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Microsoft, Sony Announce iPod Competitors
Pfhreak writes "According to the Denver Post -- Las Vegas section, a little over halfway down the page -- Microsoft will begin selling a $50 music player that will 'look and feel as good as the iPod' later this year. Yusuf Mehdi, a Microsoft VP, is quoted as saying that the player will give customers more choices than Apple."
In related news, Tetsugaku-San writes "The Register has the scoop on Sony's new portable audio/visual playback device. Impressively it plays MPEG2, MPEG4, BMP, GIF, PNG, TIFF and MP3 (finally they got the message Apple was gonna whoop em!) straight out of the box. Not as good battery life as I'd like to see, but real world tests remain to be seen."
this is going to have a similar capacity? If so, IPOD should be out of business with that price difference.
The safest way to approach lava is to have another person with you and he goes first.
That's just the way it is. I want my open-source, patent-free, DRM-free codec.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
Finally some competition in Apples handheld audio monopoly? Good to see the underdog(s) stick it to 'em.
What a coincidence. Apple's lawyers are already filling out a lawsuit with the very same title!
You know what?
The Sony device will be quite good, and will compare favorably to the iPod. The Microsoft device will be a POS, but will sell like hotcakes despite that, and in a few years we'll have fanboys and pundits gushing about how Bill Gates "innovated" the personal MP3 player.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Well, was bound to happen some day. Hard drive is probably the most expensive part of the hardware, and one can assume Microsoft already has software development covered.
However, even Dell's digital jukeboxes start at $200, and beating Dell pricewise is something out of ordinary (possible, but few have done it).
I hope these players let us access the content normally through the filesystem, unlike the iPod :)
In order to let folks know just how cool Microsoft is, they always seem to pre-announce products by several months to years and invariably when they come out, they always seem to be somehow less than they promised. The iPod is good.....damned good. So I am certainly going to take a wait and see approach, but one usually gets what they pay for.
I likely will be sticking with the iPod I suspect.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
That Sony one looks really nice, and it does everything I need except one... I need OGG Vorbis support, as my entire audio library is on my server in Q6 encoded files. :)
So, does anyone know of another similar player, that does both MPEG4 (or compatible, like XVid) and OGG Vorbis?
-- sudo.ca
Not trying to flamebait or anything, but haven't we seen this type of strategy before?
Dejavu is such a wonderful thing.
Look and feel are cheap. The question is whether it will work and sound as good. The principal attraction of the iPod is that it's intuitive and meshes well with iTunes. That's worth money to users.
I'm glad that iPod is getting some competition (it will make iPods better to) but I don't see that this is necessarily a death blow for them.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Alright, how many people actually have the need for a mobile video device. I mean, audio I can understand, but how often have you sat on the subway going, "I'd really like to watch a movie right now." That must be one long commute....
I mean the only use I can think of is for mobile pr0n needs, and if that's the case, I sure as hell don't want to be sitting next to them wthhout a raincoat.
It looks and feels just like an iPod! (of course, they don't mention it working, sheesh).
I can just see MS coming out with something the size of an ipod, but with a tiny flash memory instead of a hard drive. And if MS markets it hard enough and makes it ubiquitous enough, the uninformed consumers will just slurp it up and think they're getting a huge bargin (despite there having been flash players that cheap for a long time).
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
Really? I can't wait to rawk to my
...does the first reply in an article get modded "redundant".
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Ours will be just like Apple's, only better.
This time we're serious. It's really cool.
Really.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Microsoft announcement of products before they are available are always 120% of the truth.
Their inability to get the gist of things they copy except for the superfical (i.e., I'm sure the MP3 Player will be a small white box) reminds me of the kid in school looking over my shoulder during a math test... copying all my answers onto his paper including my answer for the question "Name:"
I really fail to see what value is added with having a colour screen and video playback. I don't think many people have any need for video playback they'd be using a portable device. Unless they have other behaviours in mind like using it primarily as an audio player and a video player or data storage when you arrive at your destination. Just from the perspective of my own behaviours I'm definitely not sold on video playback as a must-have feature. For the same reason portable RF televisions or DVD players aren't terribly popular I see this Sony unit as being similar.
_nfotxn
It will be the size of a postage stamp and hold one song.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
I'll bet it only plays Windows Media...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
It's a fun game! Moderate the first mention of OGG Vorbis as a troll, because, you know, people aren't allowed to express format preferences... and then, moderate the second mention as redundant, because it is too politely worded to be a troll!
Yeah, I know "don't complain about moderation". Good thing this is an open forum and I can complain about retarded moderation if I want.
-- sudo.ca
While developing a competitive audio portable against the iPod certainly is a possible feat, there's more to the iPod's success than just the actual player. What about ease of file-transfers and syncing? The iPod killer has more to beat than just the iPod. It'll have to beat the iPod-Winamp combination.
While yes, existing portables have their own merits, very few of them are supported by an application like Winamp that can flawlessly sync my audio files (and ratings and playcounts) from my media folders to my iPod, or reverse-syncs my iPod so that my media folders match up with what's on my iPod. It'll have to beat Winamp's intuitive artist/album views, ipod-media library integration, mp3 transcoding, and other features...
Winamp and the iPod "just work."
Microsoft will begin selling a $50 music player that will 'look and feel as good as the iPod' later this year
Please note thatt by "look and feel as good as the iPod" they mean they're selling a rounded green and blue plastic shell, they also threw a couple a couple beads inside which you shake, when they rattle it makes the shell a music player.
I stole this Sig
Yup, you get what you pay for. Dell makes some cheap laptops, but they have this tendency to fall apart in about a week. That doesn't happen with powerbooks.
:P Apple has earned my loyalty by making a great product; Microsoft's business practices (and OS) make me want to blow up their headquarters on a daily basis. I'm sure others agree with me :)
And as for their music player, it's rediculous. They make you pay extra for "enhanced" (i.e. non-crippled) software, and I'm sure the hardware isn't as good as Apple's. Apple, unfortunately (for their sales department), always adds features that are hard to market. For instance, read any review of MP3 players and you'll find that Apple's sound output hardware (DA converters, amp, etc.) is the best. But you can't really market that.
Oh well. The people who want a good music player will buy the Apple and the people who want a new toy will buy the M$ box. That's the way things have always been, and I don't see how it affects me if M$ makes a $50 music box. Whatever
My other car is first.
These articles shit me. The thing is, Apple is a fashionable company. They make fashionable computers and fashionable products and this puts them in a different league to Microsoft et al. Geeks do not, by their very nature, understand fashion. Microsoft's competing product may be cheaper, Sony's may have more features etc etc. That will mean nothing to a kid who wants an iPod. I doubt that Ferrari were worried when Kia/ Daewoo/ Hyundai popped onto the car scene; I don't think Armani is worried that you can buy shirts for $20 at Kmart, and so on. The Apple iPod is a fashion accessory. Paris Hilton ( or insert vacuous celebrity here) won't be caught dead using a cheap Microsoft rip off and millions of teenagers will feel the same way. Apple could double the price of their iPod range and they'd still sell them. Apples are desirable. They're cool. Microsoft has never been cool and never will be no matter what they do. Can you really imagine a company owned and run by Bill Gates producing something that teenagers everywhere go nuts for? Compare their interface designs to Apple's.... Sony are too sensibly Japanese to be cool. There is no iPod killer. When cool people start saying "Levis are dead - I can buy jeans for 1/5 the price at Target" then maybe, just maybe, Apple should start to worry.....
Putting syrup in coffee is some form of blasphemy.
Geez, not another one! I expect the Sony product to be well designed, a lot of attention to detail -- and high priced. And don't forget, Sony has built-in schizophrenia -- their music division -- MP3 is evil, remember? Sony could have owned the market with mini-disc, but their own paranoia crippled the product (no high-speed digital download, clunky proprietary software, etc.)
But a friend points me to the Sony announcement -- it plays movies, all these formats. Does it have a corkscrew, I ask? GPS?
What? Corkscrew? GPS? Yeah, if it's going to replace things, it should play my AV stuff, have a corkscrew, show me where I am, and be sturdy enough to pound nails...
Really -- what I want in a portable music player is to play music. I don't care about video, GPS, cell phone, or anything else.
As to the iPod killer? It's already on the market. It stores enough of my music, the battery lasts long enough, it drives my earphones (Etymotics ER4), and it's small enough to carry in a pocket.
It's the iPod mini. It does what I want, and I love it.
Classic Microsoft. There is no way MS could or would want to release such a cheap device but it sure as hell is great to FUD everyone out of buying an iPOD.
Well, for $300 you can get 15Gb of storage on the low-end iPod. For $500 you can get $40Gb of storage on the high-end iPod.
The iPod/iTunes combo has become the core of my audio system. I don't have a boom box or home stereo system. I hook my iPod into my stereo TV when I want to listen to tunes downstairs. When I want to listen to tunes upstairs, I listen to the tunes through my computer's speakers. When I'm driving in the car, I plug in my tape deck adapter and go.
When I go for a run or go to work out, I take my iPod and have all of my tunes with me. So in that sense it's not just "a Walkman that doesn't need CDs or tapes." A CD Walkman is fine if I just want to listen to whatever CDs I happen to have with me at the time. But when I'm mobile, the last thing I want to do is decide which tunes I think I'll want to listen to at some point in the future. I want the whole range of my music library available.
I'm not rich. Not even close. I like my music a lot, but I'm not the music freak I was when I was in my teens. All the same, the iPod has really changed my listening habits quite a bit. It allows me to listen to a broader range of my own music than I otherwise would, lets me listen to music pretty much anywhere, and eliminates the need to haul around discs or tapes wherever I go.
Prices will doubtless drop on these devices as they become commoditized. Someday they'll drop to a price that will be acceptable to you. In the mean time, the investment in my iPod has more than justified the cost several times over for me (and for my non-technophile wife, who is an iPod addict as well).
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
There's no mention of the technical details of the MS player but it's a fair bet it will only do MS-proprietery formats, and theres no mention of OGG support on the Sony specs either. ..And thats reason enough for me not to buy either one.
Pardon my cynical attitude but I cannot imagine an item that sells for $50 for 20G versus the Apple model for the same size at $399 looking and feeling remotely the same.
I have one of the original 5G iPods. I have used, abused and it runs beautifully. The design and looks are without peer IMHO.
This sort of reminds me of plastic surgeons who claim silicone breast implants have the same look and feel as the real deal.
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
Odds are it will be an iPod shaped flash player, holding 128 megs or so. the "advanced" micro drive version will cost a lot more than $50.
look at feel aren't really tech specs. when this thing is actually for sale then we'll be able to tell how good of a deal it is.
I found this story wirtten on May 5, 2004 which states "ON THE VERGE. Still, if the iPod were a stock, I'd dump my shares. It's hard to imagine Apple maintaining its dominant position in digital music. Jobs had actually predicted 100 million in iTMS song sales in the first year, and he missed by a wide mark. Apple managed to turn in only a 10% quarter-over-quarter increase in iPod sales last quarter, implying the market is slowing. And several top executives dumped millions of their own Apple shares in late April, the first major sale by insiders in years" The article goes on to say that Apple w\should spin off iPod now and pocket the cash while the gettings is good.
Note: this has been posted by r.future (a person who spends way to much time on the internet!)
"Blue note of death"
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is illegal!
MS cannot use funds from a separate section to flood the market in order to promote a standard for competition. Selling a product at a loss in order to undercut competition without relent for the purpose of creating a flooded standard is wrong. This is predatory pricing and is specifically and explicitly prohibited by the Sherman anti-trust act.
They've already done this with the X-Box which they sold at a loss in order to undercut and deprive smart companies (Sony & Nintendo) of their only source of income by using their deep pockets. Now they do the same thing in an attempt to push WMA over AAC as the standard DRM music file.
This is absurd. The DOJ has no balls if they let this pass. MS is getting out of hand.
However, even Dell's digital jukeboxes start at $200, and beating Dell pricewise is something out of ordinary (possible, but few have done it).
I would suspect that with a $50 pricetag, Micro$oft is losing some amount of money per unit. They want to make the money on the music sales. Like razors or cameras - make money on the blades/film.
640KB is enough for me, you insensitive clod!
-- James
MS is only going to use a hardware media player to push a wide-scale adoption of Windows Media. MS is not going to make a dime off of their MediaPlayer. They'll take a giant loss selling a $50 Media Player (even a good tiny flash player costs $100).
MS is going to shoot for long term profits from WM licenses. They are going to try to squish competition, and after that is done, they're going to raise licensing rates... which will make music more expensive.
I'm all for competition. However MS's concept of "competition" is the exact same as Walmart's. Slash prices, kill competitors, raise rates, and lower product/service quality.
I'm sure Apple knew this was going to happen. These are typical Microsoft actions. It'll be interesting to see how they're going to innovate their way out of this predicament... they certainly don't have the money to counteract stuff like this.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
The Microsoft music player will feature a complete selection of air guitar tunes, encoded in the new MT format.
Remain calm! All is well!
Microsoft will begin selling a $50 music player that will 'look and feel as good as the iPod' later this year.
... That Sony player does look shweet! ;)
...
Well thats great, but id personally prefer a player that sounds as good, and performs as well as the iPod rather than one that "looks and feels" like one. With a 50quid price tag it will either be horrendously locked in (so that they can make money back from the songs) or the capacity will be so small that it becomes inconvient for people with large collections.
And i'd be very surprised if the "Gives more choice to consumers" part means anything more than WMA support, I would be prepared to place money on the fact that flac and ogg support are not included in that "more choice" line up...
However
nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
UFS is not specifically a Linux filesystem; it was originally developed for one of the BSDs I believe and is used in Free/Open/NetBSD, SunOS, and others.
Now if you could prove that they were using the Linux *implementation* of it, then you'd be on to something...
Yusuf Mehdi, a Microsoft VP, is quoted as saying that the player will give customers more choices than Apple."
How exactly is a Microsoft portable MP3 player going to give more choice to consumers than an iPod? Is he referencing that the end user can use all of the other commercial download services that are in competition with Apple's iTunes? (you know, all the ones that deal in WMA, and yes, I said "deal"). In that case, the "choice" is like Henry Ford saying the consumer could have his Model T "in any color, as long as it is black." I'm sorry, but unless the Microsoft player supports Ogg and "unencrypted" AAC, then again, its the illusion of choice on the part of Microsoft. In other words, more of the smoke and mirrors routine from Redmond. Considering this product will be another expense bankrolled by the ill-gotten gains of their operating system (and office applications) monopoly, they should (IMHO) instead invest the money spent on this ill-conceived project on further securing their bread-and-butter offerings. Or buyout Rockstar Games and break the exclusive PS2/3 contract they have for the next GTA title so the Xbox Next has a fighting chance against the PS3.
Regardless, I will lay down dollars or euros that Microsoft will include an (unencrypted) AAC to WMA conversion program, to answer Apple's tit-for-tat from last month's announcement. Just like I will bet green that Apple will be the first computer manufacturer to ship machines with Blue Ray drives as a way of spiting the DVD Forum for supporting WMP9 as the compression scheme for HD-DVD.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
they'll make it up on volume!
--
Anyone else notice that MS stock is going for less than Apple?
Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a critical component of spiritual devotion. Jon Krakauer
Don't worry. It will cost $50 just like iPod Mini cost $100.
Unless of course they force you to use a Microsoft online music service to get music (and not let you play your own MP3s). Then it makes sense for them to sell you a $400 item for $50, and make a killing on the actual songs... (kinda like they do with XBox).
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
Time to hire more janitors and double the amount of toilet paper in all public bathrooms.
Apparently someone got their grubby little hands on a beta version of Microsoft's iPod killer. I must say, it's very stylish, and I wouldn't mind losing the portability of my iPod to show off this baby. Hot!
"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion." - Democritus
cat ~/background.jpg > /dev/dsp
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Mac OS. Man, in some ways Mac OS 9 is still better than Windows XP.
NeXT Cube. What a sweet machine. There was nothing like it then and still respected today.
NeXTStep. IMO still the best OS made. So good Mac OS X uses huge chucks of it.
Newton. Bumpy at first but the last models released are still better IMO than any other pda.
Mac Cube. Very cool looking and quiet. They still get top dollar on ebay today.
iMac. The original iMac gave us style where style had been missing. Beige was dead and you were proud of your Bondi Blue machine.
... and of course the iPod.
I know I've missed a few other marvels and I'm sure there's some cool stuff they never released. With all that said don't you think that Apple already has a working video iPod prototype that could be in production in less than 30 days? The magic eight ball says "Yes".
I have yet to see someone scoop Apple in style and thunder, and IMO MS/Sony won't do it this time. I don't care how good it is, Apple will make their's better.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
There's a rumor that Xbox Next (Xbox 2 as the name suggests) will use a removable iPod like device as its harddrive. The main storage for save games and the like will be internal flash memory. It would be pretty cool to be able to download songs using whatever iTune clone MS will have all on a console.
Apple really, really needs-- not now, but sometime before the Microsoft "We can set rediculously low prices becuase we don't care if we make a profit on anything except Windows and Office Music Player" hits-- aggressively start licensing the FairPlay DRM and some kind of fancy "iTunes Music Store Compatibility" logo to other music player creators. I think if they do not attempt to do this they are in big trouble.
Microsoft has been really, really harping on this "choice" thing, by which they mean "iTMS purchases can only be played on the iPod". Meanwhile they're trying to push music player carriers to support WMA. At the moment WMA is still just an also-ran in this space but if this keeps happening that could change. Apple needs to get FairPlay support into everyone's hands in order to make AAC the new standard so that WMA doesn't grab that spot...
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
That statement borders on blatant trolling! However, since I have faith in your high moral caliber and good intentions, I'll assume what you meant to say was "Dell laptops have higher rates of failure (or lower MTBF) than powerbooks, and here are the statistics to back it up. You can clearly see that the dramatic difference in failure rates justifies the 2x price difference (or some portion thereof, the rest being accounted for by superior features, etc).". That would be a convincing argument. Unfortunately, I've yet to see it phrased that way. Moreover, if your Dell laptop does happen to fail in a week, there is this thing called warranty, which I hear Dell is pretty good about.
And as for their music player, it's rediculous. They make you pay extra for "enhanced" (i.e. non-crippled) software, and I'm sure the hardware isn't as good as Apple's.I'm not going to deny that Dell's music player isn't the best. In fact, the iPod is much better, but I would make that choice based on the individual products involved (ie. the iPod, vs. the Dell player), not based on the companies' track records at making some other product (although you could argue that inability to make good laptops is correlated with inability to make good portable mp3 players ... but to that I say that just because a company makes better laptops doesn't mean it will make good mp3 players either). Similarly, when the MS player comes out, I'll judge it against the iPod based on the characteristics of those two specific gadgets - not the quality of Windows against Mac OS, nor the quality of MS mice over Apple mice, or some other equally irrelevant benchmark.
For instance, read any review of MP3 players and you'll find that Apple's sound output hardware (DA converters, amp, etc.) is the best.I would dispute this. The iPod hardware has nothing over, say, the hardware used by the Creative Jukeboxen (except, maybe, size, which is a separate category to sound quality when comparing mp3 players). The Jukebox produces sound that is no less clean and vibrant, and also supports things like 4 channel output and a whole heap of EAX post-processing (a small fraction of which, believe it or not, is actually useful!! I know, I had a hard time believing it too.). Not only have I read reviews that say this, but I've compared the sound from an iPod and a Jukebox too. Even if the iPod hardware is better by some absolute measurement of fidelity, it is not a difference 99.8% of the population would pick up in a blind listening test.
But you can't really market that.You're saying that in a device the purpose of which is to play music, you can't market the quality of the sound that comes out? If it's not marketable, why do the very reviews you speak of mention it? Tell you what, just send me some of whatever you're smoking and we'll call it even.
Microsoft's business practices (and OS) make me want to blow up their headquarters on a daily basis. I'm sure others agree with meWhat a concise summary of the rest of your post!
"Why are you watching the washing machine?"
"I love entertainment, as long as it's clean"
it said MS will be introducing playerS. presumably some will be flash based; you already see those for $50.
It occurs to me that MS cannot make an iPod knock off for $50. If so, then they are losing money to build market share. It's been a while since my marketing classes, but it sounds to me like Predatory Pricing. And if I remember right, it is illegal.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The Karma's a whopping 1.1 inches thick to the iPod's 0.62. It also appears to have been designed by someone with a terrible hangover from the late '90s.
After that, everything else is just quibbling. Still, I should point out that you neglected to mention the iPod's new lossless codec.
I doubt it will compete with the next gen of iPods.
You forgot a few things on the iPod:
Width: 0.62"
Interfaces: FireWire 400 AND USB2
Extras also include Smart Playlists and auto playlist syncing.
Also, an interface that doesn't suck the balls.
- oZ
// i am here.
'Overpriced' only applies to people who are not willing to pay that much money (duh ;-).
Any product that is selling well in a market with competition CANNOT be overpriced, in the market sense.
Overpriced for you - yes
Overpriced for me - yes
Overpriced for the market - no
Business isn't a charity. Public companies are legally required to price their products/services for maximum shareholder return. They have to find the balance point between raw profit, and how many people will buy at that price (volume). If pricing 80% of the market out makes more profit than selling to 80% of the market at a lower price, tough luck for the poorer 80% of the market. This, of course, assumes a competitive marketplace, which the iPod seems to be in.
Manufacturing capacity is also a factor - if your warehouse is constantly understocked and you cannot increase factory output, it means you are UNDERPRICED: increase the price to re-align demand with maximum supply.
'Overpriced' only occurs if you are making less money at current price/volume than you would by increased volume of sales at a lower price.
The man with no surname and a silly hat
On the universe: It's bunk.
That's, "Sucks the sweat off a dead man's balls" to you.