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Dcube: Portable Audio With Ogg And A Scroll Wheel

Posted by timothy on from the big-in-korea dept.

Slowtreme writes "There have been many attempts recently to cash in on Apple's iPod success. Napster, Dell, and others have made iPod clones. This Korean Dcube looks like they are going all out. With 1.5 gig, Ogg and MP3 support, grey scale display, USB2.0, wireless, FM radio, it looks like a nice device. Most noticeable however is the scroll wheel, Apple holds patents (pending) on scroll wheel design. How much noise will this make?" (The Napster-branded one is actually a Samsung product; Samsung, too, is supporting Ogg Vorbis in some models, though not in that one.)

1 of 556 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Apple patent on scroll wheel is ridiculous by rev063 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It's not just a wheel. The wheel is just the physical interface. There's also the way it scrolls through long lists quickly, and the way it interacts with the other buttons, that make it such a great and unique piece of interface design.

    All the best interface designs are obvious ... in retrospect. You can't just say "It's a wheel!" without recognizing the enormous amount of effort and care that went into its design and engineering.

    The wheel is what makes the iPod unique, and it deserves its success because of it. This is one of the good uses of patents, in the sense that it gives a manufacturer a temporary monopoly as a reward for innovative design, and will hopefully spur other innovative designs in the iPod comptetitors. Seems like a good thing to me.