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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.
Since the linked story doesn't have pictures of the MP3 player in question, here's the official page from Dell. Enjoy.
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RumorsDaily
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
Actually, I believe the iPod Shuffle hardware does have a radio, and a voice recorder, and a display driver. So, the better question is why did Apple choose not to expose them?
The answer was given in an article whose location I don't remember, soon after the Shuffle came out. Apple could not think of a good interface that would fit on a display small enough for the Shuffle, nor could they think of a good interface for the radio and voice recorder. So, unlike most companies (and this is what makes Apple stuff generally better), they left out features rather than make a kitchen-sink player that would do everything, but do nothing well.
The key to good design is often to leave things out.