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Behind The Development Of The iPod nano
bonch writes "A Time Magazine article on the behind-the-scenes development of the iPod nano reveals that development work began just nine months ago, when the iPod mini was still a top-seller. Every internal component was redesigned and packed into every millimeter of the space inside. Famed Apple designer Jonathan Ives spent months on the tiniest of details, like the laser-etching of the logo and the roughness of the clickwheel compared to the smoothness of the rest of the exterior. 'I know you're not going to consciously find these details particularly appealing," says Ives, 'but I think it's the fact that we've worried about all of them that makes the product so precious.'"
At any rate, my bet is that Apple didn't run their prototypes over with cars. Or did they??
"It's still not slim enough, give me the BFH.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Anybody know who has these in Canada? Been waiting on one for some time now... they look totally awesome.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
What is the next BIG thing?
"'I know you're not going to consciously find these details particularly appealing," says Ives, 'but I think it's the fact that we've worried about all of them that makes the product so precious.'"
Then why do they matter? As long as my product works, and works well, and I notice the quality, shouldn't that be enough? Why should the product cost more money simply because someone labored over it to add features I will never notice? I don't buy a product because the developer decided to make it "precious" by worring about it too much. Just a thought.
WASTE - The Secure P2P
I know you're not going to consciously find these details particularly appealing," says Ives, 'but I think it's the fact that we've worried about all of them that makes the product so precious.'
"At which point in the interview, Ives, began sandpapering his own fingerprints from his fingers in order to leave no smudges on The Precious."
for less than $30 you can buy a 256MB flash card, MP3 player, FM radio, and voice recorder.
That's about the same size.
So, my question is, why bother? I'd much rather have something that gives me extra features and plugs into my laptop and work PC or Mac and lets me transfer files and do all that, and runs off of rechargeable AA batteries.
But that's just me.
Now, if someone wanted to do a case mod of the iPod nano and get it to run Linux or BSD, now we're talking!
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The name is Jonathan Ive, without an "s". Sheesh. It's even spelled correctly in the article. ::sigh::
they certainly had some crappy ideas on design. :-)
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
In addition to Libraries of Congress and football fields, today we add two need units of measurement: "pencil width" and "bucks in quarters". Alas, Google has yet to enter the new units into the search engine as this search produced no useful results. But just you wait! Apple has always been a trendsetter. Soon all the models will be listing their measurements in terms of pencils and weight in terms of bucks in quarters!
EvilCON - Made Famous by
it's Jonathan Ive, not Ives.
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PS: I know I'm a karma whore.
The great thing about the Nano (from an Apple perspective anyway) is that it hits the price vs. features sweet spot that fills the last gap - anyone who didn't have an iPod before, because the big'uns are too expensive or the Shuffle is too... well, the non-geek is pretty incredulous when told "no, it doesn't have a screen". The Mini's, while selling well, really did overlap the iPod's market, because they were practically the same size - essentially trading price for capacity. That leaves the two on pretty equal standing, whereas the Nano changes the dynamic altogether. The price AND size/weight vs capacity will draw in that previously alienated market who want a fully functional player but not their entire library in their pocket. Bravo Apple!
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Style, functionality, the interface's ease of use. Oh, and peer pressure. Those are reasons enough!
The reported battery life is 14 hours.
I didn't know Jonathan Ive had changed his surname's spelling!
Circumcision is child abuse.
The user interface is one of the top reasons people buy iPods - almost every review of every MP3 player compares the interface to the iPod and almost every other brand falls short - the iPod truly is the standard against which all else is compared.
In industrial design, as with programming, the best solution is difficult/expensive to attain but is elegant and almost mind-bogglingly simple. A perfect example: the iPod click-wheel and the way it works with the iPod OS.
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That interview just underlines apple's focus isn't on The Next Big Thing, or technological progress, it's something much more attractive to consumers - elegant design.
They've been very lucky, releasing highly polished articles at just the time when consumers, spoiled by choice, are beginning to use quality of a design as a differentiator betweem almost equal rival products.
Sometimes they're monomaniacal obsession with elegance causes them to make decisions that seem idiotic from our technical viewpoint (you can't get to the battery on an iPod because they wanted it to look "perfect" with no nasty access doors...) but the public doesn't care.
Design is the new black.
Ipods have been around awhile now and this is the first one I'm tempted to get. I've never read much on how accessible they are in linux. Can they just be accessed as a regular harddrive? I noticed in rhythmbox it had an ipod tab, does that functionality have any limitations? Can I slap a live distro on it and boot from it? I'd like to hear from people's experiences outside of using itunes.
The Mini was a top seller right up until Apple replaced it with the nano.
I'm pretty impressed with that move, myself. Discontinuing a very successful product just because you have a better one takes more guts than most companies have.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Attention to detail has been Apple's hallmark on hardware for quite some time now. Anyone who owns a Powerbook, for example will have noticed the ports on the right hand side are arranged in size order, and there are USB ports on both sides. They're just little touches, but they mean a lot in everyday usage. Apple brought the iPod to the mp3 player market, and its design & interface have managed to win out over technically superior players time and time again. The nano is neccessary for Apple to stay one step ahead on having this cool factor that other vendors strive for.
Business Voyeur
Ah, fashion. What causes people to pay $300 for a little white t-shirt with a logo on it?
Same thing with the iPod. People are paying a little for the style, but namely for the brand and class associations with it. Almost enough to make you want to go all Fight Club anarchist.
Yep. You are paying extra 'cause it's white and it's an iPod. And also for that genuine "new apple smell". Them mind-bending chemicals they stuff in there to make your purchase seem totally justified and explainable don't come cheap :)
That said, it doesn't play windows media audio files. So it's doing a damned fine thing by trying to get people NOT to use that shitty format. It's also the only player on the market that legally allows you to play files from the worlds most popular online music store. It also has one of the best audio-quality ratings of any handheld device (beating even some large hi-fi's). It's also not made by creative, who despite making the worlds best soundcards make the worlds worst quality players.
But yeah, who needs extreme over-engineered precision quality audio-heaven. After all, these are people that will accept and PAY good money to rent 128k WMA files. They deserve shit.
The truth shall always be free: Boris Floricic is Tron.
"There are so many flippin mp3 players out there.....etc etc etc"
But they don't work with iTunes.
You're just pissed because Apple isn't dead yet. Get over it already.
Already there are several comments about how "Brand X" player is cheaper, or "Brand Y" player has more features, or "Brand Z" has more capacity. What nobody will accept is that no other player has the same _combination_. Anyone can make a big player cheaply. Or a small player with 128MB of flash. Only this has the capacity, size, and usability combination. If you don't value that, that's fine, but many people are willing to pay for quality.
I drive a Corolla, my Grandma has a Jaguar S-Type (I think thats the model). They are roughly the same size, they serve exactly the same purpose. Now granted the Jag has better performance, but you are paying a lot for image. Then again people complain about fancy cars, so you can't please everyone no matter what.
You apparently missed yesterdays post to the contrary.
The NEXII is a buggy piece of garbage. I bought one off of EBay three years ago, and it will deafen you with electrical noise every few minutes.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
This makes you wonder what the world would be like if Microsoft played fairly.
I think it might be for the better, but Apple seems to have a little bit of a monopolistic practice in their sleeves also (not letting any other mp3 devices play with iTunes, and iPods only working on iTunes).
You are right, and it also be a cold day in hell before I Payed to downlaod music,
I really don't get why everyone is saying the nano is too pricey. A 4GB flashdrive goes for $250-300 on Froogle (I'm sure there's some geekier place to check, but whatever). So basically with the nano you pay for the flash memory, and get the music part free. I also see a lot of complaining that the nano is worse than the mini because it doesn't have the same GB/$ ratio. I know it's unnerdy and wrong, but I would rather have the nano, which I can wear on a lanyard, and the durability of the flash over the hard drive. I'm seriously thinking of selling my 3G 20GB and picking one of these up.
1. It is both efficient and sturdy. In addition to reading online reviews, I've been using my own for just over 24 hours now and it is fantastic. Did you not read the last Slashdot post on its durability testing? I'd call withstanding being hurled out the window of a moving car at 50mph, then run over twice and still playing fine pretty sturdy. Yes, it looks and feels very fragile at first, but slipped into one of those rubber sheaths and it's almost indestructable.
It costs 199 or 249 - for a flash-based player with that much capacity, it is a very reasonable price. And remember, you aren't just paying for the technology, but the unparalleled industrial design genius that has been poured into the iPod. Its interface is, after all, the standard against which all others are judged.
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Does your 256MB flash card hold 4 GB of data?
If not, it's hardly a replacement, is it?
The puck mouse was designed to address a real issue/problem. With a normal mouse, you need to rest your wrist on the table, and then to move the mouse, you have to move your whole wrist sideways/forwards/round in circles...you get the picture. It's slow, cumbersome, and causes all sorts of prolonged use problems.
Now enter the puck mouse. You still rest your wrist on the table, but you can move the whole mouse with ONLY your fingers! Very fast, light, easy, and sensible.
Now, I'm not going to deny it sucks the first time to use a puck mouse. In fact I'm one of the people who threw them away when they started coming with the Macs for the labs at university. But one week I was forced to use one - and guess what, your body starts to remember/know which way around the mouse is after about...ohhh...an hour of use.
When you think about it, this is no where near the learning curve of a Dvorak keyboard, which is everyone's darling at the moment. So - enough of the lame puck mouse bashing. Go get one on ebay for like 10c. Your wrist will love you, and you too will have the chance to marvel at possible the most underrated and misunderstood computer inventions of the past decade.
Ok - off my chest now...peace :)
...Because it implies an all-new generation of technology, when the truth is that most of its internals are silicon that Apple just hasn't used for its iPods but has been used extensively elsewhere, as Ars Technica noted in their review posted here yesterday. This isn't a bad thing, of course, it's just kind of lazy journalism, IMO.
From the review: "Most of the other components are run of the mill as far as iPods go. The heart of the iPod, the PortalPlayer chip, was upgraded to a slightly newer model (the PP5021C-TDF), the audio codec is the same Wolfson Microprocessor (WM8975G) found in the current generation iPods, a new power management unit by Phillips (CF50607), a batch of 32MB of Samsung SDRAM (534-K9WAG08U1M) replaces the old Hynix chips, and the LCD is of unknown manufacturer but it's a 16-bit color, 176x132 1.5" model."
flash-based player Flash memory is expensive. You can get 40 gigs of space but it is hard disk space, which runs the considerable risk of dying if you drop it on a hard floor from elbow level, and will skip if shaken too hard. You are also paying for the benefits of solid-state memory.
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Style, functionality, the interface's ease of use. Oh, and peer pressure. Those are reasons enough!
...
Never underestimate the power of peer pressure.
That's why most iPod users keep using the original earbuds even tho they're really pathetic and you can get a $5 pair that works better for hearing
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He's already calling the Nano his precious. Obviously the dual personality displayed by Gollum/Smeagol is beginning as well. "Tricksy little Ballmerses stoles our interfaces!!"
Have you seen the size of these things? I have handled one at the local compUSA store and (to put it politely) you are out of your mind to think that its the same size as a 256MB flash card, MP3 player, FM radio, and voice recorder. These things make the iPod mini look big and clumsy. and it makes my mp3 player (with its radio and 1.25GB) look like a dinosaur
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I drive a Corolla, my Grandma has a Jaguar S-Type (I think thats the model). They are roughly the same size, they serve exactly the same purpose. Now granted the Jag has better performance, but you are paying a lot for image. Then again people complain about fancy cars, so you can't please everyone no matter what.
...
Heck, I've got you beat. My chauffeur drives a massive biodiesel bus, and takes me from my house to my work while bypassing all the lusers in their teeny cars
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I've heard complaints that the nano is a step backwards in capacity. However, a recent survey showed that the average MP3 player has about 300 songs on it, while the average iPod has 500. So for most people 4 gigs is enough.
Maybe that survey was reported here. I don't remember, one of the side effects of reading too many web sites in a day.
Let's see you take that hard-drive based player out for a run across harsh terrain, and not damage the moving components in it.
It's aimed at a different market segment - people who have money, and want something extremely rugged that they can take jogging, running, mountain biking, etc...
It's funny that the iPod nano finally has the size, feature set, and price point that Slashdotters were bemoaning the original iPod for lacking when it launched (when it was predicted to be a failure), and now that they've got it, well, nothing's changed of course.
After being an iPod user for several years, I took everything that the iPod offered for granted. After purchasing something different (iAudio U2 1GB) for my exercizing needs, the drawbacks became clear.. let me list what I found so far.
Accessories. This is a key point for me. iPods, being the most popular MP3 device, has a TON of addons, accessories, and etc for it. It gives you a ton of options later on, should you decide to add something. Meanwhile, I STILL haven't been able to find a damn belt clip for the iAudio U2. You know, something to hold it on my waist. Yes, it's that bad if it's not an iPod.
User Interface. Most people take it for granted, but UI of iPods are superior to anything I've used. It's simple, clear, and easy to use, which by far appeals to the mass than something complicated. My iAudio U2 isn't that bad, but I miss my iPod interface. Easy and simple, with no complicated controls. I looked through my friend's iRiver 799 manual the other day, and it was horrible. You had to memorize combos to access certain features. Ugh. And the clickwheel is a godsend. Simple things like a joystick on the iAudio U2 doesn't compare at all.
iTunes. Very important. With this, you can easily buy songs off the music store and sync them to your iPod. And sync is amazing. Plug in your iPod, let it automatically sync, and you're good to go. My iAudio U2 requires you to drag and drop. That's pretty easy too, but I like the iTunes method better. And don't forget other iTunes features, such as Podcasts.
Form factor. Face it. People do care about how a device looks and feels. It doesn't matter if a device has all the features in the world, if it's ugly as sin and big as a brick. Things such as a voice recorder and line in port are useless and only make the device bigger and bulkier. How many people would actually make use of those features? I haven't used it once on my iAudio. Granted, I like the FM radio, but that depends on people's taste. I'm not complaining about the size of the iAudio U2, but iPods are generally smaller than anything else on the market today (And do look better).
Well, that's all I can think of by now. But if you think that people are buying iPods because of the brand name, you're dead wrong.
(Oh yeah, the Nano comes in black too)
It's just a flash player with the ipod design. Why are there so many slashdot articles about it. Flash players of all kinds have been out for a good while, apple is a few years too late.
Let's see you watch movies on yours!
Besides, how in the world do you figure that a shiny and easily scratched, non-splash proof player is designed to be "extremely rugged"?
If you want "sport" then go with the Rio Forge. It's case is made of rubber wrapped around steel. It has actual sport features like a stopwatch and laptimer and it outlasts the nano's battery by 6 hours.
Now enter the puck mouse. You still rest your wrist on the table, but you can move the whole mouse with ONLY your fingers! Very fast, light, easy, and sensible.
I'm using a "slow, cumbersome" normal mouse right now, with my wrist wresting on my desk, and I'm moving the cursor everywhere with ONLY my fingers. Up your pointer sensitivity.
The road to hell is paved with Cat 5 cable.
well, the 1GB was something like $35, but I was too cheap, and the 4GB was around $50.
... that works wonders ...
Still a lot cheaper than the iPod nano, all in all.
Now, if you want to attract girls, get a Nintendo DS and Nintendogs on it
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... it also gets the market who wants a flash-based player so it doesn't skip when running: the nano is my first ipod and I basically ordered it 5 minutes after reading the 'how can we destroy it' article here on /.
I do plan to eventually get a 60gig one at some point, but right now the nano just hits the sweet spot for me in terms of durability, price, size and capacity.
-- the cake is a lie
They will almost certainly port Linux to the nano, as they have to all generations of its big brother.
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
Here's a clue Mr "I design inside an aesthetic bubble", in the real world things people touch with their hands gets DIRTY. If you make it from something that doesn't wipe clean, it stays dirty forever.
yeah, i saw the picture of it in Steve's hand, and I own an MP3 player that's a flash card, FM radio and voice recorder and it's pretty much the same size. And that's even for the 1GB flash card version.
It's just flatter, taller, and wider than my player.
Now, back in my Army days, it would be cool cause it would fit into my inner mag pocket, but so would my player which would fit in my pen holder pocket.
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Normally my chauffer drives a huge train. I own my car, and have free parking and barely pay anything for insurance. I still take the train into the city for school. But nothing beats your own car/truck/etc for things like grocery shopping.
Not wanting to have a horribily disfigured iPod in four weeks I returned mine today.
Cheers yo,
Billy
bamph
If you can find a 4 gb for 50 Ill shit on it before I eat it.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Yes, but I don't think you understand -- our Apples go to 11...
Unless they do the serial number that way too, then make it $1.50 maybe.
Everyone on slashdot has always whined about microsoft's monopoly. Now you all, and I'm speaking to all you who bought an ipod, bought right into another monopoly. Where's the logic? Its the same business model! Hell it may be worse! At least you can use firefox instead of IE, but you sure as hell can't get your songs from anywhere else, can you? (I'm talking about conveniently, which is what 95% of ipod owners would use, not some hack-and-slash conversion that the other 5% have the knowledge to do).
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm an ergonomics scientist and appreciated the puck mouse for the very reasons you cite. The extra width offered by the circular design is very good for the hand. Were a traditionally-shaped mouse this wide at the point of finger contact, however, the mouse would be too large to use with the wrist anchored to the table (an ergonomics must). In short, the "puck" design achieved long-term health goals that almost no other mouse has duplicated.
I should confess that I don't continue to use this mouse (both because I wanted more functionality and because I also occasionally had trouble orienting it successfully without looking at it). But to criticize it (as many do) as poor design is to not understand design.
You're absolutely right -- the 2gb nano was actually cheaper than a respectable 2gb USB stick (Iomega IIRC).
I think these prices were plucked out of the air.
Not too silent -- they're moderating me down as expected. :)
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
OK, this is going to be a bit of a rant. The basic problem is, I don't get why people love the click wheel. Yeah, it looks cool and minimalist, but people are always raving about the iPod's user interface, and the click wheel just doesn't seem to be all that good in that department.
Let me explain. I own an iPod Mini, and I like it. It looks cool, the battery life is quite good, and overall the user interface is well-designed. But, I primarily use this thing while I'm on the go (surprise). As such, I am usually doing something else while listening to music -- something that requires 95% of my attention. Namely, driving. I love that the iPod lets me have a bunch of songs in the car; previously I was keeping 10 or 15 CDs in the glove box, and I was always too lazy to change them out, so I wound up listening to the same music over and over and over.
Enter the iPod. Now everything is great. I got a $5 cable from Radio Shack and wired the thing into my car stereo's aux input. I keep the thing in a pocket that's very convenient to reach even while I'm driving; in fact, I barely have to move my hand.
So what's the problem? The problem is that the click wheel has no tactile feedback at all. It's just a big round thing, and pressing on it in different places does different things, but there is no way for your finger to tell where one place ends and the other begins. Would you want a keyboard that is perfectly flat and smooth across the top so that your fingers can't tell where one key stops and another starts? That's what the click wheel is like.
The reason this bugs me is that 99.9% of the time, I put the thing on shuffle, and I often want to skip a particular song when it comes up (if I'm not in the mood for it). So I reach for the iPod and press the track skip button, or at least I try. Because this requires me to push the right quarter of the wheel, I often get it wrong and punch the play/pause button or the menu button instead. Pushing play/pause results in silence. This is particularly irritating because many of the songs on the iPod start with a fade-in or a quiet part, and it's hard when I'm in the car and there's ambient noise to tell if the iPod has stopped playing because I've hit the wrong button or if the song is just quiet. So I pretty much have to grab the iPod and pull it up into my field of view or wait 30 seconds. Or crank up the volume nearly all the way to hear the difference and hope I don't damage my hearing. (Well, my car stereo isn't that powerful, but you get the idea.)
So, overall, I think the iPod does have a fairly good user interface, but I'd really much rather have the wheel and the buttons separate. The click wheel as it is makes the thing unnecessarily hard to use, and the only payoff you get in return is the "gee whiz" factor.
Slow start as prices are at least $50 too high
A fuel shortage-induced recession, flood-exacerbated inflation, and no Firewire-syncing means that this user will wait for rev 2.0 which (better) include FW-syncing.
Know what I mean?
blog
The Truth is, Apple could not have become a Monopoly, because Apple more-or-less created Microsoft. Microsoft won because they embraced open hardware, which was exactly why Apple lost. So it's not really realistic to ask "what if" when the scenerio was pretty impossible anyway. If Microsoft hadn't won, someone else would have, and Apple would be in the same position they are now.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
But nothing beats your own car/truck/etc for things like grocery shopping.
... I'll tell Bill G to put that money back in his pocket ...
Like home delivery of the groceries ordered by your fridge?
Dang, there goes the 21st century wired house concept
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The CRC wzs veru useful indeed, but I think I'd rather try and do without that than without my Merck Index. Never would have made it through college witout. Most. Useful. Chemist's. Book. Ever.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
* Mini: "This thing is barely smaller than a regular iPod, costs almost the same, and still has a hard drive so I can't go jogging with it."
* Shuffle: "Great, so you shrunk it down and removed the harddrive, but no screen? How am I supposed to use this thing?"
* Nano: "Ah, perfect. Small enough to fit just about anywhere. Full screen and standard interface. And no harddrive!"
I wouldn't be surprised that Apple knew of the complaints they would get with the Mini and Shuffle even before their launches, but decided that those were the best that could be implemented at the manufacturing costs they were willing to have. It was all just stepping stones to get to the goal they had preset: Small, fully functional, flash. In short, Nano.
sure it was scratched and the screen broke
Eh, the screen breaking was the reason I threw away my 4GB mini...I wouldn't call that surviving.
TigerDirect - works fine.
Your mileage may vary.
I was only looking for 64MB, 128MB, 256MB, 512MB, 1GB ones, and recall the prices when I did the search, no idea if it has a different price now.
Even got a Wireless 11b/g basestation with 4 ports for $20.
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Dude, that kicks ass. I haven't used any of my iPods in linux because I didn't get one until after I had bought a Mac and relinquished my linux boxen to server roles, but it's cool to know that the functionality is there. In fact, I just sold an old 3g iPod to a friend of mine, I'll have to tell him to try that route since he's a linux guy. Awesome.
My experience with the Nano hasn't been quite so good. I drove out to the local Apple Store several hours after they got their first shipment and came home with a 4G Nano in black. I opened it in the store, it powered up, but didn't have any songs pre-loaded, so I stuck it in my pocket and drove home.
When I got home, I was surprised to discover two things:
1. Just riding for an hour in my pocket with my cell phone scratched up the gorgeous clear plastic front.
2. The unit failed to power up reliably once I got home. I was able to hard-reset it a few times to gain limited functionality, and then it died completely.
I drove back to the store the following day, the techs there prounced it dead (after waiting for 45 minutes, grrr...) but they were out of the 4G black model. Not happy to settle for white or two gigs, I just got a refund.
I may, or may not, try again in the future. It sure is one sexy little toy, and it might still function after being run over by a car, but a screen that scratches so easily is completely unacceptable.
-p.
The only problem I see for the Nano is that it's reduced size would make it less suitable to powering external gadgets like this. I think the Nano is stunning, but I'm happy I got my 6GB Mini for the brief time they were available.
One of these days I'm moving to Theory - everything works there
Actaully, yes it probably is worth it - as the commoditization of nearly every manufactured product makes the "race to the bottom" in regards to price harder and harder. I'm guessing Apple's philosophy is to make very high-quality and well-designed products (or at least the appearance of this), so people are willing to pay more.
(Which, personally, is a very good idea, imho. I know I'm personally getting tired of the now-broken crap I bought because of "wow - look how cheap this is".
My philosophy now-that-I'm-all-grown-up is: wait until I find something I really want, and then buy the best quality product I can.)
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
Several: Iiiiiiiiiiiiive.
Bedevere: Oooohooohooooo!
Launcelot: No no, aauuuugggh, at the back of the throat: aauuuugghhh.
Bedevere: No, no, no, oooooooooooh in surprise and alarm.
Launcelot: Oh, you mean a sort of AAAUUUGGHH?
Oooh! OH NO! It's the legendry black beast of AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUGH!!
Which MP3 player do you have? So far you have been sprouting numbers pulled (by the smell of 'em) directly from your anus, and spreading them around like they're facts or something. Please back up your comments with something approaching reality...
no need for you to have all that DRM-less media laying around anymore
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
to your MP3 player so we can compare.
- sigs are for wimps.
Best I could see there was a 512MB for $49.99- and it was USB, not Compact flash.
Can you provide a link? A 4GB, or even a 256MB CF drive with all of that extra functionality would go great in my IPAQ- regardless of the fact that it's a device on it's own.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I'm thinking by Jan 2006, I should be able to pick up a silver Mini (silver being least popular color) for $130, is this realistic?
They have lots of those.
Be careful for four weeks?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I don't really care about movies. I don't download them. I don't rent them. I don't buy them. I don't go to the cinemas. I don't watch TV.
Nor do I really give a toss about the case. I just want it to still be playing Pantera after I've come off my bike into a big pile of rocks.....
The Mediagate is not even the same class of device, I don't see how it can even be compared to a nano.
Billy
PS You insult others while calling them a troll? How old are you?
bamph
I really don't think this is a "Microsoft or Apple" scenario. Microsoft, from the begining, was a software company. They popularized the idea of selling "licences" for software. Apple began as a hardware company. And they both wish to stay that way. Apple tried Mac clones and didn't like it.
You can bet we would have lived with $10K computers for years in a stagnating market..
I don't get it. How could you possibly have a monopoly and the most expensive product on the market?
I can't even imagine a world where consumers want expensive computers so badly, no retailer would risk offending Apple by selling cheaper non-Apple PCs. It defies logic.
Protective Skins for the Nano. Found this while browsing some ipod forum looking for something to protect my new nano. BTW, you haven't seen such rabid fan boyism till you read an ipod forum. Say on negative thing(battery life on the nano is not 14 hours) and you'll have 30 guys/kids flaming you and the funny thing is half of them don't even have a nano.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
I just finished cutting 1/4" closed cell foam to fit inside an Altoids or Penguin mint box. 1/4" actoss the whole bottom, and two 1/4" x 1/4" stripes along the sides. Drill one hole at the appropriate place for the headphone, smooth with Dremel. I used a sharpie to re-blacken the scratched paint around the earphone hole.
I put a couple of felt pads on the inside of the lid to protect the face and provide downward pressure (make sure not to have anyything interacting with the click wheel).
As Emeril would say, "BAM!" iPod Nano case. Looks cool, contains caffeine (when used in a Penguin case). The black and white Pengiun box also works well with my black Pod, and will stand out enough to keep track of it in a room.
... if there was a way to do it on a PC.
It would also be nicer if it was integrated directly into iTunes so when you select "downsample to aac128 before downloading to ipod" it would also do this automagically
-- the cake is a lie
The NEXII is a buggy piece of garbage. I bought one off of EBay three years ago, and it will deafen you with electrical noise every few minutes.
I love my iPod. It's better than any other player I've used.
But.
Your statement is pretty thin, bro. You bought a piece of electronics off of eBay and it--GASP--doesn't work properly?
Yeah, it must be a problem with the product line. Totally.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
I find it misleading to claim Microsoft has "protected" us from an Apple monopoly, as Microsoft has never been a hardware company, and the entire idea of "commodity hardware" is derived solely from the availability of PC clones and not under Microsoft's control. IBM, not Microsoft, had a stranglehold on the PC market until Compaq reverse engineered the PC BIOS and produced a clone. Had IBM's lawsuit been successful, we probably would have lived with $10K computers for years in a stagnating market, Microsoft or no. It would have been an ugly battle until IBM was finally broken apart. Or until Apple grudgingly accepted low-cost Apple clones and took over the market. See how fun pure speculation can be?
As a counterpoint, you can imagine a world in which Microsoft did not have a virtual monopoly on office productivity applications and indeed on the entire chain down to the operating system, and had been forced to play nice with others. Perhaps the lock-in precluded some incredible innovation of the software side which our counterparts in the alternate universe simply could not imagine living without. Oh, I'm speculating again. It must be contagious.
Sorry, I forgot I'm the only person in the world with access to external 12V battery packs and car AC adapters.
That would be mighty convenient, but sadly it isn't a practical reality yet. Teleportation would be even cooler. Until then, I'll stick with my car, but someday...
Yes, because I just LOVE taking 12V battery packs along with me when I go for a jog or to the gym.
/.: why the hell am I here?
Both play mp3s, both cost money. That's how I'm comparing them. To some people that's all that matters.
Yes, because I just LOVE taking 12V battery packs along with me when I go for a jog or to the gym.
You want a workout don't you??
Actually, iTunes and the various iPods that require its use in order to load them (either that or WMP -- blecch) is the main reason I won't buy an iPod.
I should not have to use a proprietary app just to put songs on what is basically a portable hard drive.
I should be able to drag and drop, or use a fricking command shell if I want even.
I wouldn't have a problem with the iTunes functionality being available with iPods... that's all well and good.
But making it the ONLY way to load songs onto it?
Screw that. That's broken, in my opinion.
And the circle of life continues to spin, occasionally wobbling on its axis thanks to the weighty presence of dumb.
You are paying extra 'cause it's white and it's an iPod
so the one black in color should be made cheaper?
well, you can rip as one track in itunes, and add chapters: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050 81423571277&query=gapless
though i agree, that one should be able to select the play options during import or any time after.
If Apple had won, imagine the pain and suffering we would have gone through having only one supplier for both hardware and software. You can bet we would have lived with $10K computers for years in a stagnating market. It would have been an ugly battle until Apple was finally broken apart.
If Apple had won there would have likely been multiple architectures still in existence and in competition, giving everyone a lot more choices. Instead, everyone flocked to x86 because it was the cheapest, not necessarily because it was the best. If Apple had a 50% share of the market perhaps the Amiga and Atari ST would still be alive -- in some evolved form.
If the success of the PC is all based on a pure love for openness, why did the Amiga and Atari ST fail, and the Mac live on? The reason is Apple possessed an attention to detail and desire to empower its users through technology, and people were and still are willing to pay a premium for that. Through all the greed Apple has always had a subtle sense of altruism, that MS has never had. Steve Ballmer represents the soul of Microsoft; Woz and Jobs are still the soul of Apple: a combination between altruistic qualities and the assholenish required to stay alive.
That article mentions the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey... good comparison. If you scaled it, it's pretty close:
nano dimensions: 3.5 x 1.6 x 0.27
monolith ratio: 9 x 4 x 1
scaled 0.4x: 3.6 x 1.6 x 0.4
So, it's a slightly (3%) taller and 2/3rds the thickness of a monolith.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
The iPod nano has a stopwatch.
Yeah, real mouse here, moved with fingertips.
If I moved my whole arm I might actually develop some muscles in it and lose geek cred.
p.s. I thought that Apple-style mouse interaction was all about fast, long distance movement, hence big menus at the screen edge for the mouse to slam into. Fingertip style is good at short distance and precise, so Apple promoting fingertip mouse movement seems contradictory.
I quit!
Engineer One: Let's make it smaller
Engineer Two: Okay
The puck is so low profile that you don't have this problem - and with the sensitivity right up, you can move the pointer right across the screen with TINY movements of your fingers. You have to try it to apprecite the difference.
For the record, I don't use one and haven't for many years now. But I do think it's such a shame that many people - especially those here who are for the most part proponents of clever and considered design - dismiss it outright without considering why it is like it is.
Heh. Maybe I should have a new warcry - Viva Amiga, and the Puck!
It would be nice if they spent the extra 10 cents to make the black models back case plated with nickle then blackened. Ive's laser etch would stand out even more, it would be very nice indeed. Black earphones would be good too. For the complaints about the laser etch, the serial number is etched by the laser, the additional logo etch is essentially a freebie as is personalization from a cost perspective. The etch on the click wheel provides important tactical feedback, not just something to look at.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
So in a world of Apple, we have 80% Apple, 10% Creative, and 10% other.
To go with this, we'd also have:
Spare, clean OSes that don't try to do everything and be mediocre
(Compare to the MP3 players that have FM tuners, replaceable batteries, and voice recorders)
Good software on said OSes
(Compare to iTunes to all the other jukeboxes)
Price competition forcing the #2 manufacturer to actually LOSE money to compete
(Compare the fact that because Apple is cutting prices to maintain dominance, Creative is losing money to 'keep up')
So if Apple had captured the OS market, we'd be seeing:
Well designed OSes (like the iPods)
Fast adoption of new technology (The iPod was the first with the 1.8" hd when everyone else was using 3.5" and 2.5" drive, the first to use CF drives when everyone else was using flash, and now the first to use flash when everyone else has adopted CF. The iPod was also first to use a fast serial connection.)
Computers people LOVE to use (like the iPods)
Wait... all those things are true NOW in Apple computers.
So the only difference is, with 80% dominance, is that 80% of the populace would be:
Happy
Using a well designed OS
Using new technology
Instead of only 5% of the population.
GPL Deconstructed
So you got it for free?
Gah, that was supposed to be a 40, not 4. It was 10 bucks less than the 4GB iPod, though. :)
TLoM: Nerds + DDR + Rednecks for the win!
It's funny when you try to offer people an alternative and they rail you about how "it's not exactly the same". Yea no shit, that's why it's an ALTERNATIVE.
I have not posted in eons. But parent comment takes the cake and I had to respond. Funny how trollish comments get rated as Insightful. The statement is a complete slander. The only complaint raised is "commodity hardware".
Do you have any other points on which you can compare Apple and Microsoft.
Do you think if Apple was a monopoly, Steve Jobs would have given up his reality distortion and would be a corporate suit? Forget the products, have you seen the passion with which the man introduces the products. If Apple was 80%, and Microsoft 20%, would anyone have come to watch Bill Gates introduce Windows Vista? The point being...despite market share Steve would have had passion for usability, and bill for unethical practices.
Do you think if Apple was a monopoly, the prices would be 10,000 per machine? Would not have Linux have much better opportunity in such times? After all, Linux is trying to fight a $300 operating system and could be winning with some more effort. With a $5000 operating system, and another $5000 for hardware, Linux would make sure Apple could not remain a monopoly.
Do you think if Apple was a monopoly, it would not innovate? With limited R&D funds, Apple is able to develop such cool technology. Give them twice the money, give them their lost 10 years and they would have had an operating system of circa 2010 NOW. Why? Because for all the market leadership Microsoft has, they do not have imagination. They know how to copy, not how to be creative.
I can go on, but I wonder. Why is the parent comment insightful?
Operating systems are natural monopolies. How do you think Microsoft gained hold of so much power? It's because almost everyone develops to the dominant platform, and it's expensive to develop for other platforms.
Now, suppose it was Apple that had somehow gained, say, 85 or 90% marketshare in the 80s, and all the app developers stayed on Apple. You'd have the same situation we have today, where no new O/S can gain a foothold, because they need applications. The difference is that it would be far worse -- Apple would have a monopoly not just on the OS, but on the hardware as well.
Monopolies typically charge whatever they want, because where else are you going to go? Apple would have no incentive to lower prices. The only reason Apple is "only" 20-50% more expensive these days is because of PC downward price pressure. Without that, Apple would be far, far more expensive. Why not? Apple isn't exactly known for cut-rate pricing. If Steve could charge 10K for the "honor" of owning one of his machines, he'd do it in a heartbeat.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
You really never have held a managerial position, or considered this at all.
Just because this is superior is no reason to replace a hugely successful product. Most, heck pretty much all, companies would say "Sure, go ahead, WORK on the next gen one, and we'll look to think about releasing it when the current hot model starts to loose some sales fizz".
Most companies would never do this. Why would you? Why would you invest all the money to tool up and build these things on mass while you've got a product you spent heaps of money on out there recouping its development costs and reaping a tidy profit? Why would you? You wait until you can see you can make more money with the new product.
Now... this is where Apple is being different... they are looking at the iPod Nano and thinking "You know what, this is going to be even bigger than the iPod and the Mini, probably combined. It's just too sweet a thing to wait on... let's go for it, let's release it now"
I'm no Mac fanboy by any stretch, don't own any Apple hardware at all, but I can see this as a pretty bold move... and one that will pay handsomly.
Bring out this before the competition has really had a chance to combat the mini... that's pretty darn smart.
Are you daft? The value in the iPod is the simplicity. You have MP3s (or whatever other file format it supports) plus your playlists in iTunes. You plug in an iPod. It instantly works EXACTLY THE SAME WAY.
That's why people love the iPod. It's simple to use. It's tiny. It works exceedingly well with existing software (and that's putting it mildly). When you buy an iPod, you're paying for the interface, the ease of use, and the design. That is worth plenty of "bang for the buck" because most people don't have to fight with it to work with it.
Note that plenty of players out there offer more, but their interfaces suck, the software is a bear to use (Creative, I'm looking at you), or the whole package is just annoying to use. This is a huge reason why the iPod rules all at this point in time.
(Also, it still doesn't have Vorbis or FLAC support.)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
No question about it. As "passionate" as Steve is, he's not known for cut-rate pricing. Apple has always charged a premium. What makes you think it'd be different in an Apple monopolized world?
Would not have Linux have much better opportunity in such times? After all, Linux is trying to fight a $300 operating system and could be winning with some more effort. With a $5000 operating system, and another $5000 for hardware, Linux would make sure Apple could not remain a monopoly.
No question about it, but the timeline here is the 90s. It would be a golden opportunity for someone else, but remember the primary achilles heel of any alternate operating system -- Applications. Developers don't want to spend money to develop for minority machines, and minority machines can't gain traction without applications. But in our $10K/machine alternate reality, that'd be a big incentive to break the monopoly.
Do you think if Apple was a monopoly, it would not innovate?
Do you not remember the absolute pathetic failure that was Copland? Prior to OS/X, Apple had a terrible recent track record of innovation (albeit with a few bright spots). And that was in a time of fighting for survival! If Apple was fat and raking in the money with the same ol' crap, would they innovate?
How much did, say, Quark Xpress innovate and develop once they reached their market dominance? Many people *despise* the arrogance of Quark. That's what happens when you get fat, and I highly doubt Apple would be any different, especially with the natural arrogance of their corporate culture (you can't deny that).
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
remember that little pocket on your jean at your right hand side?
Thanks Steve, it just works(tm)!
DRM, lack of WMA compatiblity, ITMS files can't play on other players, "this here no name plastic player from China is cheaper and plays Ogg and... yadda yadda yadda".
OK, sit down, shut up and pay attention.
The overwhelming majority of people who buy iPods and KEEP buying iPods don't care a fat rat's ass about ANY OF THAT. Not one little bit do they care.
They want something that simply works. They don't care about ITMS DRM. They DO care about the fact that they can get music they want right now for a modest sum. They know they'll get a quality file.
They buy iPods because the interface is simple and it works well.
They buy iPods because they are small, sturdy and hold an amzing amount of music.
The overwhelming majority of the buying public is who Apple is targetting the iPod line to.
Not you smelly Linux hippies with your handmade machines and having to config it. And then you have to write some shell scripts. Update your RPMs. You have to partition your drives. And patch your kernel. Compile your binaries. Check your version dependencies. Probably do that once or twice.
Just to install an MP3 player.(and after all that, you STILL don't have more friends!)
You are not the consumer Apple cares about.
You have never been the consumer Apple cares abou.
You will never be the consumer Apple cares about.
Get over yourself and welcome your new, Jonathan Ive designed overlords!
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
Or maybe they just know that the iPod has become a cultural icon, lead by Apple fanboys, followed by people who just love the newest and latest thing. And to capitalize on the market, they can release a 'newer', 'better' iPod every few months?
Granted the iPod Nano is really the only iPod that has ever peaked my interest. I may end up getting it, but I'd like to avoid using iTunes.
You should be asking what's the next little thing.
I have more than 4,000 songs on my iPod. Maybe 40 of them were bought from the iTunes Music Store. What is so difficult about dragging any MP3 file to the iTunes icon? Or inserting a CD and clicking the "import" button? I'd venture to guess that only a very small percentage of the songs on iPods were purchased from Apple.
So it's not really realistic to ask "what if" when the scenerio was pretty impossible anyway
Wait a minute, lets recap:
1. You speculate about an alternate reality
2. Others speculate about other alternate realities
3. You say the whole idea of speculation was silly to begin with.
Well, you came round and summed up my point by ridiculing the very thing you had just done. Care to speculate on what else I might have said in an alternate reality?
BTW, you misspelled scenario.
Yeah, and quite frankly I can't figure that attitude out.
:)
Up here in Canuckistan, virtually every other mp3 player, for the same capacity, costs as much OR MORE than an ipod.
Back in 2003 I got a 40gb RCA Lyra for around $450CDN. The same ipod at the time was nearly $700. So yeah, huge price difference. But these days? My next player is going to be an ipod, mostly because they're CHEAPER than nearly every other player. Add in the positive feedback I hear from owners, and I'm sold.
No, it won't play 85 file formats that I don't even own. No, it doesn't have an FM radio - I bought an mp3 player specifically so that I WOULDN'T have to listen to the radio. No, it doesn't have a microphone (? what the hell is this complaint about anyway ?).
Apple makes em high capacity, cheap, and solid state. Pick any 2. Just not high capacity and solid state, yet
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
No, it just means I'm mentally flexible enough to consider many alternate scenarios, even if they may be unlikely in a global sense. :)
The point still stands that it would have been horrific for the industry and the world if Apple had won and gotten themselves a monopoly-level marketshare.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I ran, the day it came out on the Apple store, to Future Shop to return the Shuffle that I still had 15 days of money-back guarantee for, and gave it back. I was hollering and yelling, and generally making the clerks very uncomfortable with my excessive ranting. They gave me the money back, and as I was about to walk away, they ask,
:-)
Clerk: "Sir, we need to know what the defect was. Uh... What was the actual symptom?"
Me: "... The defect? It shuffles music and has no screen. Later."
I proceeded to order it on-line and it just arrived today with my custom etching that says, "zomg?"
Life is good again.
Nobody's gay for Mole-Man.
Just bought the 4gig NANO, plugged it into my pc and it froze. The apple kids might be out there chuckling about how that's what I get for plugging a nice little nano into a big bad PC. At least it's not bluescreening I hear one of them saying. The screen is actually frozen on the time and date screen by the way. I'm a pc user who was strongly considering making the switch and paying a little more for a more stable platform. And by strongly considering I mean I was fooling around with the apple store website every day, pricing the system I might get, adding a bit of memory here, adding some disk space there until I had exceeded my intital budget by a fun weekend in Vegas. I may speak for myself but I don't believe that any other former potential customers would be too pleased with their first, and last, apple product crashing on them. How do I hit CTRL + ALT + DEL on a Nano? Or do I just chuck it into that slick industrial swedish trash can that's also more style than substance?
I posted elsewhere in here that it was a typo, I meant a 40GB iPod.
TLoM: Nerds + DDR + Rednecks for the win!
Magic Wands. Vice Grips were an Italian speed wrench, and Beer was breakfast.
photosMy Photostream
Ive said "consciously find these details". That's fairly precise. He's hoping you will unconsciously or subconsciously find these details appealing.
The idea is that these details somehow convinced you to buy an iPod; it is irrelevant if you are skilled enough to notice these details consciously, and actually not all that conducive to using the product.
It's as if, in a well prepared dish, you were able to consciously pick out the individual flavors of each ingredient, when the idea is that each ingredient has been carefully blended and combined to form a whole.
Or if you want a more visual example, as if you could perceive each individual color in a fine painting; if you are looking at individual shades and pigments, then you aren't looking at the picture itself.
The iPod has lots of tiny little details that, in of themselves, should not be noticed except in the context of the whole device; like how the music stops if the headphones are unplugged, how the design of the case is carefully rounded so nothing gets snagged or caught in your pocket, how the scrollwheel is textured so you can feel for it in your pocket without sight.
That said, there are STILL little details they can do to improve the device; enhance the texture of the scroll wheel so you can easily tell left/right and up down. Perhaps this is possible by etching the icons for menu, left, right, and play/pause. Or they can engrave those icons, slightly, on the case itself so you can feel them without touching the scroll wheel.
GPL Deconstructed
When I skimmed your post I thought you were complaning about buying a U2 iPod.
Then I realized, of course you weren't, because no one has ever bought a U2 iPod.
Funny thing is Apple killed its best seller, the iPod mini, but still proudly offers the inexplicable U2 iPod. Which, again, I can't imagine has sold a single unit, as U2 is a band older than most iPod buyers. A fine band, mind you, but the last time I bought a U2 record it was on vinyl. And yes, they're still in the spotlight, but so's Aerosmith. They play U2 on the classic rock station for God's sake.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, Steve Jobs is a Bono fanboy.
Just a thought.
You could call it your iWoody
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
I have the Windows version with the scroll wheel and I assume the wear and tear on a scroll wheel could cause premature breakage so Apple replaced it in subsequent versions. I bought my unit refurbished (with what appeared to be a brand new case) from Apple and would buy and second and third if I could. My scroll wheel has worked fine for the last two years, so I guess I've had good luck.
I completely agree that the physical feedback from the scroll wheel feels natural. I prefer it to the click wheel in that your touches aren't always interpreted correctly.
Well the rest of the world was jogging an exercising even with regular iPods - never mind the Mini. Do you know how much force those microdrives can take and keep going? Quite a lot.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
how is the nano 10^-9 of anything?
This has to be a troll or the poster has been trollishly hiding under a rock. The spot market price for 4GB of flash is $144. Apple has negotiated with Samsung for pricing that some estimate is 60% of this in exchange for purchasing 40% of Samsungs flash production. So I look forward to Creative trying to compete with this, maybe samsung, but somehow I doubt it. And as another poster has already responded, there was a post on ArsTech yesterday about the nano being almost indestructable under normal use.
No need for you to have any DRM media rather since of course you can just use MP3's with the thing, or plain AAC files...
I'm afraid it's only your Wazoo that seems to have anything stuck up it. The rest of us are free to do as we like.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Personally I'm waiting for the iPod Yacto.^ Details are a bit sketchy at this time but some expected features include:
* Incredibly small design! Only 1 cm x 1 cm!
* Connect the iPod Yacto directly into your brain for optimal performance!
* Store music directly in your brain!
* Features new DRM technology to further limit what you can do with your purchased music!
* New patented One-Blink (tm) interface (no one needs more than one blink!)
* Battery life now 3 times as long, bringing the total battery life to 9 hours!
* And much, much more!
^ Requires iTunes: Working Edition. Quicktime 8.0 will be installed without your permission.
find . -name "noobs" -print | xargs rm -rf && echo "pwnd."
Did I say iPod's are hard to use? Did I say they are too big? Those aspects aren't in question here. The ratio of storage to cost was my point.
"If Steve could charge 10K for the 'honor' of owning one of his machines, he'd do it in a heartbeat."
Bullshit. Explain the Mac mini, then.
You want arrogance? Arrogance is Microsoft's and Dell's satisfaction that their products are "good enough" for you and me, and expecting users to conform to their awkward designs. On the other hand you have Apple, whose eagerness to make its hardware and software accessible to everyone--i.e. intuitive "for the rest of us"--is the most meaningful sort of humility.
And if this eagerness, nay, devotion leads the Mac to be more expensive than your average "good enough" PC, which I'll allow it very well may, then you're mistaken to characterize it as the result of some obsession with class or status symbolism.
That's if you ask me, which I guess you didn't.
Tell me where I can get this sweet $30 package.
"Apple today updated its Xserve RAID storage system, a 3U high-availability, rack storage system to deliver 7 terabytes (TB) of storage capacity at a price of US$1.86 per GB." There you go, Apple wins again.
Let's race. We both try to get to a specific song in 4gb storage (~800 songs). You get the NEX IIe with its crappy controls. I'll take the iPod Nano.
Ready, set, go.
Absolutely no comparison.
I haven't seen Creative put out anything particularly innovative recently. Their strategy thusfar appears to be: do whatever Apple does. Imitation is the best form of flattery.
People don't pay for iPods just because its white and has a good name. I would personally buy it because it works infinitely better than almost all of the DAP market.
These numbers are completely made up. At these rates, flash memory is cheaper than using hard drives. There is absolutely no way that could be normally possible.
Mine arrived 48 hours ago. I've already got a 40G non-Photo iPod, and I love it, but don't use it that often as it's still a little big to stick in a pocket, and a little vulnerable on a belt clip.
:-(
This little baby, however, is just great. Not just gorgeous, fortunately, but also slim and light enough to pop in a shirt breast pocket and and genuinely forget it's there until I think "I want some music".... and then it's got enough capacity to have a wide choice of moods. If I travel, I'll take the iPod. Day-to-day, I'll carry the Nano.
The photo functionality is kinda nice in the same way that carrying a couple of tiny photos in the wallet is nice, but it's not particularly useful since postage stamp sized images just can't show much visible detail, even on the Nano's rather good screen. But the form factor and music capabilities, IMHO, hit the sweet spot, and the price is highish but not unreasonable, especially for such a desirable device.
Of course, my main fear is that I'll mislay it one day and then realise it's in the pocket of the shirt I've just put in the washing machine. Flash-based memory usually survives such treatment, but I doubt the iPod's controls, screen and interfaces would...
Crap. the more I think about it, the more certain I am that it'll happen. Now I'm getting too scared to carry it!
-- What goes up must come down. Ask any SysAdmin.
The Ipod family is a proof that design matters. Now if I only could convince my boss that we should write our software the same way. It isn't like industrial designers are paid less than software developers, right?
did any one hear that one of the Lord Of The Rings final edits was place onto an Ipod so they could transport it to Peter Jackson. the guy who was carrying it was getting scared because a guy was following him and he thought that if he was mugged for his Ipod then he would have lost the whole final production film and it would have been leaked onto the internet
Interesting, Oh no wait the other thing, Tedious
"get one on ebay for like 10c. Your wrist will love you, ..."
:-/
My wrist already loves me...
Call tech support or visit the store. A lemon is a lemon, whether made by dell or apple...
I think, therefore I am...I think.
Has Time always run arselicking all-but-paid-for advertising for companies? It was only a couple of months ago that they ran an adulatory XBox360 extravaganza which read more or less like a Microsoft press release. Lots of pictures, nod-nod-yes-indeed interviews with developers - no critical views, no interviews with competitors, pretty photos... What happened to journalism?
Ok, I click down twice past hard rock and soft rock, Click, Push in and select Rap, Press down 5 times past DMX,Tupac,Eminem,50 Cent, Click OK on Wu-Tang Clan, Click down a few times past there new albums, Click ok On Enter 36 Chambers, Click Down once, BAM Im listening to Wu-Tang clan ain't nothing to fuck with. This is Complicated? It works with basic directory/sub directory structure. Not clumsy at all.
"Every internal component was redesigned and packed into every millimeter of the space inside."
Wow, this thing is so small that it's only one-dimensional!
because 10k computers would be out gunned by $1-$2k BETTER amigas that rocked in full color and sound unlike the shit PCs of the day. Anyone today can make a D2A converter, even back then it was trivial to make a D2A converter , to embed that to reading ram via DMA and piping it out... trivial. Seriously, not many transistors, just a good design.
AtariST wasnt an option, it was crap tho 'wierd'.
So today, wheres our uber cool 3d interfaces based on OPenGL or DirectX ?
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
They aren't still releasing the U2 iPod. They are releasing it again. The original was a 3G 20GB machine, like mine only less tasteful. They quietly re-vamped it to the newer, colour, 4G design.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
To perform a hard reset on an iPod, I believe you need to hold down the center button and the play/pause button for 5 (maybe 10?) seconds.
uh, no...
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Select Artists. Scroll down to Wu-Tang Clan. Hit play. Or if you prefer, select Albums, scrowl down to On Enter 36 Chambers, hit play.
And I meant clumsy in terms of the physical interface, not software.
I'm going to guess that you organized your music yourself. If not, how do you know where each song is listed since songs can fall under multiple genres? So if you're organizing it yourself, just how long does that take?
*snicker*
''smelly Linux hippies"
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
just saw a 1GB advertised for $49.99 on TigerDirect this morning.
as I said, your mileage may vary.
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Well, if we can't get teleportation, then jetpacks would be cool, especially if we use them to fly up to our zeppelins.
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i found it on TigerDirect - think it's www.tigerdirect.com, originally from a /. header link.
Look under flash cards or MP3 and then select on the left side combinations or something like that.
Today they had a 1GB combo for $49.99.
But since I have one, am holding out till Xmas when I'll get another one for my son.
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I have my music organized myself because I have 60 GB of music, scrolling through all my artists until I Get to WuTang clan would take forever. As for how long it took, maybe 5 minutes with directory opus in power user mode, and now I just deposit each download in its directory. The physicall button is a little up and down toggle, that you push in for select.
I already did: "PC downward price pressure". What, you think Apple came out with the Mac mini just because they're so noble and wonderful? Please. They did it to compete with the $500 PCs.
And if this eagerness, nay, devotion leads the Mac to be more expensive than your average "good enough" PC, which I'll allow it very well may, then you're mistaken to characterize it as the result of some obsession with class or status symbolism.
Apple is not more expensive because of higher quality, it's more expensive because they think they can get away with it. Or do you think shaping plastic in a different way is enormously more expensive? Most of Apple's components are exactly the same as PCs, except sell for more.
I will grant you that Apple often pays more attention to design, but the point is still that Apple historically does charge far more than other manufacturers, and the only reason they don't gouge even more is that they can only charge so much of a premium when everyone knows what computers "really" cost. We have a baseline from the PC market.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Most of Apple's components are exactly the same as PCs, except sell for more.
Respectfully disagree. I've got Macs that I've owned for five, ten years, maybe longer, and they work as well as they ever have. In contrast, it's pretty well-known that when you buy a $300-400 Windows-compatible PC from eMachines or Compaq, you're getting the cheapest possible components with the shortest possible warranty and the highest likelyhood of manufacturing defects.
When you buy a cheap PC, you often get a cheap PC. When you buy a Mac, you're paying for quality control and professional design. (Yeah, in fact, it does cost more to shape a piece of plastic differently if you're the only one doing it and you had to research the best possible way to shape it.)
As long as money exists, there are people who will prefer a cheaper computer to a more expensive one, even if it's less effective. This is why the iPod has "only" 75% marketshare instead of 95%, and why Apple computers could never have gotten the 90%+ marketshare Windows enjoys today.
You equate Apple with Steve Jobs, but during most of Apple's history they have been two very distinct things. Remember that Steve Jobs got kicked out of Apple for being too much like Steve Jobs back in the 80's.
In fact, Apple today is not really the Apple of the 90's anymore. They are NeXT with the Apple name. Apple paid NeXT to take over, and Steve Jobs came with the deal.
Had Apple been the market leader in the 90's, they would never have taken over NeXT, they would have had a generic corporate culture, and they would have been just as bad as MS.
What saved Apple was near-bankrupcy and a tiny market. They'd have never gone for NeXT if that wasn't the case.
I disagree, but funny shit. I'm glad I +5 all troll posts.
Apple, refusing to stand still, has released its trimmest full-featured iPod yet. The iPod Nano plays music, displays photos, is cleverly designed and is VERY small.
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Gotcha
So essentially you're willing to do the work yourself. Your player only has basic functionality, but you can extend that functionality through manpower.
The iPod can do a large number of useful things on its own. For example, iTunes can automatically fill unused space with random songs of high ranking. The iPod can automatically play songs with higher ranking more frequently. While you're listening to a song, you can change its rating. Once its hooked up to the computer again, that rating will automatically be uploaded back to iTunes such that your library will slowly get a better idea of what you like to listen to. iTunes automatically downloads songs into appropriate folders, and the iPod automatically organizes music by id3 tags such that you don't need to worry about putting things into separate folders.
I'm certain you can duplicate all of that functionality manually. I'm also certain that you can change all of your OS settings through a text editor. Now you might be willing to sacrifice functionality for cost, but I'd dare say that the majority of people prefer it the other way.
Also, the iPod's physical interace runs circles around the NEX IIe's button. You need to put in effort to make NEX IIe's button work efficiently. On the iPod, even if you stuck all of the songs in a single list, you'd be able to get to it relatively quickly.
I don't understand why you get so mad, it just boils down to personal preference anyway. You are willing to sacrifice cost for functionality, almost everyone else wants it the other way around. What's the big deal?
but they'll still have to ditch lots of icky green cases
Explain why, when buying new electronics from a reputable ebay seller, I should expect faulty products?
Maybe you should stick with your Ipod and be quiet when you don't have a point to make.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
it would face pressure from its owners to extract monopoly profits.
IF there were a mixed market with three, four or ten big players, none of whom had a market share larger than 40% in any one year, then Apple (but also the competition) would probably be streets ahead in technology terms.
However would that be better socially? The monopoly of Microsoft in the operating system world has brought a standardisation that has allowed a focus on hardware improvement and cost reduction. Consistency between organisations allows for trivially easy file-transfer.
Some smelly Linux hippie sez:
/. all you want. Steve Jobs doesn't care. He doesn't have to. He owns the DMP market in North America and iTunes Music Store pwn3d the "new" Napster from before day 1.
"If Apple does it, it's HIP and NOW and HAPPENING and the general public accepts it wholeheartedly."
Yes, smelly Linux hippie! The general public HAS accepted it wholeheartedly. They demonstrate this by buying iPods and not the cheap plastic crap from China. They demonstrate this by buying additional iPods.
Over 75% of all DMPs sold have the Apple logo laser engraved on the back.
To reiterate:
You are not the consumer Apple cares about.
You have never been the consumer Apple cares about.
You will never be the consumer Apple cares about.
Gripe on
Get over yourself and welcome your new, Jonathan Ive designed overlords!
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
I must have been sleeping when I wrote this. Several mistakes:
1) interace -> interface
2) you'd be able to get to it relatively quickly -> you'd be able to get to a song relatively quickly
3) You are willing to sacrifice cost for functionality -> You are willing to sacrifice functionality for cost
Actually, no.
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It is my understanding that Apple has had serious sourcing/price problems with microdrives, who have only ONE vendor (Hitachi), and rather than pay inflated prices for microdrives they redesigned the iPod mini to a flash player so they could use competing vendors, like Samsung. That's what's REALLY behind this great "design" innovation. I'm told theat they were originally going to do a new iPod mini with a larger color screen.
Found an article on this: http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtm
The nano is nice, but the iPod mini was more durable and had a better price/capacity ratio. But apparently Apple isn't getting good enough margin on them anymore.
(Disclaimer: I have yet to use the nano, but I have seen it in person and I've heard many reports about it's scratch-tastic faceplate.)
...try to give people a little more bang for their buck This is what you posted. You mentioned storage throughout your post. I'm pointing out that 'bang for your buck' means more than just storage to most people, and in fact greater storage with crappy interface is MUCH WORSE.
Why did I buy an iPod nano (2GB)? I will never be listening to over 500 songs, and if I would have time to do that, then I would have my laptop with me. The weight and size are amazing qualities to me, with the inclusion of simple navigation, full featured screen, and a rechargeable, long lasting battery. I bought the arm band for the iPod nano (which admittedly was a little pricier than I would have liked), but it is all I feel. I do not feel that I have a music player on my arm while I run, bike, and work out. It is so tiny that it is amazing. Honestly, I expected it to be bigger.
I used to have a Creative MuVo 256 MB (the best one, I forget the little acronyms at the end). I did like it, mostly because it acted just like a USB key, allowing you to just drag and drop music onto it. However, I sent that off to my brother serving in Iraq and never bought a replacement for myself because I was not so impressed by a few other features. Getting to a song that I wanted to find was not easy (well, not fast--clicking over every song to skip it). The display sucked, and the battery life was weak. Also, the head phones really sucked (I did buy a nice pair of Sony ear bud head phones that I found to be EXTREMELY comfortable).
The iPod nano covered every single issue there, except the ability to simply drag and drop music, but iTunes makes that very simple. I got 8 times the space for $50 more, with much better features in every other department. The MuVo had good sound quality, but not this good. Plus, the click wheel took a few minutes to get used too, but the quality of it and the speed of it make it extremely nice and enjoyable to use (and well worth the short learning curve) from changing a setting, cycling through songs, or the volume.
My friend is already going to buy one just from seeing how much I enjoy it.
I have never owned another iPod and I was adamant about never buying one, until I saw the iPod nano. Why? Excluding the iPod Shuffle, which has no screen and I particularly do not like, the iPod and iPod mini use HDD, which I have an usual fear about breaking while I run and bike, or even while I work out. I do each one at a pace that I believe makes the fear feasiblely legitimate (I'm in good shape). However, I cannot break a Flash drive, not unless I smash it against the ground or a wall, or something that can break anything, and that comfort, combined with the quality of an iPod sold me. Not to mention, I was even happier to find out just how small the iPod nano really is in person.
I do not own another Apple product, and have never owned an iPod before.
Also, your point about Linux picking up in percentage stake hold because of $10,000 machines does not really fit too well because I do not see how a $5,000 computer, maybe as fast as a modern machine (because of a lack of competition) would be better just because it is running on Linux? I would much rather have a less than $1,000 beast of a computer running Linux, than a good computer that costs $5,000.
People did not see MS as a non-innovator prior to it being labeled a monopoly. Plug-n-play? Did not see that anywhere else. Simple networking (just turning on your computer and plugging it into a network) and it finds everything for you? Most things are still playing catch up on that. Not to mention they made the step of making Virtual PC for Mac's. I don't see a Virtual Mac piece of software. C#? A lot of people like to scream Java copy, but that is really only syntactally; there are tons of features in C# that do not, or did not, exist in Java (including a well done form of templates using Generics... Java implementation for backwards compatibility is just horrible). Java was not really anything new, except it was better advertised. WinFS, with all of its delays, seems to be getting done right, which means it is not rushed and it will be innovative.
Long story short, both companies have some great innovations behind them, and ahead of them. I LOVE my iPod nano, but I also enjoy a lot of MS products.
Yes, but the Troll moderation just got meta-modded Unfair.
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...and metamoderated unfair again.
(And I'm even an Apple fanboy. I just realize that there's a difference between "A differing opinion" and a troll)