Slashdot Mirror
Sony takes on iPod Shuffle
Ben writes "It seems that Sony has decided to take on Apple with a low cost flash based player that will go up against the Shuffle.
Pocket-lint has
the low down on some of the stats,
as does the BBC and Engadget." The major improvement in my eyes is that some models have an FM tuner.
IMHO they look like every other flash drive, apart from the circular one. It doesn't matter, I reckon Apple will be laughing all the way to the bank here - the press are describing it as "Sony takes on Apple's IPOD shuffle" - ie: they're already the de-facto standard in a market that's 2 months old.
The other comment is - what on earth are Sony smoking - they really need to learn about branding - the models are the NW-E103, NW-E105, NW-E107, NW-E405, NW-E407, NW-E505, NW-E507. Apart from 'bigger numbers are better' (which is a guess), what does that tell me ? What are the distinctions between them ? both in-range and between the ranges (presuming the E1xx, E4xx and E5xx are 3 distinct ranges).
Even I get this, and I write s/w for a living. You'd have thought someone in the highly-paid 'marketing director' position would have a clue too.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Dang it, why is it so hard to find an MP3 player with a decent AM radio built in? I keep my portable AM radio in my pocket right next to my mp3 player and it has no problem with interference when the MP3 part is turned off. I use it to listen to baseball games... would be nice to have it all on one device.
It conforms to NO Human Interface Guidelines at all, it has huge amounts of extremely choppy and pointless animations and is such a CPU hog that it doesn't respond even when the only application open on a 2.6GHz P4 laptop. Quite unbelievable.
Now if I could sync it with iTunes, that would be another matter.
Get a free iPod Nano 4GB!
I'm convinced that every time some product is touted as the "iPod Killer" it's destined to be a flop. This Sony design won't be any different.
Why do people buy a flash music player like the Shuffle? To listen to music. The problem with competing with the Shuffle is that it serves one purpose and does it well. Trying to compete with it on features can easily raise the price so that it's no longer price competitive.
The other big reason is that the Shuffle is being driven by the success of the iTunes Music Store. Any other player doesn't work with the most popular online music store. Any player that wants to compete with the iPod has to either play iTMS songs (which Apple won't do for obvious reasons) or have a music store that's better than the iTMS. So far none of the competition even comes close. They either have horrible interfaces, bloated prices, or draconian DRM -- and most of the time they have all three.
Unless Sony can not only create a flash player that's cheaper, but a music store that's better, they're not going to put much of a dent in the iPod's sales figures. Personally, I don't see Sony doing either of these things.
The iPod Shuffle works because it's small, cheap, stylish, has the benefit of iTunes' excellent UI, and works with the iTunes Music Store. The Sony player is Yet Another Flash Player, and it won't sell necessarily better than an iRiver, Rio, etc. would.
...The iPod, in any incarnation, has three advantages going for it: style, ease of use, and iTunes integration. The iPod Shuffle is no exception. 256MB MP3 players are plenty common these days; Sony's competing with them, not with the iPod Shuffle. The only real similarity it has to the iPod is the form factor.
I know that iTunes integration is something only Apple can do, but if you can get the ease-of-use going, then you can at least sport Microsoft integration. And somehow, nobody gets the ease-of-use thing working. They keep thinking that they can beat Apple on price, which isn't really relevant now that Apple has a $100 iPod. Sure, you can make another MP3 player for $50 or $75, but it doesn't take long to compare features and decide the extra $25 or $50 is worth it.
Get it right, manufacturers -- your target is ease-of-use, not price or size. The iPod has proved that there are enough people who will pay for quality (and fashion, I'll admit it) to make it worth catering to them.
Obviously sony isn't about to challenge the shuffle with a unit running 200 pounds+. Their real shuffle competition is $150 US, has a gig of space, and a display. It needs a AAA battery to run but does NOT have FM radio.
clicky
I don't see this as an improvement, if radio had any quality programming we wouldn't need iPods.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
Apple has always shied away from features it doesn't want enabled in their product but which are supported by the hardware. For example, all iPods since 3rd gen have been able to play WMA! But Apple never enabled it. The original iPod OS can control FireWire CD Burners - Apple never enabled that feature. It would be trivial (and cost nearly nothing) to add an FM Tuner to the entire iPod range, but Apple thinks (right IMO) that people buy Music players, not radios, and complicating a product with extra unused features is not a good thing.
In fact, looking at the original iPod to the Click Wheel iPod, apart from the Click Wheel itself, what has changed about the way you interact and use the player? Actually very little, when you think about it.
Get a free iPod Nano 4GB!
Insightful? Do you think the iPods would have become popular if they weren't really easy to use and had a great interface?
Jesus. Not everybody is a slave to fashion. I hate when people say that they're bought because they're cool. They BECAME cool because they work better than anything else out there for the majority of people's use.
And I've never understood you anti-convergence guys. Think about it - if you happened to want to listen to the radio, you'd now be carrying three gadgets instead of just the one. Throw in an organiser too, and you're really starting to take the piss.
... I'm sorry, I'd rather put up with a dorky-looking Batman Utility Belt or one of those "man purse" hip bags, assuming I would ever want to carry all that stuff with me.
If "convergence" means a phone/mp3/radio/camera/pda/gps device in which:
The phone doesn't connect reliably or sound good
The MP3 player runs down the battery in an hour
The radio barely tunes in broadcast towers from standing across the street
The PDA is clumsy and slow
The camera is extremely low-res with no flash
The GPS can be used to track my location by Big Brother...
Personally I have a good phone in one front pocket of my jeans, and an iPod in one back pocket. I don't really need any of that other stuff with me, so why would I want a "convergence" type device which has them permanently built in?
FM Radio built into a flash media player? That at least I can kind of see making sense. I hate the radio, so it's not for me, but I could see where some people would prefer this gadget over the iPod Shuffle.
An MP3 player which takes pictures? Nah. I'm sure Apple is probably working on a camera enhancement for the iPod photo, but it seems like a foolish bolt-on idea to me.
Then again, like George Carlin once said about American commerce, "if nail together two things that have never been nailed together before, some schmuck with buy it from you."
IIRC, he said that back in the 60's. Way ahead of his time, that guy.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
For a long time Sony has sold on its brandname, while it's products have started to suck in both quality and functionality/components. In this market though, Apple has brand recognition in the high ground. Sony might be able to snag a few fanboys, but I hope that they eventually catch a clue and realize that selling an overpriced player with less features (in this case less storage) is not going to gain them many fans.
Obviously I don't mean "crap + crap == good", what kind of ridiculous straw-man argument is that?
... ah, screw it. I'll stop there. If you can even show me something that does those three things, you will have already proven me wrong.
The kind which recognizes the reality that multi-purpose devices almost never do all purposes well.
Prove me wrong. Show me a device which:
1. Plays MP3's with the ease, capacity, and battery life of an iPod
2. Takes pictures as well as a Sony CyberShot 5.1 MP
3. Has a good-quality GSM phone built in to it
4.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.