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Mobile Phone - Convergence Point For iPod, Others?
Nagen writes "DrunkenBlog has an intriguing essay arguing that the mobile phone is the primary convergence point for digital devices and will soon cause iPod sales to evaporate. Perhaps more interesting is the idea that the iPod is an expendable pawn in a larger battle of who will control the gateway of all legal content to the user."
I will never, ever, ever let the phone company come between me and my music collection. They'll decide they want to bill me for every minute I spend listening to stuff I've got stored on my hardware.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
When will companies realize that the whole cell phone convergence thing isn't all that its craqcked out to be. Every attempting at converging a cell phone with another device has been embarrassing. Even camera phones. Face it - the cameras suck and the're next to no use for having a $hitty camera in your phone. Get a digital camera. They're probably smaller and much better. And I dont WANT my phone to be an MP3 player. I want my phone to be a phone. Arrgh!
Battery manufacturers rejoice!
"I'm sorry I missed your call, I either have my phone off or the battery has run down from picturetaking, musiclistening, notetaking, gameplaing und blinkenledwatchen. Please leave a message..."
Worst thing that can and will happen in the future to ruin your life? You lose your phone and if you had a password it was 1-2-3.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Firstly, my iPod is one of the staples of my existence right now. I taking it running, biking, in the car, on trips. I love it.
Second, I fucking HATE cell phones. I hate people that sit and talk on their phones at the gym while peddling away at 1 mph on the excersice bike like some pee in the cedar chips hamster thinking they are actually "getting a workout" all the while fucking up everyone elses concentration with their senseless chatter.
I had a cell phone for years, my bosses used to love abusing it, calling to find out where this or that was rather than just getting off their fat asses and looking for it themselves. I didn't use the stupid thing for half the things I thought I would. It's an impersonal and fake way of having relations with people. Just get together and have fun, don't sit and gossip like a giggly little girl on it.
My iPod makes me wanna get out and DO something, like ride through the county park down the street or go to the gym and bust my ass on a 4 mile run.
I'm obviously biased but I hate the cell phone lifestyle. It's fake, lazy and pointless. I see people crashing cars on their phones, ruining movies not paying attention while walking into me at the grocery store. I see people in lines chatting away on the phone and all the people around them giving them glares like they're irritating everyone around them. Like so many fads before, these little gadgets have turned the zombified idiots of our culture into the lemmings we all knew they could be.
The last thing I want is "convergence". I like being able to buy an iPod and JUST have it be an iPod. If I wanted a cell phone I would JUST want a cell phone. If I wanted a camera I would JUST buy a camera. Cell phones right now are nothing but bloated feature nightmares, most of which people do not use or care about. I don't need an mp3 player that comes with a 50$ a month cellphone bill plus text messaging at 15 cents a message.
I wonder if they're planning to actually build a cellphone. The two things Apple is best at - design and user interface - are lacking in virtually all the cellphones currently on the market.
...sure you can put all the features and electronics in one device, but certain things don't scale well.
...which translates to memory size, CPU speed, in general faster == more power. ...I have a camera on my phone (it had a lot of other things I wanted), and it SUCKS. In daylight you can get some half-assed thumbnails, but really...
1) Battery
2) Optics/Camera
Basicly, the electronics can scale down to nothing at all, it is simply that the rest can't. Though I suppose the future may be more "intelligent" power management. It is a dummy phone with low low consumption when you need it (not powering up the huge MP3 collection or decoder chip) and an entertainment center (for a short while) when you need it. It's all about what you can pack into a cell phone sized object. Maybe a "dock" extension to your phone to make it iPod-like?
Jack of all trades, master of none is not good. But I hope they can make a flexible "master of all, one at the time" pack.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Heck, judging by the stories here it seems the iPod is more popular in the US than the mobile phone!
That's because you're on Slashdot, where people love Apple devices and often hate the yammering that comes with cell phones, not to mention their "yuppie" associations. If judging only by stories and comments here, an observer would be unable to understand why "American Idol" or "The Bachelor" is on prime time TV when everyone seems to love $CANCELLED_NERDY_SCI_FI_SHOW.
Mobile phone use is about the same in America as it is in Europe. The difference is mostly that people in Europe (I've heard) and in Asia (I've seen firsthand) often use their phones primarily for text messaging. Here in the US, most don't. I'm not sure why, my guess is that we're just too lazy to learn how to type on the telephone pad. :)
Mobile phone market penetration is high in the US, but the "gee-whiz" factor has definitely worn off among all but the hardcore. Most people are more interested what kind of a deal they can get on the minutes they use than whether their phone can play MP3s.
There's no sig like this sig anywhere near this sig, so this must be the sig.
The difference is 20 gb and the ability to store a whole shitload of albums on a small device designed explicitly for ease of use and functionality in that regard.
You're not really in the market Apple is going after, and neither will these phones until they can hold the massive amounts of tunes that the iPod can with a comparable interface. I think it'll be a little while before we see 20 gb phones. In the meantime the iPod will continue to sell because it excels at one thing.
I remember reading a similar article about camera phones hurting real digital camera sales.
Apparently, noone else gives a shit about the battery life as much as Slashdotters do. I've got one and have a bunch of friends who own them. Any battery issues seem to be transparent for all of us and indeed all other happy iPod owners I know because we rarely sit and listen to our iPods for FOUR HOURS STRAIGHT before recharging. (PS: Ya know you can recharge the iPod WHILE YOU SLEEP?)
I always laugh when this comes up... a longer battery would be nice, but some folks complain about it on here as if Apple should be ashamed that their middle-aged nerd travelling customers (the same ones who predicted the iPod would be a POS noone would buy) don't think the battery life is adequate.
The funny thing is they don't realize they're not the market, even given all of the obvious evidence. And this is what is funny and makes me roll my eyes at every "OMG BATTERY LIFE" post. Longer battery life would be nice, but it's not the ridiculous issue detractors make it out to be.
Indeed. The iPod is so well liked because it actually works. It amazes me that so many billion-dollar companies think they can throw an MP3 player on their devices and the user will come a-flockin'. It amazes me that, after the iPod has dominated for as long as it has, none of the companies have picked on the fact that maybe, just maybe, users would like to be able to use their devices without taking instructional classes. It amazes me that all these companies are so focued on their plans for market domination that they completely neglect the users. Ahh well, all the better for Apple I suppose.
Convergence is a definite. A lot of comments I've read so far seems to miss the point of convergence. The phone is not going to put digital camera makers out of buisness, simply because of physical limitations (the optics must be larger) a phone camera will never be as good as a dedicated camera, but soon resolution will get even better than it is, and it will certainly replace the cheap point and shoot cameras (not everyone is margaret burke white nor do they need 8 megapixels). Furthermore as solid state memory advances and cheapens (we already have 1gb cf cards commerically available) there will be even more of a reason for sticking in mp3 and video playback capabilities. But until someone figures out how to cram a 15gig drive into a cell phone, the ipod will still hold its crown. As a side note. I'll never give up my standalone digital camera, or my standalone video camera, nor my ipod. But lets say you see something interesting one day and you want to take a picture or video of it, you'll probably have your cell phone; or you're waiting on a long line, you're bored so you listen to some music or play some games, once again you'll probably have your cell phone. It just makes sense. Just because many of the current implementations of convergence are crap (my sony ericson T616 for example) does not mean everything in the future will as well. Remember the PC is leading example of a convergence device (music, video, printing press, sex toy, you name it, it prob does it).
Nuclear war would really set back cable. - Ted Turner
I don't see mini hard drives being integrated in cell phones, but it's only a matter of time till flash memory gets cheap enough for cell phones and similar devices become an alternative at least to the iPod mini class of devices. Personally, I don't need 20 GB of music on the go, 1 or 2 GB would be more than sufficient - currently, I make do with multiple 250 MB mini CDs. 2 GB flash memory modules already exist, but for now they're prohibitively expensive.
And of course, the next generation of static RAM is just around the corner - where it has been for a while, admittedly.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Jesus dude, get a grip before you turn into a complete luddite. You have a valid point, namely, that cell phones have a lot of features that are half-assed. However, no one FORCES those on you. In fact, practically every major carrier out there has their no-frills phone that is more often than not free with a contract. It makes calls. It stores numbers. It can't sync with your PIM software via bluetooth and it can barely eek out a text message. Good for you.
But blaming cell phone usage into turning people into lazy slobs reeks of shortsightedness. Do you think when cars started becoming mainstream that people exploded into lazy blobs? Do you think people complained about the noise and the pollution? I'm sure it seemed like it at the time, especially when people took the car to go down to the store two blocks away.
And guess what? I've seen more abuses of iPod folks than cell phone folks lately, especially in urban Chicago where I live. People are constantly standing in front of el train exits and entrances, not letting people through because they are oblivious to the crush behind them. They do not answer when you call your friend from 50 feet away. I've seen so many instances of oblivious attitudes almost leading to car accidents while pedestrians with white headphones leasurely stroll into a DON'T WALK intersection. Does this prove that iPod users are lazy idiots? Of course not. It just means that people are dumb in general, and it's amplified when many people jump on a bandwagon (ie cell phones, and iPod usage).
And finally, while some of us don't want crappy gadgets to replace single-use, superior ones, you are NOT that majority. Plenty of people deal with crappy, inferior products when they are handy. In fact, your iPod is another example. How many people use Apple Lossless on their ipods? How many of the masses even KNOW what that is? Nope, mp3 at 128 with bad compression artificats is plenty good for them. I like convergence, except when it compromises too much... however we are clearly not the group with the most buying power.
Basically, what you are complaining about is human nature, that is magnified by certain gadgets. If it affects you to such a degree that you are overwhelmed emotionally and mentally regarding bad cell phone etiquette, I suggest you use some of that angry energy to affect some change, not bitch mindlessly to an audience that either agrees with you or doesn't care. In other words, get over yourself dude; since your iPod make you want to do something, well... do it.
I read the reference article when it first hit /. I am now returning to see the /. comments. Based on what I've scanned (>1 scores), it does not look like most people read the article. Understandable maybe because its long and yes, suspicious since it sounds like yet another iPod killer theory.
But I suggest those that have not read it take a look. The writer builds a good case. Everyone who has a cell phone will carry it before anything else (true for me, my G3 iPod is great but its not exactly invisible to carry, the mini maybe). processing power and storage is improving radically. Who would have thought 600-1000 songs could fit in a device the size of a zippo lighter on steroids a few years ago? Yes, convergent theories aside, this one does make sense.
The author also seems to position why Apple freaked at Real's encroachment. Its more about who controls DRM distribution in the long run - music as well as movies/video content. Despite the (rumored) loss leader of Apples iTunes service, there is big bucks in who controls the distribution in the long run. Apple (actually Jobs) is really plugged into the movie industry and the argument that the distribution of all (DRM) digital content may be the next big thing to homes and portables has some logic. iTune/iPod have been primarily a US success (remember, we are 4% of the world population) so getting control of the distribution of digital media worldwide is huge. Jobs gets it. Not sure the tunnel vision music or movie industry sees it (yet).
Don't get me wrong, I love my iPods (yes...). But I have a history of lots of cool things that morph over the long run. I am not worried, I'd love a tiny device that is the gotta have device for communication and storage/playback (I assume audio playback not video). All it needs is a processor, storage, a few keys and a ear phone jack -- wait -- this is not anything radical, it could be the same platform as a next gen phone.
I humbly suggest you take a peek at the article, worth the read.
which is lovely but misses the point... that I USE the iPod all the time while the phone is on standby... it's not that the battery is any better/worse just that I use one more than the other.
I am a leaf on the wind
He paints a grandiose scheme of how apple is somehow attempting to control all these different elements to sit in the middle of all content being the gatekeeper and toll-taker.
The trouble is, the planets would have to align in a very precise way for this to happen.
Here's where I think he runs into trouble:
1) People who live and die by their cellphone think everybody does too. Perhaps this is generational, but most people don't take *any* devices when they go someplace. The idea that more than a minority of people think they need to be always connected is shortsighted.
2) People will not forget they can own their music. The idea of a pay-per-listen model probably gives the RIAA members chills up and down their spine, but people haven't gone for this in sizeable numbers since the 45 RPM vinyl single was produced. People can own a sizeable stack of music in almost perfect digital form on CD today without any hints of DRM or usage restrictions. I don't think people will move towards this model without getting something in return. For example, I might go to a pay-per-listen model provided the "listen" cost so little that I didnt' even have to think about it... say 5 cents or less per listen. But clearly, this is less money than the record company gets today, so where is the incentive for them?
3) People who are really into iTMS think the whole world is now downloading music. They're not. I think its great apple figured out a way to get people to download music and pay for it. But the amount they sell probably doesn't come close to what Wal-Mart does on their own.
4) Finally, the biggest flaw with this op piece is that it assumes companies can act intelligently enough over a long-enough period of time to fundamentally change the market. But Apple has never demonstrated this kind of consistency over a period of decades; heck, they've not been around long enough. Fundemantally, I doubt any one company has this power, if only because other companies will not let Apple achieve a position of dominance. Arrayed against Apple are all the tech companies, the record companies, and probably a handful of agencies that control the artists.
Now to be sure, this guy paints an interesting series of events, and who knows... maybe Apple believes it can be the new mega-entertainment power. Well, all I can say is that for all of Apple's visions and execution, they still can't get a significant portion of PC sales, so I don't believe the company really has the ability to execute in the content business. It isn't even core to Apple, how can they have any credibility in the entertainment arena?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
You seem really protective of the iPod. I suppose for someone who has been a spectacular failure, they view the iPod as their "champion".
Nah. I like my iPod, but what I'm really a fan of is the design principle of the thing. It does one thing, it does it well, it's sleek, functional and ridiculously easy to use. That's what I'm protective about. I'm sure it'll be bested eventually, of course, but for now I definitely think it's the most elegant solution for what I use it for, and I definitely believe that Apple designed and marketed the sucker pefectly. I want more toys like the iPod that are as innovatively elegant, that's all.
But the battery life could be a lot longer for it to be useful.
I'd love to see longer battery life, I don't think anyone doesn't. It's a positive. The question is whether or not the battery situation actually gets in the way of normal use by the average guy who DOESN'T listen to his iPod more than 4 hours a day without recharging. Is this a common case? Not from what I've seen or experienced. If it is an issue, go get the other player with the bigger battery life. You used the word "useful" though... how many hours of battery life do you think the iPod needs to have to be deemed useful to its target crowd (college kids)
I think the funniest people are those who actually have the time to set up play lists and are always fiddling with songs.
Play with iTunes. It keeps track of all sorts of crap like how many times you've played a song, what you've rated a song (you can adjust that on the iPod), and things like that. The nice thing with iPod and iTunes are the smart playlists. They literally take under a minute to setup. I've only got a couple, like my top 150 rated, worst 10 songs, top 10 played within the last month, all songs from a certain genre, artist, songs I've never listened to, stuff like that. The playlists are automatically generated, you just have to set some parameters. It's a snap, and it works great for my purposes. What you might be refering to are the folks setting up On-the-go playlists (you can't make normal, permanent playlists using the iPod alone). It's another little feature that I like that's ridiculously simple, but effective for me. You browse through your songs (which is again, easy), hold down the "button," and it adds whatever song/album/playlist you're on to your On-the-go playlist. Wash, rinse, repeat. The playlist sticks around for a day or two, then automatically clears itself out. Good for when you're in the mood for something that your smart playlists might not cover, but don't want to set something permanent up.
You should get a bigger ipod and make sure all your songs fit. Drop the playlists, and just listen to entire albums.
Nah... I dropped the money on it last March. I encode all of my stuff at 192 and have a bit over 3000 songs, which is plenty for me right now. I've got just about every album I own on it and still have 4 or 5 gigs left. I'm waiting for something large enough that I can do everything lossless down the road, but I'm more than content for now.