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Sony Admits MP3 Error
inflex writes "In a rare show admission of taking a wrong turn, Sony's officials have admitted that their stance on MP3 players was wrong." While this was pretty obvious to anyone who has ever shopped for a portable MP3 player, it is nice to see Sony admit their shortcoming. Ken Kutaragi puts it best when he says, "We're growing up," and with any luck future devices won't be crippled with silly formats no one uses.
give consumers what consumers want, not what you want consumers to want (to make the most money)
Sony is about one of those companies seriously capable of making a real iPod killer.
iPods are by no means a superior product. it uses dated technology and lose out in terms of features and price to other players. What makes it sell is that it has the Apple brandname behind it.
I think Sony is about one of few competitors with the sort of brand that can compete if they get their act togather.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
Out of all of the parent article, the most significant part of the posted article for me was this one unintentionally-included word...
>Adblock
Because the post is about a large company realizing the market isn't swayed by it's actions, this single word is profound, in a poetic justice sort of way. It says that the consumer, not the producer, has final say in what they are exposed to.
It's almost an ironic recursion. It's hard evidence of the future direction of market interests.
Remove the spamfreak to speak.
I know parent will get modded up because he mentions the words "DRM", and any paranoid rant about DRM on /. gets modded up automatically, but WTF???
Sony was apologizing for not including MP3 support on their MP3 players(they only supported Altrac) not that they are getting rid of altrac. Oh, and in case you didn't actually know, iPods support MP3, so I'm not really even sure what basis in reality your post has. Oh, and AAC is open, just the DRM on Apples music store purchases(called fairplay) is not.
Please, RTFA and know what you are talking about before your next paranoid rant.
Thank you come again.
Monstar L
Devices are only crippled when they don't include formats that everybody wants. They can include all the formats in the world as long as they include the ubiquitous ones too. If they don't, then they are indeed crippled.
Before iPod Apple had about 3% of the U.S. personal computer market share. After iPod, Apple has about a 3% market share. iPod however has about 70% of the mobile digital audio market. iPod is just a good product. It's fashionable, it's crash proof and if people read the instruction manual with it, it's battery will last quite a long time. Also most iPod users use the Microsoft Windows platform. I doubt you'll see any iPod Killer from Sony. If you watched the MacWorld expo and have read any of the rumors on the web you'd have noticed a technology glasnost has occurred between Sony and Apple. I expect more cooperation not competition.
As storage becomes more plentiful and cheaper, the improved compression matters less and less, a 10% space savings on a 5 megabyte file doesn't seem worthwhile anymore. Even when scaled up to 50 Gigabyte collection 5 gigs doesn't matter so much if storage costs $0.50 / Gig. Meanwhile there is a standard which everyone accepted that works "well enough" for 97% of consumers, and supported by nearly every audio program and device - MP3. That last point is a sticking point, I'm not going to narrow down my available choices by 95% for one obscure codec, that's like voters that vote on a single issue and that issue only.
Now, I wish people would drop RAR. ZIP works fine and I hate having to dig up an unRAR program for the occasional oddity I might download.
"It's nice that they finally admitted it but, in another context, they still have to get rid of DVD Region encoding otherwise it's only rethoric."
Huh? One is an incompatible format that made using Sony players an incredible chore. The other is a universally-accepted format that, while frowned upon, doesn't encrypt content (and it can very easily be avoided by using a multi-region DVD player). The two are apples and oranges.
sony really did miss a very narry window of opportunity in the mid-90's before the CD burners took off for the mini disc to succeed outside of japan. when mp3s became popular in late 90's, that sealed its fate.
in japan, mini disc succeeded for two reasons - rental CD shops are common and small profile/protected discs/recording capability were all favored by a country full of people commuting by train.
sony misread the american market, which generally do not favor new formats, don't care much about small profile or the protected discs. only musicians took up the recording capabilities. what sony should have done in america was to promote albums in mini disc format, and perhaps price it a tad below CDs. never happened...
i liked my mini disc player. i used it extensively for about 3 yeras from 1999 when i converted all of my CDs into MDs. but as soon as i switched to an iPod, my collection of about 200 MDs pretty much died instantly. ever since then, i only pull out MDs to check to see if there are any songs I'm still "missing" in my mp3 collection.
Because Ogg decompression is much more relient on CPU power which embedded devices tend not to have.
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
From TFA:
Mr Kutaragi - known as the "Father of the PlayStation" for making the game machine a pillar of Sony's business - said the new PSP, or PlayStation Portable, handheld will grow into a global platform for enjoying music and movies as well as games.
Ummm, no it won't. Movies maybe, but not music. It's too big. Why don't these companies understand that people are looking for three things in music players:
1) Useful
2) Small
3) Beautiful
So far the only company (IMHO) who seems to have this figured out is apple.
Really? Well, um, maybe you should've done some research before buying into the format. Because I know that when I was transferring music digitally on and off the discs, the iPod was still five years down the line, and nothing was comparable. I won't even get into how different the two beasts are, but suffice to say, caveat emptor.
Now I love my iPod and I no longer have a reason to buy MD devices (I don't do nearly as much recording anymore), but anyone doing even CURSORY comparisons of the two types of devices should be able to pull apart which one they should purchase.
Incorrect.
it uses dated technology and lose out in terms of features and price to other players.
Correct; by any and perhaps all of these means, there are a number of products definitely superior to the iPod.
However, if your means of comparison is file space per gram or per cc, it has few competitors; and if your means of comparison is based on quality of interface, the iPod is definitely superior to the competition. One need not use bleeding edge tech to create a superior product, you can simply put existing stuff together better than anyone else.
Apple does human-use engineering better than almost anyone else. I didn't find the cost worth the improved usability, and went with an Archos product. I also prefer a command line to a window; this may mark me as an uber-geek, but far more certainly marks me as a weirdo. (Of course, the fact that I refer to iPod users as "pod people" is more obvious evidence....) Most humans place a higher value over improved usability than on improvements to other features.
I think Sony is about one of few competitors with the sort of brand that can compete if they get their act togather.
With this, I agree completely.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Sony could make iPod killer a looong time ago! Even before first flash-based mp3 players like Rio.
They just needed to add mp3 decoder to MD and make MD as a USB/FireWire mass storage device. Sony liked FireWire aka iLink and they created PERFECT MD players - small, sexy and power-efficient.
Yes! This is what we need to happen. Every time some company comes up with their own propietary DRM system, trying to corner an entire market, people need to not buy that product. Someone else comes along with a more open system and eats their lunch, and the company gains insight.
#define struct union