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

Re:ffw ?

[jrandall]

I believe what is being referred to is a ridiculously slow "Fast Forward" function.

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?

[mrtrumbe]

Because Apple is the only manufacturer in the world whose batteries eventually die, right? Or is it that, IN THE PAST, they didn't have a battery replacement program?

IN THE PAST, they didn't have a way to fix the issue of a dead battery. That was bad. Bad Apple! But they fixed that problem. Now, they are just like every other manufacturer out there: your battery dies within the warranty period? You get it fixed for free. Your batter dies outside the warranty period, you pay to replace it (either through Apple, or through many of the "unofficial" sources available).

Can we stop grousing about this issue now? Please?

Taft

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.

Lyra: the * MPY * player. (not MP3)

[denis-The-menace]

I have a Lie-ra too. The 128MB version. It claims to play MP3s but you must convert them to MPY format using a MusicMatch plugin!! (BTW: it plays WMA files too but without a conversion to MPY )
I wonder if this Lyra play MP3s or MPYs?

Re:Hey, not all codecs ..

[CKW]

Doesn't mp3 allow you to just "start somewhere" and begin playing? It's a streaming media protocol... They don't need to *process* 60 minutes of mp3, they just need to stop processing the mp3 while you're holding down the Fast ForWard (FFW) button, AND do a slow rise in the rate that the "time counter" is increasing....

My Lyra 64 MB SD mp3 player also has this problem, it only fast forwards at a fixed rate of about 10:1, which is entirely unacceptable for a "whole albumn" mp3. For "large files" they need to rise to 50:1 after 5 seconds, and 200:1 after another 10 seconds. Maybe leave it at 10:1 and 30:1 for files less than 10 minutes... heck scale the rise in rate with the size in file...

And my Lyra isn't processing the file either like this reviewed device is, I don't hear any clipped chatter.

4 dimensional

[pwells]

According to the article (sorry):
The 154 gram unit comes in at 8.5-by-13.8-by-7.2 centimetres and 2.5cm thick

Should we fret about the 4th dimension instead?

Re:But there already IS something better

[Talthane]

Actually, the iPod doesn't convert everything to AAC. Why do you think it's called an MP3 player? It'll play either of those two formats.

Secondly, AAC can either be lossy or lossless, depending on which format you choose. AAC Lossless is, by definition, lossless (er...hence the name).

So apart from getting both of those facts wrong, you were almost right :-)

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.