up shopping bags.
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It doesnt say anywhere (or does it??) that it can link up with other Aireo's so whats the point? sticking a wireless link in it just so you dont have to plug the cable into your computer!? Ok so it could be cool if you want to leave it in the car or something but its not designed as a car stereo box so you would have to be pretty lazy to justify that. What would be really cool is if it could communicate with other mp3 players on the street so you could listen to what others were listening to (like jacking in with headphones but wireless) or even better, swap music with people. Im guessing they didnt do this for "legal" reasons but hopefully someone will come up with a firmware hack.
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won't work with any of the top music-download services
Sure it does, if it plays good ole' mp3s... because the "top music download services" are always going to be the free ones... perhaps the author meant "top pay services"...
You could also broadcast a live audio from anywhere with network access, as well...
I don't know I still like the IPod it has alot of gadgets you can buy for it. Like the module you can add onto it to record meetings, or memos, or if you are a college student just record class sessions. I might buy this if the price is in the ball park.
Now this is the sort of music player I would be looking for. I ask: Do you really need an MP3 player with 10GB worth of storage space? Well, I'm sure some people out there have music collections that fill more than that, but seriously, 90% of people that will be buying MP3 players will use, at most, 1GB of space. Combine that fact with being able to transfer music wirelessly, and you get a useful little music player that I'd certainly buy...
Think of it as a wireless file server. Too bad about the drive size, but an interesting combo. Looks like the 'mini' computer intel(?) was pushing a while back. I suspect these are being made by the same folks who bought the polaroid name.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Best Buy has its customers arrested for such heinous offenses as trying to get the advertised price on an item.
If you want an Aiero, get it somewhere else.
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.
I think that this product is a step toward what the majority of /.'s are seeking for portable audio devices. I am intruiged by this product, primarily for the wireless capabilities it possesses. I have been researching audio systems for my car which would allow me to wirelessly update my musical selections. I had looked at the CAJUN Car Audio Jukebox, but this device comes close as an option. I dream of finding a local merchant that makes custom Mini-ITX cases, and installs them in my vehicle inexpensively. But I will consider this, as an alternative to my dream car audio system.
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And it has a built-in slot for small flash-memory cards to transfer photos from digital cameras to its hard drive, a feat the iPod can match only with a Belkin add-on. This feature isn't fully operational on prototype Aireos but is scheduled to be available with finished devices for sale.
I find this to be the most interesting feature it lists. I do digital photography as a hobby and I've always thought this feature would be awesome for an mp3 device. I personally have a hard drive based storage device (the MindStor - discontinued) for offloading my media but it's still rather large and bulky. There are also a bunch of portable storage devices with video screens out that play mp3s but the mp3 functionality is an afterthought.
I would love to be able to replace my ipod with a device that can function as both which still being compact. I would buy that in a second.
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!
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. 1.5 gigs is not measly. I'd rather have that than have to pay for at least 15 gig for a real ipod.
The fact that it doesn't work with the music download services just shows how useless the music download services are because they sell broken DRMed songs.
You've gotta love Slashdot logic.
Someone posts a comment praising a device that's been selected as the coolest PC/audio player in the entire world for the past year, and automatically you all assume that he works for the company.
None of his other posts mention this product. If he were really getting paid to praise it, I'm sure his signature and journal and member URL would include information on it as well.
How that went from +5, Insightful to 0, Troll is beyond me.
Being owned by the same company that owns Fingerhut, you know it has to be quality.
I've been working on for a few months. We are a 20-gig hard-disk-based car product, with a REAL interface, and a wireless link (which can sync to a number of services). We also showed versions of our products at CES this year which can play MPEG1/2/4 (and DiVX) in both home and car flavors.
"and won't work with any of the top music-download services"
Umm, you mean it doesn't work with iTunes don't you? That's only one of many download services out there, and I bet a larger portion of MP3s come from people ripping their own CDs. In any case, it'll work with my top music download service thanks...
If you're interested in music around the house, might I suggest a low-power FM transmitter?
;-)
Then you can buy cheap receivers, and put them all over the place, and listen to the music that's on your server.
Virtually no server configuration required! And if you time it right, you can have it play your theme music while you pull into the driveway
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In other words, can you stick another 1GB of music on some flash and have it read the MP3's directly off of the flash card?
Where it doesn't matter whether or not the device is connected (ie because it's sitting next to the computer), use a cable and enjoy *significantly* faster syncs. A few years ago I spent some time building a computer for the car which would be connected to my LAN at night by UTP cable and/or updated by CD. It was to be connected to the stacker interface and controlled as a CD stacker would be (complete with track names, etc.). Fine if you've got a garage but I was a student at the time so the car spent most of it's parked life a few hundred metres from the flat. Then MP3 car computers started being produced in small quantities, and I thought I'd wait until they hit mass market (figuring you can easily fit a cheap hard drive in a head unit and therefore it wouldn't be long until we saw such devices). Yes, you can buy a head unit which will play MP3s from a data CD, but that's not what I'm after. Then embedded platforms like Via Eden started to be mass produced and I now have access to a small form factor (300x300x80 or thereabouts) machine which is fed by 12vdc. Unfortunately I don't have the time to invest in it at the moment, but I figure it won't be long before one of the big manufacturers works it out - perhaps this year? The idea is that when you park your car (probably triggered by your turning off the ignition), it checks whether or not it is in range. If it is, it syncs and then shuts down. Otherwise it just shuts down. If you're lucky enough to have a carspace within wireless range of your desk at work then you can sync both ways, so as if you import a CD at work, you can also play it in the car and/or at home. The syncs may be slow, but they're only doing a few tracks a day so it doesn't matter. Anyway, if someone knows of such a beast already, or wants to make one, let me know.
tell that to the BBC who streams in ogg, or quite a few of the large conglomerates of indy bands who release music in ogg
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.
I'm curious. How hackable will this be? Does this include WEP encryption (or WAP)? Not that WEP will do much good. This may open up a new door as far as Wi-FI security goes. If this device is constantly looking for a 802.11x connection while it is on, (and if this device becomes somewhat popular) I suspect someone will come up with a rootkit to install malware on it, and then transfer to the users computer. Yet another wireless back door.
anyone heard of them? and if only someone could combine the 2 solutions.
http://www.slimdevices.com/
i'm probably going to use one of these for my new flat, it makes more sense for me since i will probably have a server running 24/7
...just don't park too close to the neighbors who have the same device and atrocious taste in music!
How about making copyright reform a central issue in the upcoming election?
Very likely most politicians don't know if the DMCA is fit to eat, feel Disney and the RIAA are important campaign contributors whose requests should be given priority, and music downloaders are simple thieves who deserve every bit of punishment they get.
You can change that. But it's going to take some work. There are enough people sharing music in America - more people than voted for George Bush - that if you get off your collective asses and get politically active, you can get laws passed to get the RIAA off your back.
In Change the Law, I explain that copyright is not a Constitutional right, like free speech. Instead copyright is allowed (but not required) to serve a useful purpose, a purpose which I feel has long since outlived its usefulness.
I suggest steps you can take to bring about copyright reform, ranging from speaking out to practicing civil disobedience.
One thing I'd like you all to do today is to write your elected representatives to ask their opinion of the current state of copyright law given its widespread abuse by organizations like the RIAA and MPAA, and to urge them to work towards copyright reform. Let them know your vote will depend on a positive response.
When you're done writing that letter, write to the other candidates for each office in the upcoming elections, to ask them the same question.
Sixty million American peer-to-peer file traders have the potential to raise a lot of Hell with the politicians. I want every candidate to be peppered with questions about copyright reform at every campaign stop and in every press interview. I want the repeal of the DMCA to be discussed in the Presidential debates.
People marched in protest when Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested. Dmitry is free now - but the law under which he was jailed is still on the books.
If you agree with me that something needs to be done about copyright, I need your help.
Thank you for your attention.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
PoWiFi, or Power over Wireless Ethernet. I use it with my PDA all the time.
GROSS!
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Mamma look!
If it has network support, it might as well ESD support. Both client and server. Other useful protocols would be http serving (remote control), NFS(larger file archive), and telnet/ssh for nethack on the go.
Something like rendezvous for sharing music on the go would be a good idea, though the RIAA would pitch one hell of a temper tantrum.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Bunch of loser faggots
'nuff said.
--
Mamma look!
My Dell Axim has been doing this for more than a year now, and does a lot more.
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.
Elizabeth Hendrix: My husband died of cancer a few years ago. I'm working full time, raising 4 boys, and earn $28,000. I think it makes sense to roll back the tax cuts on the wealthiest people in this country. But some candidates want to raise taxes on the middle class. We can't be taxed any more. John Kerry's not going to raise taxes on the middle class.
John Kerry: I don't think we should be asking the middle class to be the people who are going to pick up for George Bush's mistakes.
Elizabeth Hendrix: John Kerry understands what's going on in my life.
John Kerry: I'm John Kerry and I approved this message.
I've been thinking of geting an X box for my car and installing Mythtv on it. I would then have it synk my showes and music whene ever I parked my car. All I would have to do is get one of thoughs ethernet-wifi bridges that are made for gaming in mind. I think it would be the ultimate car media player.
It has controls for a CD changer (which we don't have). I'm pretty sure Ford built the stereo this way so you couldn't buy a stereo from anyone else but Ford. I find it very annoying.
I admit to not having looked into it too carefully - but is there an MP3 player I can mount in my Ford without making it all ugly?
Thanks!
Request your free CD of my piano music.
According to the features list, you should be able to listen to what other people are listening to. It contains an FM transmitter, as well as an FM receiver. I suppose they put the transmitter in for use in the car, but you could techniqually search the radio waves for someone elses transmitter.
tell that to the BBC who streams in ogg
They only stream in RA sadly.
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It should just be a network drive that you can copy all your songs onto from ANY computer on your network, so how is it "not" compatable?
Ok the first time you connect the Aireo it'll take forever to transfer your mp3s, but future connections should only take a few seconds. Why? Because as soon as you download a mp3... or two, or ten... you wirelessly send them to the device. And how long does it really take to send a mp3 at 11mpbs? 3-5 seconds? Do I really need 400mbps to transfer a 4mB mp3? I think not.
"FM Transmitter is worthless/unnecessary"
Depends on what you do with it. This is the perfect mp3 player for your car: you can send mp3s to it wirelessly and listen to them through your radio with your stock radio, no wires needed. What could be a better mp3 player for your car stereo? You'd need to keep it powered while in your car though, so you'll probably end up leaving it running 24/7 plugged into the cigerrete lighter, but if it can play mp3s for hours with tiny built-in batteries then it can't suck that much power so your car battery will be fine.
I really hope they come out with a car stereo version. A car stereo with a 10+ gig iPod drive, mp3 cd/dvd+-rw player with the ability to transfer songs from cd to hd and can play songs from mp3 dvds instead of cds, wireless 802.11 access, and of course FM and all the other features an aftermarket stereo includes.
That's a lot to pack in a car stereo, but I'd imagine it would be possible. I'd also like to see a way to keep the 802.11 active with the car shut-off, since I don't want to run out and start the car just to transfer some mp3s.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
what did you expect?
It's gotta be coming soon. I want a pda that can play streaming mp3 over 802.11. Ideally it would also have some internal storage (1.5GB is just about right) and the fm transmition that this has. But if the wifi is only for syncing, and only with their software, then I think the wifi is wasted. It could be used for streaming mp3s, which is my favorite thing to listen to these days. Groove salad, and KCRW play more music than I colud find in years of downloading and paying for my own mix of music. I've been waiting for the next generation Zaurus to be released in the US because it has built in 802.11, still, I'm tempted to give the Aireo a try.
-Jim
Celebrate Excellence!
But are there linux drivers for their "wireless sync" or is it using some sort of pripority *cough* sony *cough* software... anybody out there got one and can answer that one?
My UID is prime and so is this number: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.
I took a quick look around the site, and didn't see anything about battery life, which makes me all the more skeptical...
... so where's the benefit of wireless again?
The pictures make it look comparably-sized to the iPod, so assuming they haven't come up with some miracle battery technology, and factoring in the drain of a wireless connection, I can't see that thing having a large battery life, which means you'll end up having to plug it in anyways pretty frequently
A Minesweeper clone that doesn't suck
Time after time slashdotters complain about there being no good OGG players, when iRiver's iHP120 has been out for months: iRiver iHP120 at Amazon It has a 20GB harddrive, plays MP3, OGG, WMA, WAV and ASF, has high quality MP3 recording with adjustable bitrate, has an FM Tuner, optical out, in-line remote with backlit screen, a longer battery life than iPod (16 hrs), and acts as a USB 2.0 harddrive with no software. Note that a firmware upgrade is required for OGG playback, but most of my music is in OGG and it plays perfectly with the update.
According to one of their press releases it will retail for $300.
I had the fortune of seeing an early version of this unit. It was billed as a iPod competitor (yet was not Mac compatible) The only thing that caught my eye was the built in FM transmitter. Other then that it was a yawner. I asked about the small drive and upon cracking the thing open saw that it was just that, a small drive (this was of course before the announcement of the mini 2GB drive the new iPods will use) and was told that it was the biggest drive available for the form factor.
Anyway, I knew the guy, and hated to say it, but the device on the whole is a yawner and not worth the cash. The interface sucks, the FM (granted this was a alpha/beta unit) was iffy, and it has not Linux/Mac support. (which is not a big deal for some, but is for me)
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.
tard de gozaimasu
A device with Wifi and mp3 playing must support streaming (even if it's simply "streaming" off a network filesystem) instead of requiring you "sync" the music before it'll play it. And let me guess, you have to use some annoying custom desktop app (even though this device has everything you'd need to browse/dl music directly.) Next!
Archos has various accessoris that let you transfer files from a CF card to one of their very portable hard drives that also play mp3s and mpeg4 video.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
- Drive past building with open WiFi network.
- Download all their MP3s.
- Profit.
Warsharing?CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Sorry to rain in your parade, but WTF?
1 GB is enough to store 16 CDs at moderate bit rate quality, perhaps half of that at top rate.
That is 8 to 16 hours of music.
I don't know others, but I don't hook up to a music player for more than 20 minutes or half an hour a day, mostly during my commute to work.
If you have the damn player glued to your ears 4 or 5 hours a day, so in your mind you create the "need" to carry around your 200 CD collection at all time, I would suggest that it sounds horribly like a manic behaviour.
I recognize that there are people that may actually need to carry 200 or 300 CDs on their music player, but for normal people that only want to listen to a few CDs every couple of weeks, 1 GB is perfectly appropriate.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
While it's good to see another hard drive based player in the market with some innovative features, I can see some problems with it:
Syncing over wifi is great, if a bit slow, but I don't think it will affect sales of devices like iPods for two reasons:
1. Many people who want players don't have wifi. The most likely to have wifi are people who own new Powerbooks, who are also the most likely to buy iPods as it's also made by Apple. It wouldn't really be worth getting wifi just so you could sync with the player, that would greatly increase the cost of the device.
2. The wifi syncing is really only useful for people who want to leave the player in their car. Otherwise, it's so little hassle to plug a player in to a cable or put it down in to a dock, either of which you'd need to do anyway to charge it (in the case of the iPod.)
OK, so lets say you can leave the player in your car attached to the cigarette lighter to keep it charged (my car doesn't have a cigarette lighter socket, but lets leave that aside.) Now, I can see a problem where the battery in the player is getting lots of short charges from the car. This isn't good for rechargeable batteries - they're better if they're allowed to drain completely and then charged up. So I can see a problem like the recent fuss over iPod batteries degrading quickly happening with the Aireo player as well.
If the player is in the car all the time, it won't matter if the battery doesn't work for very long, except for when you want to take it somewhere out of the car.
Really, car-wise, I can't see this beating the portable CD player I bought which plays discs of MP3s. It's not particularly great (it was a cheap one, much cheaper than the Aireo) but then again neither is the stereo in my car. However, when I want new music I can burn a new disc on my computer and leave it in my car. I effectively have infinite storage, and back-up of my music in one go. Also, if I buy a new CD I can listen to it on the same device, rather than having to take it to a computer to encode it. Now some proper car-based CD players have the ability to play discs of MP3s, if you want a good car-based experience they might be a better bet.
Back to the cable-based syncing: I'm not discounting that Apple, Creative and other MP3 player makers will put wifi in to their future devices. Once wifi becomes very widespread it will probably make sense. However, monitoring for wifi networks is going to be a drain on the players battery, so it will probably be something that needs to be turned on and off, which means if you forget to turn it on there's no difference between having to go and find the player and turn it on against finding it and carrying it to the computer and plugging it in.
And, lets face it, you're probably going to go to that computer anyway. That's the thing with MP3 players - generally they're carried around by you anyway, so having it in your pocket when you go to the computer anyway and plugging it in when you're there really isn't much of an effort. At the moment syncing involves bringing two pieces of personal equipment - the personal stereo and personal computer, together. You don't really need wifi for that, a cable is probably going to be long enough.
"What if they're using IE?" "I've dumbed Mozilla down to cope with it." - BOFH
Here is why this is important.
Think about the marketing forces behind commercial radio stations, their value can be summed up as "driving consumer preference by making music available in a channel that exposes users to advertising messages."
Something like this (which I have been waiting for for a while now) can make it so that Pepsi, instead of paying to have Britney on their commercials, can just buy her new song from her for $1MM outright, and have access points which automagically d/l the song to you whenever you go into a Pepsi vending establishment.
In other words, moving back to a world where music is too cheap to pirate. Why bother downloading from Kazaa if all you gotta do is buy a Pepsi at lunch, or go to McDonalds instead of BK, or Mobil instead of Shell. This does two things:
1. Seriously reduces the need for record companies, really all you would need is some sort of clearinghouse.
2. Disintermediates all the middle men in radio advertising, since companies can now directly affect consumer preference, rather than coming up with tricky ad copy to do it and then baiting us to listen to the ad with a kewl tune.
Where do you get *your* entropy?
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.
Reading between the lines with my conspiracy theory mindset going full blast brings up this tidbit from the specifications page.
USB mass storage device.
1 Gig SD card slot.
This might not be an open wireless share. It may be a wireless client for your PC. I wouldn't get my hopes up that this is a wireless open share. I'll wait for the reviews before I buy one to find out what it does to protect it's content from casual sharing. Why is it using DRM removable memory?
The truth shall set you free!
Trademark now, save court costs later.
"Future releases of Aireo(TM) software are expected to enable content download directly from the Internet via Hotspots and peer-to-peer content download from one Aireo(TM) player to another." (press release)
One of the main reasons I never listen to the radio is because I can't stand the quality of the audio. As well, when I got my iPod, I tried 3 different FM transmitters before giving up on them because of quality issues.
Note that I'm definitely not saying TCP/IP is the correct way to do this--I'm just saying that FM definitely isn't.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;