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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.
As a retirement gift this week, the ousted Sony CEO (Nobuyuki Idei) was given an iPod of all things! He didn't find it very funny considering he is famous for declining Apple's offer to participate in the iTunes music store.
I'm a big tall mofo.
A 70 hour battery life on a AAA? A 3 minute quick charge that lasts 3 hours and at max charge 50? These are things that some people look for and can use. Those are insane battery life spans for something like this will be a real selling point. The IPod Shuffle only offers up to 12 hours at most currently. I can't remember how many times I've tried to turn on my MP3 player only to find it was dead, having forgoten to put it on the charger or replace the battery. With lifespans like these, one would only need to recharge once a week in most cases, vs. once every day or two for the shuffle.
Now all we need to do is find out if the audio quality is just as good.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
I'd love to have both FM and AM on my mp3 player - the sound on AM might not be that good, but I enjoy listening to talk stations such as Radio 5 (a BBC news/sport channel in the UK). I'm sure basic FM/AM support wouldn't be too expensive, and I'd be swayed towards a model with this feature.
Yes, a DAB radio would be nice, but I don't really need it, and I think the extra cost would be too much for most people.
The iPod isn't a blazing success because of technical superiority; the iPod isn't a blazing success because of crazy mad features. The iPod is a success because it does what it was designed to do very, very well--better than the players that boast eternal battery life, radio tuners, wireless, video playback, more storage, more audio formats, lower prices, and smaller packages.
It's about finding the right balance--and based on what I'm seeing, I don't think that Sony's upcoming offering will succeed at striking that balance.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Actually, Kudos should go to Apple for truly thinking outside the box.
Until the shuffle came along, most flash-based player manufacturers thought "People need to see what song they are listening to" and thus tried to cram a poor interface with display on a tiny gadget. But Apple said "let the interface be clean and simple, and let there be new no display -- and there was no display". "Let the users listen to songs that they like, and they listened to songs that they liked, whether it was in a playlist order or a random order -- they still liked the songs."
I didn't think I'd like the iPod shuffle without a screen, but I wanted a flash-based player (& iTunes support).
Having had a shuffle since Macworld, I can say it is the only player I use (I also have a 20GB iPod). Screen? Don't really need the screen.
And here's a tip -- ONLY ADD THE SONGS YOU WANT TO HEAR!! Then it doesn't matter if it is in playlist mode or shuffle mode, you'll always be listening to songs that you like.
I went to my local Fry's electronics and checked out flash based MP3 players. Fry's, in case you don't know, is a huge store that carries most anything computer or electronics related (with several exceptions - but for flash players they pretty much have it all). They had a wall of flash players and not one of them was a better deal than the iPod shuffle when you compare price and megabytes of storage. Most were in the $50 - $70 and had either 32MB to 128 MB of storage. At $99 for 512MB, the iPod shuffle seems to me like a better deal.
For what its worth, I saw several people crowded around the Shuffle and other iPods and no one around the other players which were in a different area of the store.
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