Will the iPod Ever Die?

Azhar writes "Will we always prefer the iPod's glossy slim design over all the others? Or at one point of time will the iPod revolution actually fade? Lets have a look at what could happen and why."

Comments

'Ever' seems a bit optimistic

[celardore]

Granted, there have been some fantastic inventions in the history of man. Like the wheel, that's still going pretty strong and with a massive distribution even now. Will the iPod follow in its footsteps? Unlikely that it's not going to 'ever die'. So yes, it will. Might take five years, might take twenty; but yes it will die.

Next up

[tkdog]

Will the automobile ever die, will toasters ever die, will stupid pointless articles written just to make ad money ever die? Stupid, stupid article.

Not even worth a mention.

[Jartan]

The article is just some blogger listing a bunch of reasons why the iPod is better than the Zune. Maybe if it were someone who's an authority on the subject it might be worth reading but after wasting my time I got the distinct impression that it's probably just a mac fan. Now that doesn't make his argument incorrect but it's not really worth a discussion.

Will the Walkman ever die?

[dschl]

July, 1983 - The Sony Walkman has dominated the portable cassette player market so far. It began the ultimate revolution in how we listen to our music......

Back to the present, the Walkman ceased to dominate the industry 15 years ago or more. The iPod will someday share it's fate. TFA is a lame blog article written by some fanboy who thinks he is creative, insightful, and discerning.

You know Taco, if it is a slow news day, it's better to leave the front page alone than to post "stories" like this just for the sake of filling space.

Re:Will the Walkman ever die?

[MonoSynth]

The disadvantages of the Walkman:
- max. 90 minutes of storage (120min just wasn't reliable)
- more storage meant more physical space
- relatively bad sound quality
- difficult to find songs

The disadvantages of the Discman:
- max 80 minutes or the length of an album
- more storage meant more physical space
- not shockproof, even shockproof versions could scratch cd's.
- quite large

The disadvantages of the iPod:
- non-replaceable batteries

The iPod solved the major problems of its predecessors. It enables me to take 3300+ songs with me (15GB) on a very small device. Of course, it's not perfect, but I don't see how the availability of new technology will change the perfect music player radically like it did before.

of course it could happen.

[abrotman]

There have been other companies we thought we never see a decline. For a recent example, look at the problems that Sony is facing with the PS3.

If Apple forsakes their loyal customers, and abuses said loyalty, they will lose their biggest cheerleaders.

Well

[Sv-Manowar]

The iPod is a revolutionary device, although maybe not techinically, it has entered the conciousness of the public and it will be extremely hard for anyone to even try and match it's market dominance. The one thing Microsoft could have done with the Zune was to make sharing music unrestricted, but once again red tape has stopped it and the DRM will limit the function that could have made the Zune the better choice (along with Apple cutting the price, a move Microsoft didn't expect). I think the only thing to match the iPod now will be a device that is a mix of genres, much like the phone that is rumoured to be in development from Apple, if they can successfully merge the best features of an iPod (plus storage) with the good functions of a phone and make it stylish (not a hard job for Apple right now) then they may just have a chance of beating one of the devices of the decade. For other companies, it will be very hard to beat the iPod in the long run, and the only front I think they will have is pricing - which will only hurt their bottom line, as people will pay a premium to have the iPod. Congratulations to Apple on their market domination with this one, it's well deserved.

The pull of a trusted brand

[jdbartlett]

There are trusted brand names in many fields of consumer technology: the Zippo lighter, the Brunton compass, the Victorinox Swiss Army knife, the Timex watch. Outside of the geek market, Apple's biggest challenge comes not from what their competitors have to offer as features and cool-factor, but from their own ability to keep excellent customer service and quality control while newer and more machines are turned out of the factory. Even yuppies and posers will have enough common sense to prefer a brand name trusted as "reliable" over cheaper or more feature-filled options.

I have felt no compelling reason to upgrade from my monochrome 4G: its battery life is as good as the day I bought it, it plays music, it works. I know that if my battery starts to die, I can send it to Apple with $100 and receive a refurbished iPod of the same generation with a new battery. This is something important to me, and that kind of customer service will be a factor in my eventual decision to switch to another music player.

All fads eventually die

[DaRat]

iPod is a fad. All fads eventually die. Some have longer legs than others, but they all eventually fade into a sort of background commodity basis if they don't outright die. Usually, you can tell when a fad is about to die when you see the fad and products for it everywhere...

iPod is a fad?

[jdbartlett]

More accurately, the rate at which iPods are sold will level off. That doesn't mean iPod itself is a fad, just that consumers are approaching it with a "fad" mindset.

iPod itself may become the Sony walkman: ubiquitous, until CD comes around.

What will ultimately kill the iPod

[bbzzdd]

The day you can walk into Walmart and buy a 4 - 8GB flash player for $39.99 is the day the iPod will die. The iPod will eventually meet the same fate as the Sony Walkman did in the 90s once cheap Japanese knock-offs can be manufactured for cheap enough.

Sure, the iPod will die.

[dpbsmith]

The Osborne 1 computer died. The IBM Stretch 7030 computer died. The Sony Walkman died. The Studebaker died... and so did the Oldsmobile and the Plymouth. Eleven of the twelve corporations in the original Dow Jones Index died. Elvis Presley died. The Soviet Union died. The United Society of Believers (Shakers) died. The Roman Empire died. Kepler's supernova died.

The iPod will die. So will Windows. So will the Toyota Prius. So will Toyota. So will GE, the sole surviving original Dow Jones Index company. So will the United States of America. So will life on earth. So will the sun. Even Jack LaLanne will eventually die (oh, wait...)

And your point is?

Re:Battery Life

[thelost]

Most products are designed with a certain lifespan in mind. Companies realized that while people will moan and grumble they will still go and fork out for that new washing machine because they need it. That's why TVs and microwaves from the 80's still work, but more recent ones will only have lifespans of 3-4 years.

The moment companies start to design products without a limited lifespan the sky will *actually* fall.

TFA

[ColdWetDog]

was pointless and annoying the firsttime. We really didn't need to see it again. Sometimes slashdotting is a good thing.

Really

Re:TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm trying to figure out why the DRM is an issue. My iPod has exactly 0 DRM encumbered songs on it. How did I escape the wrath of Apple? Maybe it is because I don't use the iTunes Music Store. It's not a requirement for an iPod, but a choice.

If you don't like the iPod because it's too popular and has white ear-buds, just say so. Don't try to spread mis-information for some pathetic anti-iPod agenda.

Re:Battery Life

[BalanceOfJudgement]

That's why TVs and microwaves from the 80's still work, but more recent ones will only have lifespans of 3-4 years.

The moment companies start to design products without a limited lifespan the sky will *actually* fall.

This is sick.

Not pointing fingers or anything, not intending to flame or troll, but it's just.. sick.

Stuff from the 80s still works?

[freeweed]

That's very funny, because as someone who was actually alive over 20 years ago, I can tell you that people said the very same thing back then.

Notice the pattern:

In the 2000s, everything built in the 1980s lasted forever; things made in the 2000s break after a few years.
In the 1980s, everything built in the 1960s lasted forever; things made in the 1980s break after a few years.
In the 1960s, everything built in the 1940s lasted forever; things made in the 1960s break after a few years.
In the 1940s, everything built in the 1920s lasted forever; things made in the 1940s break after a few years.
In the 1920s, everything built in the 19th century lasted forever; things made in the 1920s break after a few years.

And yes, I've done research on this. My grandparents are over 90 and swear that everything made since the Great Depression is crap and never lasts. I've found early newspaper op-ed pieces from the 1910s that claim the very same thing, just pushing back the date a little.

(The secret, of course, is that the things made in year X that only last a few years are long since discarded, and we only remember the things that last any decent length of time)

Repeated post from a while back. I can't believe people still believe the "stuff made today is shit, while everything made in the past lasted forever" meme.

Re:Stuff from the 80s still works?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe people still believe the "stuff made today is shit, while everything made in the past lasted forever" meme.

While I don't believe it, you still haven't shown anything to disprove it.

Based on the data above, an equally-likely-sounding explanation is that build quality has been on a steady decline for 100 years.

If every generation said "people are so fat today; when I was a kid, people were thinner", would you think that they're lying, or is it possible that recent generations are each a little fatter than the previous? If your only data was that people consistently said "when I was a kid...", how would you tell the difference?

(The secret, of course, is that the things made in year X that only last a few years are long since discarded, and we only remember the things that last any decent length of time)

That sounds like we scientists call a "hypothesis".

DRM and iTMS aren't mandatory.

[Kadin2048]

There are a lot of legitimate criticisms of the iPod, but the DRM one I don't particularly understand. Okay, so the iPod supports DRM. It doesn't require it. There is nothing about owning an iPod which requires you to purchase music from the iTMS. You can own an iPod and just ignore the iTMS completely, and use it just like you would an iRiver or a Creative or whatever.

The whole "I hate the iPod because I don't want to pay $0.99 a song" is silly. Nothing about the iPod requires that you buy your music that way. In fact, I'd argue that if you want to get your music from a CD, the iPod is probably still the best player, because iTunes is the easiest ripping/syncing/library-management software around -- naturally that's debatable, of course.

Your points about the lack of a microphone and a line input are well taken, because they're actual capabilities of other devices which the iPod does not have. But the DRM thing is a rather silly point and it gets brought up a lot. If you're buying another player as a sort of "protest vote" against DRM, that's your choice, but it's not really a limitation of the device. Apple isn't Sony, and you can use an iPod just fine without ever paying a cent into the iTMS or buying a single DRMed song.

Re:DRM and iTMS aren't mandatory.

[Bing Tsher E]

You can't, however, own an iPod (at least, an apple branded one- the term has become generic) without using iTunes or an iTunes clone.

I prefer players where you can plug them into the USB bus and just copy files over. And for my 'playlists' I use these things called directories.

Re:DRM and iTMS aren't mandatory.

[alienw]

Well, not unless you use gtkpod or anapod or about half a million other programs.

Re:DRM and iTMS aren't mandatory.

[Anonymous Coward]

iPod is a registered trademark and it refers to specific class of products made by Apple Computer. It is about as "generic" as Macintosh is when referring to a computer. That is, it is not generic at all.

And, yes, you can own and use an iPod without using iTunes or iTunes Music Store.

But, please, keep on trolling.

Re:DRM and iTMS aren't mandatory.

[John Miles]

There is a utility called "Tag and Rename" that addresses the problem of "Help, I have 15,000 MP3 files with accurate, consistent filenames but no ID3 tags." You can create a batch job that parses the metadata in your .MP3 filenames and turns it into ID3 tags. It's a real lifesaver when using iTunes.

Re:DRM and iTMS aren't mandatory.

[dangitman]

And furthermore, what are you going to do with your mashups that have more than one primary artist but for whatever reason you want it classified with a particular artist so you leave it in that folder though you want the filename and id3 tag to represent both artist's names. So when you play your music by artist, you won't hear your mashups and remixes with the artists you normally associate them with. That's just a clusterfuck.

You simply add the original artist to "Composer" or "notes," or whatever other field takes your fancy, and the remixer to "Artist" (or the other way around, depending on preference). Then you create Smart Playlists to look for strings in both the Artist and the Composer or Notes. You make rules on how this is handled. Heck, you could even add both the artist name and remixer name to the Artist tag, and have it look at those. You can even add text to the notes, like "remixed by" or "written by" to help refine the system, and add information.

How is this easier when manually managed by directories? Do you make alias folders with the songs represented in two places? Seriously, that's one of the big disadvantages of manual file-system management, when something falls under multiple categories. Tags and "smart" rules make it easier. Perhaps you can explain what your simple manual solution to this is. That's a serious question, because I can't imagine an easy way to do that manually, without having a clusterfuck of music folders. I'm sure it can be done, but it doesn't sound particularly painless.

Re:DRM and iTMS aren't mandatory.

[Yvan256]

[...] I should have the CHOICE whether I want to tag my files or not. [...] So-called smart playlists is the dumbest idea I have ever seen. I don't need Jobs and cos. iTMS crapware algorithmically mis-predicting what I want to listen to. A person that primarily listens on shuffle will find smart playlists to be quite "dumb" to say the least.

Personnal attacks aside, it seems you don't even know what you're talking about. Your hatred of anything from Apple probably makes you blind to reality.

The fact is, that's the way iTunes works. Any music player worthy of that name should also work that way in 2006. Music, by its nature, already has metadata associated with it, wether you want it or not. Year, type of music, artist, composer. album, track number, disc number, etc. The fact that you don't put the metadata in your files is your problem, not mine.

When you decide to put a track in a single directory, it limits you to a single metadata field (ex: artist directory, album sub-directory). You can't, however, make a "Best of the 1980's" from those files afterward. With smart playlists and metadata, it's done with a simple rule. Want a "Best Rock Tunes of the 80's"? Two rules. No need to handle files and directories. That's what metadata and smart playlists are all about. You make the smart playlists and define which fields to use and which parameters you want to apply to fiter those fields.

How do you handle tracks that should be in multiple directories? Aliases? I don't think your iRiver handles aliases... (and if it does, then fine for you).

Once you let go of the "I have to manage my files myself" syndrome and let iTunes do it, you'll be making your computer work for you. Until then, do your directories thing if you think it's good enough, and do the work your computer should be doing.

Slashdot like Apple in mid 90s ?

[nv5]

This isn't a new observation, but it's the first time that I'm writing about it. Probably because I'm sensing the end of my time here at Slashdot. I have not journaled worth mentioning, and not commented worth mentioning - but I was an avid reader and meta-moderator (and yes, I read many of the articles I meta-modded and their responses, to make sure that I would get non obvious situations right).

The news business, even in it's blog form is a tough business indeed. When the mother of all blogs (i.e Slashdot itself) needs to go trolling for clicks with a front page link to a teenage fanboy's blog related to iPods, it's a sad day indeed.

This article is neither "news for nerds", nor "stuff that matters".

But it's a predictable click gatherer - and it's been promoted to the front page by the Cmdr himself, not a junior apprentice editor.

The Cmdr hasn't lost his marbles - quite the opposite, he has a business to run - and this business is desperately competing with the shrill upstarts with editorial models solely around popularity, rather than quality.

The unwashed masses supply more clicks than even moderately intelligent and critical thinkers.

Populism at work, because populism pays. So now we have editorial control trying to emulate populism. Not the first and not the last time that will happen.

I understand that, but I see a fatal disconnect with Slashdot doing it. Slashdot doesn't do populism best. Slashdot's strength is (was) in quality control (editorial control , followed by discussion with moderation and meta moderation).

However, when the first input (editorial control) to the process isn't even remotely attempting quality control, all other quality control processes are becoming rather irrelevant.

Or to put it more bluntly, if the whole story is a troll, the comments, moderations and meta-moderations can't untroll it.

So I think Slashdot is losing it's way in this battle and like all good things will slowly fade away.

Reminds me a bit of apple in the early to mid 90s. They tried to emulate the populists of their day in their industry, when that's not what they did best.

Why am I mentioning apple?

Because against all odds, apple found its way again and came back - and found that their original essence could get them back into their highly respected and quite nicely profitable niche and they even could become the number one popular choice in another field.

Here's to hoping that Slashdot can do the same, because I miss Slashdot without its original essence.

Re:Battery Replacement Service

[RexRhino]

Other brands offer batteries that can be replaced by the user!

Re:Battery Replacement Service

[jdbartlett]

On the contrary: the most expensive iPod, the 80 GB 20 hour model, costs $350. The battery replacement service is $65 or free if your iPod is within warranty period (one year).

Most other manufacturers of comparably sized digital music players have only a 90 day warranty period and a $30-$50 cost for battery replacement. For $15 more per battery replacement (a rare occurrence), I could get my preferred product.

I do indeed rock.

Can that be true?

[tkrotchko]

"What it *doesn't* let you play is older DRM-protected WMA files such as those downloaded from Yahoo Music Unlimited or Rhapsody."

Isn't this a huge mistake? Isn't the biggest drawback of DRM that you are locked into a specific implementation? That people are worried that the songs they've "purchased" will turn out to be useless next year? This seems to confirm people's worst fears that MS will obsolete their entire song collection just because it's more profitable to do so.

I can't imagine anyone dumb enough to buy another WMA/DRM file after this. Usually MS doesn't make these kind of ridiculous mistakes.

plenty of DRM in iPod

[oohshiny]

There are a lot of legitimate criticisms of the iPod, but the DRM one I don't particularly understand. Okay, so the iPod supports DRM. It doesn't require it.

DRM probably has driven some key aspects of the design of iPod. For example, the fact that the iPod doesn't present its contents as a file system, like many other MP3 players do, is probably due to DRM. The fact that it's hard to get music off the device is also driven by DRM concerns. Likewise, the fact that the iPod does not support syncing to multiple machines well is probably influenced by DRM. Lack of iTunes support for third party MP3 players, and lack of third party support for iPod is another consequence.

Getting MP3 files off an iPod is not hard

[LKM]

The fact that it's hard to get music off the device is also driven by DRM concerns

That may sound a bit harsh, but it's only hard if you're a moron. Seriously, if you know a small bit about the Terminal, you don't even need any kind of third-party app to copy MP3 files from an iPod. It's all there as plain old files, just inside invisible (to the Finder, that is) folders. It's not hard at all.

Yeah, it's not as easy as it should be, although it has got nothing to do with DRM - in fact, you can copy DRM'd files off an iPod through iTunes if the "other" computer is allowed to read these files - the copy prevention only applies to non-DRM'd files.