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Handicapping the 6th Generation iPod
An anonymous reader writes "It's that time of the year again, when Apple rumors bloom with the fall foliage and the press is inundated with hype and wishful thinking. MP3 Newswire has a reasonably sober article addressing 17 of those rumors, even giving odds on the validity of each. From the article: 'It is the peripheral manufacturers that now have a heavy sway on what features the iPod will add to its 6th generation. The peripheral market has done more to cement Apple's proprietary technology as a standard than Apple itself, adding to the iPod's dominance. Mr. Jobs will not upset that balance without good reason and Apple's recent deal with Creative to make iPod peripherals shows he wants to feed it further. But the iPod needs something new to keep it fresh and ahead of the competition.'"
I think Apple's priorities here are fairly close to the average consumers (especially those who support copyright even if they dislike restrictive DRM). I trust Steve Jobs' business intuition enough that I don't believe the next generation iPod will be crippled, etc. Who knows what features apple has coming? It could be a new look, a new feel, maybe lighter and brighter? To be honest, I don't know what else I want out of an MP3 player, except easier booting of linux on the damn thing, for whatever reason I'd want that..
There is only one thing that could actively cripple the iPod, and that is DRM.
Apple's machine has an insurmountable mindshare lead on the competition. They have reached the point where their product name is synonymous with it's purpose. Tell 50 people that you're going to the store to buy a DAP and they'll have no idea what you're talking about, but if you tell them you're going to buy an iPod, they'll smile and tell you all about how they think iPod's are the bee's knees.
However, if Apple falls into the trap of DRMing the iPod/iTunes interface to the point where it becomes too difficult for the average person to use quickly and efficiently (read: anything that takes more than 30 seconds will lose the average person's attention span), just to appease the music conglomerates, people will very quickly lose interest.
Luckily for Apple, they're smart enough to know this, and the powers that be in the recording industry are quickly realizing that they need Apple more than Apple needs them.
Correction: Apple sabotaged Motorola's ability to be the one profitting from that phone.
Eventually you'll see your iPhone, but that time will not be until Apple is the only force behind it.
"iPod Home Entertainment System = 125:1 - Like the in-dash iPod I think it is inevitable, with an Apple widscreen TV connected to an Apple Mac mini-based DVR with dock for whatever the future top-of-the-line iPods will offer. I just don't think it is on the near horizon."
:)
You don't need a "ipod dock on a mini" to accomplish attaching a mini to any HDTV input, you just need to be able to get the content to it easily somehow. One friend of mine has had a mini attached to his HDTV for awhile now, and have most of his DVD's on the HD for play. The mini comes with a remote already, all that is missing is convenient movie sales via ITunes, or perhaps it shoud be renamed IMedia. And that seems to be a sure bet, given the "It's Showtime" announcement on Thursday.
IMHO we are on the cusp of a change in the way A/V is delivered to our tubes.... er.. i mean plasma/lcd/DLP/etc...
As much as I'm going to be burned alive for saying this, the reality is that no one outside of the Slashdot/IT/geek-cred camp cares (or even knows) about OGG support. You could do a poll of 100 people anywhere on the planet and maybe 1 or 2 of them would know what OGG is, and of those 1 or 2, I'd be amazed if they would request it on a DAP.
People know what an MP3 is, and talking about OGG and AAC and Apple Lossless just confuses them. Confusion leads to aversion. Aversion leads to fewer sales for Apple. Hence, you're going to have to get by without your OGG supporting iPod.
I'd love it as a "silent" feature, and have itunes be able to encode and play ogg as well.. they don't have to advertise or promote it, just have it there for people who want it.
IANAAE (I Am Not An Apple Engineer), but I imagine that adding such a feature would inherently add some amount of extra work to their schedule (and thusly to the cost of the unit itself). Why would Apple want to add a feature that is only important to an extremely small minority, that may add quite a bit to the overall cost of either the R&D or the unit itself?
Has anyone realized that pretty much all of these rumors, if real, would be crap? Theres far better things you could put in a media device. For one why don't they have a different form factor and make a longer screen, that could change orientation like many handhelds to give better movie playback? Or even better a SCRATCH RESISTANT SURFACE?
>they don't have to advertise or promote it, just have it there for people who want it.
that's not Apple's way when it comes to design and features: if it's not worth making a big deal of it, why is it worth including?
seriously, why would anyone want to use OGG? (I may be wrong but isn't it significantly more CPU intensive than AAC and lesser or comparable quality?)
the only reason is basically FOSS geeks with philosophical reasons and, as per their fundamentalism, they should have the courage of their convictions and not be using an iPod in the first place.
Maybe not everyone knows what OGG is, but just about everyone has heard MP3s that have been re-encoded too many times, and most people DO understand the difference between lossless and lossy formats.
I don't buy from iTunes or any other online sites because I'd rather have the higher quality original and compress it myself onto my portable music players. If Apple, or anyone else for that matter, offered me the option of downloading lossless originals and included an option to compress them onto my portable player, I'd join the downloading generation.
Until then though, I see lossy formats as just another sneaky way recording companies are trying to make me repeatedly purchase the same product.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
- You can't retrieve Songs from the iPod. (yes there are programms available)
- Content purchased at iTunes has DRM on it. (yes there are programms or
you could burn a purchased track and then rip/mix/burn it to remove
the DRM.
Clueless people are wondering about it, but hey it's an iPod.
1) Replaceable faceplates
This is a HUGE issue for me. I'd like the iPod to have snap-in faceplates in various colors, and some patterns like flowers and camoflauge. White is just so... boring.
2) 3D interface
I think, with the color screens, we need to get rid of the boring list interface and do some sort of 3D spatial interface. Imagine flying through your playlist!!!
3) Integrated camera, and bluetooth headset
Get rid of the accident prone earbuds, and go with one of those cool bluetooth headsets that the business guys wear for their phones. And a camera, so I can upload pictures to all of my friends!!
4) Wireless connectivity, and IM integration
I'm thinking like a slide-out keyboard, so I can chat with my friends whenever I'm near a Wifi spot. That would rock!
These are just some of the ideas I think would make the iPod a much better product. I mean, it's a good entry into the MP3 player market, to be sure. But if Apple wants to be taken seriously, they need to start including some basic features. I don't want to pay that much money and then just be able to play MP3's.
Most people don't know what an MP3 is either. I know plenty of people who thin a WMA is an MP3, and so forth.
They may know the name, but they don't know what it is.
Riiiight - So Apple CAN spend the time to do "Apple Lossless" (which the market place was begging for at the time - NOT) but CAN'T take a chunk of free code without encumbrances (key point) and implement it? Logitec Mice have always been supported in all their glory (well most of it) yet no where (except for the astroturfers on /.) does Apple "rave" about it - "I imagine" it's a silent feature!
The real difference is Apple's ability to control the market and technology. Last time we saw a dominant company actively ignore free software in favour of proprietary (DRM) formats was - wait for it.... Microsoft, yet there was not an army of FUD drones insisting it was all in our best interests....
But because it's Apple - it's all good?
wake up to yourself.... please.
There's nothing wrong with their using an iPod, but they shouldn't be using the poprietary OS. There are at least two Free alternatives, and using one of them would give them the features they want (including the 'feature' of not being able to play DRM'd music).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Sounds like the perfect reason for making the architecture open so people can add what they need themselves.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Most people might know their music is represented by files, and know that compressed files are smaller. I doubt the majority of people realise that MP3 or JPEG are a lossy compression schemes, or that the degradation increases when the file are decoded and re-encoded multiple times. People don't want to know about those things, they want to listen to the music.
you're going to have to get by without your OGG supporting iPod
No, you don't have to:
http://www.rockbox.org/
Supports: iPod 4th gen (grayscale and color), 5th gen (Video), Nano and Mini 1st/2nd gen
If you could easily replace the transparant part of the iPod then all the scrathing problems would be gone. Why is it so difficult for the IT companies to learn the lessons from real life? Have you ever seen a helmet in wich the faceplate can't be easily exchanged? Transparent plastic scratches so you make it easy to swap out. Homer simpson would get this but not Steve Jobs. For me this simple design flaw explains all the problems that exist with IT.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
> Remind me again why they are considerd the good IT company?
:)
That's Steve's reality distortion field. Duh!
Well, uh... They could let you remove songs from a playlist without needing to plug it into a PC. Maybe.
Isnt it amazing how IT can make more money by saving money? Heres a great example:
If Microsoft dosent fix bugs in their OSes they save money, but then people need those bugs fixed, so Microsoft will make a new OS, and people have to buy it to fix thier problems, giving MS more money!
Every company does this in one way or form and its very very pittiful.
There are extremely tough glasses, eg as used on quality watches.
Oh yeah, yeah, I went to the website and I am *so* excited about the YP-U1, it's better than an iPod and just as easy to say. I mean just the catchy name is gonna sell it to me but then I read the marketing.
"Light and attractive, capable and compact, load it up and let it ride your side in style for revolution of senses...now that's flash!"
Brilliant! I... I feel like I was there!
With competition like this it's surprising Apple's still in business!
And yet, every time speculation on the next generation iPod starts, people ask for:
- ogg (Face it, it's the BetaMax of this decade. Cross encode to mp3 and get over it.)
- replacable battery (plastic latch => worse design. Battery packs are available for those who need it)
- FM radio (can be bought as an extention => extra sales to Apple + lower unit cost)
- WiFi (which can not replace a wired connection => extra cost for Apple)
- BlueTooth (headsets are not universally accepted yet => unknown by Joe Sixpack => no benefits for Apple)
- CF, SD card bay (ext. for camera available. oh, to transfer music? get real.)
A new one:
- IM integration (I am listening to music in my world => do not disturb)
Thanks, that's a great recommend. What's also nice is that it requires no software and shows up as a flash drive.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Good point!
.. is it really worth the efford on my part to install it?
If you know (and care strongly) for ogg, chances are, that you will bother to install RockBox.
I just want something that works, the original firmware does. It seems like a good project which adds lots of features to a DAP, but
Wi-Fi / bluetooth support with built in file sharing.
PC Dude: Hey man, what you listening to...
Mac Dude: An old favourite, Assemblage 23
PC Dude: You mind if I listen...
Mac Dude: Sharing ear-buds is so last millenium, but watch this...
Mac Dude:
PC Dude:
PC Dude:
PC Dude: Cool !!!
RIAA Dude: You guys can't do that, thats, like, stealing, man.
RIAA Dude: Anyway, hows you all do that, I thought we had managed to ban all that stuff since the 60's like drugs, free love, sharing.
RIAA Dude: Don't you know we are at war those damned commies, err, I mean terrorists
Mac Dude: If I'm the Mac, and your the PC and Tux is there doing the filming thus is always out of the picture, what does that make him.
Tux: He must be Sid, the Digital Restrictions Monster in disguise who trys to destroy all the cool toys.
RIAA Dude: Mock me if you wish, but we will see who laughs last when I sue you for $150,000... per song...
Tux: If you strike me down now I will become more powerful than you can ever imagine...
Tux: Hey wait, didn't the last guy to use that line get killed shortly after...
RMS: Look you signed up to this. GPLv3, Section 7 says "Give me libery or give me death"
RMS: I know we tend to focus more on the liberty bit than the death bit, but hey thats where the intrest is...
RMS: But it would really help if you could submit a patch, once you have finished getting that death thing completed, that is...
RIAA Dude: Hey, I'm the RIAA and I demand to have the last word.
Tux: OK
< Opps forgot I can't use without encoding them %gt;
Wi-Fi / bluetooth support with built in file sharing.
PC Dude: Hey man, what you listening to...
Mac Dude: An old favourite, Assemblage 23
PC Dude: You mind if I listen...
Mac Dude: Sharing ear-buds is so last millenium, but watch this...
Mac Dude: < clicks button >
PC Dude: < clicks button >
PC Dude: < looks down to see song plaing on his own iPod/buds >
PC Dude: Cool !!!
RIAA Dude: You guys can't do that, thats, like, stealing, man.
RIAA Dude: Anyway, hows you all do that, I thought we had managed to ban all that stuff since the 60's like drugs, free love, sharing.
RIAA Dude: Don't you know we are at war those damned commies, err, I mean terrorists
Mac Dude: If I'm the Mac, and your the PC and Tux is there doing the filming thus is always out of the picture, what does that make him.
Tux: He must be Sid, the Digital Restrictions Monster in disguise who trys to destroy all the cool toys.
RIAA Dude: Mock me if you wish, but we will see who laughs last when I sue you for $150,000... per song...
Tux: If you strike me down now I will become more powerful than you can ever imagine...
Tux: Hey wait, didn't the last guy to use that line get killed shortly after...
RMS: Look you signed up to this. GPLv3, Section 7 says "Give me libery or give me death"
RMS: I know we tend to focus more on the liberty bit than the death bit, but hey thats where the intrest is...
RMS: But it would really help if you could submit a patch, once you have finished getting that death thing completed, that is...
RIAA Dude: Hey, I'm the RIAA and I demand to have the last word.
Tux: OK
It should be a phone. It makes sense to me, I always carry a phone around sometimes, I wish I had taken my ipod with me. But the phones/music players I have seen, have had a bad interface. The ipod is a simple device when it comes to navigating the interface. It should be possible to integrate into a phone.
Yeah, the name is really, really bizarre. Why the flying rhino they couldn't come up with at least SOME sort of a name is completely and utterly beyond me. However, with the product itself nothing really seems wrong.
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Use http://www.rockbox.org/. It plays ogg and flac already on nano's among others. Why wait for Apple?
Motorola has always made extremely unstable phones. It's no surprise that that one was buggy too.
For what it's worth, in Japan the major mobile phone companies (DoCoMo, Vodafone/Softbank, AU) have promoted music-player phones since January or so. My current phone (DoCoMo N702iD) even plays AAC. The latest DoCoMo line of phones uses the fact that they all have music player software as their main selling point in advertising.
However, the ads specifically mention their WMA compatibility, so maybe Apple might be missing the boat in this market.
(and, of course, one of the phones is ATRAC compatible. Care to guess which manufacturer makes that one?)
Which would be mainly because no mainstream portable music players support the format.
To your average consumer they find files and they download them from wherever. If a garage band offers their stuff in OGG (however unlikely) and the consumer tries to put it on their iPod - it is a no-go, however if iPod supported it it would work an customers would be happy.
Sure the average person knows MP3 and little else, but those same people typically have file extension's hidden and determine a file's type based on icon. To them MP3 means music on a computer, not a file with a '.mp3' ext. All the iTunes software would need to do is to make the OGG icon appear like an MP3 icon and to the average user it would be transparent, while us more tech-orintated types are happy too as we don't need to transcode anything to play it on an iPod.
What the iPod needs is something that just about every other generic mp3 player has... an FM radio! While it's amazing that we're expected to listen to our own songs every day on our iPods, occasionally it's nice to tune into something else....
No one knows what an MP3 is. Half of the users think it's the actual player device, and the other half don't even know what a file is since iTunes has abstracted them away from actually managing anything so crass as actual files on an actual disk.
Yes, this is the same 50% of users who, after you finish reinstalling Windows, stare in blank uncomprehension when their email/music and copy of Word are missing, and you don't even bother to try explaining because why would they understand when the other 500 users this month didn't.
Correction: Those are things that we ask for.
You're falling into the trap of assuming that we are the average consumer group, when in reality, the average iPod consumer is the 14 year old kid whose parents bought him or her and iPod for a birthday present to keep the kid from bitching about how all of his friends have one, but they don't.
Do you think that a kid who believes 50 Cent to be the voice of his generation is going to have any idea about open formats and removable memory/battery benefits?
Just because a group happens to be VERY vocal about their desires, they are not necessarily the majority, or even the most desired demographic.
I imagine that adding such a feature would inherently add some amount of extra work to their schedule . . .
One engineer on his coffee break. It's just a codec. A free, freely downloadable and fully documented codec.
KFG
Apple wanted to use ALE for transmitting music over wireless to Airport Express, so there was reason to create it anyway. And for ALE is a greater improvement over WAV than OGG Vorbis would be over MP3 or AAC.
You may also want to check out a SanDisk Sansa e130. Doesn't support Ogg/Vorbis, which is a pity, but easy enough to get around by using LAME to encode your music instead. It *does* support MP3, WAV, and WMA playback, including MS's PlaysForSure DRM crap. So why is it better?
I get 8-12 hours of playback, depending on sound level, from a single AAA battery. Meaning the battery is interchangeable, and I can use rechargeables. Great for long road trips where I can't plug the device in... just bring a couple of extra batteries. Also, it's got a built-in FM radio. Finally, it has a built-in SD cardreader. So even though the device is 512MB, it's easily upgradeable just by carrying around extra SD cards. And it shows up as a USB drive when I plug it into the computer (as does the SD cardreader... meaning it works in Linux).
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
Nobody calls their mp3 player a "DAP". It's called an "mp3 player". I go to Best Buy and ask "where are the mp3 players" and the pimply kid points me to the right aisle.
And as far as "..DRMing the iPod/iTunes interface to the point where it becomes too difficult...", for me it's too difficult if there is any DRM at all on it. I'm not interested in DRM and I won't buy a player or music with DRM as long as I have an option. And with music-lovers on the internet and flash memory so cheap, I'll always have an option.
I just bought an 8gig SanDisk flash player that does video and plays mp3, wma, practically whatever I want. And it was cheap enough that I don't worry about it getting scratched by the change in my pocket. "Not Crippled in Any Way" is the kind of mp3 player I will buy.
I am so sick of big companies telling me how I'm supposed to enjoy music/play games/watch movies. This economy is consumer-driven and it might be time for consumers to take the wheel.
You are welcome on my lawn.
IMO there's no point in supporting ogg. FLAC on the other hand would be a great addition, but I guess Apple lossless is good enough. It's not like HDDs are getting any smaller (on iPods or computers) so the amount of people using lossy codecs will only decrease.
First ogg is a container, when most people say ogg they actually wanted to say Vorbis (an .ogg could contain other codecs like flac).
And while I like the idea that Voribis is completely free, to my ears vorbis is definetly better quality over aac (faac) at the same bitrate. YMMV
But why argue, encode in whatever you like and your player supports, for portable players quality isn't that important anyway IMHO, the only time I use them is in crowded, noisy environments with their crappy default earbuds.
Sarcasm (or at least recognizing sarcasm) is a lost art. I'm really sure the GP intended to portray Mac users in a positive light with the picture of a unique artistic type licking a foot. - sarcasm
How old are you - 14?
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Old bits don't die, they just keep rotting. :-)
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
I bought a Treo so I wouldn't have to carry a phone AND a PDA AND an iPod everywhere I go - now I'm down to Treo + iPod. If Apple would make a combined iPod + PDA + phone, I would buy it in a minute. The Newton had features that the rest of the PDA community still can't hold a candle to - why don't they dust those designs off and have another look at them?
:-)
Hey, and if they could put a spot on the back for credit cards and money, I could leave my wallet at home too!
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
unless you haven't noticed, the songs that are in the hidden directory USED to be in non-ordered folders, true, but the song titles were right. This means that (and as a set and setting - i'm a sunday muscian and have a bunch of my own music on the ipod) if i lost a file i wanted i could still search for and retrieve it. As of the latest firmware update, NOW IT AIN'T like that. All songs have been renamed to a XXXX alphanumeric code such that, except for filesize, i can't figure out what is what at all. Some of MY music i'd really like back is trapped.
Just a cute litttle apple feature, or the closing alligator jaws of the ipod trap?
Well, if you boil a frog slow enough they'll nary jump an inch to save themselves. You decide.
Meh.
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
... (after all, this is slashdot!), but I had this line of thought today :
Video iPods exist. Apple is doing its downloadable "DVD" video thing with Disney. What are the odds of a video iPod with SD 720 x 540/576 TV output turning up in the next generation or two?
I mean, it's the perfect match. Apple want content, and know that people want to use that content anywhere - but studios want content locked to a device. Well, if you can't have portable content, how 'bout a portable device?
An iPod-sized pocket portable "DVD player" equivalent would be the next "if it does 80% of what I want, it's good enough" killer device - much like the original iPod / FairPlay mix.
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
Correction: Apple sabotaged Motorola's ability to be the one profitting from that phone.
True, but I wouldn't put it past Motorola for screwing up themselves. I say this based on my own experience with Bluetooth and infra-red transfer, where you had to go and install extra software on Windows XP and even then it has issues. Then again it could be Windows issue.
For me Motorola is often almost there, but misses out on the detail.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Sometimes the glass used in quality watches is made of sapphire - aka transparent aluminum.
It could play ogg. Let's start with that.
Then have it boot linux next year.
Given that there is iPod Linux, then there is no need to wait. As for Ogg I am not sure that it is supported by iPod Linux, but then again with a little work is doable and there is no need to wait for an Aplle business case to add it.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
True, true.
I am trying to see the next generation iPod from Apple's point of view; trying to figure out what to expect in the future. In that equation I do disregard the desires of "us" and I even give a reason WHY theese features woun't happen.
I would like to see a survey clarifying your point of view regarding the average consumer group, I don't think you are right.
A little extra research reveals Rockbox. If I understand, from scanning the site, Ogg support is in there.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I work at an all-girls secondary school in PA and I have to tell you that one of the things I see most common is two girls trying to share a single iPod. I think wireless is inevitable, or maybe even a dual jack model. Sure, I know you can get a jack splitter, but it's not the same.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
I deal with it by buying a cowon iaudio mp3 player. it's better in all ways to the ipod. including OGG support :-).
im hoping for this whole little empire based on the ipod and its accesories collapses. with such a dominant marketshare and mindshare, they haven't really innovated in a long time. they just steal a few good ideas from other companies from time to time.
Just about every other MP3 player on the market supports this. The iPod is retarded in that it does not support this feature, and the only way to use it is through iTunes. Of course, the fanbois will come up with some excuse for this, just as they would if Apple started murdering people.
and FLAC, and another seven or so codecs, if you use the RockBox firmware.
I got a 30GB Video ipod as a present (5gen), while I was looking for an irivier, because I wanted ogg vorbis support. But by the end of it, I came across the Rockbox firmware, which is an opensource replacement for the apple firmware, and provides a lot of extra features like:
Support for lots of codecs, including AAC,mp3,Ogg,ALAC,FLAC
Gapless playback
Replaygain support
Extensions in the form of plugins (including games)
Fully Theamable
Can copy songs both too it and from it, appears like a USB storage device
And others, but those are the ones I use. While Apple caters to the masses, who are not interested in things like vorbis support, for those of us that are, the option exists. As such I see little reason for apple to bother implementing it, as long as they do not try to prevent people doing it themselves.
Also Rockbox does not remove the apple firmware, so you can switch between the two, allowing you to use the Apple firmware (and iTunes) if you wish side by side with rockbox.
While an FM reciever is cool, a built in transmitter would be even better.
And speaking of FM, why hasnt anyone made one with a AM receiver?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Just to clarify, transparent aluminum oxide or alumina, a ceramic, is often confused by the news as "transparent aluminum metal". Alumina is one of the hardest materials next to diamond. The polycrystalline mineral form of aluminum oxide is called corundum while both sapphire and ruby are transparent single crystal forms with various impurities giving color. Sapphire single crystals are grown commercially and sold as substrates for making gallium nitride LEDs, the blue ones, because a gallium nitride substrate is too costly. Presumably, watch makers also purchase this single crystal sapphire for use in watch faces.
Confusion leads to aversion. Aversion leads to fewer sales for Apple.
Fewer sales for Apple leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
You can add/remove songs from On-The-Go playlists on the newer iPods, I believe.
All you need to do is hold down the center button on the song until it blinks to remove that song from the playlist.
True, but not indistructable. When I was hit by a car my watch screen broke (swiss army watch, a proper one) Now of course that didnt matter as it was on my wrist and only a tiny piece of glass. What I would not like is for my ipod to shatter in my pocket, severely damaging the surrounding area.
Two tears in a bucket. Motherfuck it.
The new device will be 4" by 6" by 0.75. The unit will be white plastic. All sides will be flat except all corners are rounded. There are no controls on the device except a hold switch. There will be an iPod dock port and a headphone jack and an infrared port. The entire front will be a touch sensitive 16:9 color screen. The front is touch sensitive. The device will have a rechargable battery and a hard disk. The battery is user replacable and the unit can be opened relatively easily by the user.
The device will work in multiple modes. As an iPod you hold it vertically. The entire screen shows the list of artists, menus and so forth. Touch anywhere on the screen and a translucent image of a click wheel appears. The location of the wheel varies a bit according to unit orientation and touch position. You use it as usual. Drag around the circle to scroll, tap or press to click in the five positions. The unit senses strength of touch by pressure on the case and/or variation in area of contact. Bluetooth allows loading stuff on the device albeit slowly, and using BT headphones.
The unit also works as a video player. The click wheel appears on top of the video as you touch. BT allows slow file transfers. Of course the port is high speed.
The unit also works as a learning remote control. A set of remote buttons appears on touch. It is an IR remote for CE devices, and a Bluetooth remote for your Mac. Your Mac shows a second screen on the screen of the device. Your touch controls the cursor and you can use guestures, and type if necessary on an onscreen keyboard. Fully control your Mac through this, ala Apple Remote Desktop. Audio output from Mac transmits to device so you can hear it. Using a bluetooth headset you can both hear the other Mac and transmit your voice to it, to control ot via Apple Speech recognition.
The unit also is a GSM quad band phone. You open the unit and put in your SIM card. Phone controls appear on the touch screen. Use BT headset and voice control.
This is all speculation. But it is perfectly logical and CAN BE DONE NOW. Well worth $500. I don't know if it comes out next week but you can bet the farm it will come out.
Mike from www.myallo.com/blog
the availability of the rockbox port makes me really considering buying an ipod, even if only because it happens to be by far the cheapest offering in music centered (i don't even watch tv, why would i need a mobile video player?) players with >20 gb hdds
guess i should wait a while though for the port to get more polished (maybe i could get a cheaper 5th gen when the new ones come out? but iirc apple was always very good at not having many leftover predecessors in stores when the new gen comes out)
[i have an opinion and i am not afraid to use it]
You're an Apple astroturfer, and it's seriously starting to show in your comments, dood.
(how do you survive on the free cheese-n-crackers they give out at the Apple Store, btw?)
for me the core bonus of ogg support would lie in avoiding having to encode a given piece of music more than once. this can be very interesting for people who often create audio content themselves for uploading somewhere on the web and want to avoid close quarters warfare with the thomson lawyer squad.
admittedly, this issue used to be more pressing when cpus were slower at encoding audio - but at the same time the "voirbis heavy on cpu" argument is also shrinking in the face of mpeg4 video capable mobile players.
[i have an opinion and i am not afraid to use it]
Obviously, the original firmware doesn't, at least for some people.
It might be worth the effort to install it sometime in the future. As Apple slowly introduces new DRM 'features' it's nice to know people are working on parallel unencumbered firmware. Kinda makes your investment in 'closed' hardware less risky.
More than being 'worth installing' it is worth supporting, even if you're not using it at the moment.
I think the key point is the tiny amount of people that care about odd first said of the iPod "No wireless. Less Space then a Nomad. Lame." Of the tiny amount that care about ogg, there is an even smaller amount that would actually think about buying an iPod.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
How would it "shatter"? I find it hard to think how it could cause much of an injury, more than if the screen was plastic. If he screen was facing in, unless it was pierced by something very sharp (which would do plenty of damage by itself), your flesh would cushion it and it and be unlikely to break. If facing out, the iPod should block any glass shards from going in.
Perhaps that's why they use soft plastic though, paranoia of product liability from some unlikely accident.
i don't trust the cowon M3 because of it's reliance on a cable remote. as much as i love cable remotes i know how much those cables suffer from wear and tear.
:(
the X5/M5 has this mini joystick, if it is as unusable as the one on my w800i then i would want to avoid that too.
in all other aspects of course, the cowons blow the ipod away. if only they were not considerably more expensive than an ipod with the same capacity, at least where i live
[i have an opinion and i am not afraid to use it]
The 'requires no software' is a feature of almost any other MP3 player but the iPod.
Translation: iTunes is an integral part of the DRM on the iPod. Why any reasonable person would be fooled by this is just strange. Then again, I installed the software on the CD that came with my cheapo 'Creative' MP3 player- a few weeks after I'd started using it, though, as it is essentially a 'thumb drive with a play button and earphone jack.'
Apple already sabotaged that
Apple did? Multiple choice:
The first thing a person would want to do with such an iTunes-phone is download something from iTunes and use it as a ringtone. But you cannot do this with the ROKR. This is because:
a) Apple hates it when you buy songs off iTunes.
b) Motorola would rather you paid them $2.99 for the ringtones they already provide.
c) The technology to make this happen is just too hard and/or expensive.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
Now, you know that's not true. Hell, unless the engineer managed to sneek it into the iPod (Graphing Calculator style), there'd be Product Management meetings, code reviews, QA, etc...
God knows I hate all the overhead of product development and I've snuck some enhancements into releases that PM never saw, but they still got QA'd and rolling a software update to the ~50 customers would have been a lot easier than the millions of iPod users.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Why this speculation? Because the parts have all been there for a while. And Apple has issued nothing big for a long time, and this takes a LOT of work to pull together software-wise. Note we already have voice control input and output on our Macs. We already have tablet control. We already have Apple Remote Access. We already have Bluetooth. Note I didn't put in Wi-Fi - it sucks power and BT is going to be revved soon to have much faster transfer and much longer range and higher-sound fidelity.
And let's recall Apple bought a huge data center recently. Huge. Very high capacity. Sure this will be used to ship movies around but also to handle the MNVO phone service. Apple would never ever brook the bull current phone carriers throw. So they will contract with Cingular and make their own service. Note Disney already DID this. Now Apple will have full control of the carrier. They can allow transfer of data freely, unlike the current carriers, and they can allow easier and more tightly integrated sync between phone and computer. The Apple phone will work with any carrier and Apple phone service will work with any GSM phone but Apple phone service will have tons of features no other carrier will, when used with Apple phones. And its all sold in the many Apple retail stores.
No new iPods all year, what happened? This. Is. Big. Better iPod. Video iPod. iPhone. Remote Mac control. Consumer device remote control. Very tight integration. Video AirPort Express plus BT range extender. I'm tellin ya. Soon! It's hard to get all these ducks in a row. I have no indide info. Just a brain.
Mike from www.myallo.com/blog
Motorola has always made extremely unstable phones. It's no surprise that that one was buggy too.
No one knows whether the ROKR is buggy or not because when people heard "holds 100 songs", no one bought one to find out whether it was buggy.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
It keeps overheating while I blow glass
Maybe the temperature is too high in your glass blowing studio to operate electronics?
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I need something that will play on both my Sansa e250, and my fiance's iPod. MP3 is nice, but ogg is just as good (if not better, depending on the crowd) and it can be much smaller! That's ideal for me, considering I have 2GB to work with. My fiance could care less, she has 30GB! I'm also smart enough to realize this isn't going to happen.
Starmen.net
I went back to my m500 because my T3 was too bulky.
Someone needs to release a PDA in the same thinness factor as the nano, and they need to do it stat.
..don't panic
But more importantly: (d) The songs you buy from iTunes Music Store are licensed for private listening only, either inside a home or on headphones. If the phone plays a song when it rings while you are shopping, that's considered performing the song publicly, as far as I can tell from the definition of "publicly" in copyright law.
Does this particular ATRACS-playing phone happen to come with a rootkit pre-installed? I would think that would save their customers some time.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
You think it is that simple? Did you follow the whole Apple-ROKR debacle? It's true that Apple burned one of its bridges on that, but there are still many other options (internal devel, nokia, sony, etc). The fundamental flaw that really killed the ROKR before it was even developed: Cellular Carriers.
The cell carriers are the gatekeepers to the phone bussiness. Without their adoption of your phone, it won't be offered "officially" with their services. You can develop the best, most awesome, feature-rich cellular phone ever imagined and still not make money on it without this type of support. Think about the Razor. AMAZING hit for motorola. Why?? Sure, many people really liked the phone... But for USD $300 or more? NO WAY!! It was the fact that carriers bundled the phone with plans for a mere $99 or even free that make the Razor a hit. The carriers even advertised it FOR motorola on TV, in newspapers, etc. Remember?
So now you say, 'okay that make sense, but why wouldnt the carriers LOVE to offer an iPod phone?' If you have not figured it out yet, go ahead and take a moment to think...
Answer: The iPod is part of a three-way orgy that does not work on its own. iPod + iTunes + iTunes Music Store. See it yet? How much do the cell carriers make on their proprietary ring-tone/music sales? My carrier sells songs for $3 USD/each. My buddy's sells them for $2.99-4.99 EACH SONG! iTMS sells songs for $0.99 USD, of which there is no room to cut the Carriers in. Officially supporting an iPod-iTunes-iTMS phone would result in a carrier potentially losing MILLIONS of dollars in global music sales.
Finally, I am comfortable buying any GSM phone, unlocking it by hand, and changing the sim card. Done it two or three times already. However, most people will not pay big bucks for a phone that requires such a procedure.
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.
Without fail, the "I'm gonna lose karma" gain karma. Oh, and I want FLAC. Does that make your head spin?
Some people lack a proper sense of scale... We're talking about a geek audio codec. Much of the planet is still waiting for telephone service. You could do a poll of 10,000 people randomly distributed throughout the planet and probably still only have 1 or 2 who recognise OGG.
People in Soviet Russia, however, appear to be afflicted with amusing juxtapositions of the aforementioned situation
It's been done years ago.
No it won't. There's two reasons for that. Music capacity and battery life.
That's like asking someone if they want to pay 100$ for a 1GB player that can hold 11 CDs and play for 10 hours or pay 350$ for a 10GB player that can hold 11 CDs and play for one hour. That's your lossy vs lossless comparison right there. Only audiophiles will pay more for less.
Remember: it took WMA@64kbps before people began to ask "why does my music sound like crap?"
But is ALE such a big improvement over FLAC?
A lot of these players don't have a beefy CPU and rely on a dedicated ASIC for MP3, AAC, and MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile video decoding. A faster CPU or a second ASIC for Vorbis and Theora would drive up the cost of goods significantly.
Sure, it would be more work for them, but the people behind OGG Vorbis are keen on getting support, so I'm sure they would be more than happy to help. They already provide sample code, and may provide more than that, which means that Apple has a really easy job of adding the support.
It seems more likely that Apple would release, or someone will hack open, ways to add codec modules. I imagine that iPods already do codecs in a modular way, since it would make development a lot easier.
I might even buy one if I could play OGG and encode to Speex on the fly.
-Computational complexity of encoding and decoding
-Compression ratio
-Licensing/openness concerns
-Software/hardware support for the format
-Error tolerance
-Other additional features (metadata, streaming, support for better than 16-bit 44kHz audio, etc.)
FLAC is better than Apple Lossless in most of these categories, but (in the grandparent poster's opinion) the difference is small enough that "Apple lossless is good enough."
There are extremely tough glasses, eg as used on quality watches.
You might be thinking of sapphire, which is quite hard, and so scratch resistant. It is also brittle, and shatters more easily than glasses or hard plastics. It's also expensive. A piece large enough to cover the iPod Nano display will run about $85 each in lots of 1000, and at 1 mm thick that might be too fragile. I don't know of a vendor who can supply these by the million. They're relatively labor-intensive to make, being sliced from a synthetic sapphire using a diamond saw.
- The computational difference between the two is, in 2006, probably nothing as far as the processor is concerned.
- Compression ratio: lossless CODECs usually averages around 50% depending on the music you're encoding.
- Licensing/openness: unless you're a Linux user with strong ethics about that kind of thing, it's not important. Joe Street wouldn't even know what you're talking about.
- Error tolerance: zero in both cases since we're talking about lossless audio (unless you meant lost encoded data, in which case I have no idea which one's better)
- Additional features: I know that Apple Lossless has metadata and streaming (that's how Airport Express works). As for 24-bit and 48KHz support, I don't have such a file to do any testing with iTunes. But I do know that AAC allows 48KHz and that my iPod does play 48KHz files.
The whole debate of FLAC vs Apple Lossless is a bit pointless. It would be valid for debating between MP3 vs WMA vs AAC vs Vorbis, but in the case of lossless audio, there's no difference in the end result (audio). If there's any difference, then one of the CODEC screwed up.
Go back 10 years, and ask 100 people what a MP3 file is. You might get 1-2 geeks that knew what it was, so it was clear back in 1996 that nothing would ever became of MP3, which is exactly how it is today. Oh wait....
Besides, go ask a 100 people right now if they knew what a AAC file is. I would guess that you would only get a handful, even amonst iPod/iTMS users. Of those that knew it is a music file format, I would guess a good fraction would think it's a propriety Apple format.
I really don't understand the opposition to OGG. It's just a file format. The hardware is powerful enough to support it. It would not add any additional complication to the iPod, unlike something like a FM tuner. There are no licensing fees. If Apple supported OGG in the iPod, most users would not know or even need to know, because of the way that iTunes abstracts away things like formats in the file system. OGG files would just be another song. Sure most users wouldn't know or care, but it would be nice for the ones that do know and care.
I need something that will play on both my Sansa e250, and my fiance's iPod
I'm looking at the manual, and it only mentions MP3, WMA, and Secure WMA. "Other file types need to be converted to these formats."
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
That's actually because most people don't know what a WMA is, not because they don't know what an MP3 is. The weird thing is that most people don't know what an AAC is, yet the most popular portable music player is, by default, an AAC player! AAC is the BEST DRM compatable format available... and no matter how much you screem, DRM is a neccessity to the music industry and is here to stay, so we should be pulling for it in favor of lesser, more brutal formats like the PlaysForSure WMA. I laugh when people call the iPod an mp3 player... as I don't have a single mp3 on mine. Similarly, iTMS doesn't sell a single mp3, and yet people consistantly call it an "mp3 downloading store". MP3 is dead, we should get used to it, and drop it from our lingo.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Only problem is that OGG is a processor hog, and thus, a battery hog. Apple has taken enough flack for being a bit weak on the battery life end of things, so why would they want to risk n00bs accidentally ripping their CDs to OGG and then saying, "hey! my iPod only plays for 4 hours!" I think it's probably for the best that they keep OGG out. I do want gapless playback, though. For all of my concept albums, I've had to make duplicates that are one file, just so I can listen to them straight through without breaks. AAC can play gapless (hell, so can MP3s, with a read buffer), I just wish Apple would support it.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Use Yamipod. There's an option within the program to copy a song from your library to your computer. I use it all the time.
After buying a Razr, I don't think I'd buy another Motorola phone. It's got a lot of hype, but not as durable as my old Nokia was by a long shot. It keeps overheating while I blow glass, going black after I leave it on for a few days, needing rebooting, and I can't load my own ringtones to it. All in all, I have to give it a bit of a thumbs down.
Let's break this down, shall we?
It keeps overheating while I blow glass
You work in a glass-blowing studio, and you are surprised that electronics overheat when you leave them near the furnace???
going black after I leave it on for a few days
You are surprised that a battery-operated device shuts off after a few days of continuous use???
I can't load my own ringtones to it
Maybe you can't, but that's not the phone's fault. I made my own ringtones using iTunes, and had no problem using my Mac's bluetooth connection to load my custom ringtones, wallpaper, etc., into my RAZR.
The RAZR simply kicks ass over every phone I've ever owned, and is also way smaller.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Sure, many people really liked the phone... But for USD $300 or more? NO WAY!! It was the fact that carriers bundled the phone with plans for a mere $99 or even free that make the Razor a hit.
you're forgetting 2 facts:
1 - the iPod regularly sells in the same $300 (and up) price bracket. can you imagine the what apple would do to the phone market would if they replaced the Hard Drive iPod line with hard drive iPod phones in the same price bracket? wow.
2 - metroPCS. i have a metroPCS razr. $250 out of my pocket, no contracts. in hindsight it was a crappy deal, but it made a statement. i will NOT stand for being forced into a contract.
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
Why is Apple Lossless "good enough" compared to FLAC?
The other poster already gave you a good answer, but I'll add one more reason: I, and many others, are lazy and would like to avoid converting between formats. Most of the music on P2P is in FLAC format (I base this on what I've seen, not on any real statistics), so it would also mean that most of the music in other people's collections is also FLAC. Hence the "good enough".
That's like asking someone if they want to pay 100$ for a 1GB player that can hold 11 CDs and play for 10 hours or pay 350$ for a 10GB player that can hold 11 CDs and play for one hour.
After a couple of more Moore's law doublings of capacity, we'll have enough space on our players to have our entire music collections in lossless format. When that happens, there will be no point in using lossy formats. It's still some years down the road, but the shift from mp3 to lossless has already started happening. If one rips a cd today, there is really no point in encoding it in a lossy format, audiophile or not.
You may be right that someday it'll be true, but we're still far from there. I'd choose Apple Lossless only if I could get a flash (or other) iPod with 120GB for about 200$CAD. Until then, lossless is just wasted space. Just use a higher bitrate for those tunes that requires it.
As for most music being in FLAC on P2P networks, I have to strongly disagree. Either you're filtering keywords or searching for very obscure music. Most of the music on P2P is in MP3, by a huge margin.
Aside from Moore's law not being about storage capacities, it still makes no sense to pay for more storage and less battery life for the sake of a slightly better audio quality, especially for portable audio players.
;)
What do you think flash memory is made of?
At some point the question goes from "Why pay more to use lossless when I can fit more lossy music on my DAP?" to "Why use lossy formats when I can use lossless and still have too much space for my needs?". The extra power usage is bad though, and more efficient designs would be nice.
You may be right that someday it'll be true, but we're still far from there. I'd choose Apple Lossless only if I could get a flash (or other) iPod with 120GB for about 200$CAD. Until then, lossless is just wasted space. Just use a higher bitrate for those tunes that requires it.
YMMW, of course. A 4 GB nano can hold ~10 hours of lossless music, and I'd be very hard pressed to even come up with that much music worth listening to, so lossless makes sense for me.
As for most music being in FLAC on P2P networks, I have to strongly disagree. Either you're filtering keywords or searching for very obscure music. Most of the music on P2P is in MP3, by a huge margin.
Sorry, I mistyped. I meant that FLAC is the most popular format of all the lossless music on P2P.
1. It will use a new case design derived from the old iPod Mini case but in a smaller form factor, with scratchproof materials for the case and display. It will be about the size of the Sandisk Sansa e200 series portable music player.
2. The display will be larger than the current Nano display, which will allow the playback of short 4:3 aspect ratio video clips.
3. Flash memory storage will be 8 GB, 6 GB and possibly 4 GB.
4. Apple may offer an AC adapter standard so the new iPod model can be charged without using USB port power to recharge the battery.
5. Apple may offer a protective carrying case as standard.
Don't expect the true video iPod (aka. vPod) to arrive until MacWorld Expo in January 2007.
Blah. You've purposefully misread much of what I've written. Not really interested in answering most of it, but uh... You're Wrong. It's nowhere near the phone my last one was, and that has nothing to do with how I'm treating it.
Ringtones and uploading are disabled by default with Verizon's phones. I don't want to flash a new bios into my phone, so I'm apparently SOL. Work for Motorola?
My little site.
I don't think it's a called a rootkit when it's integrated with the operating environment.
The Farewell Tour II
MP3 will be open soon enough; the patent expires in a few years.
still waiting for gapless audio.
what other players feature gapless audio?
But the difference is that there was a void where the MP3 could fit. There was nothing like it before it came out.
OGG and AAC and so on won't catch on because for 99% of people, their purpose is already served by MP3's. And as much as audiophiles want to be pretentious and argue the point, most people can't hear the difference between 192kbps MP3 and anything above that.
I've been dreaming of the "iPad", a little touch screen based device to control computers etc. I got the idea from using a clicker for a textbased game, it gets boring clicking numbers as they come up onscreen, so i thought "why not have this little device to do this kind of stuff with?". The way i imagine it, it would be about the thickness of an iPod Nano and about the same size as the current iPod, and just ALL touchscreen. It would have limited ram etc, and would just use its touchscreen, wifi and bluetooth to interface with other computers etc.
Imagine, the technician who monitors the servers through dashboard type widgets on the crapper, or being able to txt on your bluetooth phone by writing with the stylus which sends it to the phone, you could have your phone in your pocket and just have your iPad vibrate and have the message come up on it. I would really want this device to be cheap, say, $50 american for example. i know i would buy one if they cost the equiv of that. It would have to be cheap though, and simple, just the wifi/bt and the touchscreen to control everything.
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LOL!
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As long as their landmines are more stable than their phones they should be ok.
what's to correct? that point was the entire purpose of the post! Of course Apple doesn't want a joint venture on the "itunes-phone" idea, which is why they sabotaged the idea.
you should be writing "I agree", not a "correction".
Push Button, Receive Bacon
No I'm not...
Yes I can. It will be a huge waste for Apple. Like I said, the whole "phone" aspect is still not understood by most people. Apple sells MILLIONS of iPods every year, and mostly to people with little to no real technical ability. Much of the success of the iPod is due to its simplicity (click "import" to copy your cd then just plug in the ipod). 95% of iPod users will be lost when you tell them to pull the sim card from their phone and plug it into their ipod. So to make this work, you need support from at least one major carrier (at first). You need to be able to active the phone service at the Apple store, or the cell store.
Would the device be CDMA or GSM? 3G support? Bluetooth too I hope, right? It'd be cool if it ran cool Java games too! Hopefully a speakerphone function too.
Look, I would embrace an iPod phone with open arms. However, I doubt that even Apple can cram a full featured cell phone into the iPod form factor. Would it have good battery life? Somehow I doubt that the iPod-phone will do "phone" better than my cell... (hope i'm wrong)
I paid $295 out-of-pocket for my phone for the same reason. Just changed providers too. Again, hardly anybody does this. Techno-Geeks are a very small (sometimes lucrative) niche of users.
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.
I think we're going to see the widescreen iPod ... you know, the one that has the virtual click wheel overlayed on the touch sensitive LCD screen. This makes sense with the showtime theme -- in fact, to go a little further out on the limb, I'm going to predict that it will be introduced along with a device for streaming videos to TV sets. Not quite a Media Center PC, but more like Airport Express Video.
Add your predictions?
Share data. Share code. Share ideas. Share the wealth.
http://stockfilter.org
Ringtones and uploading are disabled by default with Verizon's phones. I don't want to flash a new bios into my phone, so I'm apparently SOL. Work for Motorola?
No, but I got my RAZR from T-Mobile. I guess they don't cripple their phones the way it sounds like you are saying Verizon does.
Still... It's not exactly Motorola's fault that you chose a shitty phone provider, is it?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
It hadn't even occurred to me that a cell phone provider would gimp their phones. The flat-out unreliability I have run into - in the glass shop, before I started working in the glass shop, out of the glass shop, whatever - is what I'm not happy with. The ringtone junk is just icing on the cake. Battery life is comparatively short, yes, but the problems I have are mostly related to me having to screw around with the phone once every day or two to get away from the blackscreening. And rebooting it because I can't get it to dial. And and and. I haven't mistreated this phone at all; in fact I've been pretty kind to it overall. The glassblowing is an example, and it's not like I put the stupid thing in the flames and say, "Heh heh. Ring now, bish." No, I take pretty good care of the phone and it has rewarded me with calls that don't ring for some odd reason, short battery life, two day late messages, and other general unreliabilities. I don't particularly want to RMA it, because then I get a refurbed one back. It's a cool LOOKING phone, but I wouldn't buy a second one at this point.... Of course, I've only owned it for six months, so it might get better. Who knows.
I'm sorry if I seemed a bit personal earlier. This phone annoys me, and life in general is mildly annoying at the moment. Some genius at a bank to go unnamed decided long ago that releasing software at 4:00 AM on Saturdays was a good idea and I've gotten roped into testing it.
My little site.
MP3 has come to mean "any music on my computer" to the average person, in the same way that "hoover" means any vacuum cleaner, "selotape" means any such product, and "iPod" means any portable digital audio player.
OK, two engineers over four coffee breaks, plus 50 managers over 100 meetings.
Once upon a time Ford introduced a new car model. It was their first offering with a spring loaded hood ornament to prevent breakage. It was not until the car was introduced at a show in its final form that it was discovered that the ornament could be bent down far enough to cause a scratch in the paint. There was much consternation over this, as they figured it would take three years to fix the problem in production.
That's why I prefer to work as an independent who could fix it in half a coffee break.
KFG
You might get 1-2 geeks that knew what it was, so it was clear back in 1996 that nothing would ever became of MP3, which is exactly how it is today. Oh wait....
Yes, wait and think about why the mp3 caught on in the first place, and it's advantages over WAV. Then think about the number of similar leaps Ogg makes over mp3. You know, none.
I really don't understand the opposition to OGG.
Because Oggers act like it's the second coming of Crist, when in reality nobody gives a damn.
After a couple of more Moore's law doublings of capacity
But there is no Moore's law for battery life, and having to read 25 megabytes of data vs 4 megabytes of data per song is going to kill your battery.
Besides, why do you want lossless files for a player you'll be listening to with headphones?
But there is no Moore's law for battery life, and having to read 25 megabytes of data vs 4 megabytes of data per song is going to kill your battery.
I agree, that is a problem with current battery tech.
Besides, why do you want lossless files for a player you'll be listening to with headphones?
Why not? I am unable to fill up a 2 GB DAP with lossy audio, as I don't have that much good music, so the space would go unused otherwise. Converting my existing mp3 files to lossless is pointless of course, but not having to convert my existing lossless to lossy saves time. This isn't true for all users of course, but everyone has a point when filling up your player with yet more music stops making sense, and quality becomes more important. While it seems like a waste to use lossless with headphones, I think it's a good idea to remove compression from the sound quality equation completely.
I don't need any of these. I just want gapless MP3 playback. I believe I'm not the only person in the world who likes to listen to classical, live, prog-rock, or mix albums.
Too bad Apple has dug in with a huge array of things non-gapless... like iPod, iTunes and all those copies of songs sold through the iTMS. If they went gapless now, they'd have to do it with an active gap remover thingy that might have unintended consequences. But really, LAME gapless (like foobar2k) would do it for me.
I agree, completely. "MP3 player" was commonly used to refer to any digital music player. But more and more, the term "your iPod" is being used. NBC switched, in it's advertisements, a few months back from using the meme "Download our newscasts to your MP3 Player" to "Download our newscasts to your iPod", simply because their realizing that the term "iPod" as a universal is becoming more accepted. If I were Apple, I'd be paying them to say that, but they don't even have to, because society is pushing that last little bit for them.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
Probably the best solution then would be to add a downconvert option to library software, for those who like to keep their digital music in lossless format but want good battery life on their mp3 players. This would become more important if the industry ever quits dragging their feet on DVD-audio or come up with a new surround-sound format for computing devices.
Because Oggers act like it's the second coming of Crist, when in reality nobody gives a damn.
I think it's more about "Not invented here" syndrome amonst Apple fanboys. You can hardly mention Ogg without someone writing a stupid ranting about how the iPod shouldn't support Ogg, simply because it shouldn't. If you don't care about Ogg, then ignore it.
Oh, gapless playback would be nice. I don't care if it would only work on AAC files, I can live with that. If I had to re-encode my cd's to get gapless playback (and playcounts for each track) I would do it.
.. I can't believe that Apple doesn't have high quality source files from which to downsample to whatever the current standard is. Converting from non-gapless mode to gapless capable mode would "just" be a question of computing time.
Madonna's entire back catalogue was added a year ago as well as her new album. That album really doesn't have any gaps. Hopefully, she is complaining to Steve about this! (plans within plans)
As for the rest of the music sold on iTMS
I have to say I agree with the person you're responding to. You are asking too much, and blaming the faults of others on the phone itself and its designers.
Verizon do have a history of crippling the phones they sell so they can extract more in OTA charges. The fact is though that the RAZR, as designed, is a fairly stylish, reliable, phone. The vast majority of users are very happy with it. Motorola isn't selling the same phones it was pushing out faster than it could design them three years ago.
I passed over it myself after deciding the V635 met my needs slightly better. The V635's a very solid phone, has crashed maybe three times since I got it. Battery life is good, not "the best" out there, but more than acceptable. Like most of Motorola's stuff, the V635 contains a significant amount of good, new, technology, well implemented - for example, the Transflash card, the high quality megapixel camera, the cleanly implemented Bluetooth. But I've met plenty of people with RAZRs who couldn't be happier.
The real problem in your case is you went with Verizon. Verizon, in my experience, has never put quality first, and it's simply not possible to buy a phone from them and know in advance what you're getting. IS-95 ("CDMA") advocates will tell you that many US carriers picked it for its supposed capacity and reliability. In my view, Verizon picked it because it's sufficiently controllable that they can exercise unparalleled control over their customers in a way they wouldn't be able to with an international standard like GSM. I didn't need T-Mobile's permission to put my V635 online.
In the mean time, unquestionably, you're running a phone that's been modified by a third party (Verizon), and you're complaining about its poor reliability as a result. I'm not saying don't complain to Motorola - DO complain, DO let them know that them letting Verizon do this is undermining your confidence in their products, but DO complain to Verizon too, and make sure you give the blame where it's deserved, not just to one manufacturer, in an industry where every cellphone manufacturer has to whore their designs to stand a chance of getting their products on the shelves.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.