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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."
1. "DJ Ditty" is a stupid name, and likely to get them sued by P. Ditty. (This is the same guy who threatened legal action against "Puffy" forcing them to change their name to "Puffy Ami Yumi.")
:-P
2. 512MB, FM Radio, 1 inch LCD screen... That sounds awefully familiar... You don't think Dell would just be rebranding and pretending they did all this great and competitive R&D, do you?
Nah. That wouldn't sound like Dell. (Which is to say, that sounds EXACTLY like Dell.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
(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.
The main difference between the ipod and this player is that the ipod plays AAC files (and not WMA) and this dell player plays WMA (and not AAC).
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
And it wouldn't be the first time Dell rebrands a flash player. They used to rebrand the Oracom ORC200 if I'm not mistaken.
Since the linked story doesn't have pictures of the MP3 player in question, here's the official page from Dell. Enjoy.
--
RumorsDaily
If you're going to post an article about a new product, it might be helpful to post a link to the product. I kind of like being able to see pictures of what the article's about...
Funny how the pc-pro with &%#%& advertisement over the text in Firefox, said that the AAC/mp3 format of the ipod is a tie in and this way suggesting that WMA is not a tie in. Very funny.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
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
Both the Napster and Yahoo have unlimited music access for these players. I think Real might also make music available that way. I have used both Napster and Yahoo (with Yahoo now because it's cheaper and I like the attitude of the developers).
You can also find per-song costs to BUY for only $0.79 on Yahoo. Walmart's are $0.88.
The unlimited subscription and cheaper music prices are _not_ available on ITunes. Yahoo/Real/WalMart/ETC are competing with each other to give you a reason to go with them - once you buy an Ipod you are locked into Itunes and Itunes alone.
DJ P Ditty with highly annoying background chatter about making money, groping women, and busting a cap in peoples asses on every song I hear.
Get with the times DELL is '05 not '85.
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
Who ever came with that idiotic name? It should have been named Dell P14YZ0R!
People say "I'll google it up!" when they want to search for something on the net.
They'll say "It's so Dell!" when talking about something so ugly that people can use it to scare kids.
-xype
It'll probably never be in the nano though, that thing's pushing it as it is on size.
They also aren't advertising for it. In a similar article, they disucss Dell's marketing scheme for this product.
"Dell has launched a digital music player dubbed the DJ Ditty in what it calls its first "word-of-mouth" promotional campaign. The vendor announced the player in the US only with a banner on its website, and stated that it is getting the word out through employees and customer focus groups. Dell has also launched a special multimedia site targeting young buyers. The announcement was so low-key that a UK spokeswoman was unaware of the launch. "We don't get US announcements but I wouldn't be surprised if it were available here soon," she said."
This might have been a viable competitor with the iPod Shuffle, but only if people know about it.
"For Great Justice."
There are lots of similar players on the market. Why is this one better/more newsworthy? It does not even look cool.
Freedom of speech doesn't come with bandwidth.
Civilization, the death of dreams.
Ok, you're joking but you have a point. Sytle does tend to win over substance. So why in God's name have Dell placed their name in large type across the device. It is pretty damn ugly to begin with in my opinion but who the fuck would want something so obviously branded Dell? This will prevent it selling well no matter how good the device. It just looks crap! Sony could get away with putting their name so obviously on a device but they have spent years building up a cool image. What kind of an image does Dell have?
All Dell has done with this is prove they don't have a fucking clue!
That's one .mp3 player that everyone I know who has an iPod would never buy. Dell needs to find some designers that know how to make things look good.
As far as i am concerned, the iTunes software is one of the key reasons Apple have done so well. It's easy & effective, whereas I suspect Dell is not. But then I guess we knew that right?
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productde tails.aspx/dj_ditty?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
My spirit takes a journey through my mind...
Dell is trying to establish branding for a personal accessory that has a four-syllable name? Especially "DJ Ditty," which sounds like it's being marketed to kids? I can just imagine how that's going to play out.
What about UI? Will it have a proprietary UI? Will it be as easy to use as iTunes?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I realise I'm feeding a troll here, but you do realise you can still buy music on CDs and rip them with iTunes, don't you?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
For a couple more bucks you can get an iRiver which are much better players.
DJ Ditty changed its name to "Ditty" to avoid confusing its fans. At a recent product launch, some people were chanting "DJ Ditty!" and some people were chanting "Ditty!" and it threw everything off. This way, everybody can just chant "Ditty!" and be on the same page.
iPods can be put into one of two modes: player mode and storage mode.
In storage mode, it becomes an external hard drive. Music files copied to the iPod in storage mode cannot be played when the iPod is put into player mode. Unless, that is, one uploads one of the many third party pieces of software that allows you to do just this.
In player mode, one does have to use something akin to iTunes to transfer files. But that something does not have to be iTunes. There are many third part programs that will suffice. This is how iPods can be used with Linux, which doesn't have iTunes available.
So, out of the box, your friend is correct. But one can easily fix the problem by installing third party tools.
Dell's offering
:P
As you'll notice its a little longer thinner (depth) and not as wide. I doubt the Zen Nano was packing extra space inside just for the heck of it. Dell also has a 5 band equalizer compared to the Zen's 4 band.
So the conspiracy theorists can go back in their holes now
-everphilski-
http://www.dellditty.com/
What happens, I bet, is that Dell realized that Ditty is going to be an utter failure following iPod Nano, and decided to save marketing dollars on it.
Part of the reason the iPod works so well and has such a responsive interface is that it keeps a detailed database of all the MP3s and playlists stored on it. This database has to be updated each time you add songs to the iPod, which means you need to use iTunes or a third-party application to transfer the songs over.
Otherwise, the iPod just acts like a Firewire hard disk - which it is, when it's hooked up to your computer.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
This article analyses and explains why the shuffle sounds the best of all major mp3 players: Shuffles Secret
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
For those whose browsers don't link outside of
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
And what about software on the PC side. Shuffle's iTunes integration will no doubt kick the crap out of anything Dell can bundle together. Also the fact that it can play iTunes downloaded songs. I don't think you have appreciated how important these two things are!
Also what REALLY matters is brand and image. People think Apple and even the Shuffle looks cool. So cool they even were the thing on their arm or around their neck.
Nobody wants that ugly thing from Dell, especially with the Dell logo so visable. Can you imagine anyone with that around their neck. It looks like a lighter. The only people who would have it around their neck will be young boys who like like geeks and nerds (and hence were even aware of the extra features). The 'oh so cool' people will stick with the shuffle and will act free advertizing to everyone else.
Mark my words, this player will rapidly die. After a few news articles like this, nobody will ever talk about it again. I honestly don't think it stands a chance against the Shuffle.
Thats true, all their players have an option to mount as extenal hard drives. It hides your music library, and the remaning space can be used for whatever. You'll be able to view any text notes, address books, and pictures (if you have a color display) directly from the iPod, but anything else isn't playable or viewable. But its nice to be able to carry a few movies and documents with you. As far as filesystems, you can format them in "PC Mode" or "Mac Mode", which I imagine refers to Fat32 and Ext/Reiser/whatever the hell OSX uses, respectivley. I'm aware the later is probably a technicaly superior filesystem, but I don't see a practical advantage, since OSX can read PC Mode and PC's can't read Mac Mode. Anyone out there have a little more insight?
Anyways, they're not trying THAT hard to keep you from manipulating the library, it's really not much more than a hidden folder. But the file and folder names aren't very human-readable, they're hashes (I'm not positive if this is done to discourage manual editing, or is done for efficency to reduce disk seeks or something), and I believe an index is kept as well.
So a drag and drop into the library won't work, and editing by hand would be tedious, but there's a lot of FOSS stuff out there to manipulate it. Of course, none of them are as pleasant to use as iTunes, but if you don't feel like running Windows or OSX or want to copy from an iPod to another machine, you're in luck.
I can't believe you didn't link to the official Dell Ditty site! They show how cool you'll be with your Dell Ditty! And there's a dance instructor in Flash to teach you the latest Hip-Hop moves!
Best Buy can have you arrested
Simplicity!
If I want a player that can do all that stuuf I will get one large enough to hold my whole library! If I am going to carry 1GB around I just want it to play... and be easy to use. Don't give me a screen to look at... don't give me a bunch of option... I don't have a use for an FM player I am listening to MP3s! My phone has a voice recorder.. calculator... calendar... you get the idea.
The Shuffle is sooo perfect because of what it does simply... we just bought twenty for a bunch of little old ladies who will never figure out 99.9% of the mp3 players on the market, but can push the big round button with the play symbol.
Well... enough with the product endorsement, but hopefully you do "get" the idea. The Shuffle especially combined with iTunes "autofill" feature IS the perfect flash memory mp3 player.
I
Well, as usual, I haven't read the article but my first thought was "I wonder what crappy propietary file system this will use" ?
:) but I despair at the ridiculous overengineering of most MP3 players. It's almost worse than under engineering.
I have an "el cheapo" portable MP3 player and the best thing about it is it uses a "bog standard" FAT32 file system. No fancy, unnecessarily complicated databases type structures (hello iPod) and, even better, no retarded over complicated interface software (hello iTunes) which attempt to "manage" your collection and then ends up losing or deleting stuff (hello iTunes which deleted loads of MP3s off my friends hard drive when he borrowed an early iPod from a mate)
To put data on my player you simply plug it into a USB Port (I use it from both Linux and Windows) and shortly thereafter it shows up as a removable drive. You then just copy & paste files across (optionally using as many, or as few, folders as you wish). If the files you put on the device are MP3 or WMA (sadly not Ogg) then they show up in the players menus and it will play them back. If they're not they simply take up room until you move them off to another machine or delete them etc. etc. So not only will it play music I can transport data with it.
In my humble opinion all these other "fancy schmancy" iPod style players (which I am assuming this Dell will emulate) are complete crap. Absolute over engineered bollocks. Why do you need special drivers to talk to a flash based device ? Why do you need crappy management software to talk to a flash device ?
So sorry for the rant (which was probably somewhat off topic
As usual, "Keep It Simple Stupid"....
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
Under "Customize it!"
"Save $50 with mail-in Dell/Yahoo rebate. Price shown before rebate. [Included in Price] "
Well, that's clear as mud. The DJ Ditty is apparently so compact, there's no space left for articles, pronouns and modfiers, not even in the ad copy.
Sure makes you appreciate "Do not eat iPod Shuffle." At least we knew exctly what they meant.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
My friend got this one recently. He hated to admit he got it at walmart, but it's super tiny orange cube with a blue display. It looks awesome and hilarious, and everyone's always asking about it. I'm sure the Dell's nice, but why does everything they make have to be ugly?
I have an Ipod. And I have a Dell DJ30 (for Rhapsody to go). And the Dell sucks in unimaginable ways compared to the Ipod in terms of user interface. It's slow. The controls don't respond instantly. The little scroll wheel is MUCH too sensitive and impossible to use while riding a bike, or driving a car, or walking fast. The feature set is lacking in terms of playlists and shuffle/repeat modes. Ok to give you an example, Say you hit pause to put the player to sleep because you don't feel like holding the tiny power button down for 6 seconds. When you want to power it back on you hold down power for an eternity and it finally comes up. But none of the buttons work for the first 10 seconds after turning it on because it's CPU is being used to initialize everything, but the display is siting there showing the last song you were listening to. Finally after now 20 seconds since you hit power the buttons start working. You hit play and wait, and wait and wait and finally it begins to play the song you were listening to when it went to sleep. You are listening to a track and want to listen to the next or previous song so you hit a track button. It takes 5-10 secons to change a track. This doesn't sound unbearable unless you consider it takes almost 30-45 secons to go forward 6 tracks. This thing is unbelievably slow with regards to changing songs, loading playlists, etc. My ipod on the other hand is instant. It changes tracks as fast as I can press the button. The DJ? To fast forward through a song you have to hold down the track change button. And hold it. And hold it. And 15 seconds later it finally begins to fast forward through the song. Dell screwed up big time by under powering what ever process they use for the operating system. The sound quality and everything is fine, but the interface is so slow and clunky that if it weren't for the wma to go capability I would have sent it back. And I don't see this new ditty player to be any better.
Here's what counts: ...to you
...to you
price
functionality
batteries
Here's what doesn't count:
appearance (unless you wear transparent trousers and are incredibly vain)
size
weight
a funny circle thing [- note, some people call this 'usability']
corporate branding
Have you ever considered that people other than you might have different priorities? The market seems to put quite a premium on size and weight, and it makes quite a difference when exercising.
No joke. It is pure hype that makes people think the Ipod is well designed.
You don't know anything about design. Maybe you've been walking around acting like you do, but you don't. Your friends like you too much to stop you when you start talking out of your ass. They cringe inwardly, but they just smile and nod outwardly. I'm here to relieve you of your delusion. You're welcome.
The click wheel is a terrible interface. What, is there a little piece of string in there that connects the click wheel to the menus? The screen menus go up/down/in. Wheels go around. The metaphors just don't link up at all.
And yet, dispite this, the vast majority of human beings are able to figure it out within a few seconds of picking it up. Just like they can figure out that a steering wheel goes left and right, or that a volume knob controls quiet and loud, they can discover that clockwise is down, counter-clockwise is up, and pushing in means 'in'. How do you explain this? Is it perhaps that people are able to understand new things that don't precisely align with what they knew before? Inflexible adherence to metaphors (precisely what you're suggesting is preferable) is one of the quickest ways to design a shitty interface.
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
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