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Dcube: Portable Audio With Ogg And A Scroll Wheel
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.)
I mean, c'mon... IT'S A WHEEL!!!
We've been using wheels for input since, well, since forever! Those big round things that have been on ships for centuries and centuries? They're wheels! They translate rotation into linear input. What's that thing on the iPod? It's a wheel! It translates rotation into linear input!
Hello???
Fucking Steve Jobs thinks he's patented the fucking wheel! And you know who's to blame? That other fucking idiot, Jeff Bezos, with the infinitely moronic One-Click patent. The two dufuses are slugging it out, vying to be the one who holds the world's most ridiculous patent!
None of this would be possible if it weren't for the fact that the people working at the USPTO seem to have been genetically engineered to be utterly devoid of critical thinking skills! I mean, hiring the merely stupid would not do, because at least then there's a chance of a ridiculous idea being rejected. It's like we cross-bred a human being with a rock, gave it a diploma for knowing how to inhale before exhaling, and then shipped the result off to Washington so it could have an "APPROVED" stamp crazy-glued into it's rat-like claw!
And I'm paying taxes for this???
ENOUGH ALREADY!!!
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
I would like to see more MP3 makers use FireWire. I speed of updates is very nice. When I got my iPod my whole mp3 collection was on it in less then 20 minutes. (ok I have a small 10Gb collection) But with speeds like this I can run a program off of it, or store large data files off of it. Also the iPod is more then just a mp3/aac/what ever player, it makes a great portable hard drive. I don't use the Pim stuff off of it because I have a good Palm, but that is another story.
If this is cheap enough, I'll definitely buy it.
The one thing still preventing me from buying a portable audio player is the price.
I don't need 20GB of music in my pocket, 1,5GB is more than enough for me.
The path I walk alone is endlessly long.
30 minutes by bike, 15 by bus.
It's also kinda funny that, on the web page, the device's display shows a couple of Beatles songs. (The Beatle's record label is Apple Corps)
Any Roland/Akai/EMU rack-mount synth or sampler.
How hard would it be to have, instead of a wheel, a thin strip of the stuff they use for touchpads in laptops (god, how I hate them, give me a trackball anytime) on the side to replace the functionality of said wheel?
I don't think it'd be TOO hard, and the results would probably be good.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
Where can I get one before Apple crushes them?
I bought a second generation 20GB iPod soon after they came out. However, I now have more music than I can fit on it and I'm getting interested in re-ripping my tracks at higher quality or even investigating FLAC. Also, Apple is doing me a disservice by preventing me from using Ogg-Vorbis which I still think is superior to LAME's output. If I download .oggs, I then have to go through decompression and another round of lossy compression to create mp3s that will play on my iPod.
As such, I'm very interested in the latest releases of hard-drive based mp3 players. I especially like the look of the iRiver players and I'm hoping to try out my friend's new Rio Karma. Nevertheless, I will have to save up again if I want to get a new player and there are a few minimum feature requirements I can't help thinking would be easy to include on a new player.
I don't give a shit for ITMS compatibility or crappy organiser-style features or games. I just want to be able to fit all my songs in my pocket and find the right tunes to play when on the train. Is it really too much to ask?
Turkeyphant
On this page in the flash banner, it lists it as "FM Transmitter".
I think that's quite a cool feature. Maybe it does both? Dunno... but thats nice to have an FM link built in so I can just carry it in my pocket but listen to it on my car stereo without connecting it to another little box.
You shouldn't pay more just because it has an Apple logo. You should pay more because:
The iPod works with the music store that currently makes about 70% of on-line music sales, works on both major desktop OS platforms, plays the major audio formats (AAC, MP3, WAV and AIFF with others possible) for high quality compressed and uncompressed audio, operates as a portable hard drive (bootable for Macs), replaces most of the fuctions of your PDA(calendar, notes, alarm clock, contacts, games) and generally does the best job at melding all the requirements of a portable player; mainly small size, long battery life, easily readable display, fast file transfers, high quality audio amplifier, easy navigation, and the elusive cool/wow factor.
It's long, but gramatically I do thing that qualifies as one sentence.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
makes no mention of the ipod lookalike (NHD-150D). Perhaps they can get away with copying the ipod interface in Korea because of differing IP laws?
The english site link:
http://nextway.co.kr/english/
Now the built in FM transmitter (which this seems to have) IS new, as far as I know. If they do a good job with that feature, that would be quite nice.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Depends on if you're another person who does not rip their own music, mearly steals it from other people. Kinda sounds like you might be in that catagory. There are people out there that don't belive in ripping off other people. Why not use the best codec? Why not expect products to support what you want? Why pay a tax to the frau^^^^houfenber people?
"think of it as evolution in action"
Both artefact and artifact are considered correct, although artefact is preferred in Commonwealth English while artifact is preferred in American English. As with grey and gray, choose whichever you or your editor prefers.