40GB RCA Lyra: Apple Fans Needn't Fret

PaulEshoreLives writes "The Globe and Mail isn't taking too kindly to RCA's Lyra 40GB iPod 'competitor.' Amongst its gripes are a crazy-slow FFW. How slow? Like 6 minutes to get to the end of a 60 minute file. Gotta wonder how these things get missed at the beta stage."

Comments

Why should Apple fans fret?

[3terrabyte]

I don't understand the tone of the post. Why would a better product coming out years later be a bad thing for Apple fans?

Will it make your iPod quit working? Or make you love your iPod less?

Re:Why should Apple fans fret?

[pertinax18]

I had this same question. Do Apple fans really have so much of their self-worth, emotional well-being and identity tied up in the Apple products they use that a competitor would make them concerned? Perhaps the Apple Corporation would fret, but unless I am really missing something this is hardly a concern for iPod users as it will only force Apple to innovate more and create a better product.

Re:Why should Apple fans fret?

[jellomizer]

It is an issue of feeling validated with your purchase. iPods are not cheap and for a person to shell out a week salary on a Portible MP3 Player takes some though for most people. So after they chose the iPod and they find the next week that XYZ company produced a better product or an equilvlant product at the same or less cost. Then the consumer feels like they have made a bad decision and have wasted their money. But as in the case of the iPod it has been popular for a couple of years now and so far there hasn't been a product that compleatly competes with it. So the customer feels good about their purchase and that they made a wize decision. This hold true in differnt areas that is why there are people who take joy when Crysler has a recall because they are a proud owner of a GM Car. If a product can over time make the customer feel good about buying it then there is a chance they will buy it again. But if there is something out there that was better and more afordable then they feel anonomsity towards that product, but mostly to themselfs for putting the money into it.

This emotion is straight from childhood. Having to defend your toy with your friends. So if your friend has the latest plastic car with all the features. The child may often defend their Hot Wheels by the fact that the body is mostly metal and can't be broken as easily. Or the Kid with the Game Cube vs. the Kid with the PS2 They will argue back and forth saying whos is better.

So now as an adult we see somones elses toys to be infearor to yours so it makes you happy like you just won an argument.

iPod Competitor

[Ionizer7]

Why does every new hard disk mp3 player have to be labeled an iPod competitor? Some of these devices aren't even close to the iPod.

So?

[iainl]

So the forward-scan button gives you a 10x speed ffw. And? Why is this bad?

But then, I'm not getting my head round having single mp3 files that are 60 minutes long either, so that might explain it. I mean, there's Eno's Neroli, but I can't think of any others off the top of my head.

Slower than a cassette player?

[suso]

Most cassette players and VCRs can go from start to end of a tape in about 1-2 minutes. That's sad.

I love that headline

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Apple Fans Needn't Fret

What is that saying about a group of people, that a competitor's product to Apple might cause you to "fret"? I guess its implying that Apple users don't like competition? But beyond that, why should competition cause anyone outside of Apple cause any stress for anyone that doesn't make a living selling Apple realted products? Its just wierd thats all. I understand that we can all get caught up in fandom every now and then, but geez louise give it a break.

Re:Hey, not all codecs ..

[doofusclam]

Sure, on an uncompressed mpeg4, you can just fseek() where you need to go and pick right up

What are you on about? What is an 'uncompressed' mpeg4 file? The real issue is the bitrate, is it variable or fixed per frame? Most decent codecs are the latter and you need to build an offset list to handle ffw correctly. Rewind is even harder that ffw, especially with b-frames.

Speaking of portable music players...

[gumpish]

It seems the Rio Karma hasn't had a feature bump since it's introduction last year. Sure, it's pricing is on par with the 20 GB iPod (and the Karma comes with a dock, featuring an ethernet port, not to mention native support for Ogg Vorbis and FLAC), but I think Rio can do even better. =)

Competition

[SJ]

What are you talking about?

Apple fans WANT something to fret about because thats what makes thing better. The worst thing that could happen to the industry is for no one to bother challenging Apple.

See what happened when no one challenged Microsoft?

Apple fans WANT some one to beat the pants off Apple, 'cause it means that after Apple has gotten up off the floor and brushed itself off, it is going to come up with something freakin amazing to get back into the game.

Thats what makes healthy competition great.

Thank goodness usability matters somewhere.

[dpbsmith]

The big revolution from, say, 1973 to 1980 was making computers affordable, an activity which the IBMs of the world had no interest in whatsoever. They saw microprocessors as a direct thread to mainframes and sought use them in limited ways and protect products like the DataMaster from cannibalization by cheap general-purpose PCs. The result was that the personal computer revolution was fueled by technies and hobbyists.

From 1980 to 1990 it was all about making computers usable and seducing ordinary people who had no interest in learning how to program in BASIC or learn a traditional CLI. The result was a revolution in usability. The overall computer usability experience (not just the GUI shell, but quality, installability, and usability of applications, ease of adding peripherals, etc.) probably peaked in the Mac world circa Apple System 7.

Ever since then, it's all been slowly downhill, as user familiarity and "computer literacy" have increased the tolerance of the general public for complexity, crashes, and other things that are now accepted as "what computers are like." Usability has been in a slow but perceptible decline.

You can see it in all sorts of little things. The latest Dell computer we got has six USB ports on the back, two of which are totally unlabelled and four of which are in close proximity to the letters "A," "B," "C," "D" in circles which are spaced closely together and are not aligned with the USB connectors they are probably labelling. There are color-coded, iconically labelled jacks for speakers and headphones, and but no obvious clue as to where mouse and keyboard are supposed to plug in.

Meanwhile, every new gadget I buy has a microprocessor in it... and usability problems. The $10 thermometer I bought in a drugstore has several different measurement modes, all incomprehensible, controlled by two unlabelled buttons and an LCD screen which displays not only the temperature but smiley faces and pictures of a running stick figure while emitting incomprehensible beeps. I can guess that if it tells me my temperature is 98-something degrees it is probably in Fahrenheit mode and if it tells me it's 37-something degrees it is probably in Celsius mode, but I'm darned if I know how to set it, or what it is that I'm doing that causes the mode to change.

My cell phone comes with a 100-page manual but frequently emits strange beeps and displays messages that the manual does not explain. (In this case, the explanation is that the cell phone user interface as experienced by the user is a combination of what the phone itself does and what the specific set of services offered by Verizon does. But the user experience is one of a low-quality UI.

Thank goodness there is at least one arena in which the market is apparently still rewarding usable design.