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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)."
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
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.
That's not a reason to dislike iPods. It's just a reason why they are probably not right for you.
The iPod is designed for urbanites. The battery is perfectly adequate for people who don't go more than a few hours away from an outlet most of the time. I have my iPod running in my car (off the car charger) when I drive in to work in the morning, listen to it on headphones in the office, take it jogging with me over lunch, and back in the car in the evening. If I go for a bike ride or a walk that evening, I can take it along then. It's even nice for domestic air travel, and awesome to have with you for a day of downhill skiing.
Even when traveling by hitch-hiking or on a bicycle, you plug in your charger in the restaurant where you eat lunch (every restaurant has a few outlets in the dining area so they can run vacuum cleaners and stuff), and you're good to go until dinner. No problem.
That said, unless you attach an external battery pack, it's unsuitable for camping out in the wilderness.
Then again, when *I* go out into the wilderness, I'm trying to get away from all that shit, and the only piece of electronics I want with me is *maybe* a GPS. Kind of hard to hear the call of the eagle, or the wind rushing through the pines, if it's drowned out by your "slow jams."
Still, it sounds like the iPod is the wrong player for your lifestyle. You do, however, realize that the way you live is rather atypical, right?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
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
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?
> Those people bought iPods.
I'm not so sure that those people even gave other products a passing glance, much less enough to make an informed choice. Their only concern during purchase is the color.
To say that everything out there pales in comparison to the iPod isn't very fair. The iPod has some usability shortcomings just as other players. I've owned the great 5GB Rio Carbon, and got a color iPod solely for the space. And I do miss the ability to bookmark a 5 hour mp3, start to play music in shuffle mode, then switch back to the bookmark, all without taking my Rio out of my pocket.
What's with the iPod only bookmarking "podcasts" and audiobooks, and not any old mp3 file?
What's with the iPod only having one shuffle option, and no option to shuffle based on genre, artist, etc?
So I don't think other players are getting their fair share of attention or respect. Maybe it's too much work to compare the available units to make a truly independant decision.