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Dell Launches Flash Music Player
desert island writes "Dell launched a new flash-memory digital music player, named DJ Ditty, to compete with the iPod Shuffle. Both devices are $99 and come equipped with 512 megabytes of memory. The biggest difference between the devices is the Ditty's 1-inch LCD display screen, which helps users navigate their music lists. In addition, the Ditty can receive FM radio and sport a rechargeable lithium polymer battery that can provide up to 14 hours of continuous play."
(taken w/o permission from Daring Fireball)
Rhymes With Ditty
Wednesday, 21 September 2005
See news item that Dell had released a new flash-memory-based music player to compete against the iPod Shuffle: the Dell DJ Ditty.
Note that no picture of said Ditty accompanies news item.
Visit dell.com.
Note that no picture of said Ditty appears on front page of dell.com, even after several reloads to cycle through random promotional images.
Search for "ditty" in text of front page of dell.com.
Note that "ditty" is not found.
Begin to suspect that even Dell is not very proud of this device.
Visit apple.com.
Note prominent and primary emphasis on luscious product porn of new iPod Nano.
Hop back to dell.com and search for "Ditty" in site-wide search box.
Note vague resemblance to a 50-cent Bic lighter:
Note footnote attached to claim in "Product Highlights" that the Ditty can pack 220 songs into 512 MB of memory, roughly twice the songs Apple claims can fit on a 512 MB iPod Shuffle.
Follow footnote to see explanation that this storage estimate requires encoding songs as 64 kbps WMA, which bit rate is half that of Apple's default of 128 kbps AAC, and roughly equivalent in fidelity to that of transmissions carried over tin cans and string, but which, perhaps, is not a dirty marketing trick, but, rather, a fair assessment, considering that anyone with such profoundly bad taste in industrial design who would consider purchasing this device probably also has such bad taste in music as not to notice that their 64 kbps-compressed songs sound like mush.
Sit back and recall, with tremendously smug satisfaction, a decade's worth of tech industry punditry holding that superior design would never get Apple anywhere, and that Apple should instead, you know, be more like Dell.
hallelujah! a radio!
now i would actually buy one of these things
why the heck the iPod doesn't have a radio is completely beyond my understanding
i would never buy an iPod simply because of that incredible oversight
50 cents of circuitry=massive improvement in usefulness... do a cost-benefit analysis
i simply cannot fathom why any player would not have a radio... what, it's peripheral to the player's purpose? you mean playing music?
and PLEASE, none of the bs about radio being dead... radio is NOT dead
if you get one pop station in the middle of nowhere, that is NOT an argument against the inclusion of radio for those of us who live in major cities and have a lot more channel options
seems like a no-brainer to me, it's so little added cost for such great benefit, and yet getting a radio on a player seems like such a struggle... i don't understand that
are you listening apple? it's a deal breaker for me, and plenty of other people, to not include a radio
good move dell!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's one thing to say that most people don't use the radio, but most people don't use the LCD? Are you mad? Maybe back in the 64MB days, no, but once you get 100+ songs on a device, the LCD becomes more and more useful. Would you rather hit "next" a possible 100 times to find a certain song you want to listen to, or just navigate to it real quick on the LCD? What if you want a couple different playlists? Only want to hear a certain artist?
Going from a CD-based MP3 player with no name display to a Dell DJ was night and day. Even with 20 times the amount of music, I get FAR less frustrated trying to find what I want to listen to. Yay LCD.