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Sirius Confirms iPod Satellite Talks
An anonymous reader writes "Remember those iPod Satellite rumors last December? Mel Karmazin, the CEO of Sirius Satellite Radio, announced at the 2005 Media Summit that he had discussions with Steve Jobs about the possibility of putting Sirius' technology in future iPods. Steve's response? Not interested."
Songs in iPod will grow old and users will eventually buy new ones to replace the olds, and iTunes the cash cow is waiting.
Being a satellite radio will allow users to use iPod without purchasing anything thing more from Apple.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Steve Jobs, the Prince Charles of the tabloid computer industry.
of reading an article about apple on a website called fool.com
due you think the clue is in the name ?
Adding satellite radio to iPods could create an awesome portable media player. I don't own an ipod, but adding this functionality might convince me to buy one. The capability to listen to satellite radio, and my own downloaded songs on a single device is a very attractive combination. I think jobs screwed up here... I think they'd sell tons of those units.
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
I'm not up on the tech, but aren't satellite radios fairly big, and requiring a high-power aerial? We don't have them in Canada, but I saw a couple of XM units when I visited the States and they didn't look iPod-sized.
I don't claim to be an expert on the subject, but I think he made the right choice.
Satellite radio has limited appeal. I don't know many people that are excited about the idea of radio you have to pay for, commercials or not. Digital Radio (Digital FM & AM) will offer CD quality broadcasts in the near future effectively killing the satellite Radio market.
I discovered MP3s nearly 10 years the time I spend listening to the radio has decreased. Even before that CD players often omitted a radio tuner further effecting how I listen to music. The iPod and other MP3 players have eliminated my need for radio.
The impeding failure of satellite radio aside, I don't see how it would even fit into Apple's bigger plan for the iPod. The iPod allows us to create out own personalized 'radio station' without commercials.
Now I'm just dependant on friends to introduce me to new music. I think they have better taste then the DJ's and what the big labels want to shove down my though any way.
Why should I bother with satellite radio anyway? I can just subscribe to a few podcasts, maybe download a few extra tracks from the artists' sites once in a while and I have plenty of music to keep me busy, given how much I use my iPod. Plus I get that warm fuzzy feeling of being RIAA-free.
Karma: Segmentation fault (tried to dereference a null post)
They probably don't want to make a whole new line of satilite iPods, thus diluting the product lines.
This is a big mistake, the money they both could make would be huge and what would apple lose? Not making money?
If you consider that any song that is ripped from original media instead of being downloaded from the iTunes store is a potential loss of revenue for Apple, then you can see how Steve would be against the idea.
With Apple at the forefront of online music stores, it makes sense that we support them by buying our portable music at iTunes rather than listening to radio (whether free or otherwise). Not only can we, the listeners, decide what we want to hear at any given time, it benefits Apple in a way that mere words cannot.
Steve Jobs has again seen the correct path. While it may hurt Sirius XM in the short term, in the long term I think it will be a boon to everyone to have a strong Apple Computer company.
Too bad. Everyone knows that would be one sweet product. Besides, everyone would go out and buy a new iPod, yes?
or something like that
This sig is intentionally blank
Looks like slashdot is picking up Ars Technica's sloppy seconds.
They might as well get with radio, the shitty 8-track like sound quality of an iPod would be uber-retro if satellite could capture the sweet tinny sounds of AM.....
Hey, you think your house is cool?
Or maybe a mini-fm broadcaster?
That way it could truly become your own personal radio station (and you could share with others at the gym etc.
The preceding message was based on actual events. Only the names, locations and events have been changed.
M$ buys an anti-virus firm and decides NOT to integrate AV technology into Longhorn.
Now that would be news.
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Somehow I get the feeling that Steve would have been more positive about this if XM had been knocking on his door and not Sirius. The biggest problem with Sirius is that is has a terrible signal -- on my last two vacations we rented cars with Sirius systems, and were regularly frustrated by not getting a signal when driving in forests, under light cloud cover, fog around the San Francisco bay, or clear skys in Napa Valley. XM radio on the other hand, has an excellent signal - I have used it inside of brick buildings with no trouble.
The only thing Sirius has going for it is Howard Stern, who won't be on for a few years yet. They had better launch a decent satellite first, or all he'll talk about for the length of his contract is how much Sirius sucks.
Satellite shmatellite. How about a damn FM tuner and recording to step up to the feature set of every other high end MP3 player?
Is Steve gonna sue Sirius now? ;) (Hint: What happened to the last person who revealed Apple's short-term plans? OK, so this is more of a lack of one specific plan, but...)
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
iSatellite
It would be a nice addon, but it would most likey be priced at something like 399 which i think is what most of the sat radios go for...
DAMN YOU STEVE JOBS!!!!
Steve is not that serious about sirius.
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."--Howard Zinn
but what about payment?
:~D
users wouldn't get free xm, would they? that would definitely be a downside for me (i have a 4th gen ipod)...
or maybe they could come up with some sort of prepaid plan for xm....either way, like the article says, the battery life required for something like that would be enormous...probably an impractical battery size by today's standards...
just my two cents
dave
This will be fun to watch fall in the morning. It closed today at 5.93 down 1%
Dave
Make my iPod like TiVo... There's a radio show I like in L.A. called Morning Comes Eclectic on KCRW. I'd pay a small fee to every morning sync my iPod on the way out the door to download the entire program from the morning and have it last for say, five days before expiring. People can get commercial free the radio programs they want directly in the genre they wish without fiddling.
Apple would do well to look at PodCasting and figure out how to bring large name radio broadcasts such as this (or say NPR's This American Life) to the iPod.
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
iPod already has an audio input. It shares the headphone jack (I think). That's how the various audio recorder accessories work.
chown -R us ~you/base
As a Sirius subscriber, what I REALLY want is a Sirius unit for my car that also plays MP3s. Think satellite radio unit with built-in iPod, not the other way around. That way, when there's nothing good on (which happens from time to time) or I want to listen to something specific, I could have thousands (or at least hundreds) of MP3s at my disposal. Of course, I'd also like a receiver that's much closer in size to the iPod, and isn't hot enough to fry an egg. Sirius, are you listening?
Perhaps Steve's just seen what some people ran into with the MyFi.
Right before I graduated from college, I was working at a large consumer electronics store to pay the bills. As frequently happened, we were given the opportunity to purchase XM equipment directly from a manufacturer at ludicrously low prices. This sort of thing is common in certain sections of electronics retailers; car audio and home audio traditionally have a huge markup, and manufacturers offer direct purchase plans that end up being better than the normal employee discount, all in the hope that an employee will fall in love with the product and recommend it to customers.
This time, we were offered the XM MyFi for 6 months of service. That was it. We paid shipping on the player and prepaid six months of service. That meant $60 for a player that was retailing in the mid to high- $300s. Several guys jumped on it.
AND HATED THEM.
These things were wretched. I'm not sure if we got a crappy batch (although some personal online reviews at the time were similar to our experiences), but these things couldn't hold onto a signal if the fate of the earth depended on it.
One guy actually walked outside with his MyFi while it was hooked to a small set of portable speakers for purpose of demonstrating the new utter crappiness to the rest of us. He held it out from his body. The unit played fine. He held a small stack of about 15 papers above it. The signal died completely.
Most of us simply sold them on eBay. The profit was reasonable, but given the amount of problems, I was just glad I never purchased one.
Indirectly, it confirms what I'd already seen with my father's car satellite radio system. Terrestrial rebroadcast is great in some areas. In others, pulling into a gas station cuts out audio entirely.
iPods work damned well. The iTunes sync system is great, the interface is nearly as simple as it gets, and unless you have a peculiar niche desire for your player, it does everything most people want. Now imagine the same player randomly cutting out when you walk under trees by the sidewalk, or when you walk into the gym because rebroadcast isn't reaching the area you're in, or when you stick it in your pocket (if it behaves like some of our MyFi's). If and when Sirius or XM can demonstrate a 99% effective coverage system for a player that can't guarantee free view of the sky, then we'll talk.
Until then, Steve, don't pollute an otherwise great player.
clearly, Apple rather people buy songs from iTunes Music Store than strike a deal with a Sat radio company
http://brandonbloom.name
There is a very simple explanation for this. Satellite radio is not yes sufficiently fault-free to be put into a mass market portable device yet. This article from the NY Times looks at one of the first such portable devices and explains why it doesn't work. The radios require line-of-sight to the satellite (so you can forget about all the subway commuters, the primary city iPod audience), and need a good antenna to get a really clear signal. There's also too much "geek factor" involved in all the various attachments necessary to get it to work properly in different conditions (a separate antenna for each type of listening location).
Apple is not interested in the iPod becoming (just) a geek toy. Most users, I suspect, would want satellite radio to work normally if they are underground, lying around in their apartment, or walking through the streets -- just like their iPods do now. Until Apple can figure out a way to get the technology to work as simply as most people expect, they'd rather not add it to a mass-product device.
I suspect Apple will eventually be the first company to offer a really usable satellite radio device though. Jobs likes to say no until the technology is ready.
They oughta really integrate this thing... "buy this song", or at least "add a stub of this song to my playlist so I can easily find it once I'm connected to the Internet through iTunes". You can't beat the listening to good, commercial-free radio with the option to easily buy songs you like.
RP
Digital Radio (HD) will be the same crap that is on FM & AM now, with less static. Still 25 minutes of commercials each hour, still the same old songs. Satellite gives listeners exactly what they want and unique programming like audio books, specialized genres like reggae, standards, and bluegrass.
This is just a conjecture on my part, but it seems that one of Jobs' insights, or pecadilloes, or whatevers about selling is that he thinks people hate supscriptions. He could have made iTMS a subscription service, but didn't, and he prospered. He shows little interest in Sirius because you only really rent Sirius or XM, and perhaps he takes a given that this makes people think twice before buying -- subscriptions are the anathema of gee-whiz, they reek of responsibility and if you are being sold a subscription, you're going to put a lot more thought into it before you do it. It also perhaps worth remarking, if only in passing, that the most successful internet/IT ventures of the last decade have been either free to the consumer (Yahoo, Google) or paid on instance of use (eBay, Amazon).
Contrast this with everyone's M$ conspiracy theory, where .NET is a big trap to suck everyone into paying monthly to use Word. I don't think this would work; imagine all those home users seeing "MICROSOFT.COM THANKS YOU-0231" on their Amex statement every month, and then wondering if there was another way. Even if monthly subscriptions are cheaper than buying a new package every 5 years, the psychological impact of paying monthly for something that only seems to get more features every year or two would insurmountable (and, after all, how many features could they possibly add to Word to justify the constant payment, the days the net is slow, etc.)
So, I guess I agree with Jobs on this, and I have doubts about subscriptions for pure information services.
Although, I do have .mac.... Hmm. I'm a hippocrite.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
but not for the iPod.
The MyFi from XM is portable but bigger than an iPod by itself.
That said, satellite offers somethings iPods don't - random exposure to new music, seamless integration into your entertainment world (Sorry my stereo is not USB enabled and my better than $200 PC speakers still suck compared to a Yamaha reciever and good Boston Acoustics speakers.) all of the MLB games, lots of news, a very smooth interface, rewind capability. I could go on.
But for $9 a month XM kicks ass and will not be slowed by dgitial FM, as digital FM is going to be the same crap, but now at higher resolution.
...dont have to finish this sentence
iTunes Says Moo
I think maybe you meant "mu"?
I'm not saying it's not a good idea, but I think it is definatly too early. It will be a while before we see such a thing. I don't see how it could happen right now. Just doesn't seem to make sense.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Since your called Jobs a "realist," I must call you a "sensationalist." I don't think your going to get Apple whipped into a frenzy with this one, but you tried. This story is bait.
I don't keep a lid on my coffee so when I walk around I look busy -me
2.) the size of the unit would be really big to accomidate the extra electronics and most importantly the much larger battery.
I'm sure Jobs knows, like we all do, that eventually the ipod will have to go there. But for now he can reap the design benefits of the smaller battery and the revenue stream of itunes for a year or two until miniturization runs its course.
And that differs from iTunes how? I pay every moth rather then a one time fee for each song?
personally, i didn't mind when satellite still had commercials ... they really weren't that instrusive
... 100 channels of shit" argument. if i'm feeling the blues, bam, got a channel. classic rock? got a few to choose from. on an ecstasy groove, a few channels for that too
i haven't listened to regular radio in years (xm subscriber currently, moving to sirius). it's not because it's commercial free, but more because
1. i have plenty of choice. there are 100+ channels. i don't buy the "yea
2. it's cheap. for $10-$15/mo, I can listen to 720 hours of tunes. ok, i'm asleep for half, and probably not listening to a radio for another 70% of what's left over. that's still about 100 hours/mo i can listen. $.10/hour isn't bad. what's an hour of music cost on iTunes? $15?
3. i'm telling the FCC to go fuck themselves. regular radio is crap. everyone is offended by everything, and with the new legislation going through Congress to allow for fines of individual performers, forget it. i was tired of avril lavigne 2 years ago
4. regular radio plays the same shit over and over on 3 or 4 hour loops. want to hear that new jimmy's chicken shack? ain't gonna happen on regular radio. instead, you get to listen to that ultra hip new britney or ashlee simpson
frankly, i'm happy the deal didn't go through. imo, apple is a pretty shitty company when it comes to treating those who have helped them get where they are. if sirius partners up with someone else, great. and i hope they pound the shit out of apple
vodka, straight up, thank you!
This is the sort of thing that's going to drive another nail into the coffin of broadcast-type radio.
With podcasting now starting to catch on with the general public, broadcast and satellite radio are increasingly going to need a share of the iPod listening market in order to stay profitable.
Obviously Karmazin realizes this. I'm not sure if Jobs doesn't realize there's a profit to made there, or if he doesn't care.
Sirius has great reception here in the concrete jungle of NYC.
Also, my rental care experience is the opposite of yours throughout my travels in the Midwest and South with very good signal always.
What I like about Sirius is the programming diversity. XM is fine too but I have been very pleased with Sirius.
It has some potential, yes, but in order for it to become the real cash cow, they need to sell billions of songs every year. Consider this. They've sold something like 250M songs since opening iTunes. This is just $250M in revenue, out of which a half (at least) goes to the record company and the artists. $175M is not that much. I'd think that R&D and operations of iTunes are at least $30-40M a year. That's another $60M to cut out of this pie (2 years). What's left? $115M, a measly $57M per year of profits.
I think they're making a lot more on iPods themselves.
To apple, Size matters. Smaller is better and its the motion of the ocean that gets the job done. Adding satellite to the silly thing would make it much larger. MAYBE they could talk apple could into licensing its look and interface but asking apple to add their stuff to it in my opinion sounds unreasonable.
If they want to be cheeky, they could make their own add-on for the ipod that uses it as a control unit.
try 10.5 months, or maybe less
... right at the top
howardstern.com
vodka, straight up, thank you!
Steve Jobs did do real work with the iPod and iTunes--he didn't just say "do it" and it got done right.
People make more money with copyright than sales? How does that happen? The ONLY thing that makes iTunes and the iPod monetarily successful is sales.
I don't want an iBrick; I just want a freaking MP3 player. Jesus, will companies get over this "everything in one" idea? If I want a satellite radio, I will buy one.
I doubt that you got a signal inside a brick building using xm. satalite radio requires a line of sight view to the southern sky(at least up here in washington, in southern states i imagine it would be the northern sky), this is why when you drive in a forest, you lose signal because of all the tall trees blocking your signal. I imagine that xm had a repeater that your attenae picked up the radio waves. Just a thought. Btw, I have both xm and sirius and xm is my preference. Also, there is already a personal satalite radio reciever. Same concept as the ipod except it only stores 5 hours of programming instead of all the songs you already own. Although im sure someone can make a hack for it. https://xmradio.metrononline.com/xm/main.aspx/
I just use WM recorder to capture my streams of NPR and such (Big talk radio fan, not a big music fan), since I work odd hours, I can listen to the shows from my local station being netcasted. The great thing is, I can pause it, and resume where i left off. I try to update my mp3 player daily, so don't keep any onld stuff on it. Just like my girlfriend in the 80's used a vcr to record her soaps.
GM cars have MP3 players and XM radio.... but not Sirius.
-Kacy
No, I think you're wrong.
Stern's primary market is blue collar workers, not the young "hip" generation. The hip generation is just that, the hip generation. They won't have any hips left soon you see, because they shake them too much to that hip hop music. This is much like what happened with Elvis and his fans.
People wonder why there is so much hip replacement surgery going on these days. Personally, I'm considering starting SternWalkers and SternWheelchairs, since we all know that Howard Stern is the hip hop king of the hip generation.
The problem is that there's no line-in. So instead of being able to plug in a cheap mike, you're forced to buy a $30 accessory.
They'd sell some, but I don't know about tons.
A combo unit would have horrible battery life and require a monthly fee.
Not to mention that this couldn't be like their plug 'n play radios where you can take the radio part out of the boom box and stick it in the living room reciever, etc. This would have to be a completely seperate radio or the iPod wouldn't have to get bloated. Also if you already have Sirius radio, say, in your car, you'll have to pay $7/mo on top of your current fee to get something like this, and you can't have more than 4 of these on one bill.
Join the conga
I'll take an MP3 player over even the most tricked out sattelite radio.
I bet that a subscription iTunes dating service would be a really big lucrative success for Apple.
LOKI TORRENT IS DOWN! OMGWTFBBQ just a scary warning by your friendly neighbourhood MPAA
Then again, if we think Stern is retarded, we can just tell you to STFU. Stop snacking on the paint chips for a while and you might grow out of Stern, like everybody else did 10 yrs ago. If he was still the 'King of All Media' (as if he ever were), the networks would happily pony up the fine money, since they'd make it back in ads. Face it, your boy is washed up. Jobs didn't do a thing to hurt Stern; Sterns doesn't warrent a blip on the radar, much less having unrelated businessmen toss him a bone.
Everyone loves to second guess Steve Jobs, but based on how Apple has turned around since his return, I'd say he knows what the hell he's doing.
Here's another example: Ever since he killed the Newton, a small, vocal group of people have been screaming for an Apple PDA. Jobs refuses to make one. Said small, vocal group of people say he's crazy for ignoring such a huge market, and then look what happens: PDA sales have been falling for the last three years.
~Philly
Most artists come out behind after they get dropped from a label. Sure they pay for the hotels and cars and things for you to stay on, but little of it is actual money. One band came out $14,000 behind.
No way would I buy an iPod, too expensive, too cute, too proprietary. There are plenty of good MP3 players out there, at least one of them will add a sirius radio. At this point I would much prefer an Mp3 player that is small, lightweight and takes a compactflash card to an ipod. I have a secure digital MP3 player, works great, plenty of room for music. Add the sirius capability into that and give it the ability to rebroadcast its signal on an FM radio band short distance so I can use it in the car. Or better yet build it into a compact cassette form factor and let me use the most useless feature of the built in car radio for satelite connectivity. Make it a bluetooth connector for my cell phone while you are at it.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
hmmmm.
Mine isn't a specific solution, but here goes.
I recently bought a mid-line Clarion mp3-cd player. If you buy a sirius unit to attach to it, it hooks right into the stereo via a unique cable (+ rca's?) so that you can use the Clarion head unit to view and control the satellite receiver.
Not the most simple solution, but definitely a decent one that doesn't require something hanging off of your dash to use the satellite radio.
Karnal
Steve isn't stupid. He knows something the rest of us don't. For example, he may be angling for a better deal from Sirius or XM. Or he may just be a realist who gets that the iPod would have to become the iBrick to accommodate the battery life needed to mix in radio.
This is why people who don't understand technology shouldn't speculate about it. Increased battery drain from an XM/Sirius tuner? A tuner would be 100% solid state, as opposed to the hard drive that currently has to be spun up to read MP3s. And what, exactly, would they need to add?
LO - Check
DSP - Check
Audio Amplifier - Check
User Interface - Check
Most of the main parts of a receiver are already existant in the current iPod. All they really need to add is a low noise RF amp, program the digital decoding method, and slap an antenna on that sucker. It takes a minimal amount of power to drive most of the circuitry -- the biggest power drain is the audio amp. If anything, the satellite radio enabled iPod would get better battery life when used as a reciever.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Avoid making a public comment that people stupid enough to purchase satellite radio stock are stupid.
But there's no reason Apple couldn't make money off of both hardware and a music service. If I were Steve Jobs, I'd be downlplaying the long-term profitability of the iTMS every chance I could get, for the sole purpose of scaring competitors away. Look at Real, for example. With no hardware to sell, they're still trying to compete with the iTMS, and so far with limited success.
If Apple can outlast competitors in the online music store arena, it could start making a healthy profit at it. From there, migration into an online video download service seems like a natural progression (when the labels and consumers are ready for it).
Apple seems to be moving into the place Sony would like to be - the nexus of the consumer digital lifestyle. If that's the case, the old, "Repeat after me: Apple is a hardware company" mantra may not hold up for long.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Apple finally realizes the advantages of nurturing opportunities for third-parties. It wasn't always that way.
Now, Apple creates the basic technology and lets third-party accessorizors create marketing oppportunities. This keeps Apple free to determine the destiny of its own products.
Partnering with anyone on basic design aspects of the iPod means that Apple throws away the leverage it has worked so hard to build. There is plenty of opportunities for third-party providers with iPod just as it is.
Maybe the broadcast stations where you live aren't shit like they are here (DC). Satellite radio is only going to get bigger.
I have two cars, and only one has a satellite radio tuner right now. Since I put that in several months ago, I haven't ONCE listened to FM or AM radio in that car. Sirius is just so much better. When I'm in the other car, I'm frustrated with all the commercials and inane DJ prattle (the DJs on Sirius talk, but nowhere near as much, and they don't have stupid call-in segments or anything like that - plus, the DJs I listen to *know* the music they're playing).
I think digital radio will have the same problem as FM and AM do - they're run by the same stations, so you'll just get the same garbage in better sound quality. No, if anything, digital radio will die, not satellite.
... Currently I record Howard Stern in the morning with radioShark and listen to it throughout the day, fast-forwarding through the commercials, much like I do with my TiVo and TV.
Sirius should make a unit to dump broadcasts to iTunes and then your iPod.. would make so much more sense.
The Internet (and TiVo) has taught me that there is no reason to HAVE to listen to something live.. I much prefer listening at later times, so there is no real reason to be increasing the size of the iPod, when a recorded show works just as well, if not better!
Having worked for one of the iTMS competitors, I know what rate we were getting per song from most labels, and it was a greater profit margin than most retail products (40% or so).
200 million songs? Apple likely raked in a cool 80 mill...
Now, if you take into account the oodles of cash they're dumping into iTMS marketing and iPod marketing (who knows which wallet the advertising dollars are coming from ; if they're using iTMS revenue to fund iPod marketing, then, sure).. but the margin in and of itself is -not- slim...
With 40GB of storage, there is not much incentive to shell out for music you can not keep. And there are plenty of solutions to record both regular and web radio, including mine. Maybe Napster will still fall for this kind of thing judging by their superbowl ads
Actually, the newer XM units allow you to do everything you mentioned -- pause, replay, and search for specific tracks (if they're currently playing, or you can set a live search that will switch to a specific song when it comes on).
Besides, how much is 2+ weeks worth of songs going to cost you? Let's do the math.
2 weeks = 14 days = 336 hours = 20,160 minutes.
Figure your average song is roughly 4 minutes.
20,160/4 = 5,040 songs (roughly).
From the iTunes music store, that's roughly $5,040 worth of lower-than-cd-quality music, which you need to pay for. Now. Not a month from now, not a year from now. Now. All of it (to get your 2+ weeks worth, anyway).
For the same price, I can subscribe to XM radio for the next... 42 years, assuming the $10/month subscription fee (which could be inaccurate, since the fee goes down if you pay for more than 3 months at a time). It will come with all the latest tracks, all the old stuff, and a good mixture of things I certainly wouldn't pay $.99/song to listen to once or twice.
Now, let's see you not get bored off your ass after 42 years of listening to the same, oh-so-mighty, 2+ weeks worth of tracks...
Ack!
You mean you don't like HFS anymore? What about the 100.3 ClearChannel monoculture? or how about good old DC101?
Damn straight, DC sucks ass for decent radio.
Satellite Radio is much like a TiVo. Those who don't have it, don't really miss it. Those that do, can't imagine life without it.
A year ago, my wife bought me a TiVo for my birthday and I got her a Sirius Sattelite radio. It seemed like a good deal at the time, I rarely listened to the radio and she didn't watch much T.V. A year later, she spends all of her time watching TiVo and I spend all my time listening to sattelite radio.
Since getting sattelite radio, I have pretty much stopped downloading mp3's (don't need them, too much good music on Sirius). A couple of months ago, I bought my first CD in THIRTEEN YEARS. I'm not joking, the last album I paid money for music before this past December was Tesla's Edison's Medicine in 1991.
Sure, you can download several hundred songs for your iPod and create your own commercial free radio, but describing Sattelite Radio as commercial free is like describing Open Source software a software you don't have to pay for. Commercial free is just scratching the surface.
Satellite radio has limited appeal. I don't know many people that are excited about the idea of radio you have to pay for, commercials or not. Digital Radio (Digital FM & AM) will offer CD quality broadcasts in the near future effectively killing the satellite Radio market.
Now I'm just dependant on friends to introduce me to new music. I think they have better taste then the DJ's and what the big labels want to shove down my though any way.
The point of satellite radio is not it's quality. At least, that's what I've been led to believe. The point of sat radio is that the spectrum is so broad that they can carry many more different channels than are commercially viable in the AM/FM market. One of the biggest pushes of sat radio is the variety of choices now available; you only have to listen to Clear Channel crap if you want to, whereas AM/FM it's harder to find a station that's not CC.
That said, I don't have sat. radio either. But if I were more interested in music I would; it's becoming the refuge of "not mainstream" music genres.
--
$tar -xvf
My Dodge Magnum came with a six disc MP3/WMV/CD/Sirius radio. They're out there. Just gotta by the car with it.
i'd buy a $10 radio, not drop hundreds on an iPod.
I certainly wouldn't spend hundreds on a radio, so i could listen to someone elses playlist on someone elses timetable.
I mean really, a large collection of MP3 music and other audio content (with new content discoverable and downloadable via P2P, Mp3 streaming stations, podcast feeds etc.) has completely removed any reason i might have to listen to the radio.
If Sirius or XM makes up the bulk of the content you listen to, you don't need an iPod - just a compact Sirius/XM receiver - i'm sure its illegal to actually record Sirius/XM content, so theres a very limited amount of value a hard-drive based receiver brings to the table.
Why don't they just make an addon like the iTrip?
I mean - if the capability to play Sirius/XM on the iPod is a feature lots of people are wanting, it should sell like hotcakes, right?
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
What if as you listened each song was stored on the ipod for a short time, and within a small window you'd be able to save that song permanently to your device. You wouldn't be able to charge per song, but you could just factor into the cost per month an aggregate value to place on each song played. I don't know,but I'm sure the RIAA would never gofor it. But what a boon for the music enjoying community.
I was looking forward to listening to Howard Stern in the mornings...
Umm, I have a Blaupunkt SR04 America connected to the Aux-In on my empeg^WRio car.
The only real issue with this is that I have two displays instead of one. Has anyone reverse engineered the interface on one of the trunk-mount Sirius tuners? (The ones that interface with otherwise normal head units?)
-Z
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
imo, apple is a pretty shitty company when it comes to treating those who have helped them get where they are
Examples please.
Jobs reportedly told Karmazin he might change his tune if more interesting content were made available on satellite radio.
:)
Sounds to me more like a not now than a no. So I have trouble seeing this as entirely unreasonable on Mr. Jobs' part. I'd say maybe it's too bad but, hey, I don't own an iPod so what do I care.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
So you're bringing, what exactly to this discussion?
You don't want an iPod. Good for you. Want a cookie?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I was confronted with this EXACT same situation in my head this Christmas. My folks went out on a limb and, between the iPod and the MyFi, got me the MyFi. Oh, god, how I wish I could download songs onto it... I wished for an iPod after seeing the sparse techno music collection on the XM techno stations (massive amounts of repeated songs), and the mesh of the two would have sold me like no other. Heck, that'd be #1 on my wish list hands down, before car repairs or anything. Why? Because my MyFi has in-car capabilities, and listening to the radio, my recorded songs from the radio, and my own downloaded songs would have been... Well, *DROOL*......
Keeping the ipod simple is the best way to go.
In Europe, we have Digital Audio Broadcasting, or DAB for short. It's part of several Europe-wide initiatives we have in a standard digital transmission medium; for example, DVB is the format used for digital transmission of TV airwaves, DVB-S for the same over satellite dishes, and DVB-C for cable.
:-) I think that the American HDTV will bring about these standards much more satisfactorily.
Ironically, one of the best suppliers of devices for Macs is an American company www.elgato.com and they don't even supply these models to the American market because there's much less standardisation in America
Again, we watch as Apple's brilliant technological innovation is tragically trumped by Jobs' bad business decisions. Who needs a time machine when you can relive the 80's through Apple? Will Apple EVER learn to play well with others? Time after time it's been this weakness preventing Apple from practically taking over the computer world. Sometimes, I think Jobs could invent a box that spits out cash and he would lose money on it.
Delphi makes an XM-enabled product about the size of an iPod that not only can receive the satellite signal but can also record up to 5 hours of the stuff for later playback. Bundling a satellite receiver with an iPod 20GB would probably not result in something terribly larger than a 40GB or at most iPod Photo. Check out the MyFi, it's actually a pretty cool bit of equipment: Delpi MyFi
---
Take it sleazy,
-The Shockmaster
They've both got their advantages and disadvantages - what exactly are you trying to win here?
have you ever used a laptop with a wireless card? notice how that too is solid state, but the battery lessens with its use? when you turn off the wireless card, the battery life improves. now how exactly is that different from a satelite transceiver, aside from the satelite doo-hicky sucking up more power?
the iPod hard drive hardly ever runs on mine either. i just let it play, without skipping songs, and it queues them to memory (32 MBs i believe). that's how you get a much longer battery (their theoretical 8 hours) as opposed to 4-6.
Right now, until June, you can spend $500 and get sirius on one device for LIFE. It's actually an excellent deal, especially after you hear just how good Sirius is. Of course I'm a Sirius customer, but my only gripe is that they stream their audio with a Microsoft Windows Media format ONLY. They could do it with Flash Communication Server, which would be more universal (you could then hear the streamed audio with the Linux Flash player), but unfortunately, that's not their goal...
He's basically saying that since Apple won't do a satellite radio MP3 player someone else will step up to the plate. Just like how others are adding features like OGG, FM tuners, video, built in mics, replacable batteries, and other features not found in the iPod.
i wish i mod points - i'd try to find a way to give them all to you. very insightful!!
Sometimes, Jobs acts like ... well ... a "Carly Fiorina".
Except of course for the part where Jobs has guided his companies to wild success and critical acclaim, and Carly's destroyed all that comes before her.
'cept for that part, yeah, definitely you have a point. Maybe.
Ok, you don't have a point at all. Never mind.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
And that differs from iTunes how? I pay every moth rather then a one time fee for each song?
Satellite radio is a service you pay for that basically streams over 100 channels of music (and talk radio) to a reciever in your house, car, etc. There are little or no commercials, and just about every genre you can think of.
iTunes is a program you run on your Windows or Apple computer that organizes and plays music stored on your computer, and lets you purchase songs at the iTunes Music Store.
Get it now?
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Why don't you stop thinking locally and think globally? The reason why Apple is doing so well is precisely because they are thinking globally. Consider that there is no "Japanese" version or "Chinese" version of OS X but rather OS X supports strong localization support.
Even if I was living in the US, why would I care about satellite radio when I don't even listen to regular radio?
Leave it to companies like MSFT and their partners to create different products for different markets.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
POOPIE IN MY DOOPIE HAHA
1. APSLs g04049.html
2. http://www.monkey.org/openbsd/archive/misc/0411/m
vodka, straight up, thank you!
.... through Audible, for some time now.
I figure this might be the same kind of thing, where you can download a canned stream (X hrs of channel Y, or the Howard Stern show for date Z) or have a new playlist pop up in iTunes (ala the Music Store 'playlist')...
It could work, and be quite cool, and something that would get me to consider subscribing since I would rather iPod stuff like the Stern show and be able to listen to it on the subway or inside the ferry...
Have you ever had a close look at one of the satellite units? I have. First, they have rather beefy power adaptors, and second, they get really warm under use. Granted, part of the reason is for the backlight, etc, but the main reason is that they have a fairly powerful chip in there to decode the signal, and this chip sucks up a bit of power. I'm pretty sure that the portable satellite unit others have linked to that supposedly gets a mere 5 hours of battery life probably has a considerably larger battery than the iPod.
iTunes, iPod and iTMS are a trinity. Each is designed to reinforce the other. iTMS may not be a cash cow and Apple wisely said that the primary objective is to sell iPods (period), but I see it another way: iTMS primary objective is to sell iPod over and over. Suppose you already have 100 songs from iTMS, then you want to change player. Sure, you could burn those 100 songs and re-rip them or you can use DRM remover to get plain vanilla AAC or MP3. But you need to do some work (and a lot more if your collection is huge) and you may end up with lower quality songs. It's much easier to buy another iPod and keep using iTunes. Not that it's much of a negative, mind you, since iPod and iTunes are well designed.
As for iPod, it works extremely well with iTunes (thus, most people use iTunes to manage the playlists for iPods) and support DRM-ed songs only from iTMS. And iTunes, well, its the browser for iTMS and playlist/song loader for iPod.
I'm terribly sorry that an OpenBSD/OpenSSH developer didn't get a PowerMac G5. I'm crying on the inside.
i -clarifies-APSL.php
Apple hired a bunch of FreeBSD hackers, but apparently they're not equal in the scheme of things.
Oh, and criticizing APSL? Even fucking ESR has no problems with it. http://opensource.planetjava.org/pressreleases/os
huh?
Mr. Jobs is as firmly in the driver's seat here as he's ever been with any product in his life (pretty much at Pixar, too, but that's OT). He's a smart guy, and it won't be a matter of "loving" or "hating" a product or model when it comes to it: it'll be a matter of his - recently, at least - impeccable market timing and business intuition to say "It's time to offer an iTunes Subscription Service, too," and "It's time for an XMPod / SiriusPod." and 3 to 6 months later, he'll have the most lucrative deals as well as fantastically-designed products available.
His barrier to entry for a subscription service is going to be minimal; he'll actually be making money to product a SatelliPod (as Sirius or XM will pay him to do so if the timing's right).
The quality is very good in my opinion. I have Sirius through Dish tv and I'd have to say, I don't know what I ever did without it. It is so much better than "regular" radio, cannot even compare. No matter what mood I'm in, there is a station for me, and never do I have to worry about some inane commercials (outside of cross promotional bits concerning what's available on other stations which I don't mind). And another plus, it isn't censored. No bleeps/cut-outs in any of the songs. I get to hear the music as the artist intended, not "radio'ed" down. Also, another thing I like, is the "live/shared" feel, that spark that makes radio different than listening to an album... I'm not sure others agree, but something about hearing the dj talk about the music and whatnot between songs just adds to the experience you can't get from an album or a bunch of downloaded songs. I can get that from satellite radio without all the crap of regular radio. Now the only time I switch the station is to find a different type of music, not music period.
I agree with you. I have an iPod, but I don't think it's smart to go for the iPod just because it's an iPod and everyone else has one. People should consider their own needs. This sounds obvious, but I don't think many people actually do this. If I made my purchasing decisions on what everyone else is doing then I would probably be using Windows--thankfully there are alternatives. If Ogg or Flash or whatever is important to you, don't get an iPod. If you want a compact mp3 player with a great interface, an iPod may be a good option.
I personally looked into several players and concluded that the iPod is the best choice for me. I've had it for several years and haven't looked back.
Moof.
I remember when people said the exact same thing about a little something called "cable TV".
Satellite radio is like cable TV. The main appeal is that you don't have to deal with the FCC so it allows a greater variety. Because you don't have to sell commercials you also get to have a better target market for your programming.
I don't recall hearing any FM radio stations that play showtunes all day.
Not since Marie-Antoinette played milkmaid has looking simple and honest been so fake and complicated.
people realize that having sattelite radio is stupid when you can have have 2+ weeks worth of songs that are replayable, searchable, and pauseable. I'll take an MP3 player over even the most tricked out sattelite radio.
Wow. Do you have a link to that cool MP3 player that lets me listen to the BBC World Service, and CNN, and PRI, and Radio Budapest and 24-hour local traffic and weather like I can on my Sirius radio? No? Then STFU.
World's tallest building rises in the desert
"Digital Radio (Digital FM & AM) will offer CD quality broadcasts in the near future effectively killing the satellite Radio market."
I think this is based on the assumption that it's the audio quality that's the primary benefit of satellite radio. While it may be for some people, for me (and most everybody I've talked to), it's the incredible variety. The lack of commercials is a second. The CD quality audio is a distant third. I believe the assumption is incorrect.
With each post on Slashdot about satellite radio, there's the "I don't see what a big deal it is" posts from the folks who haven't yet tried it, and then there's the posts from people who have it and who will never go back to terrestrial radio. I'm guessing that you (as well as those who've modded your post insightful) fall into the first category.
"Now I'm just dependant on friends to introduce me to new music. I think they have better taste then the DJ's and what the big labels want to shove down my though any way."
My experience is different. Friends continue to be a source of inspiration, but my musical horizons have been broadened by XM by an order of magnitude beyond what my friends could have provided.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
"Ok, you don't have a point at all. Never mind."
The relevant text was "Even Steve Jobs Makes Mistakes" and the word "sometimes" in "Sometimes, Job acts like ... well ... a "Carly Fiorina"." The GP probably understands that Steve Jobs is a hundred times the manager that Carly is, but that even he makes mistakes, and sometimes he pulls a Carly. Get it?
It's a bit like saying "Even Linus Torvalds sometimes acts like a retard." This does not have the same meaning as "Linus Torvalds is a retard;" in fact, even if one didn't know who Linus is, one could infer from the sentence that Linus is considered by the speaker to be quite smart.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
"Except of course for the part where Jobs has guided his companies to wild success and critical acclaim..."
Was NeXT a wild success? The last I checked the company was not a wild success. In the end, they lost the hardware side of the business and the software side was heading into the tank. I'm not ripping on NeXT because I was a actual software engineer for them that was turned into a Apple employee when we all moved over to Cupertino. The sucess of the OS X operating systems is primarily due to Avie.
Pixar is a wild success but it's success is due mostly to John Lasseter and not Steve Jobs (not just my opinion but many who work at Pixar).
In the beginning, Apple or more specifically the Macintosh was successful due to the efforts of many incredibly talented hardware and software engineers.
I would say (IMHO of working at two of these companies for many years )is that the wild success and critical acclaim for the products and applications that these companies produce is due to the incredible talent that have been and some of which currently reside at the companies and not necessarily the front man that outsiders such as yourself are familiar with.
Come to work for one of these companies and then judge the effectiveness of Steve.
The biggest problem with Sirius is that is has a terrible signal -- on my last two vacations we rented cars with Sirius systems, and were regularly frustrated by not getting a signal when driving in forests, under light cloud cover, fog around the San Francisco bay, or clear skys in Napa Valley. XM radio on the other hand, has an excellent signal - I have used it inside of brick buildings with no trouble.
That's because XM has terrestrial repeaters around San Francisco. Try listening to it in a parking garage in SF and marvel at how well it works... that's not because XM's satellite has the power to transmit through concrete, it's because XM put antennas on the ground nearby.
I suspect you haven't taken your XM radio to the same forests you visited on vacation - XM has more repeaters than Sirius, but they aren't in the middle of nowhere. If all you have is the sky, Sirius is more likely to work than XM (because of the higher angle of their figure-eight orbit), which is why XM has so many repeaters in the first place.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Because then people realize that having sattelite radio is stupid when you can have have 2+ weeks worth of songs that are replayable, searchable, and pauseable.
Yeah, that's what I used to think. Then I realized it was a pain to have to choose between (1) listening to the same 2+ weeks worth of songs forever, and (2) spending all my time looking for good new music.
Now, in exchange for $12.95 a month, a bunch of professionals pick out good music for me in any genre I can think of, and I get 4 channels of political talk, 2 channels of comedy, and all kinds of other news/talk/entertainment programming.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
And yet, the moment she saw the Napster "do the math" ad, she said "but you don't own the songs!"
Steve-o gets it.
I remember when people said the exact same thing about a little something called "cable TV".
Then you should also remember that cable comes with commercials, too. Unless you're talking about "premium" channels such as HBO. So commercial free satellite radio might have a dedicated, but limited audience.
No... it will cost you $10,000 to put music on your iPod. I saw that on a TV commercial. TV doesn't lie.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
And what about an iPod with wificast support?
that is absolutely not true that digital AM and FM will be able to even remotely compete with satelite radio. Satelite radio offers so many more channels and a great variety, such as comedy, every different genre of music, and talk shows. Just because radio is going digital, you will still only get local stations, and it will still be full of commercials.
Syntax Error
Ready _
That was classic intercourse!
For a moment I tought I've read...
Sirius Confirms: iPod Satellite Talks
wandering about a chatterer satellite shouting all the day...
Sirius cant figure out how to get thier recievers smaller than your average dorm room refridgerator. Let Jobs and apple figure it out for them.
O&A Rule
XM Forever
As for the subway, unless there are repeaters
installed, you won't get any signal for anything
underground. Here in LA, the only repeaters are for the MTA/police radio systems.
That said, I don't think XM or Sirius is going
to get subway coverage here anytime soon,
scince you can't even use a cell phone in the
subway.
Sneering at people for being "Yugo drivers" sends the wrong message about Apple at a time when the company is making new products that are--surprise, surprise--priced for Yugo drivers. Moreover, less spiteful Apple users don't like to be associated with ugly elitism. Stop hurting Apple.
XM Satellite radio was also in talks with Apple, though they didn't do a non-announcement announcement like our good boy Mel.
l e_is_hap.html) that XM is working on an iPod Accessory - titled the XM SkyPod - using their Connect-and-Play technology (which allows any audio device to be "XM Ready" with the addition of a single low-cost chip and a mini-satellite radio antenna).
XM too was turned down by Apple, because they need to concentrate on making the iPod cheaper and fighting off growing competition.
BUT.. there's a lot speculation (http://www.orbitcast.com/archives/2005/02/xm_app
An iPod Accessory device would make much more sense as it would apply to the niche that would want to listen to Satellite Radio on their iPod.
What if as you listened each song was stored on the ipod for a short time, and within a small window you'd be able to save that song permanently to your device. You wouldn't be able to charge per song, but you could just factor into the cost per month an aggregate value to place on each song played.
Sounds like you've just described Napster-To-Go exactly. You know, Rhapsody's getting ~700K monthly subs, Napster is around 200K monthly subs. Figure $10-$15 per month over a year and this exclipses Apple's revenue from ther iTMS. If this trend continues, I expect it won't be long before Apple introduces an all-you-can-eat subs model. I suspect the only thing holding Apple back is that it has not yet bought or developed a suitable DRM wrapper similar to the MS Janus scheme that Napster is using...
Da Blog
Your a freaking idiot they already make this --
Nearly and aftermarket head unit PLAYS MP3S MORON. I have a kenwood KDC-MPV619 -- With Sirius -- and guess what I can play Mp3s?
Shocker -- go spend some money and don't just get a cheap CD player next time.
"Satellite radio is like cable TV. The main appeal is that you don't have to deal with the FCC so it allows a greater variety. Because you don't have to sell commercials you also get to have a better target market for your programming."
Hmm. I don't have satelite radio, and haven't so far been interested.
I have to figure that the thing to get me interested in sat. radio would not be the opportunity to skip the FCC, but the ability to skip the corporate trend machine. Other posts have suggested that this is the cool aspect of satelite radio, and it is certainly the prospect that interests me.
If Sat radio wasn't like $300 for the listening device I'd consider picking it up. Maybe if I could try it out without the big upfront investment. =P is there a pay webcast of satelite material?
Right, because such a large % of the Yugo-driving target market for Apple's cheap devices reads Slashdot, and cares what one random person here has to say.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
...their share from iTunes downloads can't be that bad.
Reference link: here.
I've been waiting for a viable one of these for years. One that has AM talk radio support, so I can fast forward the ample commercials.
Tivo-like functionality requires storage. That is why it will not cost $10.
If there is sirius support, that would be enough, because all the talk shows are available there too. And the quality is better than AM.
The only issue is: the antenna. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think a satellite antenna will fit in a slim ipod. And it may be somewhat directional too. I don't want to have to keep my ipod oriented correctly to avoid losing the signal. If I am listening to a buffered station, it may be minutes or hours before I know to fix the orientation, and then it is too late. The device would have to provide a real-time audible indicator of whether it is oriented incorrectly or not.
Who cares is Apple doesn't want to work with Sirius or XM? This is an opportunity for any mp3 player manufacturer to create a product that will differentiate it from IPods. I'd bet that the other players -- IRiver, Creative, etc -- are talking to satellite radio providers. This will happen, eventually, and Apple will lose out.
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
not 1978... FWIW, apple already has one of the largest (size wise) mp3 players on the market... I highly doubt they'd want to make it bigger.
Why would Apple add functionality to a service that competes with iTunes? A person with streaming audio would have little incentive to pay for songs on iTunes. The only way I can see an iPod with satellite radio reception is if it was owned and operated by Apple.
You bought a Tesla album. Ok, I'm kidding, but seriously, why would apple want to entangle itself in a subscription based model with another company reaping those rewards when it doesn't even want a subscription model on its own music store? Satelite radio would mark a fundamental shift in the iPod's use and I'm pretty sure Apple is happy with the way the iPod is selling, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Now if sirius approaches another mp3 player company, perhaps creative, it could have some real value for the mp3 player company since it could add a feature that could deter buyers of the iPod. How could apple counter such a move? How about launching its own satelite and starting its own satelite radio company? Crazy you say? Imagine Apple integrating .mac so that you could copy your mp3s onto their server and stream them to your iPod? The iPod-SR (satelite radio), they could stream internet radio or your own mp3s from home to your own player. It could work.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Not true. Sirius uses a highly inclined elliptical orbit that scribes a sort of figure 8, with the fat part over North America. Each satellite spends about 16hrs/day over North America. When the sat crosses the equator going south, they turn off the transmitter. As it crosses back over the equator heading north, they turn it back on. And there are always two satellites over NA at all times.
3 0sirius.html y /satcom_radio_operations_031112.html
Here's a couple links:
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/proton/sirius3/0011
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technolog
I have no sig.
If Sat radio wasn't like $300 for the listening device I'd consider picking it up. Maybe if I could try it out without the big upfront investment. =P is there a pay webcast of satelite material?
They are ~ $80...
I don't have satellite radio, but I have considered it. For me, the attraction isn't music (which is available anywhere these days), but listening to live sporting events outside of their locale. For example, I am a fairly die-hard fan of my alma mater (Washington State University), and even though I only live one state away in Oregon, it is difficult to tune in broadcasts of the (American) football and basketball games. If I moved across country, I wouldn't have a hope of receiving the game broadcasts.
I've tried using an internet broadcast solution (based on RealPlayer), but found it to be very unreliable. To me, being able to listen to broadcasts from other locales than your own is the real promise of satellite radio.
That said, one of the iPod's strengths is its size and form facter, and integrating a receiver would probably kill that advantage. But Apple could always introduce a range of models, some with a receiver and some without.
Digital Radio (Digital FM & AM) will offer CD quality broadcasts in the near future effectively killing the satellite Radio market.
Because we all know people buy satellite radio not because there's at least 10+ stations of commercial free music, uncensored as well, but because it's CD quality.
Umm I can get a few days of CD quality music with my 6 CD changer that supports MP3 CDs. The reason I like satellite radio, Oppie and Anthony - FCC = Good radio. Same thing with Howards Stern (not that I listen to Howard Stern, but my sister's boyfriend does which is why he got Sirius radio in his car.)
Now I'm just dependant on friends to introduce me to new music. I think they have better taste then the DJ's and what the big labels want to shove down my though any way.
The DJs don't select most of the music on satellite radio, it's all what the listener's are requesting, which is why I love listening to it. When I'm in my sister's boyfriend's car, and there's a good song on, he writes down the song name and later we go looking for the MP3 along with any other songs the band might have put out. It's basically like college radio that works all across the U.S. And I really wish I had it when I was driving out to Arizona (from NY, taking a route that went thru northern CA) you probably have no idea how many dead zones there are for FM radio out west where all that comes in is some christian rock station and one country music station. And some places there is no FM radio at all. Especially in Valleys (which usually go on for miles.) I download a lot of new albums every day, but I still get tired of listening to the same songs (I have a few hundred albums and I've listened to all of them at least once.) and when I'm on a road trip it's a little hard to download new music to listen to (you'd be surprised how quickly you go thru a music collection driving 8,000+ miles across the US from the north and back around thru the south.)
Partnering with anyone on basic design aspects of the iPod means that Apple throws away the leverage it has worked so hard to build.
You are aware that the iPod runs a PixOS operating system (owned by Sun), a PortalPlayer firmware/chipset, a Synaptics wheel controller, some Wolson DACs, and licenses AAC and the FairPlay DRM wrappers from third parties, right? And that the iPod itself is OEM'd by ASUSTek (iPod and shuffle) and Hon Hai Precision (mini). Basically, with the iPod Apple works like Dell as a VAR and slaps its logo on, fills sales and direct channels, and adds some after-market service. That's also why it was so easy for HP to get into iPod "manufacturing": its just gets Hon Hai and ASUSTek to add its own logo and remixes the channel and after-market service a bit differently.
Da Blog
I could see buying the $599 model to get the 60GB drive, though.
That's a bit rich for me! I spend $80 to add 80GB to my Archos.
Da Blog
Make my iPod like TiVo
I use the Scheduler function of Media Center to record shows at specific times through the radio or TV tuner. MC will do autotranscoding and bitrate up/downsampling for different device profiles during sync. Or if you don't get a chance to sync, it will stream the recorded media over LAN or WAN. I haven't used it, but the new version 11 apparently also does streaming client-specific on-the-fly bitrate transcoding. It works pretty well. There are, of course, dedicated PVR-like programs for internet or broadcast media, but they seem to cost a relatively lot of money for single/limited functionality.
Da Blog
they're still trying to compete with the iTMS, and so far with limited success.
I think I'd call Rhapsody's ~700K subs per month @ $10 a reasonable success. Real has around a 30% Q-on-Q growth rate. And it's radio-like license model means that it gets to keep far more of each $10 sub.
Let's say Rhapsody keeps (say) 40% of its revenue. That's ~ $30m per year.
Let's say Apple gets to keep $.05 of each song. At 1m a day that's ~ $18m per year.
So you see, the subs business is a good one to be in. Add in the revenues from the satellite subs, Napster's 200K monthly subs, and the fact that the telcos are salivating to offer music subs services and aggregate the billing, and you see why the subs business is hot.
Da Blog
I have a VW New Beetle, and putting in an aftermarket head unit would make it look really ugly since the sides are rounded. And I don't want an aftermarket head unit that plays MP3s on CDs, I want a hard-drive based unit that I could take with me wherever I go, just like an iPod.
less is more
ignorance is strength
freedom is slavery
fuck you and your idiotic rhetoric.
It's not clear what the OP meant by "a Carly", but as far as I can tell, her name is associated these days with the concept of completely and utterly fucking over a previously reasonable (if slightly stodgy) company, carefully leaving no part left unfucked-over, and selling off the only slightly fucked-over parts for scrap -- and then buying other companies and fucking them over completely too. Any CEO can screw up a company, but the essence of Carly seems to lie in the pervasiveness and scale of the cock-up.
Jobs has done his share of stupid things, but clearly in those terms, the comparison simply doesn't work.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
Uh, right. The iPod doesn't do all those things. Is this news? What it DOES, that nobody else in the industry has figured out, is be a really, really, really good MP3 player. There are zero alternatives that make library management and song selection simple.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
"Since getting sattelite radio, I have pretty much stopped downloading mp3's (don't need them, too much good music on Sirius)."
:)
Even if you wanted to, you'll find the stuff you listen to on Sirius isn't mainstream enough to appear on P2P networks. I spend most of my time listening to either Underground Garage or Left of Center and, well... just try finding the Mooney Suzuki on your network of choice.
Britney Spears, Linkin Park, and now Modest Mouse now that they've been discovered, but no Killer Barbies, no Thermals, no White Stripes...
(Heathens!)
"I'm not joking, the last album I paid money for music before this past December was Tesla's Edison's Medicine in 1991."
Ironic, since I'd never heart Tesla before I got my Sirius.
Add the sirius capability into that and give it the ability to rebroadcast its signal on an FM radio band short distance so I can use it in the car. Or better yet build it into a compact cassette form factor and let me use the most useless feature of the built in car radio for satelite connectivity. Make it a bluetooth connector for my cell phone while you are at it.
Wow. I'm sure you'll go far in business, advocating ideas that only appeal to a tiny minority of consumers, and screw up the features they already like.
Good thing you are not employed designing electronic products for the masses.
Satellite Radio is much like a TiVo. Those who don't have it, don't really miss it. Those that do, can't imagine life without it.
A year ago, my wife bought me a TiVo for my birthday and I got her a Sirius Sattelite radio. It seemed like a good deal at the time, I rarely listened to the radio and she didn't watch much T.V. A year later, she spends all of her time watching TiVo and I spend all my time listening to sattelite radio.
But why bother with satellite radio now, and pay for a subscription, when the coming Digital FM and AM broadcasts will be superior, and available for free?
Both arguements (full responsibility for success hinging on the CEO or the engineers) are equally silly; you have to have talent in management AND talent on the floor. HP had a giant, talented braintrust: Fucked. Motorola had a giant, talented braintrust: Fucked. The list goes on. And there plenty of examples that go the other way, where management pushes a project that has fantastic potential, but gets fucked by the inadequacy of their design/production/marketing teams in execution.
The Apples of the world get our respect because they're in the happy position of having both talented managers and talented staff, AND they're making smart choices. It takes two to tango.
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR