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Inside Hardware Design - Competing Against the iPod
ihatewinXP writes "FastCompany.com has a behind the scenes article detailing Rio's (and others) attempts to differentiate hardware and compete in the digital music market against the iPod juggernaught. From the article: "We decided that we had to be radically different from Apple. Where Apple was sort of the ivory tower, we were going to be the dark rebel. Where Apple was very geometric, we were going to be smooth and curvy. Apple was so enamored with absolute pure, minimalist design that some designers may argue that ergonomics were compromised.""
You'll know they've got it wrong when...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Wow!
I've gotten so used to articles on the web having 12 pages with 15 sentences on each page so that page was like a breath of fresh air.
I wish all articles were like that.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
The tricky bit in designing a device to compete with the ipod is going to be user interface. Not just the interface on the device itself, but the software used in transferring files to the device from the computer. Apple has done a superb job on both ends and it will be tough to do as well or better.
This I think is what makes building an ipod competing device so much more difficult than a walkman knockoff cd or tape player. With the cd or tape player, the interface is just a matter of a few buttons. Designing a quality mp3 player is a whole different challenge.
The iPod is so popular in part because it is a simple, no-frills solution. For most people, the world of players is confusing, riddled with complex features that they don't understand or need. Apple realized this, simpified the approach, and people love it. They then went on to simplify the whole music acquisition process. iTMS is so good that it competes with illegal downloads.
It may not be very geeky, but it's this kind of clarity that the vast majority of novice computer users appreciate. Customization is something experience and confident users will do, and the simple truth is that the vast majority of modern computer users never reach that level of confidence and knowledge.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
The Nitrus????? huh? has anyone else heard of that before? No good having a great product if no one knows about it. And then there's sony:In March, we introduced nine flash-based players to the Network Walkman lineup, which includes last year's 20-gigabyte HD3.
Nine flash-based players? How are you going to get a strong message out about nine different players?
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
Actually, I've used other players alot because friends think I'm stupid for having spent so much on my iPod; that is, until they use the iPod next to their player. I think the best example is the Creative Zen Micro. I cannot figure out how to use the darn thing. It's got touch-sensitive controls, but the buttons don't click- it's like tapping a mouse pad, which I never did to begin with. There's some good features with the zen (a removable batter cover would be nice on a ipod, but would screw up the whole "look" of the player) but the usability makes it just plain unfun. Most of the other players remind of me of this. The click wheel is *the big feature* of the iPod. It's a great interface for scrolling through long lists, and it's so easy to use that ANYBODY (and I mean anybody - my grandfather included) can just pick up an iPod and get down. That's user-friendly, and that's Apple. Until somebody else comes up with a better idea (and so far, no luck), the iPod is going to continue its dominance.
James
Tranlsation:
The engineers at Sony would love to make a good open product. However, we keep getting slapped around like a red-headed stepchild by the lawyers and the content (Movies/Music) division of the company. As a result we'll keep throwing out sucky DRM'ed products that never take off because of that. But, we'll keep doing it. No matter how much it hurts us.
The Sony guy blabbing on about their customer focus and listening to the customer and all that shit, when the main reason they didn't have a competitive player 5 years ago is that they insisted that everything had to be stored in that same crap format they used in the minidisc player. What was it called? Atrac or something like that? And when they did bring out a player, they called it an MP3 player but what it really was was a player that played their proprietary format, and software that converted MP3s to their format.
That's really customer focused. Boy oh boy. I can hear the teeming millions saying "what I want from an MP3 player more than anything else is the inability to play MP3s".
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
You mean like the Treo 650?
The thing's been getting great reviews. I have one, and it kicks butt. It's not the ideal phone, or the ideal PDA, but it's a very good combo device.
"Unlike Apple, however, we are not going to spend our money trying to convince people that we are good. We are going to spend our money telling people what we offer. At Creative, more is better. Our products are packed with more features -- an FM tuner and voice recorder, for example -- and we're able to deliver this at a lower price. That's where we can win." If people don't know about the product (and the majority of the world does not thanks to their lackluster marketing) how are they going to demonstrate those wonderful features? Walk before you can run...
Oh please. Ogg Vorbis is a no where format. It's a geek format. Why use Ogg when AAC is as good or better. Look at all the listening tests. AAC is always scoring in the top, and usually bests Ogg.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Every one of the interview subjects sounded like a mouthful of sour grapes. Why is it so hard to admit that you got your ass kicked, and are noew attempting to do something to come back?
Every single one of them had some dig at the iPod, and then a marketing spiel about their own POS product that's in the clearance bin at Sam's. Tell us something NEW and we'll consider your product.
Everyone accuses Apple of being obsessed with looks, but it's always other companies and critics of Apple who focus on that. And ironically, that's only part of the picture. Apple really does understand design is a way that other tech companies just don't... and design goes way beyond looks. If that's all Apple had, they would be a lost cause. But as evidenced by the products Apple produces and the interviews with him I've read, Jobs really understands that design is how something works--looks being a side-effect of that.
I'll admit that I didn't RTFA, but it sounds like the same story yet again. Until these companies figure out that it's the combination of the iPod and iTunes and the iTunes Store that have all been designed to work seamlessly together and in a way that makes sense to people, competitors won't stand a fighting chance. It's not the looks. It's not the price. It's not the file format. It's the way it was designed with the user in mind. That's what Apple does best.
I'm a fan of Apple's products so I couldn't give a rip either way, but it's amazing to me that so many companies just can't figure this basic concept out.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
interesting.
The person at Sony said what customers really want is choice. Actually, most customers don't want choice, or at least they don't want to begiven choices that just get in their way.
What most customers really want is something that will do the job and get out of the way. For most the journey is not destination.
Steve Jobs understands this. Most Linux sellers don't.
They both provide an OS (or an iPod) and while the former says "Here is OS X and Aqua and iTunes and you can hook it up to your iPod and stuff and it just works." the later say "Look at all the configurations you can run this under, you have a __choice!__. But of course that implies you are smart and knowledgeable enough to make a choice."
At which point most people run screaming for an exit because they want anything but choice.
They just to do something and not be bothered with all the geeky stuff. They want to know nothing about how it works under the skin. They just want to enjoy it.
Apple is able to 'get away with "foisting their decisions on the world"' because they select components that do their work and then 'hide'.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Apple was so enamored with absolute pure, minimalist design that some designers may argue that ergonomics were compromised.
How in the world can anyone claim this?
I can perform the following actions with one hand holding the iPod and my thumb controlling it:
And that's compromising ergonomics? The iPod probably makes the fewest ergonomic assumptions than any other product I own/have owned.
Well, alright, it assumes you are a homo sapien with at least one opposable thumb on one hand. But even with that assumption anyone belonging to the homo genus can use the iPod.
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
I hate to be an Apple apologist, but I can't think of anywhere they've sacrificed ergonimics for design.
Well, there's those disc-shaped mouses they (used to?) ship with Macs, that are of improper size to be used by any hands larger than a kindergartener's...
They looked nice on a brocure, the transparent plastic was sleek, and the whole body of the mouse serving as a mouse button were all great design elements, but the thing just wasn't comfortable to use in the manner in which I was accustomed to using a mouse.
apple is stylish because typically artists want them and make decisions not on specifications and performance to cost ratios alone but if it looks pretty in their "space".
Bullshit. I mean sure, Apple makes some sales because clueless people with too much money think the look "cool" but that is by no means their main market. You think Linus Torvalds bought a powerbook because he is so artistic and wanted a computer that looked cool and was ignorant about how poorly it performed? You think the dozens of security professionals I work with daily bought macs because they are ignorant of the specifications and cost/performance ratios? Hell no. They bought them because they work better for the task at hand. Raw cpu cycles are by no means the best judge of how suited a computer is to a task. If I want to play Half-life I'm not going to use a cluster of PPC processors even though they provide more bang for the buck because first, they can't run the software and second, I don't need that much CPU power to play a stupid game.
Similarly, many people buy macs because they run OS X, which is the best environment for what they want to do. These people might be artists, or writers, or security professionals, or geneticists, but macs allow them to get their job done better than and other machine available. The number of artists who run macs because they are ignorant is probably a handful compared to the number who run it because the system works better for working with graphics because of the tools available, the better multithreading, the prioritization of input which means when you're painting a line the OS won't suddenly hog the processor and stop recording mouse input for half a second, the color support is much better, and because most artistic software is written for macs with Windows as a buggy afterthought.
Your condescension towards those poor ignorant artists is really annoying and your ignorance about using computers as a professional artist is glaringly obvious.
WMA vs. MP3 isn't a tech thing. It's a what sounds better at what rate thing. You can encode everything you own at 320bit MP3 and be happy as a clam. Its when you start collecting a huge collection that size/quality becomes an issue. Some people can live with 128 Mp3s. Some settle for 192Mp3s. WMA files might give you the same perceived quality of 192MP3s but at 160bits, and a smaller file size.
Ogg is a good compressor. Don't get me wrong. But the consumer doesn't care. They will go with whatever sounds good.
For me, a Musician, with a huge library, I encode all my CDs to iTunes using 160AAC. For Jazz music, which is my love, I can't really hear any difference between 160AAC and CD. If I did the same for 160MP3, I can hear problems. Cymbals don't ring right, etc.
As for the DRM non-sense. That only applies to music that you purchase online. If you own the CD, you can rip it to whatever you want. AAC doesn't have DRM in it. The stuff from Apple's iTunes store does, a protected AAC.
I think it's a moot point in supporting Ogg. It's kind of like, to me, supporting the old Archive format ZOO. Yeah, ZOO had a lot of interesting things, and it compressed well, but, it went nowhere.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Reminds me of Mystery Men
"It's a Harley. Compatible. It's a Harley compatible. Basically, the same
engineer."
While I seriously doubt not having iPod will affect how much play you get from the Hunnies or not, the likelihood that someone was about to start to explain the technical differences between a Rio and an iPod was probably far more distressing.
Imagine that one
"Is that your iPod?"
"No, it's a different player which can play ogg files because
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Linux users are the computing equivalent of car enthusiasts. They want the spoiler, the tricked out stereo, the racing stypes, the hand-tuned carburator (sp), the custom muffler, the racing tires, the bling rims, etc, etc, etc - car enthusiasts crack open a parts catalogue and drool.
Most people only give a shit about their vehicle when it breaks. Most people want to just turn the key and GO. They don't want to have to worry about engine timing or oil pressure or RPMs or torque or rather their car parts are metric or imperial because absolutely NONE of this has ANYTHING to do with running down to the store to get groceries.
The failing of linux is that you've got a bunch of hotrod enthusiasts trying to sell The Last Of The V8 Interceptors to people who really just want a commuter coupe - and these hotrodders just can't see that the rest of the world gets absolutely NO pleasure from fucking with things that should Just Work Already.
Ergonomics means designing equipment, or modifying a workplace to fit the workers (or users) rather than the other way around. This includes things like:
- Comfortable work environments (chairs, desks, etc);
- Intuitive UI design for electronic and mechanical equipment (fax machines, even things like placing a light switch by all doors rather than on an opposite wall);
- Uses of products to increase efficiency. Basically letting the workplace equipment do tedious work, freeing the worker to move on to more important things (like a printer that hole punches or staples automatically).
A little bit of personal research above and beyond the stupid buzzwords people use would give a good idea as to why Apple's iPod is, in fact, much more ergonomic than most players.I really challenge anyone to give a list of reasons why some other player is superior that consists of items beyond "it's comfortable to hold in your hand." Anyone who thinks that ergonomics means how something feels in their hand really needs to think why THAT is their central criterion.
New slang when you notice the stripes, the dirt in your fries.
Then why do Graphic designer houses have all MAC's typically as well as most vieo editing places nowdays
Because their NIC cards won't be recognized on the network without a MAC?
Ohhhh.... you mean Macs!
That's easy: The best graphic design and archetecture software out there (the pro-level stuff, anyway) is mostly Macintosh-based. They are using the right tool for the job.
while the sales drones and managers have cheapies Dell's?
Also easy: Sales drones don't need to run graphic design software. Any $300 shitbox which can run Quicken software is more hardware than they will ever need. It's a shame they must put up with Windows because of this choice, but such is life.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.