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.

Comments

Design,

[nicholas.]

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.

Re:Design,

[jokumuu]

Digital gadgets seemd to fall into about 3 categories:

Geek toys - design unimportant, need 100 impossible to use functions that are cool

Upmarket - Stylish design, ease of use are the important functions.

Massmarket - Massproduced and designed things that have price as most importnt factor.

Ofcourse there are other types too, but most designs can be fitted into one of the three.

It's not the iPod companies have to better!

[davidmcg1975]

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.

Why so few iTunes compatible MP3 players?

[Alaska Jack]

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

Mentality

[zaxios]

'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.

Maybe I'll miss the whole iPod thing

[NanoGator]

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.