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Apple to Face iPod Clone Attack

chr1sb writes "The Age has a commentary piece outlining how Apple's domination of the online media market is continuing to grow, but speculating that significant competition from the likes of Nokia and Motorola will rapidly relegate Apple's presence in the market to a corner, just as clone manufacturing of IBM PCs dominated the initial success of the Macintosh. From the article: 'The iPod/iTunes system will move into a niche with Macintosh computers because Steve Jobs has again stuck with closed architecture and total control. This will happen quickly because mobile phones are being turned over about every year.'."

5 of 394 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Um.....no by Sentry21 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I like having the camera, but it is a pain to get pictures off it (I have a RAZR).

    Just use the 'browse device' feature of your OS's bluetooth support and grab it out of /pictures/ - ten seconds, start to finish, I do it with mine all the time.

  2. Re:Um.....no by matthew.coulson · · Score: 4, Informative

    Fortunately, the Razr can be easily reflashed to enable all the good stuff.

    Not much good for the general public, but this is SlashDot, right?

  3. Ogg Vorbis Plug in for iTunes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    There is a plug in for iTunes that enebles playback and encoding of ogg files

    http://www.illadvised.com/~jordy/

  4. Re:hardware matters little by NMerriam · · Score: 3, Informative

    On the contrary, Apple got this market precisely because it had/has the best UI.

    Argue whatever you like about particular pet features/compatibility, but Apple is #1 because they saw what an UI mess most MP3 players (both software and hardware) were and simplified them both so that normal people were capable of operating them without having to know anything about the underlying technology.

    Very few competitors have even matched the simplicity of operation, and none have surpassed it yet. Until they do, consumers simply aren't going to be interested in jumping ship without massive financial incentive. And I don't see how anyone can undercut the iPod by a significant margin given Apple's huge volume discount on parts and continued willingness to forego profit for market share.

    --
    Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
  5. Re:Ogg Vorbis support by SonicRED · · Score: 3, Informative

    I purchased an iPod Nano last September and I now play Ogg Vorbis files on it every day without issue. I've converted my entire collection from Mp3 to Ogg in fact. Previously I was convinced that deviating from Mp3 would limit my choice of a player in the future but I no longer have that concern.

    The solution is Rockbox.

    MP3, OGG, FLAC, AAC, ALAC, AC3 and WavPack playback.

    You also get gapless playback, crossfading, a real EQ (not just presets) and ReplayGain support. Not to mention the rapidly growing collection of games and plugins and other random features such a real JPG viewer that doesn't require conversion. It also frees you from having to use iTunes or GTKpod or other software to interface with the player. You simply copy the files and folders over directly and navigate whatever file structure you choose on the screen (mine is /Artist/(Year) Album)/).

    The reality of the situation is that you're going to end up using Rockbox on your iAudio anyway. The Cowon firmware is pretty terrible and doesn't have a lot of the features mentioned above. This is the case with my friend who also ordered the U2. I paid $50 more for my Nano but got twice the storage space, a color screen, and a form factor that is ridiculously small in comparison. We both use Rockbox.