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How iPods Took Over the World
An anonymous reader writes "The Observer has a piece today about the iPod's ascension to dominance of the mp3 player market. The author argues that it's largely the result of clever business tactics and the iTunes music store." From the article: "The second thing about the iPod: it puts you, not them, in control. Basically, the record labels are devotees of the Henry Ford business model: 'You can have any music you want so long as it's what I want to give you.' But using the cyberspace jukebox, you're no longer at their mercy. You don't have to pay for the four filler tracks on every album. You don't have to buy albums at all. You can put country next to classical, punk next to jazz, Barry Manilow next to Placido Domingo (wait, that's a joke)."
... nobody in their right mind would listen to Placido Domingo.
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
What a concept! Maybe it will catch on and become the business strategy of the new millenium! No, wait, we've already decided to go with something else. It already has a cool TLA and everything.
The iPod is popular because it looks cute and has an eye-catching marketing campaign of silouetted beautiful people dancing.
Nothing more.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Marketing. People rarely buy a player based on the music store, and itunes isn't the first music store in the world to offer single track purchases. Once they opened it up to the windows market and ran enough commercials to make it the stylish thing to have, people bought it. Most people weren't really aware of mp3 players because they never saw commercials for it, apple was the first to do it successfully because they're one of the few that have the capital to execute it properly.
Because, of course, you can only put songs from the iTunes Music Store on an iPod, right? Even though the iPod was released before the iTMS... iTunes defaults to ripping tracks as un-DRMed AACs which you can play anywhere you can play an AAC. Or you can rip to MP3 or WAV or AIFF. And you can import all those into iTunes without any DRM going on them either. If you don't want to buy from the iTunes Music Store, guess what? You don't have to!
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
Hi,
with what software can the iPod be used under Linux? My Windows is more or less unusable and I'm thinking of getting rid of it soon in favour of Linux. My iPod is one of the things holding me back.. I remember some years ago there was an attempt at using it under Linux but somehow didn't follow the development.
Any recommendations of software to manage my library (Most of it in non-DRMed AAC from my classical CDs).
Thanks in advance for any hints
You are talking about the iTunes Music Store, not the iPod. My iPod Music is all MP3s. If I want to, I can just copy them to every other player. I won't, since I happen to like my iPod (and, accordingly, do not have another player).
I do not even care that there's this store, where admittedly you can buy music that's not easily reproducible. The store has nothing to do with the iPod; it was made after I bought my iPod, and hasn't influenced my decision to buy one (I think the US store had already been established at that time, though).
The iPod was already taking over the market before iTMS came along. It certainly helped them ramp up sales over the last few years, but the real reason the iPod became so popular was because of the one thing that Apple is known for getting right most of the time: Interface simplicity.
Remember what most MP3 players looked like before the iPod? I'm not just talking about the general ugliness of some of them, but the way the interface was designed specifically to appeal to people who LOVE high-tech gagetry, and think the Windows file manager is downright spiffy.
No non-geek had any clue at all how to operate them, or even what they were for. They just barely knew that "EM PEE THREE" had something to do with music, because their nephew set them up with Napster back around 1999 so they could steal music online and listen to it at the office.
Then the iPod comes out. It's not an "MP3 Player", it's a music player. It has simple and obvious controls. It's easy to figure out how to get songs into it, and easy to figure out how to play them when they are there.
What iTMS is doing is ensuring that the iPod *keeps* it's lead in the market. It's also creating a new revenue source for Apple. (They started it off as a possible loss-leader to sell iPods, but it's turning a profit these days, and with the addition of video downloads, I'm betting it will become an even bigger revenue generator for them. There's no way in hell I'm going to pay two bucks for a low-res TV show episode, but it appears that some people are happy to do so. Go figure.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
It's the most user-friendly mp3 player with the best interface, and excellent software syncing. Oh to all you non-conformists herescreaming that it was "T3H MARKETING!!!", Apple used to use exactly the same kinds of adverts for the macintosh, that doesn't exactly have a huge market share.
I'm starting to feel like the only person on earth who doesn't like Ipods. I admit they are well designed, they have a great user interface. They're very functional. From my point of view there's just one thing wrong with them. The built-in rechargable power supply. I use my MP3 player in a lot of outdoor activities. I prefer a device that I can either replace the battery or take one or more spares with me. You can't do that with an Ipod. Instead, I have a small Sandisk MP3 player which takes on AAA battery. When travelling I can get replacement batteries anywhere. When hiking or biking I can take a spare rechargable AAA. When camping, I can bring several. The design and UI are nowhere near as nice, but that's trumped (at least for me) by the portability.
[Insert pithy quote here]
I was going to remark that Digg has really, really stupid comments, but then I realized that people like you bring them here, too.
I lost my hearing because I use crappy "iBuds", and listned to my music way too loud!
I love my iPod. Especially because of the sheer volume of sound files it holds, and the way its integration with iTunes* allows me to manage my songs simply. But I've been arranging songs for my personal use (without buying the entire album) for more than 15 years.
*The application, not the store. I don't like using the iTunes store, because the interface is horrible for browsing. I only use it for podcasts and the occasional audiobook.
... Spicegirls?
"You don't have to pay for the four filler tracks on every album."
Wow, I just had a great idea. Record companies could have sold a smaller record with just one song on it and sold it for less money. Wait. Since there are two sides of a record, they could put another song on the other side. They could have called these records something like a SINGLE. They could have had some of the advantages of the iPod years ago.
If I can get all the same news that Digg has and more from Slashdot, then why should I even care about Digg?
Try 10. I had almost completely stopped buying albums two years before Napster came around because I was sick of having to fork over $20+ CDN for a CD that only had 2 or 3 good tracks.
Already, the slashdot posts are rolling in - "People only buy iPods due to marekting" Perhaps the lack of insight evidenced by these comments is why other player manufacturers are unable to compete. The iPod is successful partly due to marketing, but also because it Just Works for the average user. People don't care about Ogg Vorbis. People don't care about DRM if they don't notice it (and if you use an iPod along with iTunes and regular CDs, you realistically don't unless you're trying to give songs to your friends). Couple that with solid industrial design (and industrial design addresses not just looks, but human factors/ergonomics), and you have a winner. For some reason, all other players fail on one count or another. A successful company understands its customer - and Apple recognizes that its customer is not a typical Slashdotter. They instead choose to target the other 99.9% of the market.
The article AND the iPeople have missed it. As mentioned, iPod and ITMS, are simply relaxed control, but control just the same. The truth of the matter is that iPods and ITMS are simply the best alternative (more or less) for the great unwashed masses that just want music they like, when they like, how they like. To most people, a little control is a good thing, and Apple has kept up their closed/controlled business model from the beginning. This works for many people. Most folk don't want to have to install the software to make their microwave work, they just want to push buttons, and likewise, they want their music to be that simple too, as simple as turning on the radio, or as close as they can get to that.
That is why Apple's iPod is so successful, because of all the sheeple, and Apple's willingness to pander to that principle.
16 year olds know how to rip CDs to MP3 players, and it doesn't bother them doing it. They don't mind grabbing a couple of MP3s from online, or a friend... its easy for them, they think of it as normal, so the iBusiness_model will soon also be outdated. The next 'killer apps' will be those that allow this new group of technically savvy people to use their information and media however they feel like using it, without the chains or training wheels of current DRM technology.
*ANY* intelligent business group already knows this.... the rest of them will just keep lawyers busy trying to stop it.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I think what the iPod and ITMS show is not the virtues of putting the customer in control, but the virtues of at least letting the customer share some of the benefits opened up by electronic distribution.
The reason the music companies are seen as greedy is that they want 100% of the benefits to accrue to them. No, it's worse than that: they want to take away things that the customer used to enjoy... the ability to make low-fi cassette copies for friends, for example. The music companies hope they can use DRM lockdowns to deliver less music for more money than they did previously.
Apple does not "put the customer in control." But Apple does not insist on keeping total control to itself.
DRM may be a Faustian bargain, but at least the devil, Apple, promises something valuable, and delivers on what it promises.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
I have both an IPOD, then a PSP, which I bought from a user fed up with both.
t m
I don't even touch the IPOD anymore, the PSP gets all the action... because it has wireless and that big beautiful screen, and a coolness factor. Even though it doesn't have a harddrive, it has the network, which is a bigger harddrive.
Everyone who comes over plays with the PSP. Nobody cares about the IPOD anymore. Even though I have it full of 20gbs worth of music. Playing LocoRoco demo on the PSP is so much more fun...
The main problem with the PSP is SONY, which have a psycho anal retentive grip on the platform. If they would open it up, put an HD in it, upgrade the wifi from b to g or even better, nothing else could touch it. They could even dump the space taken by the UMD and put 6 slots for more Sandisk or Duo mem cards.
IPOD enjoyed a brief window of coolness for a moment, then like all gadgets, was passed by... there's cooler things out there. There was nothing special to me about it, I already had a RioCar. As far as I was concerned, Apple just ripped off the idea from EMPEG, who ripped the idea off from car hobbiests who blazed the trail sticking homebrew boxes in their car to play mp3s.
Apple never innovated anything. They just steal ideas and then mass market them.
http://patft1.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-adv.h
I'm suprised this was marked as a troll. Guess the apple fans don't like insightful opinions. The point about the CDDB database is relevent. It seems that all to often companies don't really understand what the consumer wants. Often times, the quality of community created software is vastly superior to anything a company would come out with due to their marketing restrictions.
but I wish articles would stop making articles about ipods then spending most of the time talking about itunes.
Everybody is just now emulating the iTunes software, but it's a little late. I remember when I first picked up my 32MB Rio, the software was a complete joke. Common sense would tell you that it shouldn't be too difficult to present a list of track to be copied to a USB device. After all the advances in USB, flash drives, hard drives and internet speeds it would appear to be a cinch to simply write software to copy tracks from one place to another. Wrong!
To fill my RIO, I had to create some idiotic "play list" containing a "database" and add tracks one by one. Ok, stupid but not too bad. Now I can see my tracks listed on one screen and my empty playlist on another but there's no way to simply copy from one screen to the other. I have to go to my playlist and locate every track all over again.
Now for the hard part. The dialogue for adding tracks to my database/playlist only shows the name of the song. No artist, no composer, no album name - only the track! I'm a big fan of classical and some of the track names are like "No 2 in a flat" or "allegro". How the f**k am I supposed to know what track I'm looking at?! I had to just start guessing. It literally took hours to fill up my measly 32MB.
When I finally got another player from a different brand (sanyo I think?), I was pissed to find out it included the same stupid software! To add insult to injury, the software started nagging me endlessly to actually PAY for an upgrade. Whoever created this ridiculous software, and you know who you are, please do the world a favor and find another line of work ASAP.
There's something to be said of albums that are meant to be taken as one whole work of art. There aren't any really horrible songs or filler, and each song just kinda flows or leads into the next. Some of my favorite examples:
- Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon
- Nirvana's Nevermind
- Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here
- Soundgarden's Superunknown
- Michael Jackson's Thriller (despite that horrible duet with Paul McCartney)
Whenever I hear a song from one of these albums on the radio, I'm always waiting for the following track to start playing at the end. It's so unsettling to hear them out of context. It's like seeing a drawing of Spider-Man floating on a page with no background, rather than in a comic book with a plot and setting. I'm sure every classic rock fan has encountered that one jackass DJ who plays Led Zeppelin's "Heartbreaker" and not "Livin' Lovin' Maid" afterwards.
I don't think the situation will get better for we who enjoy music's artistic merits. Radio and MTV (or MuchMusic) already can't tolerate any songs longer than about 4 minutes. I feel this "iPod effect" will only cause record labels to enourage their artists to record music that is marketable rather than good (more so than they do already).
I dunno, maybe I'm in the minority, but I've actually NEVER heard anyone say "I bought my iPod so I can finally buy music from iTunes!!"
People buy the iPod because it's attractive, has a large harddrive (one of the first players to use a harddrive, I think), and has a great interface (circular touchpad) for browsing the contents. And, no doubt, because the marketing has been successful in making it the first thing that comes to mind when people think about MP3 players. Frankly, there may be other players on the market that do as good a job or better, but when it comes down to it the iPod is just a good little piece of hardware that does what it does very well. It doesn't take a genius to figure out why it's popular.
Personally I haven't bought one because I want something that can record a line-in signal. And because I have, like, no money at all right now. I might eventually get an iRiver or something that can record CD-quality music.
However, I'm almost sure that iTunes is never the reason why people by the iPod..
Of course, I could be wrong.
Practical.
I'm surprised it was marked as insightful. He didn't share any "insights" that have not been brought up on every single Slashdot discussion of the iPod ever. If anything, it should probably be marked "Redundant."
But yeah, it shouldn't have been marked as a "Troll" either. The population of slashdot has changed to the point that there are a lot of people with mod points who don't actually seem to know what a troll is anymore. C'est La Vie.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
C'mon . . . lots of folks have an iPod and have never purchased a single song from the iTunes store. The reason iPod was so successful was that it was the first portable music player with mainstream appeal which let folks play non-DRM'd music on it. If we would have been forced to re-encode our stuff (a la Sony) people would have never touched it, and Apple knew this. (Sony probably knew that too, but their label / content arm wouldn't stand for DRM-free players) The other part of mainstream appeal is the iTunes software -- highly intuitive for non-geeks, extremely fast, no forced advertising / spyware, etc. It just works the way it's supposed to.
Perhaps it's for the tech-oriented, but I don't like the iTunesDB crap that iPods love so much. I don't want extra software to copy music onto my iPod. Installed Rockbox for iPod, haven't looked at the official firmware since. Spent a few hours re-encoding CDs into Ogg Vorbis, but the quality improvement over MP3s is worth it. At a friends' house and I want to copy songs to/from the iPod? Simple, plug it in, and use the local operating system file management tools to copy songs.
The iPod is a great deal. The iTunes Music Store is a terrible deal. The original poster doesn't seem to get that at all, nor do most of the press.
sulli
RTFJ.
It may have given "you" the perception you're in control, but you're not, you have been betrayed by every corner of the commercial industry. The only unique factor about Apple and the iPod is they've made the betrayal seem warm and fuzzy.
You are confusing the iTunes Music Store with the iPod.
I have purchased 6 iPods and currently use 2 (sold the others). I haven't purchased a single track from the iTunes music store yet my iPods are full of music I have legally purchased.
I am fully in control of that music, as mentioned in the article. The iPod works perfectly with plain 'ole mp3 files.
Apple made the iPod, and set up a business plan wherein people wanted to buy an iPod. They were not trying to sell any specific sort of music. The iTunes store is designed to work well with the iPod, but you really dont need to use iTunes to use an iPod. The only thing Apple wanted to do was get people to use iPods.
Unlike Sony, Apple is not burdened by a publishing arm that wants to sell or promote specific artists. And as the submitter mentioned, they are not trying to sell filler tracks. Apple even took the critical step of making sure that people who want to have an iPod do not need to use a Mac. They are not selling iPods, they are selling a better way to listen to the music that the potential customer already owns.
The business model is like selling transporter devices to people who normally use Cars or Airplanes. People dont want to own Cars or Airplanes, they just want to get to a specific destination. And consumers are usually smart enough to recognize when a better way of doing things show up.
END COMMUNICATION
Really, the whole site should be marked Redundant.
sulli
RTFJ.
A clarification: iTunes will only rip to DRM-free formats. It will play some DRM'd formats (m4p, audible), but it will not create them. This is unlike WMP, which will take an un-DRM'd source format (CDDA) and add DRM to it when you rip it (although I believe this 'feature' can be turned off).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I am thinking about buying an iPod because of the following reasons:
:( ) and the fact that the next generation of iPod might be around the corner, and better.
1) Great interface: I hate my MuVo with its previous-next buttons, it takes me an hour to find the song I want, with the wheel I don't even need to categories the MP3s into folders any more.
2) Ubiquity: Since everyone and their dog has an iPod, people are making stuff run on it. What other portable player runs wikipedia and linux?
3) Video: It plays video, which is great when you want something more than listening to music, so you can maybe watch an episode of a show or a movie.
The battery issues are holding me back (3 hours of battery when playing video
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
No, it just works better than anything else that's easily available. It does not take too much probing to find annoying flaws in IPod and ITunes that are solved in programs like Amarok.
People don't care about Ogg Vorbis. People don't care about DRM if they don't notice it (and if you use an iPod along with iTunes and regular CDs, you realistically don't unless you're trying to give songs to your friends).
Hmmm, what could be more natural than plugging your IPod into someone else's computer? Remember tape swapping? IPod brings a nasty surprise by erasing all of it's contents when you try to SHARE. Getting your music back is a painful operation, not simply a button press. This punishment of sharing, evil on it's own, will also punish people who lose their music due to other failures.
There are many other annoyances which users of ITunes do notice. The most significant is not being able to sort by Artist and Album. Others are less important but almost as annoying as a whole.
For some reason, all other players fail on one count or another.
The main reason other players fail is Microsoft. WMP is a well documented dissaster of DRM and poor quality software. Even when other players include their own interface, they all want in on the Works for Sure, Napster/Purge M$ DRM service d'jour. Absent M$ and DRM crap, these players work well enough, especially if the user only bothers with CDs as you suggested.
Someone just starting out would do well to use free software for their entertainment.
The main obstacle to free software adoption for music is FUD and a false sense of dependence on M$ formats for "work". The free software user is less likely to have pirated crap because no one needs that crap anymore.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It wasn't genius marking, clever business tactics, or the iTunes Music Store. It was simply the fact that Apple released a superior product than all the other crap that was being put at that time. It looked cool, worked well, and wasn't so expensive you would have to mortgage your house for it. That's it...that simple.
It is primarily due to ipod's (and itune's) highly intuitive and easy-to-use interface that made it a real winner. It made it possible for anyone who would otherwise be afraid to touch a new high-tech gizmo, instantly comfortable with ipod. And Apple's marketing of ipod is another factor contributing to ipod's success. The initial buzz that was created with white earbuds was something many marketing teams dream about launching their products.
Of course, being able to buy a track at a time is a great thing and definitely helped ipod gain market-share. But, Apple didn't invent it. It was there before ipod.
Osho
It's also not true that an iPod is required to use the ITMS. iTunes itself will play back music bought from the store.
The iPod wasn't the first HD player, but it was at the time one of the smallest and the only one that didn't take hours to fill thanks to its (at the time, unique) Firewire connection.
You're lying:
http://www.redchairsoftware.com/anapod/
http://www.yamipod.com/.
Nuff said.
Slashdot will occasionally get out a story before anyone else. link
Strangely enough, the Sony Mini-Disc player that came out in 99-2000 is one of the best cheap recording devices with a 1/8" line-in. Since it's dead technology still religously supported by Sony, you can get the player and discs pretty cheap for it.
When I go jogging, I carry around one of these puppies with me. Whenever I need a break, I just stop to change needles, give it a crank and I'm off. A whole block can listen to whatever I'm listening to and it's a great conversational piece as well. And go ahead - mod this flamebait.
My wife was just sitting here complaining to me that she can't figure out how to get her music onto our iPod Shuffle. iTunes is horribly "un-user-friendly". For that reason alone, I'll never buy another iPod again until they make it easier to use. I already have my music organized by FOLDER, so why the hell can't I browse it by folder? I don't want to have to search for my music!!!
Summation 2
One more thing that helped make it popular - accessories; there aren't just a lot of them because the iPod is popular, it's because the iPod has a fairly fixed form factor, a single connector type that allows you access to the thing, feedback from it, and of course the audio itself, and fairly simple-to-follow licensing setups from Apple.
Compare that to just about every other music player out there. With audio you're probably all set - it's going to be either a 3.5mm or a 2.5mm plug - but for everything else, you'll need special connector X. Plus you'll run into all the different form factor and design issues. The other players are just not as interesting for accessory makers beyond the ugly generic stuff.
In turn, users who want a player with accessories A, B and C will quickly notice that for the iPod, they will 'just work', and look good with the iPod as well.
It's likely not to be the main deciding factor to get an iPod, but it's factor that shouldn't be underestimated either.
Yep 14,822 songs on my computer organized by itunes and playable on my ipod, not one of which was purchased from the itunes music store, not one of which has a trace of DRM. Would we all use ogg in an ideal world? Perhaps, but this will do because in practice I can have ALL my music without DRM anyway way I want to "acquire" it, and including in the apple's lossless compression format which sounds EXACTLY the same as a cd. In theory it sucks, in practice not too bad. That's why I've drunk the Apple cool-aid even as a lefty crunchy co-opy kind of guy who supports OSS in theory. Much as I'd like a perfect free software world I dread the thought of configuring ALSA or what ever the latest flaky GNU/OSS OS audio subsystem is at the moment. Hint sound has NEVER worked properly for me installing Ubuntu on two different p.c.s. Linux/BSD is a GREAT server and as a home entertainment OS? Not so much...
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Simplicity, hype, marketing.
There are far better mp3 players out there, but they are harder to use, or their knobs are too small, or they have too many functions, or they are not well advertised...
What you gotta understand, and since we're kinda "geeks" here, I guess you already do, is that iPod is far from the best mp3 player out there, let alone with best value/price ratio (mentioning value/price ratio and Apple in one sentence makes me laugh).
Case in point, my shitty mp3 player:
$880 mp3/wma player with FM radio. It's smaller than iPod shuffle, but has a screen with song selections, doubles as a mass storate USB stick (1GB), it has rubber grip & it doesn't scratch at all, even if I put it in my pocket with my keys. Oh and it uses one AAA battery, so you never have to charge it, since you charge the other batteries while you're out listening to the player (and they are so tiny, you can carry 2-3 as a backup in your pocket for more than 16h total play time).
The brand? Canyon or something. Popularity: none. The manual is written in poorly written English, never seen ads or posters for it.
But iPod sucks compared to this thing.
Better yet, anyone know how to fix this?! Even just on iTunes, not necessarily on the iPod... as a DJ I often record mixes, and the only way I've found to listen to the mix without gaps is to record it as one giant song. That's fine, but if you distribute your mixes on CDs, you want song breaks so people can skip to whatever song they want. I can't figure out a way to do this using MacOS X (I usually record via SoundStudio and then put the mix into iTunes). Anyone know how to remedy this situation?
I think it's amusing that apple takes processors, OSes, audio&video codecs, network protocols and lots of standards (CD, DVD, USB for example) from PCs and then claim the PC aera was over, because the apple aera is here...
if this is the apple aera (haha) then it is still the PC aera, because apples are so much like PCs now... except that they are more expensive, have an extremely closed system and make the user incapacitated... Thats why I'll never buy apple products!
however - the success of iPods (like the current success of apple) is just a matter of "hey, see how cool this looks!" - the first generation of iPods (which was a great success already) was technically pathetic and extremely user-unfriendly (in many ways the newer generations are no better), they just looked cool, thats all they had to offer...
read this:
http://news.zdnet.com/html/z/wb/6035707.html
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
No, the audience of Slashdot users doesn't have to buy music from iTMS. Normal people don't have to, either, but it sure is significantly harder. We can get our music elsewhere, and we can deal with the relative technical challenge of encoding it the way we want. It's harder for them.
Even though people don't have to do something, if it becomes ubiquitous enough, it's almost as if they have to. It's a lot more difficult to go against the grain, especially when they make going with the grain as easy as they do.
Here's a great example: you don't have to eat ultra-processed, low-quality foods manufactured and distributed by gigantic megacorporations. The majority of people do, however. The same goes for anything else so widespread. The thing is, if there's a problem with something, "you don't have to eat it" or "you don't have to use it" isn't a solution. It's actually unfortunate, because people like us (the ones who actually notice the problems and get heated about them) tend to go off in our own directions, mostly ignoring what's wrong... when we could be attempting to fix this stuff.
So what if automobiles pollute the air and have a hand in destroying the ozone layer? You don't have to drive a car!
Apple owes it all to that first gen ipod that 50 cent used in his video. Never underestimate the power of gangster rap! combine sex, power and violence and the ipod and u have a hit!!!!
...that doesn't consider the iPod interface "intuitive" (Nevermind the "nipple"-theory)? About half a year ago, I thought about getting an iPod, since my Trekstor iBeat organix only holds a single Gigabyte (Flash though, which I prefer over HD, which was the reason for getting this nice, big, Ogg-compatible player in the first place). So, I went to a store and began fiddling with the different players on display, including an iPod. I should mention that I'm both a capable tech-head (CS student actually writing software and enjoying poking inside the kernel of his Gentoo installs) and comfortable with end-user electronics (Never found a VCR, Mobile or Microwave I couldn't just handle without RTFM, though I usually do when they're my own devices). So, I tried to get the iPod to play a certain song. Just play it, no shuffle, playlist, repeat or whatever. You know what? It took me more than three minutes to figure out how to get that bat-shit-fucking-loco clickwheel to do that (I had ample opportunity to see the whole collection of music on the machine during that time though). IPods look nice, sure, but the interface is massively non-obvious to me...
In your examples, the heavily processed food and cars are already dominant. It's hard to avoid them because they're so ubiquitous. However, a standard audio CD is the current dominant method for obtaining music - so surely by your examples people wouldn't buy from the iTMS because it's hard to go against the grain?
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
Nah, I don't like Ipods either. They have fewer features than contemporary devices (archos, nomad) had kess storage space and have the whole Itunes DRM dependancy issue that has been discussed to death here already. My real bitch with the thing is more with the community that bought them, with superior devices already on the market, it took a swoosh (Nike styly) and flashy aesthetic (not good UI, btw) to sell the pretty plastic players. That little touch discy on the front of your underfeatured (but overpriced) fisher-price mpeg player is about as unintuitive and nuanced a control set that I have found in a handheld. Sure, those that have taken the time and practice to figure the ways might be able to work it, but, an at-a-glance pick-up user will not be able to effecively navigate a (/laugh) "Full-featured" I-pod without making many accidental playlist or song or volume changes. An unavoidable learning curve with such a mulit-purpose contextual control. After that you'll still have to buy the most recent and expensive version (still with the unintutitive, unlabled, touch-disc UI) to be able to see the 'trickled-out-to-market' tech that was available from other players over 5 years ago (video). I'm bothered that it takes a flashy package and logo to popularize what was an already available technology, and furhter that the company that popularized it would cripple the feature sets and usability of their device in the process and yet still get praise. (p.s. I too will buy music if it is both good and available, but the Itunes store has failed me on my last two music searches, though the tracks were pretty popular at the time that they were released (less than 10 years ago) thank god for Torrents or I would have no music.)
Why is it I can't play my vinyl discs on my washing machine?
I've been ripped off!
hmmm on second thought your comment could be meant cynically... you can't be serious about the price thing...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
whenever I mention that the first iPod generation is technically a bad thing (batteries, low transfer rates) and is user-unfriendly (I don't say iTunes wasn't intuitive, I just say it's not nice of apple to force people into using it) I get score 0 (troll)... why is that? even wikipedia knows this!
m s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod#Common_criticis
so just because you like apple, dear moderator, doesn't mean my anti-apple comments were wrong. you like apple, I don't... a friend of mine likes microsoft, I don't... I like Linux, he doesn't... to me apple is a worse company than microsoft (because of an even more closed business model)
may their products be good or bad, I won't buy them as long as apple works like the church in the medieval times...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
it's largely the result of clever business tactics and the iTunes music store.
In other news, the Earth was discovered to be spherical in shape earlier today, and the sky is a sparkling shade of blue. Here's Bob with the weather.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Yes yes you can drag and drop songs onto any generic MP3 Player using USB Mass Storage. But thats a crude way of doing things. The iTunes software provides a more more elegant way with sets of playlists, party shuffles....etc. Of course you don't need all that stuff but the reason the iPod is so popular is because it goes the extra mile in being useful to people. If you don't get it, then you'll never get it. Much like the folks over at www.anythingbutipod.com
The same arguments could be used on why to use Mac OS X/Windows over Linux. You can do the same things on both types of OS's, but some Linux geeks don't understand the need for a GUI when all they need is the command line. The GUI may be easier to use, but you retain your "freedom" with Linux. Eh freedom is an overused word. I want to be free politically. I don't want to be free commercially if that means I have to put up with crude interfaces. Lock me up, lock me in, show me where the ease of use begins!
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
No, it just works better than anything else that's easily available. It does not take too much probing to find annoying flaws in IPod and ITunes that are solved in programs like Amarok.
Amarok needs a hell of a lot of work. The only thing I managed to get it to do was freeze. When I tried to add the ~1000 songs I have on my computer, it quickly ate up all my memory and then stopped doing much of anything, slowing the rest of the system down to the point that I had to do a hard reboot.
Hmmm, what could be more natural than plugging your IPod into someone else's computer? Remember tape swapping? IPod brings a nasty surprise by erasing all of it's contents when you try to SHARE. Getting your music back is a painful operation, not simply a button press. This punishment of sharing, evil on it's own, will also punish people who lose their music due to other failures.
There are a number of ways around this. You're right, it's annoying for the average user, but not so annoying that it offsets all the benefits of iPod + iTunes.
There are many other annoyances which users of ITunes do notice. The most significant is not being able to sort by Artist and Album. Others are less important but almost as annoying as a whole.
I must be misunderstanding you... it is possible and very easy to sort by Artist or Album. What do you mean?
The main reason other players fail is Microsoft. WMP is a well documented dissaster of DRM and poor quality software. Even when other players include their own interface, they all want in on the Works for Sure, Napster/Purge M$ DRM service d'jour. Absent M$ and DRM crap, these players work well enough, especially if the user only bothers with CDs as you suggested.
Even so, every other player on the market lacks something compared to the iPod, be it style, features, capacity, ease of use, etc. The iPod is quite well rounded. By the way, it's "du jour."
* Rip with Konqueror's audiocd: function. With too lame, ogg is a concern only for those who care about freedom and saving 10-20% of storage space. Correct lables, flac, ogg and mp3 encoding has never been easier. ABCDE provides more robust ripping from the command line if you want that.
* Record analog with Krec, Krecord, Audacity or Gramofile. Use Rockbox for your iPod or iRiver portable device.
* Get your new music off the web. The Internet Archive [archive.org] has more than 30,000 concerts by artists that want you to share. Most players have built in stream sources.
* Play and organize your music with Amarok. It's all the goodness of iTunes with none of the annoyances.
Yeah, or they could use one program to do all of that and not waste time mucking about with the command line, updating dependencies (depending on what distro you're using) and generally jumping through a number of annoying hoops just to perform one simple task. This is one of the main reasons that Linux as a whole has very little share of the desktop market - lack of integration. Everything in Linux relies on something else, and while that's more efficient for servers, it's just a huge pain in the ass for home users.
The main obstacle to free software adoption for music is FUD and a false sense of dependence on M$ formats for "work". The free software user is less likely to have pirated crap because no one needs that crap anymore.
No, the main obstacle is that all of the free software you've listed is about a billion times less convenient than iTunes or even Windows Media Player, especially to anyone without extensive knowledge of computers.
So let's get this straight:
1. You can play the music on five computers
2. And an iPod
3. And make an audio CD
What's left? A lounge band with carpet on the piano?
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
There are many other annoyances which users of ITunes do notice. The most significant is not being able to sort by Artist and Album. Others are less important but almost as annoying as a whole.
You mean like by clicking Artist or Album? Doing so will change what's sorted and if it's sorted in ascending or descending order
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. We have a protractor."
You know, I'm tired of this. One goes to the itunes store and buys a music file with a known quality (they even let you sample it), known limitations, etc. If you don't like those limitations then don't pay them and they won't let you download the file. Do they market their product, yep sure. But complaining that their marketing "tricked you" is just admitting to being stupid. The terms of sale are very clear. Do they give you an unprotected digital copy of the original master? Nope, but neither do they claim to do so. They claim to be an easy way to get a "legal" copy of popular music of a "reasonable" quality with a, fairly lenient, policy of what you can do with it once you've downloaded it. What you and your fellow critics don't seem to like is that they are being successful doing this. That's fine, you can complain all you want. The fact of the matter is, that the business model is working for them. It has the opportunity to change some aspects of the music industry, perhaps evening creating a market for other than just the big names and big labels. Time will see.... But, stop claiming that they are tricking people. You just look like an idiot.
When did that happen?
:)
Perhaps it did and I just didn't notice, but they're not an option for me for 4 reasons in order of importance:
1. No Ogg Vorbis
2. DRM
3. No FM Radio
4. I'm heterosexual
Okay so option 4 may be a little unfair, but there are much better options for playing music than what Jobs is peddling.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
From TFA: >That said, don't go thinking you don't have work to do, Apple. ... It's ridiculously hard to transfer a track downloaded for one iPod to another.
And you're not going to be able to. The RIAA will plant their feet even more strongly against that than they did for variable pricing. Being able to transfer songs from one iPod directly to another is one of the ways piracy could happen.
AC's modded -6. I don't see you, I don't mod you, anything you say is lost. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
Hmmm, what could be more natural than plugging your IPod into someone else's computer?
if someone wants to share a song with me, they can either email it to me, or send me a CD-R. I never touch anyone's computer unless they want me to fix it and even then, I keep it away from my computers, players, etc.the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
and Sony is still improving it. The new discs can hold a 1GB
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I have a PocketPC pda, a mp3 phone and a mp3 player, none of which can synchronize with itunes on my imac !!! I *must* buy a more expensive and with less features ipod if I want to sync my itunes music collection on the go....
:(
Makes me want to switch to linux again
-- Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world; it's the only thing that ever has.
And why does the database still not contain LaVern Baker's 'Saved'?
/ viewAlbum?playlistId=50268895&s=143441&i=50268933
It does!
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa
This is silly. Look, the average user may be dumb, but they're not so dumb they can't figure out how to rip a CD in iTunes. Especially when the alternative is paying a dollar a track from the iTMS, pretty much anyone can figure out how to put their CD in the drive, and press the rip button when it comes up in iTunes.
The people who can't be bothered to figure that out are probably so rich that they don't really care where the music comes from anyway, and aren't bothered by the fact that they'll have to repurchase it if they wanted to switch MP3 player brands.
Regular people rip their CDs. That was the original motto on iTunes, long before the iTMS: "Rip, Mix, Burn."
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I'm not quite sure why this is flamebait. The iPod has surpassed other MP3 players largely because Apple has been able to position it well, turning it into a status symbol.
I don't think it is a status symbol. I see everybody from snooty rich people and yuppies right down to scruffy students and blue collar workers (who are not known for having money to spare) using iPods so it's hardly a status symbol. I think the iPod has become more of a cultural phenominon... of sorts... Its sucess is due to clever marketing, the realization by Apple that music downloads are not a threat they are an opportunity to snatch market share from old and established media giants (i.e. a clever and modern business model) and lastly the iPod is also sucessful due to its simplicity of design, ease of use and lack of confusing features. I find the last part is very interesting and often overlooked. The iPods success is not solely due to ITMS and marketing as is often claimed although they do play a part. Most people I know fill their iPods either with pirated music or more usually by ripping their own legitimately purchased CD collection via iTunes. ITMS isn't even available where I live and yet everybody has an iPod and the fact that people here who don't use ITMS are not purchasign alternative players just goes to prove that ITMS isn't the iPod's only appeal. Another thing is that the iPod has outcompeted music players that are loaded with features and in some cases have more storage capacity and it is not alone in achieving this it has also happened in other markets. Several telecoms have for example had unexpected success selling pretty basic GSM phones that in some cases don't even have a color LCD and they are out-selling models loaded with features and fitted with high res LCD displays and this despite a marginal or even non existent price difference. A good example is Vodafone Simply. Personally I would like a little more from my phone than just GSM telephone functionality, I want e-mail, an organizer and a qwerty keyboard but other than that I could live without a color LCD and the ability to run games and stream TV onto my stamp sized mobile phone monitor.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Uh, try clicking on the "Artist" column heading (or "Album" if you prefer).
You have actually used iTunes, right?
Yaz.
..., One goes to the itunes store and buys a music file with a known quality...,
People don't know about quality, they assume it's good, as in, just like CDs. It's not their fault, noone really tells them differently. Yes, there's a lot of techno-mumbo-babble, but it is beyond the average consumers understanding. The surprise is when they create a CD, and rip, and start hearing funny noises. I'm not saying Apple lies about that, but the landscape for consumers has changed, and they're not being given the full story in easy-to-understand terms.
..., But complaining that their marketing "tricked you" ...,
Please don't do that. Don't put words in my mouth. Neither the word "tricked", nor any conjugation of it appears on my comment (I "searched" it to be sure, you can check up on that). I don't think Apple has tricked anyone. My point was, and still is, Apple is part of a larger consortium that has betrayed the consumers.
Instead of expanding and turning digital music and its related entertainment media into its potential, Apple, and others spent their time and energy tightening the digital screws. Apple has done the best job of making their suite of stuff easy and painless to use, but it's only as long as you behave and stay within the domain they've carefully cordoned off for their market. Betrayal is different than trickery.
..., perhaps evening creating a market for other than just the big names and big labels...,
Perhaps. You have any examples? It's not like there hasn't been sufficient time for evidence of this.
..., But, stop claiming that they are tricking people...,
As I pointed out, I didn't and wasn't. Stop putting words in my mouth.
Hold on...
Just a second...
Any moment now...
..., You just look like an idiot. ...
Ahhh, the obligatory ad hominem to supply the exclamation point to a post well crafted. Well done!
No I have not used iTunes. My information comes from an annoyed user who wanted to collapse the tree. Other users have told me about other problems.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I must be misunderstanding you... it is possible and very easy to sort by Artist or Album. What do you mean?
I think he wants to have the music sorted by artist name and then within each artist block the songs are also sorted alphabetically by album name. While it's true that iTunes can't do this, I can't imagine it's a feature there's tremendous demand for.
Wow - big deal - I do that on my Sony Walkman
loooosers
So, in which case, is it not possible that these nebulous "other problems" are not due to iTunes itself, but due to a fault with the user?
If such is the case, you should state that before you start claiming iTunes faults as facts. So far as you're aware, iTunes could be faultless, and you've just been hearing the complaints of clueless users who don't know the simplest of GUI control basics, or how to use the built-in Help subsystem.
Yaz.
I may have had a couple of drinks, but honestly, I hope you die in a flaming plane crash (the plane landing ON you, while standing on the ground) for using the word "sheeple" to describe iPod users.
It's so TIRED, and trite. Full of misplaced bitterness.
I've had an iPod for 3 years. That was BEFORE the gigantic marketing blitz, or the iTMS store lauched. It's sill working wonderfully well, and if I had to buy another DAP, i'd buy another iPod. Why? Because it works. It works well. Simplicity. Not because of fucking silhouettes dancing on coloured backgrounds on TV.
But no... flame people for buying iPods. For buying GSM phones. For buying PlayStations. For buying import cars. Flame, flame flame...
(F/OSS nerds are "sheeple" too, if you stop and think about it.)
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
That's strange, the version available in Debian Etch has worked well for half a year or so.
I must be misunderstanding you... it is possible and very easy to sort by Artist or Album. What do you mean?
Users I've talked to complain that it's clumsy. For instance, you can't collapse the tree, there's no file system view, etc.
Yeah, or they could use one program to do all of that and not waste time mucking about with the command line, updating dependencies (depending on what distro you're using) and generally jumping through a number of annoying hoops just to perform one simple task.
I named my favorite programs for each task, you don't have to use all of them. Still, all of them come with most distributions, such as the excellent Mepis, which runs from CD and can walk you through a GUI install in 20 minutes or so. The braver could take the hour or two to install Debian proper and get those things they like best. Dependency resolution is only difficult when you use non free or legally suppressed software like DeCSS to watch DVDs.
No, the main obstacle is that all of the free software you've listed is about a billion times less convenient than iTunes or even Windows Media Player, especially to anyone without extensive knowledge of computers.
I'll bet there are more Amarok users than there are WMP users. WMP has that bad a reputation, and that's one of the big reasons Apple has thrived.
Still, you are right the lack of major computer vendor advocacy of free software and massive FUD makes it too much trouble for all but the most motivated of users. That's what makes iTunes the best easy choice. They just don't know what they are missing. We will see what kind of a deal they have actually gotten when the RIAA decides it's time to resell everything again and DRM takes it's bite. If the Purge deal is not a good enough demonstration of their intentions, I'm not sure what is.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Of course, that's assuming some other mechanism isn't in the pipeline to circumvent that.
;-)
Yeah.. Sony is negotiating with Roxio to automatically add a RootKit to all audio CDs burned with Toast
Georg
The iPod's marketing is so clever, they've managed to bamboozle the author of the article evidenced by sentence one, paragraph four:
Then why the fuck are you ranting about the iTunes Music Store?
Of course, that's assuming some other mechanism isn't in the pipeline to circumvent [burning to CD and ripping].
This is a virtual impossibility. They cannot enforce a system where you can't rip a standard CD without extreme effort, such as making a law that even *this* Congress won't pass.
And if it ever *did* happen, you'd still have be able to do it with your existing hardware and software long before it became impossible, which brings us to:
Oh, and the music you're writing to a CD to rip back to mp3s?
it started out inferior in quality... with compression.
Inferior to what? I knew when I bought it what format it was in. It's inferior to CD, superior to tape. If I really need a song in full CD quality, I won't buy a tape, or from iTunes, I'll buy a CD. As of yet, I haven't had a need to.
it will lose quality as it gets passed up the chain and back down -- you will have to make some "quality" decisions about what level mp3 you need to retain even the quality left in the track.
Or rip to lossless if you *really* care about the minimal amount of quality loss you'd get in most cases with AAC or MP3.
Oh yeah, you're going to have to re-enter the track, album, and artist info, that gets lost in the process.
No, it doesn't. When your burn a CD, iTunes remembers the track info for that CD, even if it's a mixed CD.
The burn-rip scenario you bring up is an emergency escape protocol to engage in *only* if for some reason you need to escape from iTunes DRM. Presumably, you're comfortable with the current terms if you've already bought more than a couple of songs, so this really only comes into play if Apple alters the terms of FairPlay in an unacceptable way, or you've decided to go into full-(hippie||libertarian)-mode with Linux or BSD.
In other words, *WORST CASE*, you have to burn and re-rip and decide whether to go lossless or take some most likely imperceptible quality loss, so no matter how much fear-mongering your wish to inject into the discussion, Apple has placed a bottom-limit on the "evil" you can attribute to their DRM. As an iTunes Music Store customer, I fully understand the possibility, but not the probability, what I may have to go through to 'liberate' my music, but as it stands, my music is freely usable enough as it is.
one of the most egregious betrayals by the music industry is the CDDB
Which has *what* to do with Apple? In fact, Apple corrects this so-called "betrayal" by using the CDDB to put your track names into your ripped music since the record labels have only exceptionally rarely put them on their CDs (which Apple does not create or sell, and thus has no responsibility for). Apple has gone even further, and done what the music industry has failed to do with CDs, and put the track information into the music that they actually *do* sell on the iTunes Music Store.
The music industry is pretty bad, and Apple has had to make some compromises in order to play with them (as we all must do when we deal with them, generally via buying CDs or listening to the radio), but Apple has actually done the commendable thing and given us a truly fair deal--a deal that has, built in, an emergency escape option. Do you expect the music industry would have done that on their own? Apple's not perfect, but all-in-all, they're pretty damn good.
I'm holding out hope I can continue to find unadulterated CDs, unencumbered (and high quality) mp3s and players that will play them all interchangeably and headache free.
Unadulterated CDs work just fine with iPods and iTunes. In fact, even adulterated ones (which have nothing whatsoever to do with Apple, iTunes (player or store) or the iPod) work just fine in iTunes on the Mac.
Just copy those to your iPod and feel free to share Music with your friends if you are so inclined. Actually, I found a better piece of Windows freeware (well, maybe better...I have never used vPod), but VersionTracker is being slow for me at the moment, so I can't find it.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
No, I can tell when my physics and engineering graduate student peers are being morons, but thanks for asking. In any case, software for playing music should not require manual reading, it should just work. Amarok does, out of the box.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
or they just have live bands playing at thier house and in their limo all the time.
"As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
It's easy. (The whole experience is easy.) It just works.
(You'd think there'd be some real competition - but there really won't be until someone else can control the entire end-to-end experience. Microsoft is the only company with enough pull to do this--but they won't be able to get the experience as smoothed out as Apple. So the iPod will continue to dominate.)
I don't know how it works on an iPod (never had one), but in iTunes when I sort by artist, it automatically uses the album as the next level of sorting. Below that, though, they appear to be sorted by track on the album rather than alphabetically by title, if that's what you mean. But once you've got them sorted by artist + album, you've narrowed it down enough that it shouldn't be too hard to find the song you want. And unless you have the track list of the album memorized and know exactly where your song sits alphabetically, it's no easier or harder if they're sorted by track vs ABCs.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
I'm suprised this was marked as a troll.
Because his post is that of an anti-DRM troll. DRM is only tangentially relevant to the topic at hand, yet he used it as an excuse to go on an ideological rant.
No one *wants* DRM, but most everyone will accept it under reasonable terms. Apple's terms are more than reasonable. Posting such an unreasonable rant about reasonable DRM is not insightful--at least, yagu's rant isn't. His post is inflammatory, and really qualifies as a troll or flamebait, even though I'm sure he truly believes in what he posted.
Guess the apple fans don't like insightful opinions.
What was insightful about his post? Nothing in it was relevant to the topic of the iPod. Most of it was ideological vitriol. And the only reasonable part, which you point out below, was aimed at a company that did the *exact opposite* of the "CDDB betrayal" he complains about!
How is that not a troll, or at the very least flamebait?
Insightful? Are you mad?
The point about the CDDB database is relevent. It seems that all to often companies don't really understand what the consumer wants. Often times, the quality of community created software is vastly superior to anything a company would come out with due to their marketing restrictions.
Yes, all too often companies *don't* listen to their customers. The whole point of this slashdot story is that Apple does, and created a product that gives the customer what they really and truly want in the iPod.
Really, the whole site should be marked Redundant.
...
I'll second that! Oh, wait
I agree that the Ipod takes control away from you, but for a slightly different reason, and that is the fact that it is completely proprietary. Apple releases no source code, no public APIs, and no documentation whatsoever so that you can tinker with it. When you copy songs to it from Itunes, your filenames are mangled and put into random folders for absolutely no reason at all, other than inconveniencing people who want to use the device in ways big daddy apple doesn't want you to.
check in cvs, it should be fixed now
No, don't reply with facts because his whole argument is now false! :)
Care to know where I am right now? I'm sitting in an office at a major University acting as a consultant to both graduate and undergraduate students who are in the faculties of computer science and software engineering, and I get a steady stream of such dumb questions. And these are from people in programs who should know better (and I'm sorry to have to say this, but I dated a physics grad student for a time, and I have to say that outside the arena of partical physics and math where she was an absolute wizard, she wasn't exactly the brightest bunny in the bunch). Hell, just today I taught a S.Eng student about tab completion in Linux bash shell!
Sorry, but software doesn't read minds. And while I'm a huge proponent of HCI, in the end it is impossible to create a single buttons that says "Do what I want", and expect it to do anything and everything you want to do. At some point, there has to be a certain amount of user education and experimentation. iTunes encourages experimentation by its design, but there are people out there who don't even think to try. It doesn't help for the completely clueless that iTunes can be deciptively simple at times -- I've had more than one actual iTunes user ask me about sorting their Library by artist or album who expected they would have to go through three menus and seven preference panels to set this up, when all you have to do is click on the heading you want to sort by.
I've tried both, and sorry, you're simply wrong. You're making a judgement value on a piece of software you've admittedly never used, based on you having spoke with clueless people who don't even know that you can sort a list by the criteria you want in only a single mouse click. That just doesn't fly around here.
Yaz.
... do they run Linux?
hehe, oh wait... they do (ipodlinux.org)
I think you're confusing "full-featured" with "better".
Sure, the iPod is not as full-featured as some other players, but I think the fact that they're harder to use automatically removes them from the "better" category. Ease of use is a feature, too, even for geeks like us.
Per Square Mile, a blog about density
"There are far better mp3 players out there, but they are harder to use"
Then they aren't better. The vast majority of people could care less that Linux is "better", that Brand X mp.3 player is "better". If it's not easier to use, then it's not worth the time to fuck around with it. Most people actually have something better to do with their time than to mess around with something that's supposed to be technologically superior in order to make it work. Folks who have actual lives with kids and bills and to whom every second of time is precious could care less that some format or OS or machine is "better" than the popular alternative. They only care that it works well enough that it doesn't unduly stress them out at work or take unreasonable amounts of time from them. If it doesn't then it's more than worth it. Slashdot readers live in a different world than the vast majority of people, those who could give a shit that the GPL exists, or that Ogg Vorbis kicks the crap out of mp.3, or that "better" players than iPod are available. They have more important things to worry about. I'm a Mac user and iPod owner, but my family, and the time spent with them, are far more important to me than any computer platform or mp3 player or file format any day.
Maybe you should tell the Amarok developers to use your new motto: "All of the goodness of iTunes with none of the annoyances". They'll have to wait until it works though, of course.
I love "evangelizing" like this. Who cares about facts, right?
As others have noted, I thin you've mistaken the iPod and the iTunes Music Store. The iPod emphatically does not require any kind of DRM on the music files loaded onto its hard drive. As for the music files sold on ITMS sucking away every last right you have to music...
You seem to imply that your right to fair use includes making as many perfect copies as you want. Has that ever been the case? IANAL, but as I understand it, fair use was intended to allow end users a means to convey the meaning and context of a piece and -- in the case of software -- preserve a duplicate copy for archival purposes.
As this applies to music, for ages we've been compiling mix tapes and making outright copies of CDs, tapes, and records to audio tape. The record companies grumbled about this, of course, but didn't do much with it because -- besides being near impossible to track in the person-to-person distribution model of taping, those copies were of obviously inferior quality from the first generation on.
With those old-school uses in mind, how is Apple's DRM radically different from what you could practically do before? Can you...
I fail to see how fair use is on the way out the door based on Apple's current implementation of FairPlay.
Of course, what you fail to note is that the iPod doesn't require you to use iTunes. You are free to rip lossless files from your own CDs and distribute them any way you want. Your iPod will not refuse those files, and it will gladly play them alongside that copy of Sweet Caroline you just couldn't resist buying from ITMS when you first got into iTunes.
*I can save all the AAC files to any backup media that I want and file them away in cold storage; if my hard drive ever dies, I can retrieve the backup, copy them to the new drive, and be back in business.
**Sure, after I make ten copies of the exact same playlist I have to switch a song or two around or delete the list and recreate it, but for all intents and purposes this is still easier than 1987 when I either had to copy the same 17 songs over and over again to get first-generation 'quality' for each mix tape I was making, or settle on making all second-generation copies...
Well I for one am not about to spend $10,000 to fill up my iPod with iTunes, I'm happy to transfer my CD collection of stuff I already own.
Hmmm, something I don't do often, I'm agreeing completely with all of your points.
I "launched" a bit and was probably primed... I'm soooo tired of DRM in almost any form and from any vendor. I don't think Apple is perfect.
And, as many posters pointed out, my rant appeared to mix iTunes and iPod. That was intentional. It is the culture and behavior Apple cultivates -- most iPod owners I know go the route of iTunes, and I find for most the distinction truly is blurred.
I failed to make my case on one point about DRM and mp3 compatibility. You are correct, mp3s play fine on iPods... it is the iTunes (again, based on my experience this is where most iPod owners go for their music) incompatibility the other way that frustrates.
I'll back off Apple, they aren't RIAA, and much of what and how they've done was dictated by RIAA.
Thanks for a well stated and reasoned reply.
Regards.
yagu...
Of course, that's assuming some other mechanism isn't in the pipeline to circumvent that.
Poster 1: "They're probably plotting something! Maybe! You never know!"
Posters 2 through 10: "Wow, how insightful!"
Then one day I went to the doctor and was told something which involved the words "valve", "blockage", and "serious". I joined a gym the next day and resolved to go three days a week. My gym plays Brittney Spears' Greatist Hits all day, every day. I was ready to murder the receptionist and if someone tried to stop me then whoops I'd do it again. I couldn't quit the gym, so I decided to buy an MP3 player to drown out that toxic Toxic. And at this point I already had $60 sunk in my music collection on iTMS. So I just ordered an iPod.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
It's simple: Apple spent more on advertising and included television and non-technical publications in their campaign.
iTMS helped boost sales but the iPod was a hit in the player market for 2.5 years before iTMS was introduced.
Fuck you for calling my friends clueless. You really have no idea and the fact that they are annoyed is all that really matters.
The judgement I'm making is between a piece of free software that works as well and does more than a non free one that costs lots of money and significantly restricts the rights and ability of the end user. iTunes, for what it costs, should be held to a much higher standard of performance.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Last time I checked WMP has the DRM ripping turned off by default (of course, last time I checked was around a year ago).
I bought a Rio back in the day (best price on the market) and it lasted me a few years (and I treat my portible stuff cruely).
I've always wondered why the Rio had such a low market share. Like parent said...Rio makes (made?) a good product...really!
barack to the future?
iTunes is free. You can go and download it now from http://www.apple.com/itunes, without spending a single penny to Apple. iTunes works with MP3s, protected and unprotected AAC audio, AIFF, WAV, Apple Lossless, and Audible Audiobook audio formats (and several video formats as well). Only one of which has the option of having DRM applied to it. Don't like DRM? Neither do I! iTunes doesn't force any DRM upon you -- if you don't want to own Protected AACs, don't buy them. Get your music from the same unprotected sources you're getting them for Amarok.
You continue to make claims that Amarok "does more" that a piece of software you've never used, which you judge purely from hearing about it from people who can't even figure out how to use a single mouse click to sort music.
You, sir, are an idiot. I personally don't care one whit if you prefer Amarok over iTunes -- that's fine with me. But don't pretend to know what you're talking about when you haven't even used one of the two software packages in question.
Shall we tally your current score? You have claimed that:
Well, you got one point, but it too just makes you look like an idiot who is spouting FUD. Care to continue along this vein?
Yaz.
Hmmm, what could be more natural than plugging your IPod into someone else's computer? Remember tape swapping? IPod brings a nasty surprise by erasing all of it's contents when you try to SHARE. Getting your music back is a painful operation, not simply a button press. This punishment of sharing, evil on it's own, will also punish people who lose their music due to other failures.
In a world where musicians want money for their music, how would you have music sharing work?
I don't see that people have any inherent right to make unlimited copies of music and distribute them. To me, *sharing* is something I do with stuff *I* make. I can't share someone else's work - that's not fair to the original source.
It was the first, and still is the only, device that doesn't massively suck aesthetically.
Also, a mainstream digital music player market was not possible until storage got fairly high (multi-gigabyte). It just wasn't worth the hassle before that.
I've owned several different devices, and they were either physically too big or had too small of storage until recently. I had older players but in retrospect, they weren't worth the money.
As for Creative, their players might have more features, more storage, and cost less, but they are still too big (for me, some don't mind the full-size iPod, but I'd never buy anything that big) and more importantly, they have an ugly "Star Trek gadget" look. If you want to compete for the mainstream market, you can't design your device to visually appeal only to a niche tech audience.
Of course marketing is important, but for it to work, you have to have a product that your audience wants to buy. Even if Creative dumped a ton of money into advertising, they would not do any better.
I just bought a new player recently, and I knew all about the latest Creative players, and the latest iRiver players, but the iPod nano was the one that best implemented the features I wanted. Very small, decent storage, and doesn't look like some social reject teenager designed the exterior.
I'm definitely a counter-culture snob, and I dislike being an ipod owner (I even insist on using alternate, black-coated headphones) but they really are making the only decent product in this market right now.
Well, I, for one, welcome our clickable overlords...
Sure they do. A troll is whoever holds an opinion that they find offensive.
Slashdot - where to disagree, is to be a troll
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame
..
Oh, wait
<? include ('signature.inc'); ?>
They should have wrote that the iPod puts Steve Jobs in control. Now he can dictate his own ideas and terms to the music industry and there's not a lot they can do about it. He will also get his say in the TV and movie business as well.
...just like the losers at Microsoft, Creative, and RIAA.
You focus only on price and specs without giving so much as a nod to ergonomic design, intuitive and efficient interface, and yes, style.
I owned three MP3 players before the iPod came out. It instantly solved my biggest complaints about the others - their crappy design and poor ease of use. It also convinced me to finally dump my Windows PC and accept that Apple computers are worth paying a small premium for.
To this day, these other losers have shown they're not even capable of mimicking Apple, let alone surpassing their designs, and THAT'S why they still dominate the market. Apple's brilliant marketing is merely icing on the cake.
In reponse to your comments:
1) Usability of the device as a portable USB drive is a feature, NOT an interface issue.
2) It just so happens that iPods CAN be used as portable USB drives.
3) This has to be the first time I hear anyone claim that any Linux product offers superior interface or ease of use than Windows, let alone Apple, which is synonymous with brilliant design and ease of use. Linux fans can harp about security, open source, and standards compliance all they want, but the platform's notoriously poor ease of use and inconsistent interfaces are legendary, and the principal reason why Linux has barely made a dent in the desktop market.
4) MusicMatch Jukebox is and has always been notorious for its poor reliability and performance. It is one of the chief reasons I hated MP3 players before buying my first iPod. The moment Apple released iTunes for Windows and demonstrated they could write better and more reliable Windows software than any of the seasoned experts in the Windows world, that was all it took to begin the mass exodus to Apple's iPod. iTunes HUMILIATED every Windows based software product of its kind, particularly when it came to its flawless and effortless synchronization with the iPod. No more crashes. No more lost songs. No more sync failures. No more troubleshooting of the hardware/software communications configuration.
5) You, like all the losers in the Microsoft/Creative/iRiver camp, insist on looking for "features" and "specs" that you can match or beat against the iPod. You keep refusing to look at what everyone is clamoring about - the user interface and the overall user experience. Believe it or not, there's such a huge chasm separating the two platforms in this area, that most people will gladly pay twice as much for an iPod with half the storage space and extra features as a competing product from Creative or iRiver. Oh, and before buying my first iPod, I almost bought an iRiver player. That is, until I saw one in person and it felt like some crude toy that might fall apart in a few hours. Five minutes hands on with that iRiver was all it took to write it off as a candidate.
......most iPod owners I know go the route of iTunes.....
Have you asked these ipod owners what percentage of the music on their ipods is from itunes as compared to other sources? Most ipods actually have only a very small percentage of their library purchased from the ITMS. I like having my entire 500+ CD collection in my pocket. There are many music lover, who have bought CDs and even vinyl LP years ago and ripped these into their ipods in the last few years, so they can enjoy their music anywhere. Free legal music from the internet is another good source of music for ipods.
All theory is gray
You seem to be under more than a few misconceptions.
First off, they are spelled/capitalized 'iPod' and 'iTunes'.
The iPod is a FireWire/USB hard drive and the files on it are fully accessible. This has allowed people to trivially write software to fully access and manipulate all of the data on the iPod, including copying songs off of it, and transferring songs to it (for third-party music jukeboxes and Linux compatibility (and Windows compatibility prior to Apple officially supporting Windows with the iPod).
If, for some reason, this is not open enough for you, you can install Linux on it.
As for the filename obfuscation, this is done because the songs are in a database. There are technical advantages to this. Two of which are:
1. Speed
2. To avoid filesystem/filename incompatibilities
Both of these have affected music players that have come before and come after the iPod. The iPod gives you *lots* of control over your music. In fact, much more control than your average person has ever had before. Apple is notoriously good at this sort of thing. In fact, they are far better at it than pretty much anyone else, including you. That's why they've made choices which superficially remove control from the user--a choice you clearly would not have made. These choices have made the iPod superior to your Ipod.
If Apple had been intent on denying you access to the songs on your iPod, they could have done so. That they haven't done so take a lot of the wind out of the sails of your argument.
WMP 11 beta, DRM off by default too.
Gotta love the FUD.
yagu (yayagu@gmail.com) said:
Culture? Did you mean, advertising? I hate to burst your liberal bubble here, but advertising is how companies get their products to be known by consumers. Not all humans have telepathic powers to magically determine what products exist.
I'd love to see you try to make an MP3 player with the same features, capacity, and ease-of-use of the iPod, at a competitive price, and without massive amounts of advertising and business deals with recording companies.
Feel free to join the REAL WORLD, yagu.
Oh for crying out loud. Can we please quit belaboring this one. It is easier to use an iPod than any other mp3 player. iPods work better than any other mp3 player. iPods are cool. All other players are "not an iPod." Steve Jobs gets it. Always has. SJ will reassume his rightful place as "king of geekdom" soon.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.
Let's see. Perhaps due to a bunch of people who can't control their urge to immortalize or trendify (yes, I made that one up all by myself) certain technology devices. Especially when there is so much hype over the reasoning behind it - ESPECIALLY when it has to do with music.
Let's face it - there is nothing really all that special about a device you can listen to music on. People are just pawns. Welcome to the world.
I know it makes you feel smart to use latin words, but not every insult is an ad hominem logical fallacy. His arguements weren't based on the idea that you looked like an idiot. That was merely a tangental, albeit true, observation.
I named my favorite programs for each task, you don't have to use all of them. Still, all of them come with most distributions, such as the excellent Mepis [mepis.org], which runs from CD and can walk you through a GUI install in 20 minutes or so. The braver could take the hour or two to install Debian proper and get those things they like best. Dependency resolution is only difficult when you use non free or legally suppressed software like DeCSS to watch DVDs. Those tools are fairly common, but it doesn't mean that organizing your music won't take a lot of work. Take Fedora, for example - none of the bundled software can play MP3s, and as a result any music software (ie Amarok) which relies on bundled libraries won't be able to play MP3s without bothersome updates. Not to mention package conflicts... those are a huge headache. Obviously it depends on the distribution, but often it's going to be more trouble than it's worth to the user. Anyway, even if you don't have to install those tools, you've still got to use several seperate apps to do something that really should be one single task. One app to rip, one app to organize/play, one app to burn... it's annoying. iTunes can do all of those things by itself, and I think the vast majority of computer users, tech saavy or not, will put up with iTunes' shortcomings in exchange for the convenience it offers over the methods you've listed. I agree with you that the lack of endorsement by any major hardware vendors is a big problem. But it's not the only one...
PROTIP: perpetuating idiotic marketspeak doesn't make you appear smart.
Anyway, let's look at what seems to be your main point: Apple knows better than me how I want to organize my music, and they could have done worse, so let's just get on our knees at the altar of Jobs. Um, sorry, but you're basically proving my case for me.
File naming and organizing is not something that needs to be delegated to some program that is less powerful than the file browser and file utilities I already have. This is a problem that's been solved for years. You either know this already and don't want to admit it, or simply have your head up your ass.
Sure, you might claim that Itunes makes things easier for people, but when it comes down to it and something goes wrong, being coddled by a nanny program works against you. People will have no idea what happened. If, however, they had learned some basic computer skills, they would be able to troubleshoot and figure out the problem.
Of course, the obvious rebuttal to this is "well, since we can make it easy, we should". This is not valid. The easy solution to a problem is not always a good one. If I spill a drink on the floor, an "easy" solution would be to pay someone to demolish my house and rebuild it. Is this a good solution?
Then we get to the "Apple could have done worse" aspect. This is pure bullshit. It's like saying Al Capone was a great guy because he could have done worse.
PROTIP: perpetuating idiotic marketspeak doesn't make you appear smart.
No, but not calling products by their actual names does tend to make you appear ignorant. Deliberately getting the names wrong (as you are doing) is irrational.
Anyway, let's look at what seems to be your main point: Apple knows better than me how I want to organize my music
No, Apple knows better than you how to organize the files on the iPod. You are free to organize your music however you want.
You have absolutely no understanding of good product design. Your average person doesn't want to deal with the actual song files. Why should they? Their computer is really good at organizing such things. By "your average person", I don't mean (as you probably narrated in your mind), "your average idiot". Even your highly above average person doesn't want to, nor should they have to, organize the actual song files. The song files are not what they are concerned with, the music is. With iTunes and the iPod, Apple has put the music and the listening experience to the forefront, and attempted to keep the behind-the-scenes details from getting in the way.
I wonder if you know why, exactly, you want to control the song files? Do you really care? What's more important to you, a superb listening experience, or absolute control over the filesystem? Is it rational to keep absolute control over the files when it detracts from the listening experience? These questions are for you to answer to yourself, you don't need to respond to them.
If I spill a drink on the floor, an "easy" solution would be to pay someone to demolish my house and rebuild it.
That's retarded. having your house demolished and rebuilt is not easier than cleaning up a spill.
Then we get to the "Apple could have done worse" aspect. This is pure bullshit.
What the hell are you talking about? I never said, "Apple could have done worse". I said that if Apple were intent on stopping you from accessing the files on your iPod, they could have done so directly.
The beauty of apps like iTunes and iPhoto is that they put the media (songs and photos) into the forefront, and hide all the impertinent details, but unlike you might expect from proprietary companies, they don't lock you out of your files. If ever you want to get your songs out of iTunes, or your photos out of iPhoto, you can do so very easily.
I was a bit leery at first when entrusting my data to iTunes and iPhoto. I used to meticulously organize my files, with a standard directory structure and file naming scheme. When I was satisfied that I could get my data back out of those apps, I gave them a try, and now I'd have it no other way. I'm not longer concerned about the actual data files, except to be certain that I can access them directly if I need to. That you are trying to spin this as a bad thing is absurd.
welcome our new, intuitive, portable music playing overlords.
Where were you, folks? Come on, this one cries out for the joke...
My comments are my own, and do not represent the views of my employer, my spouse, my children, or my cats.
(Before you point out WMA's DRM, I don't like that, either).
http://www.sturm.net.nz/website.php?Section=iPod+P rograms&Page=SharePod
Other than the silly 'you can't replace the battery' issue (really, Apple, let's get with the 21st century here) and the lack of wifi, iPods are wonderful little devices that sync effortlessly and quickly and have an excellent software and hardware interface (the click wheel is clearly one of the best interfaces out there). You have choices ranging from the tiny little Shuffle through the 60 gb video iPod. Battery life has improved significantly from the first-generation units (14 hours for a nano, 20 hours for the 60 gb iPod). There are also hundreds of add-on products designed for them, including some very decent dockable sound systems and FM modulators, which just add to the appeal. Finally, the sheer 'coolness' of the simple physical design remains untouched.
Add to this the slick marketing and the ease of use of the iTunes store, and you have quite the phenomenon. Let's not blame Apple for DRM, btw. The push for DRM is a much more universal problem, and has more to do with the RIAA grasping at straws to prevent us from doing what we did 25 years ago without anyone imposing on us (taping our vinyl albums for use in our tape players) because they don't know how to deal with today's technology.
I look forward to seeing the next generation or two of iPods. Perhaps they'll gain the ability to function as FM receivers and directly record. Maybe we'll get the ability to pop in memory chips. Replaceable batteries, wifi (the iPod as the media center for your entire home... wow!). Whatever they come up with, I'm going to bet that Apple continues to redefine 'cool'.
Whose world did it take over ?
I have yet to see one in actual usage, despite the barrage of advertisements and /. hype.
Troll me if you like, but this is rubbish, designed for people who've owned a pc for less than 3 years, and have no idea of recent history.
...if you don't share it between your PC and Mac.
A handful of phrases from the article give this away:
"...Rolling Stones [...] have a new album out.."
"... today's bands are crap."
"... plug iPod into a couple of speakers."
"... four filler tracks on every album"
All the article really points out is that Apple (in the form of iPods and particularly iTMS) are particularly adept at selling music to those people who don't like music very much. This is a standard way of doing business, the best way to make money is by tapping into the huge market of people who don't really give a shit for your product. We have films for people who hate films, food for those who don't enjoy eating, and books aimed at the wilfully illiterate.
There is nothing wrong with this in itself; we all have our little areas of snobbery. The point at which it really begins to grate is when a journalist - who clearly has little interest in either music or technology - is given a voice to discuss his views on the current state of the intersection of those topics. Why should anyone care? He clearly doesn't - he has owned an iPod for nearly five months and has no insight into why the interface is popular or what its shortcomings are. Furthermore he completely misses the point that iTMS is as hamstrung by the slow moving record companies as his local HMV. That's why he can't get his LaVern Baker track.
The majority of consumers buy iPods because they're cool and everyone else has one.
There are three huge annoyances with my iPod Nano.
I have music on my desktop at Home, I have music on my laptop, I have music on my computer at work, and the iPod can only be synced to one of these computers at a time. Whenever I plug the iPod into one of the other two devices to charge it, iTunes pops up and cheerfully offers to delete all my music for me.
Despite being handled with kid gloves, my Nano is scratched all to hell (there were no cases available when the thing was released, and for a few weeks afterwards).
The Piss poor battery life on the thing means I need to charge it every two days, which is way too goddamn often.
Twitter, you're losing it man. You lost the argument, because you didn't have the facts to back up your ideology. If you can't be a gentleman and admit defeat, then don't compound your problem by lashing out. If you stop digging your own hole you'll stop sinking.
It's obvious that you feel very deeply about Free and Open software. But you're actually hurting your cause more than you are helping it. Think about it. You're damaging the cause of F/OSS, because you're coming off as a real jerk. A big jerk who doesn't know what the hell he is talking about.
Next time, try arguing with the facts, not your feelings. What works for Stephen Colbert doesn't work for you.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Step back, dude. You don't want to get any twitter on your shoes.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
All Your IPod Are Belong To Us!
No doubt that celebrity endorsements, cross platform compatiblity and advertising played a role but the main thrust of success was the add-on market.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Browse by artist.
Sort by album name.
Bow to my greatness as one views the list you are describing.
Skot Nelson music is my saviour / i was maimed by rock and roll
> Being able to download tracks you want and keep for as long as you want for under a buck seems like a good deal to me.
.com businesses are almost as short as the hardware replacement cycle. Ok, Apple has been 'dying' longer than Slashdot, Netcraft or the 'BSD is dying' troll have been around, but the cold reality is they aren't likely to still be in business in another twenty years. (Or at least in their present form, once His Steveness moves on or retires M&A activity is in their future.)
You obviously don't think long term. I do. I have old LPs, I have twenty year old CDs and all of it is still accessable and I expect it to still be accessable in some form after I am dead and gone. I have serious doubts whether anything from iTMS will survive anywhere like that long.
But most of all I object to iTMS and the other online music stores for more basic reasons. I object to paying high prices for low quality. If I am going to buy music I expect CD quality (after all, the CD is based on thirty year old tech) as a minimum standard, no online store (excepting allofmp3.com of course) offers a lossless format. All online music unnaturally ties the music and the player/PC such that replacing the player depends on the original store still being in business and not having changed the terms of the original deal. This in an industry where the longevity of
As for the iPod itself, I'm as unmoved as I am with all of Apple's products. Yes they are pretty, exhibit fairly good design, are reasonably easy to use and solidly midrange in features. Balanced by being overpriced and having a cult instead of normal customers.
Every time I have been tempted to purchase an Apple branded product the factor that changes my mind is not wanting to be associated with the the Cult of Mac. When most people see an Apple they tend to assume the owner is one or more of a) yuppie scum, b) smelly hippie, c) gay and almost certainly d) an Apple zealot.
With the iPod now being sold at WalMart, the iPod is going mainstream and starting to lose that taint. Which is why I'd bet the whole fad is about to end, you can't be an elitist snob about a product WalMart is selling and elitism seems to be a large part of what Apple is selling. It would be like BMW starting to sell to the masses, wouldn't matter if they were still the same quality cars, the status symbol value of owning a 'beemer' would be gone.
Democrat delenda est
Tried scanning the comments, but I failed to find that anyone noticed the error. With seven pages of comments, I may have easily missed it, hence, I apologize if that is the case.
This article appeared in the Guardian not the Observer.
It's costless if you happen to already have an expensive OS and an expensive portable music player. It's never been free software, which is why it's annoying the people who use it.
[your friends are stupid] ... You, sir, are an idiot. ... an idiot who is spouting FUD. Care to continue along this vein?
No, I think I've wasted enough time talking to you. My consolation is that you have wasted far more.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
David Pogue said it best in a NYTimes article (free, no reg required for Pogue's articles) about a(nother, ho hum) Samsung MP3 player.
He points out that Apple didn't get just one thing right, they got a bunch of things right AND made them work well together.
== Quote:
The iPod's competitors have wasted years of opportunity by assuming that they can beat the iPod on features and price alone. They're wrong.
In fact, at least six factors make the iPod such a hit:
cool-looking hardware;
a fun-to-use, variable-speed scroll wheel;
an ultrasimple software menu;
effortless song synchronization with Mac or Windows;
seamless, rock-solid integration with an online music store (iTunes);
and a universe of accessories.
Mess up any aspect of the formula, and your iPod killer is doomed to market-share crumbs.
== Endquote.
I'd argue that they also got the ITMS business model right, in addition to the superb integration of the above six.
You'll note there's no mention of marketing anywhere there.
Steve Jobs is by no means an idiot about product design -- myself, I usually can't stand his crap, but I can see why other people might like it -- but this is his real talent at work: the reality warp field. Apple is never percieved as Just Another Company. Closed architectures, hardware lock-in, yet another proprietary fork of the BSD code base, and now "DRM" weirdness... oh shut up you whiners, what are you complaining about?
No one *wants* DRM, but most everyone will accept it under reasonable terms. Apple's terms are more than reasonable.
What's reasonable about the fact that I can't play ITMS purchased songs on my 4 wonderful whole house music-players because of licensing issues? ( http://slimdevices.com/ )
Perhaps it would be acceptable if these tracks were sold at bargain prices, but they're not. I get to pay dearly for lossy compressed copies of the original that I can't play on my iRiver & Squeezebox players.
That is completely unreasonable in my book.
Good thing there are alternatives. Why anyone would want to shop at ITMS is beyond me.
And, yes: People *are* unreasonably modding Apple-critical comments down.
X.
I am a sixty-year old woman, I own a black iPod Video, it is loaded with cartoons for my grandkids and thirty years of rock for me
Compile a mixed set of music (at potentially lesser audio quality) for free distribution to your friends?
I see this a lot. Actually, something to keep in mind is that the mixed set of music will be of exactly the same quality as your version. Its only if your friends want to rip it into their computer that the quality will decrease. Which it would have done anyway. Unless they choose a lossless format which will, even in this case, perfectly preserve the same quality.
So even here, the DRMd files aren't causing any degredation, per se. You do lose the ability for them to have files of the same size as yours that are of identical quality, but I don't believe that that's actually granted anywhere as part of fair use, as your original point also maintained.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Grandparent said, I must be misunderstanding you... it is possible and very easy to sort by Artist or Album. What do you mean?
Parent replied, Users I've talked to complain that it's clumsy. For instance, you can't collapse the tree, there's no file system view, etc.
Hmm. Sort by artist. How would I do that in a standard, non-clumsy way? Let's try clicking on the column heading for "Artist." Yup, sorts fine. Same for Album.
Collapsing the tree? Well, the same functionality exists in a more flexible format (think of it as a multidimensional tree) with the iTunes browser. You have a list of genres, artists, and albums. Select one or more of any of those categories (or "All"). The results are immediately filtered. Or ignore the browser, which is what most people do, and simply use the realtime Search box to get to whatever you were looking for without "browsing" to find it. But hey, both approaches work, and they're both available.
As for the filesystem view -- er, what? If you want to use the filesystem to organize your music you can (although you're stuck with a single-dimensional view), just use the filesystem browser of your choice to do it. iTunes will happily integrate with it to play songs when you "run" them. But I fail to see the need, quite frankly. Still, its in there.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Fuck, I just used my last modpoint further up in the thread. Well said, showing facts instead of FUD. I don't care much about this particular debate, but FACTS should always rule supreme!
Well, based on some co-worker's experiences, you have the option of buying any number of other MP3 players like the iRiver and Squeezebox, and buying your music from any number of other places in DRM format that may or may not play on your particular model of player, and may or may not disappear if you decide that $X/month is too much for you to play given the number of new songs you're liking each month.
The iPod advantage was the seamless experience from buying to listening.
What's reasonable about the fact that I can't play ITMS purchased songs on my 4 wonderful whole house music-players because of licensing issues?
What's unreasonable about that? Those are the terms, and you know them ahead of time. You're not talking about reasonable, you're talking about requirements. iTunes Music Store songs don't meet your requirements, but that's not unreasonable of them.
Perhaps it would be acceptable if these tracks were sold at bargain prices, but they're not. I get to pay dearly for lossy compressed copies of the original that I can't play on my iRiver & Squeezebox players.
You chose to buy iRiver and Squeezebox devices. That was a choice which prevents you from using songs off of the iTMS. Had you done it the other way around, you'd have made a choice which prevents some of your songs from playing on your devices. Either way it's a choice, and either way all parties are being reasonable.
That is completely unreasonable in my book.
I'm sure you mean "unacceptable", not "unreasonable". There are many things I find unacceptable, which I still would admit are reasonable.
Good thing there are alternatives.
I find it unacceptable to buy songs from a WMA source because a) it won't play on my computer of choice and b) it won't play on my portable device of choice. I don't, however, find it unreasonable, just unacceptable.
Why anyone would want to shop at ITMS is beyond me.
Is that true? Can you really not understand why people will buy songs through iTunes? It seems your only complaint about the iTunes music store is the DRM. Perhaps, as I stated already, most people don't find the DRM unreasonable.
If you really can't understand why people buy songs through iTunes, yet the fact is that buying songs through iTunes is as popular as it is, then the lack of understanding lies with *you*, and *you* should try to understand it before you can make any beneficial criticism, for how can your opinion be useful on a topic you don't understand? This is true *even if the action you are criticizing is irrational*.
You have every right to have an uninformed opinion, and in fact, have every right to express it. But please don't think that doing so is a good thing.
And, yes: People *are* unreasonably modding Apple-critical comments down.
And people *are* unreasonably modding Apple-critical comments up. But that's neither here nor there. We are talking about one specific comment, a comment that was off-topic, acerbic, ideologically extreme, and in most cases false, misleading, or even completely backwards.
Most people like Apple, like the iPod and like iTunes. If someone is going to come in an start attacking those three things as an anti-DRM fanatic, they are going to find their message is not received very well. If, on the other hand, they just point out that they don't like DRM on principle (even reasonable DRM--yes, they will have to acknowledge that some DRM *is* reasonable, since many people have found it reasonable), or that they don't buy from iTunes since they can't use it on their player, etc, they will be better received and probably modded up. But it you come frothing at the mouth about a product that just about everyone loves, you're going to be received as a nutter.
The choice is yours.
Wrong, wrong, and wrong. I want file management to be simple and uniform across all the devices I use. This way, I don't have to rely on some bullshit application or wait for someone to reverse-engineer the damn thing just so I can read the data off of it. Sure, claim that they just mangle the filenames. There's a name for this already, it's called vendor lock-in.
It's really cute, though. Your claims about how Apple's just so clever for taking all the thought out of computing for the "average person", so let's just do it their way. Never mind the fact that this is the same argument used by companies like MS and IBM when they try to lock people into their "solutions".
But the bigger idiocy you spout is the fact that I shouldn't be able to do things the way I want to, just because you like Apple's way of doing things. The greatest asset of general-purpose computing hardware is that you can make it do whatever you want it to. Why should I give this up to some corporation? Because dumbass fanboys on slashdot think so? Please.
ROTFL!! What is this, some kind of astroturfing campaign? What, "command line ripping"?? "Amarok" instead of iTunes? ROFLMAO!!! And I suppose you want me to turn in my iPod and Powerbook as well, right?
Bwahahahahahaha!!!!!
OMFG, "all the goodness of iTunes without the annoyances"!!! Bwahahahahahah!!!! OMFG!! Are you serious? You've never even used iTunes, where do you get off telling people "Amarok" is better? What the hell?
Take your astroturfing elsewhere. You're amusing, but some of us want to have a good discussion on Slashdot without the background noise. OK? Thanks.
The person who complained wanted the list to be a collapsible tree. He hated having to scroll through everything and liked how Amarok did things.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
No, it just works better than anything else that's easily available. It does not take too much probing to find annoying flaws in IPod and ITunes that are solved in programs like Amarok.
People don't care about Ogg Vorbis. People don't care about DRM if they don't notice it (and if you use an iPod along with iTunes and regular CDs, you realistically don't unless you're trying to give songs to your friends).
Hmmm, what could be more natural than plugging your IPod into someone else's computer? Remember tape swapping? IPod brings a nasty surprise by erasing all of it's contents when you try to SHARE. Getting your music back is a painful operation, not simply a button press. This punishment of sharing, evil on it's own, will also punish people who lose their music due to other failures.
There are many other annoyances which users of ITunes do notice. The most significant is not being able to sort by Artist and Album in a collapsible tree. Anyone with more than a few dozen albums will have lots of scrolling to do. Others are less important but almost as annoying as a whole.
For some reason, all other players fail on one count or another.
The main reason other players fail is Microsoft. WMP is a well documented dissaster of DRM and poor quality software. Even when other players include their own interface, they all want in on the Works for Sure, Napster/Purge M$ DRM service d'jour. Absent M$ and DRM crap, these players work well enough, especially if the user only bothers with CDs as you suggested.
Someone just starting out would do well to use free software for their entertainment. Rip with Konqueror's audiocd: function. With too lame, ogg is a concern only for those who care about freedom and saving 10-20% of storage space. Correct lables, flac, ogg and mp3 encoding has never been easier. ABCDE provides more robust ripping from the command line if you want that. Record analog with Krec, Krecord, Audacity or Gramofile. Use Rockbox for your iPod or iRiver portable device. Get your new music off the web. The Internet Archive [archive.org] has more than 30,000 concerts by artists that want you to share. Most players have built in stream sources. Play and organize your music with Amarok. It's all the goodness of iTunes with none of the annoyances.
The main obstacle to free software adoption for music is FUD and a false sense of dependence on M$ formats for "work". The free software user is less likely to have pirated crap because no one needs that crap anymore.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
twitter seems to have a problem with the way his iTunes/Apple/iPod/"M$" flame was moderated and he's posted the exact same thing again.