SanDisk Baits Apple And Woos Rockbox

An anonymous reader writes "CNET reports that SanDisk is courting open source developers to port Rockbox to its popular MP3 players. SanDisk is currently the world's second most popular MP3 player manufacturer after Apple. Rockbox is an open source OS for most major MP3 players. The article also talks about SanDisk's subversive new anti-iPod advertising campaign which calls iPod owners 'iChimps' and uses a 'street graffiti style' to create the illusion of a 'counter-culture uprising against the iPod'. The writer says, 'SanDisk is the first company to market its player as an ideological rather than technological alternative to the iPod. To do so is to fight Apple on their own terms.'"

Comments

Re:Clever Campaign.

[jrockway]

> 4G, 60GB color iPod. Click on Music. Then click on 'artists' or 'genres' or about seven or eight other things.

So what if I have a big playlist ("My Top Rated 3+"), and I sort that by song name on my computer. Then on my iPod, I want that playlist to play by shuffling albums? Can't do it.

The iPod also ignores iTunes' "shuffle by grouping", so if I have a classical song that's split into three sections, they won't be in order if I'm shuffling the other tracks.

All in all, plenty of room for improvement over Apple. Slashdot is excessively pro-Apple these days -- you (we?) should look at iPod competitors as potential ways to make portable music more enjoyable than it already is. Instead, it seems people look at it like, "OMG there's no way anything could be better. iWant to be cool!". In that case, Sandisk's iSheep epithet is exactly right!

(RANT: Speaking of which, this Sandisk thing doesn't look that cool. The screen, for one thing, looks useless. Unfortunately, I can't view their site, since iDon't have Flash. How hard is making an XHTML page with some PNG pictures? I want to want to buy their product, but they're not letting me! Great way to build up a market...)