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Digital Music Player Overview
An anonymous reader writes "MP3 Newswire just posted its fifth article of its 'iPod Killers' for the holidays list. Most interesting are a bluetooth unit from Aiwa, Sony's Vaio U, and an Ogg/photo/FM broadcast record, flash unit from SAFA." See also I, II, III, and IV.
Seems that ipod has the total "mental" superiority, as every MP3 seems to be compared to it.
One thing that I wonder about is the digital convergence, will iPod surve with so many the new Mobile phones containing MP3 player functionality. It used to be that MP3 player phones were far between, but seems that all 3rd generation phones will contain it as standard feature.
The Linux-based X2 Megaview seems nice, but the site says it costs $4000 $-( Not in my range, but I suspect the competition will drive the prices down. Does anybody here uses this model?
So looking at the photos of these players it would seem that Apple has hired all the designers and engineers who understand interface, asthetics and functionality.
C'mon guys, give us something that's at worthy of competing with an iPod. I'll give you the first killer idea for free: make it just like the iPod but without the stupid glossy, scratch-prone plastic and polished metal.
It's called the iPod mini.
I think what companies don't realise that it's not really the player they have to better...it's iTunes. When it comes down to it, although the iPod is a great player, it's really it's integration with itunes that makes it work so well.
None of these play Vorbis/FLAC? (Or at least it doesn't say they do). That's my number one reason for choosing a player, it's too bad it's overlooked.
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'iPod Killers'
Inevitably, something that wants to be just a "product A killer" lacks the originality that made "product A" popular to begin with.
Creativity can't be mimicked. I for one welcome any products that aren't easily defined by other products. The next batch of iPod-mimicking underlords, on the other hand, aren't so well-met.
Well, the maC market is quite small, so until the windows version supports other players, I do not see much market. Yes there is market as can be seen from the list, but of the total MP3 player market, the combination of people who use Mac and Itunes and want something else than iPod is Very low.
The competitor's iTunes are called Direct Connect, BitTorrent, Kazaa and eMule. Sometimes it is called "my friend from college that has 200GB of music and hasn't been busted by the record companies (yet!)" The usability factor is there, of course, but it is not that bad actually, and such a thing as "my boyfriend's friend who knows computers(tm)" or "my nephew who is into programming(tm)" coupled with $0 /song can make things much easier for the average consumer.
I was thinking the other day that I may never get an iPod or similar device. I don't like using the word never, of course, but I recently stumbled across something on eBay. 4 gig CF cards for $300. 2 Gigs on Newegg are in the $200 range. With that kind of storage, I'm seriously considering skipping the whole portable music player device and getting a new PocketPC/Palm that'll use one of these cards. 4 gigs is more than adequate for my music needs, plus I have other reasons for wanting a PDA.
Though I doubt that's a reasonable alternative for a lot of people out there, I figured it was worth mentioning. I'm really attracted to the idea of having a little 'store all my interesting media' device.
We gots some cool stuff coming around the corner.
"Derp de derp."
Anyone have a link to anything else relating to the x2 megaview? A google search for "x2 megaview" only seems to turn up the article mentioned, and "x2 megaview mp3" doesn't do any better, with a paltry 126 results. You'd think I could at least find the product company's site, no? Must be quite a new company.
This device looks like it's got a lot of potential to be an nice portable linux tool. I like the ability to record audio, and the fact that it has a hard disk. This'd alieviate some of the irritation of having to use an SD card for storage, as on a Zaurus. Now, if only it had a host USB hub, or maybe even an infrared port, I'd be set. USB host/client hub would be ideal, though (and, of course, a keyboard that would work with it).
I wonder if I could run opie (or if it already has opie - doubt it, but that'd be cool) on it. I suspect it's quite capable of the task - and that too would be cool.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
...to just put a table together with the product names, their suggested retail price, the type of media they use and/or built-in storage size, connectivity (Firewire/USB/etc) and their supported formats?
And actually, I'm having my doubts that that's a comprehensive comparison/listing they've got on there in the first place.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
That's a fifth installment and we yet to see Rio Carbon - the best player in the iPod mini market segment. I wonder how much Apple hands over so the authors don't mention the player that beats mini in pretty much everything beginning with style, size (both 3d and hdd-wise) and battery life.
And, yes, I know there is a rebranded Carbon in the list, but it doesn't have the original's style and battery life.
My other Beowulf cluster is... er...
I picked up an iPod the other day and I found that its USB and Firewire connectivity on PCs to be iffy at best. I couldn't get Firewire to work at all, most of the time when iTunes tries to connect to the iPod, it causes a fatal system error and I have to reboot XPpro. I haven't had trouble with any other devices using these ports so I have to assume the PC version of iTunes has some glitches that create problems with some PC configurations.
Not sure what's so informative about that. I, too, have an iPod that I connect over Firewire to my PC and it works flawlessly, and has for a year without a single problem. Perhaps you should increase your sample size before making assumptions about the PC version of iTunes?
I know this because Tyler knows this.
I have iTunes on my PCs at work and at home, and it works perfectly, just like the mac. My firewire cards work fine, too, which makes me think you have a problem with your drivers, or some other software on your machine that uses your drives. Anti-virus springs to mind - that has effects on my ipod (such as making it unmountable - NAV sucks).
Were you trying to equate your CD player with more modern portable devices? If you were, good point, except that your CD player doesn't have 40gigs of storage :)
so to get the equivalent storage of my $300 40gb iRiver I would have to buy 40 minidisks at $7 each = $280.00, I doubt I can get a minidisc player for $20.00
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
Sorry, but that article looks like SPAM. Especially with christmas closing in on us all. Advertising on slashdot? Who'd have thought it? I don't need junk mail in my slashdot news articles.
Does it go on forever?
It seems the name of the industry tagging game is still "iPod Killer", to me it should be tagged "iPod competitor". When you hold as much control over the market as the white devil does, toppling it in 1 swoop is unlikely. Even if your product hit it off, it would still take a while for it to reach the point of "killer".
Because the majority of music that people have before they purchase an MP3 player (you would think they'd purchase it to listen to music they already have) ... is pirated or copied from CDs anyway... durrr.
I don't think a lot of people would drop $200-$400 on a player to only turn around and go pay another $100 to fill it up with songs.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
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Drop 200gb of music into iTunes and it will happily store it into it's library.
iTunes is merely the interface through which the iPod shines. Nothing about the situation negates the strengths of iTunes->iPod. Or if you want an analogy here, iTunes is to DC, BT, Kazaa, and eMule as a phonebook is to a service directory. iTunes just makes all 200gb of music easily accessible, and the fact that you can synch all this music to the iPod makes the music on an iPod also easily accessible.
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