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Pocket PCs Masquerade as iPods
agwadude writes "Wired News has a story about a British software firm called StarBrite that is selling a virtual iPod that runs on Microsoft's PocketPC operating system. It mimics the iPod interface exactly, including the unique scroll wheel. It's a mere $20 but this seems right considering it's only software, and it only supports MP3. MacDailyNews has a shorter story."
Is the software really the selling point of the iPod?
or as we say in German: slashdotted. Darn.
-- Power corrupts, but PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
I love the black version. That would be hot if you could change the color of the ipod screen and what not. They need to move to a color LCD version. That would be expensive but I think it would totally be worth it. I already pay a lot for an iPod why not trick it out?
___ Shout Central - Crushes your nuts!
Software doesn;t change the fact that storage is still a problem, especially since you need to use some of it to install this program. For the price of the software plus a memory card you can just buy a real MP3 player...
Long live reverse-engineering! Besides, apple wants to make money on the music, not the hardware. What harm could this be?
Fastest reaction time from Apple lawyers ever. Man those guys are good (or bad, depending on how you think of it).
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
It's a mere $20 but this seems right considering it's only software, and it only supports MP3.
;)
Well, there's where the iPod emulation starts to fall apart. It should be $60+ if they want to emulate more of the experience.
A Clie's scroll wheel would nice for this type of app. In this software the scroll wheel is emulated on the screen itself.
Casual Games/Downloads
Besides, the beauty of the interface is how it is designed for your hands, not your pointing device. How do you get feedback and all that on a touchscreen, be it with your fingers or worse, with a PDA-pencil...
A piece of software mimicing an IPod running on a piece of software mimicing an operating system.
MacCentral is reporting that "pBop's resemblance to the iPod was unmistakable, especially when the product first launched: It was originally called pPod, and featured an interface that was practically identical to third-generation iPods."
it was so similar, in fact, that Apple asked them to make some changes, including the name.
Starbrite has "cooperated fully to address Apple's concerns" but, if you ask me, it is still pretty much a rip off of the iPod interface (GUI and physical). Isn't this kind of thing legally protectable?
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
MacSlash had this item on March 01st. See it: here.
considering that 20 gb hard-drives for pocket pc's cost an arm and a leg, this is hardly an 'ipod killer'.
$20 for mp3 player software? why? just make an ipod skin for some free software.
for great justice
It doesn't seems to support aac files. All it has is pretty interface and ability to play mp3 files. (not even ogg or wma) What happens to just using xmms or winamp?
Now I can get an iPod mini on the cheap:
$250 PDA
$400 4gb Hitachi CF microdrive
$20 for this software
and the Apple lawsuit?
Priceless.
No extra functionality, MP3 only, not an iPod, and it only runs on top of MS software. Lame.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
And the difference between this and this with this. Or simply this.
Do people really want to pay $20 purely to get a skin for their pocketPC, that has less functionality(only mp3's) than something they can download for free.
buy one here (with screenshot).
And the Google cache
Not trolling or anything, but to me, this just seems to prove (again) how well Apple has been doing things these past couple years. Would companies be trying to mimic their every move if Apple was on the wrong track?
I don't really like the fact that the software is a total rip-off of Apples UI design, and that it may (potentially?) reduce iPod sales (although probably to a minimal degree, if at all), but it does seem to very much re-inforce that consumers are generally extremely pleased with Apple's products, and the carefully thought out design that goes along with them.
Mikro$haft might get a Klew eventually, but probably not, and in the meantime, I'll rejoice in my Mac OS X bliss, and never look back. (Converted Mac user since July 2002)
java guy, tech blog...
Apple patented that stupid scroll wheel thingy. That alone should be enough to shut 'em down.
There wasnt a lot of fuss about it here, since software patents are only bad when folks other than the almighty Apple take them out.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
That's completely untrue. The iPod hardware is great, certainly (except the battery... grr) but it's the UI that really makes it - the fact that you can get to any one of 10k songs really really quickly and easily, with one hand.
Lovely hardware working perfectly with lovely software is Apple's modus operandi - at a lovely price (for Apple).
pictures
*YAAAAAAWN*
Hold still little pig. I just have some lipstick I want to put on you...
You know what?
Donate free food here
Well, you are correct in more ways than you realise.
Apple had their way with these guys and forced the renaming of the product (to pBop) and slight modifications to the interface.
Slashdot is behind the times. This story would have been meaningful a couple days ago.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
If Apple's legal team was ok with it and has cooperated with Apple fully, what is your problem?
Do you have some information that Apple's legal team doesn't?
All bow to his Noodliness!! His Noodle Appendage has touched me!
You just keep on buying your $19 CDs for one song and don't mind what the rest of us are doing. But I'm sure you are just stealing hte music and you expect everyone to give you everything for free. Move out of your mom's basement and join the real world.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
I'm pretty sure you can sue for infringement on any of the claims in a patent. That said, the only thing Apple obviously mention as being patent-pending (that I can see) is their Auto-Sync technology.
In any case, the design would be covered by industrial design law - it was on this basis that Apple successfully sued Emachines over their iMac lookalike PCs.
No, it's not a bad thing that the software doesn't support the "invasive" copy protection (which is easily broken now, BTW).
It *is* a bad thing that the software doesn't support AAC or Windows Media, both of which are more suited to portable devices than MP3 on account of their superior audio quality per kbps of compressed audio.
Wow, a lot cheaper, than launching an international legal court case. Just get em slashdotted...
Think Different.
One has to wonder... being that you can now get the 4Gb CF hard drives (i.e. MuVo 2, mini iPod), you can now stick one of these in a PocketPC, and get an "iPod" that can store 800 songs, has wireless internet access, is an address book and all that, plays movies (wmv's, divx), and PLAYS QUAKE!? now that would be kickin, and would be worth the extra cash you would shell out for the form factor of a real iPod.
Skill is successfully walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. Intelligence is not trying. -- Anonymous
Um, the scroll wheel is a hardware patent.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
I have been using PocketMusic from PocketMind on my Samsung i700 PocketPC/Phone for a while, and it's amazing. I have zero iPod envy (I can't balance a budget, get e-mail, web surf, or make a call on an iPod, but I can play my Oggs on my PocketPC -- even to the extent of dagging them from my Linux box).
I mean this to take nothing away from the exquisitely designed, iPod, but I no longer have the desite to possess a single specialized device for every eFunction in my life. Sure, I sacrifice some sizzle sans iPod, some corporate penis-size sans blackberry, and some cuteness sans the postage stamp-sized phone du jour, but I love just having it *ALL* on my Samsung.
The iPod is a slick but over-priced piece of hardware
If it were over-priced someone would have come out with a copy that is the same storage/size/weight but cheaper. Can you point me to such a product?
Posted by pudge on 13:39 09 March 2004
from the i-smell-a-lawsuit dept.
Shouldn't that be the iSmell-a-lawsuit dept.?
Maybe you should educate the morons of tomorrow so they'll stop believing the leaders of tomorrow. - Dogbert
Wow.
Hundreds of doomsayers predicting the demise of this, and not one mention (modded up at least) of Windows ripping off the Mac interface...and Apple LOSING the subsequent lawsuit.
According to one legal analysis, Microsoft's legal strategy was that of "breaking Apple's nebulous 'gestalt' and 'look-and-feel' theory into specific identifiable elements and then knocking each one down like uncopyrightable bowling pins...demonstrating nearly two dozen windowing systems...that used elements Apple claimed to own.
Doesn't sound much different here, I doubt they'd waste their time on it.
The FONT is stolen and that's not nebulous. It's called CHICAGO.
What's that - that smell?
I can almost - *sniff* - yes, like rancid meat and sugar.
Good Lord! Apple released the lawyers! Everybody, run for your lives!
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
If you want to get audio books, of say periodicals like The Harvard Business Review, or Science, you can't play them on this, or most MP3 players. It's acctully one of the reasons I'm considering an iPod rather than a soild state player.
Spyder
I installed the pPod demo last Friday mainly to piss off my roommate (big iPod fan) and I must say that besides looking kinda cool it doesn't do much else. Using a stylus as in place of your fingers worked haphazardly at best, and I am certainly not going to run out and buy a microdrive for it. It's mainly just a fancy skin for a MP3 only player (if it had support for alternate formats, then I'd reconsider). If I want to compete with my friend's iPod, I find it much easier to use programs like Net Use to create a network drive and stream the MP3 wirelessly to my PDA. Sure this limits me to staying within my network, but if I want to go out, a 256MB CF card has more than enough storage for any short trip.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
Won't be long until iPod is emulating whatever the hell it can, too ...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
iRiver iHP-120
Practically the same size (2-3mm thicker), exactly the same weight and capacity. about GBP40 cheaper than the 20GB iPod here in the UK and it comes with a built in FM radio and a great LCD remote.
It plays OGGs and WMVs but not AAC (plus MP3s obviously).
I think this will have the opposite effect of what many people think. PPC owners can check this out, realize it's a damn good interface, and then they might decide that the iPod is worth the dough.
Or, they go look for a CF hard drive for more space, learn about the iPod mini being much cheaper than the drives by themselve, and wind up buying a mini instead.
However, I don't see many people using this *as* an iPod... it's just not cost-effective. I bet some people who only need a few songs will use it, but more than likely those people would not be in the market for a real iPod no matter what.
I think pPod will actually increase iPod sales.
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
are pretending to be something that doesn't suck to use? It's bad enough business relies on the ass of an interface called MS Windows, now they want to foist it on me in palm and phone based devices? No thanks, Apple should make a PDA and put PocketPC and Palm OS out of thier respective miseries, although as phones evolve I would guess the whole standalone Palm thing is near death as is.
And the iRiver iHP-120 is the same price as the iPod. The iRiver has slightly more features whereas the iPod has great usability and design. That hardly makes the iPod "overpriced".
StarBrite became StarDimm - 'Service Unavailable'.
Ok, aping the iPod is one thing, but in using the HP logo, as seen in this screenshot, aren't they going too far - in fact 'asking for it'? Carly could be the 'woman scorned' here...
There have been many lawsuits (specifically involving Lotus Notes, I believe) over the "look and feel" of software. In the LN case, it involved spreadsheets. The courts ruled that merely copying the look and feel is *not* a violation of copyright law, unless actual code was, indeed, copied (as in cut & paste, etc.) Not sure how that fits into patents, though. -DB in 2004 (Bring on the donuts..)
One of the specifics that you don't remember (and I don't entirely remember either) is that Apple and MS had license agreements.
MS claimed the license agreement covered what they were doing. Apple disagreed.
MS won.
SteveM
While I agree with you completely, I could easily see Apple using a kind of inexpensive in-between technology to introduce some colour to the display, if for purely aesthetic reasons (this is Apple we're talking about).
Some of the newer low-cost Nokias have pseudo-colour screens that look like the real deal, until you try to put some graphics on them and realize how chunky they come out. It's nice for coloured text though, and doesn't seem to impact battery life.
The iPod is not going to be screening photos or videos anytime soon but it would be nice to have a coloured calendar on there, to match all my iCals, for instance.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
This thing wasn't developed to be "an iPod killer". Hardly. The developers didn't even bother trying to mimic the iPod with all its functionality. What it DOES have is a pretty face. A pretty face and a well-known face. These guys know that Apple's iPod is the best selling mp3 player out there and they want to capitalize on that. That's it. Nothing more. They aren't trying to revolutionize anything, not trying to invent some new killer app. They just want to make a few bucks riding the iPod's success.
Of course, they're probably gonna get nailed for it, but hey, it was fun while it lasted.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
- Brian
That would be hot if you could change the color of the ipod screen and what not. They need to move to a color LCD version.
Bleh. I agree 100% with the other replies that said this was a horrible waste of batteries and unnecessary. It would turn the iPod from something (supposedly) simple and elegant to one of those moronic CD systems with multiple bullshit coloured LEDs, gimmicky-looking level meters and speakers with doesn't-look-metallic-at-all silver/grey plastic detailing.
If you really just want to change the colour of the display, perhaps an interchangable backdrop or lights would be more appropriate. But I think that would still complicate the design and add a point of potential breakage.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Saw the story on macslash last week and downloaded it this morning. the site was already down but I googled and found another place to download it from. usable enough, I guess. cute little PPC-demo app, I guess. I just got this iPaq a while ago from work and besides the fact that it has no easy-to-find battery level indicator (grr, my ancient Palm has that) I wouldn't use a PDA for music, anyway, but that's just me. mostly I just downloaded it to check it out and play with it some.
:-)
I don't see it in my programs folder but it's in the start menu. without a physical groove, it's almost impossible to use your finger to "scroll" songs but it's not too bad with the stylus. no exit, either, just choose 'hide' from the main menu. not sure if that means it's still running and taking cpu cycles/battery life. plays music just fine, but took a million years to move 27 mb worth of music to it over USB.
summary: kinda cute, kinda neat, I don't plan to use it so I don't care about the outcome of the lawsuit.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
He only has one hand!
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
They emulate a piece of hardware that is so stupid simple that as a GUI it'll actually work. That's OK, not original, but not stupid either.
...
... but if everybody had to be 100% original in order to produce, it'd be a weird world.
Apple will have no problems with that. They may have to change a few details, but as long as this is
1) only software, that;
2) doesn't totally emulate iPod's own (proprietary) software;
3) doesn't insult Apple's product...
there's no legal problem at all.
The only - philosophical - gripe might be they try to run with someone else's good idea, but then again, most everybody does. That doesn't stop people from buying Windows - or rival products that emulate Windows - or downloading Linux, or buying Apple mp3 players, or
You might have an issue with me naming linux, Apple, Windows,
Copying in it self isn't good, copying good ideas is only sensible. In the end, let lawyers and marketing sweat the details, and let us not waste time with these superficial issues.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
You're referring to Lotus 1-2-3, not Notes. No one in their right mind would ever consider stealing that East German war surplus 16-color user interface from Notes. I had the unfortunate necessity to use Notes for about 5 months last year and it vividly reminded me what software was like in the 1980's. The scariest thing about Notes was that I'd used it briefly in '96 and '97 and in 6 years it hadn't improved one bit.
All I have to say is that if the Soviet government had lasted long enough to use Windows software it would have been Notes.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Apple licensed from Xerox the elements they incorporated. The lawsuit with Microsoft was that, having licensed Apple IP for earlier version(s) of Windows, Microsoft chose not to do so in a later version but continued to use Apple's IP. The judge in the case just didn't get it and sided with Microsoft.
Wonder if he works in the Patent Office these days?