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iPod Killers For the Holidays
An anonymous reader writes, "MP3 Newswire has an excellent rundown of 29 new digital portables for the upcoming season. From the article:
'We have run the iPod Killers for Christmas/Summer series since 2004. In that time we [have] reported on 149 portable players and NOT one iPod killer from the bunch. That said, [this time] we may actually have a couple of genuine challengers to Apple. This holiday season will see Microsoft pump tens-of-millions of dollars to hawk their new Zune portable, and SanDisk's 8GB e280 flash unit is compelling high-end users. Both can realistically grab double-digit market share from the iPod... Whether they do or not waits to be seen.' The article also makes a good case as to why the Sony PSP should be included in market figures for digital media portables."
It looks like an amazing product compared to the video ipod of today. The battery life alone is enough to make me want to toss my ipod down the stairs. I wish I had known more about it before purchasing the apple brand. Oh well, I suppose I'll have to deal with my awesome 6 hour battery life for audio and 1.5 hour life for video. At least I have my video ipod running linux? If only that counted for something.
Does it vibrate to the beat?
and instantly thought that Santa just delivered a sleigh full of Sony batteries to the iPod factory.
Nobody gets to call something an iPod killer until it, you know, kills some iPods.
"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to do it by not dying." -Woody Allen
I don't think anything that i've seen really has the power to kill the iPod, or even in any way harm the iPod. Sure SanDisk has an 8 GB model. But I just checked the Apple site, and they have an 8GB model for the same price as sandisk. The Zune does look kind of interesting. It has a nice price point for the features, but I don't really see it being an iPod killer. Where do you buy videos to play on it? Nobody knows, but everybody knows you can buy videos for the iPod from iTunes. Same goes for songs. Although it's nice to see a couple of real competitors, I don't think either of these will take top spot.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The PSP is a digital media platform for the simple reason it was basically built for it. It has a bigger screen then most devices, and it has games on it as a bonus. I purchased one and have used it quite a bit in the 2 monthes I've had it. Probably 90 percent of the usage is with anime eps that I convert myself, or Mp3s.
The biggest problem with the article is thr's little data on price ranges for some objects. If the Ipod killer is stylish but costs 1000 dollars, what's the use? On the other hand, if it's 100 bucks and looks like crap (those football helmets for most people) who cares what size the ram is?
The Ipod is stylish, "inexpensive" but with a good sized ram. Now however they have made them more expensive then they should be but still easy to use. Competitors go for so many markets but they fail to miss the reason why the ipod is the killer is because it's a status symbol as well as a mp3 player, and it's easy to use (supposidly)
I do like the iPod's size but my primary use would be in the car or visiting a friends house, or my bedroom for that matter (much lighter than a laptop). I guess if you were walking around a campus or just plain need something that will comfortably fit in your pocket the iPod or similar product is for you.
Anyone been to a Walmart/Target/Best Buy/Circuit City/Fry's/Apple Store lately? Notice the insane amount of accessories available for the iPod? Anyone notice that more and more car manufacturers are including ports or docks for iPods in their cars?
I'm not sure what the 'average' consumer is thinking about when purchasing a digital music player, but to know that there are a gazillion after-market items I can get for an iPod is somewhat comforting. Plus, the ubiquitity of the iPod means millions of websites devoted to tips, info, hacks, etc. for the iPod. And don't forget the 'cool' factor (which is hard to put into words).
Do not get me wrong. I have a couple of issues with the iPod. I used to own a Minidisc player (EXCELLENT hardware, TERRIBLE software). It had swappable, rechargeable, gumstick batteries. Plus, the exterior didn't scratch easily. And the battery life was incredible.
But come on, iPods are INSANELY easy to dump music to. I don't even use iTunes and it's still insanely easy. Drag and drop will always be the best way for us geeks to get our music on these things, but the ease of use, the ubiquitity of accessories and information, and, finally, the cool factor will make it very hard for any other player to make strong inroads into the market.
[Setting: the Slashdot editors sit around a meeting room] ... Killer.' ... there's something fresh and new with the word 'killer.' Print it, push out the plum.
CmdrTaco: Ok, it's Saturday night and anyone with a life is out doing stuff. But we need more material to keep our ad revenue coming in.
*Everyone nods*
CmdrTaco: So what have you got?
kdawson: KILLER!
CmdrTaco: Quiet, kdawson, Zonk is speaking.
Zonk: Well, I could write in as an anonymous reader and we could talk about MP3 players. The kids love those, don't they?
kdawson: KILLER!
CmdrTaco: Kdawson, I don't want to have to warn you again. I love it, Zonk. But what will we title it?
Zonk: How about 'Some More Electronics for You to Buy.'
CmdrTaco: Nah, not enough edge, anyone else? kdawson, do you have something constructive to suggest?
kdawson: Yeah, 'The Killer Devices that Kill iPods in the Killing Fields for the Killing Season
CmdrTaco: You may have something there, kdawson
kdawson: Killer.
My work here is dung.
I blame violent video games. It's a well-known fact that technology reporters are all obsessed with GTA.
I own both a PSP and iPod.
Unless Sony comes out with something similar to iTunes... the PSP is little more than a novelty music player. It's much larger than the iPod, more expensive (when you add a good sized memory card) doesn't hold as much music, doesn't have a music store, doesn't have the market share [must I go on?].
I could buy a nice 2GB iPod mini for $149... or hundreds more for a PSP with similar storage.
In my case, I purchased both... because they both have their areas where they excel. The iPod for portable music, the PSP for portable gaming.
Are these going to be iPod killers or more along the lines of those henchmen sent to kill James Bond? The iPod's still going strong after years of predictions and they're still making Bond movies. On a more serious note, why is everyone so obsessed with making an iPod killer? How about just making a damn good MP3/music player? When companies become so obsessed with killing the iPod, they will inevitably try to imitate it and box in their own thinking. Maybe the iPod isn't the thing to focus on at all.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Find a refurbished iRiver ihp-140 or H340.
Install Rockbox.
Load up with (FLAC, SHN, MPC, WAVPACK, OGG, MP3, M4A) and enjoy lossless playback with pure-integer decoders and a really nice DAC to boot
Oh, and the iHP-140 has an optical output which is _very_ useful if you have digital inputs on a custom DAC or amp.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The writer (Richard Menta) has a well-known bias for PSP. For example:
PSP is the most user-hostile portable device out there, complete with awful, proprietary technologies usually found in Sony products. That's the reason why DS/Lite is eating Sony's lunch. The market even rejected PSP on its own turf.
Plugging PSP into the iPod competitor column is disingenuous. My cellphone can play MP3s too, I don't see it on there.
Calling a product an "e280" is completely uninteresting and stumbles at the first step of competing with iPod. "I bought an MP3 player." "Oh, which ipod?" "Not an ipod, an ... er... e280" "a what?"
Of course you can't have brand product recognition immediately, but you can't build it with just another anonymous product number, swimming in a sea of technology with similar numbers.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
I am so sick of seeing that phrase attached to devices that never make any sizable impact on iPod marketshare and many times cease to exist themselves first.
There needs to be some kind of rule that until a new media player has been shown to effect the marketshare of the iPod at least 20% (I know it sounds high but we are using the term "killer" here) it cannot be mentioned in any press release or news story that contains the phrase "iPod killer" unless the sentence is "iPod killer strikes again, slaughtering another competitor!"
So, is there any non-emotional reason why I should bother to listen to these guys?
Back in 2004, after extensive research, I finally moved my large MP3 collection off of my linux server and on to my first MP3 player, an iPod, and it was a slam dunk. For me and my music collection it's all about iTunes, and back in 2004 the only alternative was WMP 9, which I'm sure we can all agree is complete junk, so the choice then was obvious. And since then Apple has continually updated and improved both the desktop and client software, while adding new features such as podcasts. As I said, for 2004 it was an absolute slam dunk.
Since then there have been lots of attempts to entice me to upgrade my old iPod; features like Photos, Video, FM Tuners, etc., from either Apple, 3rd parties, and other MP3 manufacturers, all of which have meant nothing to me. I've been quite determined to keep the old iPod until its hard drive dies. With all of the new competition on the market, including Microsoft's Zune, it's ironic that the only new product I've seen that has made me even consider upgrading is iTunes 7, with its gapless playback and additional playlist fields (Skip Count, Last Skipped, etc.) which aren't available on the old 3G iPod.
The other MP3 manufacturers have added lots of technical features to complete against the iPod, but in my opinion Apple still does the best job of addressing the needs of the real music fan.
ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
What Apple has done, and is continuing to do, is forcing the "content producers" to stop the chain of forced redundacy. My father replaced discs with 8 tracks with LPs. I replaced tapes with LPs with CDs. Now with music in MP3 form, will I every have to buy an old song again. No. Do I think it was easy for Apple to convince the music label to give up this cash cow. No, even though the labels had little choice because it was the only way to have sales. However, Apple has done us a great favor by insisting on a reasonable price.
Now that the labels have done the hard work, all the other electronic manufacturers are on the band wagon, claiming superior products. The problem is that I buy music in WMP format, I am not any better off than just buying a CD. So I have a choice of buying a player whose songs might have a limited lifetime, or a player that will likely be supported for a long time. Face it, MS has already given up on play for sure, so how long will those songs be useful?
But music isn't really the issue. Apple is moving against the movie studios, and right now video is not even a huge issue. A good quality half hour show is going to be twice as big as a good quality copy of a CD. Other than hugely popular shows, the level of sharing of movies is not as great as music. And despite the fact that the movie studios are not a present threatened, Apple is still forcing them to make deals that will force a new model of making money, even more so than the VCR, which was a huge cash cow, and now the DVD.
And the competition is responding by making MP3 players with radios and 'wireless' sharing, even though we have been sharing "wireless" for years. Maybe if it was a HD radio I might be impressed, but style has always been secondary to content. Look around you. The 12-25 year old demographic is thinking which one of these can I get free music on. It is like the the 12-25 demographic 20 years ago, buying computers based on what had free software. One kid buys a CD, rips it to WMP, ops, can't give load it onto another play for sure player. Another kids rips the CD to ACC. No problem loading it onto many iPods, or burning it onto a CD. As the past 50 years of widely profitable Music has shown, the kids will eventually buy music. And everyone will be rich beyond belief, but the labels ignore history. Just remember how much they hated MTV, and in a large part was responsible for the lack of music on MTV, even though MTV was arguably a major player in the revitalization of music. I see the same thing with iTunes, with people buying music for the first time in years.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
You can't change the battery because adding a removable cover for it would make the iPod far larger than it currently is. Considering the 24+ hours available from a single charge on some models, and the much larger number of charge cycles available from lithium ion batteries today this becomes a moot point. You don't need to change it so don't worry about it. (This isn't the 1st generation iPod).
iTunes is a simple, easy to use interface. That said- there are third party interfaces including ones that run under Linux.
What conversion are you talking about? The iPod groks mp3 natively- it doesn't do any conversions. AAC is the format Apples sells songs from iTunes in- but that's only songs you buy from iTunes. Perhaps you are thinking of the cracked conversions Sony did with their moronic ATRAC format.
Your dragging question is the same as the iTunes question. Either use iTunes or use a third party app. I use iTunes even without an iPod. I used winamp 3 (IIRC) and never seriosuly considered winamp after that. Is iTunes perfect? Hardly- but it does the job and gives me no grief.
Looks are purely subject and up to you. That said- ever held an iPod? They feel solid. Everything about them feels right. The interface is simple, the buttons and scroll wheel are perfect, and the screen on the newest models is gorgeous. It isn't just about looking cool- they are beautifully designed, inside and out.
-sirket
The reason most portable players have bad sound quality is that they desperately need a headphone amp.
The iPod's headphone amp has a nearly flat frequency response - which is what audiophiles want. It doesn't get much better than what the iPod offers.
The iPod also has a 100db s/n ratio, higher than its competitors, and it supports lossless. What more do you want?
Yeah, I own an iPod so you could call me something of a fanboy. But a lot of people seem to be looking for alternatives when what they want is right there in front of them. It's like watching a Hitchcock film and saying "man, I wish I'd rented something more suspenseful."
I used to think along the same lines. I was planning to buy a player that supported ogg, but I never found one that I liked, and I have since given up on the ogg format. It is simply never, ever, going to be widely adopted enough for the player manufacturers to bother supporting it. Sorry.
The reasons are many and varied, but the main one is, quite simply, the problem it solves is not a problem many people actually have. Ogg was an attempt to create a compressed audio standard unencumbered by licensing, which could replace MP3. Which is all well and good, except I have never, since the day I first became aware of MP3, been unable to download a piece of free (as in beer) software which would encode MP3s for me. I have never been unable to do something with an MP3 because of the license the format is issued under. In short, MP3 is free enough for me.
If you look at the two other most widely used compressed audio formats, WMA and AAC, they both have (near) monopolies pushing them. The most popular digital audio player and online music store uses AAC. The OS preinstalled on 90+ percent of computers sold in the world ships with a media player that supports playing and ripping WMAs. Who is pushing ogg?
The market for ogg is basically limited to linux users, and most of us are using MP3 anyway. There is no reason for any company to push it, and really very little reason to use it. I know it's supposed to be highter quality, but A, I can't hear the difference, and B, why would I want a high quality compressed audio format? To play on my portable music player, which supports which formats? Oh, yeah.
*NOTE TO PEDANTS - Yes, I am aware of the difference between the ogg container format and the vorbis codec. I just can't be bothered to type ogg vorbis every time.
"I realise this is not a very popular opinion but it's the truth, and there for needs to be said" -Bill Hicks
I thought the PSP was just a portable media player. Its not like it has any games on it.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Some features that make the iPod great:
- The click wheel and the UI are well-designed
- The output quality and bundled earphones are good
- The design is classic, and it feels solid and well-made
You can't just drag files onto the ipod because it maintains a database of the songs in your collection. If you don't like iTunes, you can use a number of programs to maintain the collection, like Winamp.
A database is better than using the filesystem for your music collection because it allows you to find your songs with multiple indexes - artist, album, genre, etc. Using the filesystem, you have to pick a sorting system and stick with it - say, one folder per album. Every music player app made this decade uses a music collection database. If you haven't organized your music this way, it's your loss.
The iPod isn't cool any more than a cellphone is cool. It's just another device you carry around with you. It happens to be both a very popular device and a best of breed device. If that doesn't sit well with you, I guess that's sour grapes.
Hands in my pocket
True to an extent, but actually the iPod was really the first (and arguably only so far) to crack the effortless sync aspect of maintaining a large (multi-thousand), indexed and accessible song & spoken word library.
The fact that people still don't get this is evidenced by the frequent "but I just want to drag files to it" comments here. That works for about 20-30 songs or videos, but fails when you are managing thousands of music tracks from multiple albums, audiobooks, and syndicated podcasts and videoblogs.
As to your condescension about "average people" associating iPod with MP3 player and buying it because they don't know any better, I think you'll find most buyers of the high-end, high capacity iPods are by and large at the elite end of savvy techies. Yes, maybe the average folk are attracted by the pretty colors and dancing cartoon advertising for the mid-range models, but don't dismiss the instinctive appeal of a very well thought out design of the unit itself. Many owners I know fell in love with it as soon as they held it - the brand is not all there is.
Just an observation.
Um, I regularly fly LHR SFO. I always get 2 movies-worth out of my Ipod.
That is all.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
I strongly suspect that at this point, the iPod killer will not be an iPod-like device, but instead will be some device which will shift the paradigm.
At this point, the best contestant in the horizon seems to be the mobile phone which can play MP3s. My reasoning is as follows:
- Nowadays most people already have mobile phones.
- The cycle of replacement on mobile phones is about 3 years. Mobile phones that can play MP3s just came out.
- Carrying around just a mobile phone is always lighter than carrying around a mobile phone plus a dedicated MP3 player.
- Playing MP3s isn't such a special thing anymore. The technology is widespread and the processing power inside a mobile phone is more than enough for the task.
- Mobile phone manufacturers have an enormous amount of experience with things like saving batery power.
- The competition on making portable MP3 players with more storage has long reached the point of diminishing returns - unless you're going on vacations, carrying around weeks worth of music is of little use. One can already see the consumers changing tack by going for smaller devices which use flash memory and have less storage capacity (for example iPod Nano). This makes it easier to build MP3 playing functionality on a mobile phone with an amount of storage which is acceptable for consumers.
- Ever since the number of new mobile phone users started falling (because in some countries everybody and their cat has a mobile phone), mobile phone manufacturers have been trying to differenciate their products by adding cool new features to them. The ability to play MP3s is just another of those.
My expectation is that, slowly, as people change their old phones for newer ones, more and more people will have mobile phones that play MP3s (if it takes off like cameras on phones, people will be hard pressed to find mobile phones that don't play MP3s) and leave their dedicated MP3 players at home since there's no point in carrying around 2 devices that do the same.
Eventualy dedicated MP3 players (including iPods) will be a niche market.
Apple, apparently in a concession to the music industry, obfuscates the file names of mp3s as it transfers songs to the device. "James McMurtry--Iolanthe.mp3" will become OTKO.mp3 on the device, stored in the folder F47 (and yes, there is an F01-F46), all with the express purpose of making it difficult (though not impossible) for you to find a song and copy it back by hooking up your iPod like a hard disk.
You can get the files back onto the desktop and into a sensible naming structure quite easily using itunes. Just copy the ipod's music folder (which can be accessed if you show hidden and system files and mount the ipod as a disk drive) to the desktop, and import it into itunes, with the itunes option to reorder the library to its own format enabled. Instructions can be found here.
I once read an interview with someone who worked on the ipod (no idea where or when), who claimed that the renaming and folder structure has nothing to do with the recording industry, but rather with the limitations of the early hardware and the requirement that playlists of thousands of files "open" instantaneous. Limitating filename lengths and the number of files in a folder apparently helped, as did storing the files' information in a central database. I don't know if this is true, but it sounds reasonable.
I'd change that around a bit..
1. Does not require Itunes or any other proprietary software; should show up as a drive letter in Windows XP and you can move songs that way.
2. Menu scrolls FAST, allows for browsing other songs while current one is playing..
3. Supports all song formats and allows for flash upgrade to support more.. ie.. Ogg Vorbis
4. It should be at least as tough as a cell phone.
5. Wait.. why the fvck isn't my mp3 player built in to my cell phone? How about we just do it that way. Cell phones are now mp3 and video players.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
The technical problem isn't gathering metadata on the player, there are perl programs to build an iPod track database without iTunes. The problem is with the user having to select, drag, and drop 3,000 songs to fill up a 20GB player.
It works when the player can hold your entire music collection, you can just drag&drop everything at once. It breaks down when you want to fill a 20GB player from a 32GB music collection. Building an iTunes playlist for all tracks rated 3 stars or more and syncing it to an iPod takes about 5 mouse clicks. Putting the same set of songs onto a drag&drop player requires spending hours of quality time with Windows Explorer, Finder, or "man rsync".
0 1 - just my two bits
You actually think the battery lasts as long as the manufacturers claim?
Normally no. That's why so many people are a fan of Apple, because when tested the battery life is actually in line with published figures. It's refreshing to see honesty in tech specs.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have precisely one criteria that has never been met by ANY DAP... NORMAL BATTERIES
I don't want crappy, low capacity, hard to change batteries. I want to swap a few AAAs (or AA) in 10 seconds, and have my DAP working non-stop. No need to be plugged-in to a cord for hours every day. Not to mention that battery capacity is continually increasing, and CD players that had a 10 hour battery life some 10 years ago, now have about 30 hours thanks to newer rechargable batteries.
Just add that simple feature to a couple DAPs, and you'll have something that might actually appeal to people like me who wouldn't ever consider an iPod. Meanwhile, I'm sticking with my MP3 CD player that gets 50+ hours on a pair of rechargable AAs.
My other criteria are large (40GB+) hard drive and FLAC/Musepack/Vorbis playback, and any rockbox-supported players will handle those easily.
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