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.
If I understand correctly, Apple's iTunes' architecture (at least, on a Mac) allows MP3 player manufacturers to write "plug ins" for it, so it works with their players much the same as it works with the iPod. A list of iTunes compatible players can be found here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=935 48.
My question is - why is this list so short? Isn't writing a plug-in a fairly simple thing? Why have so few of the MP3 player manufacturers bothered to make their players compatible with this program?
iTunes for Windows won't work with any player but the iPod. If Apple makes that decision, to encourage people to buy iPods, that I at least understand. But as long as the architecture is there on the Mac, why don't more player manufacturers take advantage of it?
- Alaska Jack