New iPod Owner Onslaught Overwhelms iTunes

Billosaur writes "In the post-Christmas rush to power up and use their new iPods, an onslaught of downloaders brought iTunes to its knees, according to CNN. Monday and Tuesday saw users posting message after message about slow downloads and the iTunes site denying them entry. The heavy traffic was apparently more than the system could bear, what with the large numbers of people receiving iPods and iTunes gift cards. Perhaps Apple was underestimating just how successful they were going to be?"

Comments

And strangely,

[Hawthorne01]

The Microsoft Zune store was working just fine.

Huh.

Re:And strangely,

[sirket]

I just spit soda all over my keyboard. Damn you! :)

Re:And strangely,

[__aaclcg7560]

Which explains why the Zune support people were able to play Age of Empires. A single visitor could've crashed the server for both the store and AOE.

Re:And strangely,

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny. It wasn't before.

Re:And strangely,

[Tim Browse]

Thanks for explaining the joke to us. Do you have a card, so we can call you the next time a joke comes up?

Re:And strangely,

[fermion]

What kind of alternative reality have I arrived in where /. uses the words 'Microsoft' and 'Works' in the same sentence. Should I prepare for the endtime, or is this just a random aberration?

Re:And strangely,

[jacksonj04]

Microsoft Works doesn't?

Re:And strangely,

[Anonymous Coward]

I just squirt soda all over my keyboard. Damn you! :)

There, fixed your verb use for you. :)

Re:And strangely,

[JackieBrown]

No it doesn't work

Re:And strangely,

[DarkMantle]

I think iTunes uses Mac servers. While Microsoft is using *nix

Re:And strangely,

[samkass]

So... they both use UNIX?

Re:And strangely,

[Foofoobar]

When the joke impaired cannot understand sarcasm, when irony is completely missed.... one man will be there. Me. Duh.

Oh goody!

[$RANDOMLUSER]

It's September on USENET all over again.

Re:Oh goody!

[Overzeetop]

I don't get it. What happend with the usenet in September?

Re:Oh goody!

[croddy]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

Re:Oh goody!

[BRSQUIRRL]

Closed-captioning for the 'Net history-impaired. :)

Re:Oh goody!

[jam244]

It's September on USENET all over again.

Me too!!!!!

Re:Oh goody!

[prizrak]

I realize parent poster tried to be funny, but for those who don't remember: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

Re:Oh goody!

[kalidasa]

September will NEVER end on USENET.

Re:Oh goody!

[spatrick_123]

Me too!

Re:Oh goody!

[maeka]

We all know that top-posting is the only correct way.

It's September on USENET all over again.

Me too!!!!!

Re:Oh goody!

[WilliamSChips]

Actually, Billie Joe Armstrong woke up on USENET when AOL decided to drop Usenet support. There was even a Slashdot article about it. But I'm too lazy to look for it.

Re:Oh goody!

[Wow8agger]

Quick followup question to this - the Greenday song "Wake me up when September Ends". Am I the only one who wondered if they were referencing usenet? =)

-matt

Re:Oh goody!

[Bertie]

You know, when I first heard that song, I thought it might have been some clever allegorical commentary on the artist's fears about the effect on society of the neverending war on terror. Then I remembered it was Green Day.

iDoted

[Lucan Varo]

iTunes got slashdoted, iDoted.

So what?

[notque]

So they underestimated how successful they'd be, and will quickly throw money at the problem and correct the issue.

I don't see this as positive, or negative. It happened, if they fix it quickly we'll all move on.

Re:So what?

[kfg]

So they underestimated how successful they'd be. . .

Maybe they decided to take that report that Forrester pulled out of its ass seriously:

http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/06/12/12/0357223.s html

Or maybe not.

KFG

Re:So what?

[neoform]

Maybe so, but this definitely shows that those rumors of apple's iTune sales being way down were total crap.

Re:So what?

[dangitman]

DMC-locked crap!

Run-DMC are not crap!

I helped with this

[sgt.greywar]

2/3rds of the gifts I bought this year were iPods and iTunes music gift cards. I think I am not alone in this and the traffic shutdown on iTunes shows it. Apple has done a great job with their service and I don't mind paying for it. My wife did have to wait until yesterday to buy the rest of her Tunes though since the site was so hammered.

Re:I helped with this

[iocat]

Please see post above about "normal people" -- aka those not on slashdot, wondering why everyone isn't building robots.

Anyway, even as I sit here, wondering if it's nice enough outside to test this robot I built yesterday, I have iTunes running. I dislike DRM music, but still appreciate the odd iTunes gift card, because IT'S FREE. And if I want to buy, say, Surrender, by Cheap Trick, to add to a mix, I don't really feel like going to Best Buy, buying a full CD of music I don't really want/need, and waiting in line with a bunch of dirty humans to pay for it. And I know once I burn the mix, the music is 'freed' anyway.

Re:I helped with this

[needacoolnickname]

I'm guessing that someone who might have thought of getting you a gift, you already gave this rant to and they decided just to get you some nice socks.

Shit. It's a gift. Say thank you and smile.

Re:I helped with this

[Angostura]

Why not get them something useful like a Best Buy gift card so at least they can go pick up the CDs at the store

Because they have to go to the store? Because they have to pick up an entire CD, rather than an individual track?

Re:I helped with this

[sgt.greywar]

Good grief, iTunes sounds great to anyone not looking at the music through an o-scop and bitching about the degraded waveform. Basically if it is even somewhat close to the CD and better than the radio people like being able to pay .99 ofr one song they want as opposed to $15-17 for a CD with 2 songs they liked. For people with iPod's the DRM isn't an issue either. I bet your family *loves* buying gifts for a bitchy old curmudgeon.

Re:I helped with this

[punxking]

Add to the reasons of CDs with only 2 good songs and having to go to the store the fact that the CD selection at Best Buy is horrifically pathetic. If you don't want the latest flavor of the minute hit songs, good luck finding it at Best Buy.

Re:I helped with this

[geekoid]

You are an ass and you are giving UNIX a bad reputation.
Immediatly change your logon and then think hard about the idea of hitting someone just because they give you a GIFT.

You ungratefull S.O.B.

1) No one,not even you, can tell the difference without looking at high end equipment.

2) "Epensive" is determined by the market, not by your opinion. YOU may find them to expensive, but clearly the market doesn't it.

3) No music you buy from anywhere is yours. The media is, and the ability to listen to that media any way you want is, but the content is not your, and never has been in the history of music.

4) How much would you spend at a music store if you wanted only 1 track that is on 10 different CDs? You would have to pay 100 bucks to get the home made compilation. 25-50 bucks if you could get it as used music.

Re:I helped with this

[prichardson]

A BestBuy gift card? For music!? What the FUCK are you smoking? The only music that BestBuy carries is the crap played over ClearChannel radio, soundtracks, and overly sentimental 'classical' music.

What about buying someone a CD? Gift cards are a copout.

Re:I helped with this

[ColdWetDog]

If someone bought me an iTunes gift card I'd slap them in the head with it

Mad about all of those lumps of coal you got this year, eh? Don't go looking a gift iPod in the USB dock.

Re:I helped with this

[MightyYar]

Oh, Best Buy is a joy this time of year... go out into the cold, drive to the nearest Best Buy, find a place to park, find 1 or maybe 2 CDs that you can buy with your $20 gift card, wait in the line, go back out into the cold, drive home, rip the CD, and load it onto your MP3 player. ...OR...

From your La-Z-Boy, click on the song you want to download. Repeat 20 times. Load it onto your MP3 player.

Not to mention the fact that - depending on your musical tastes - you are likely to get mostly crap on the two albums that you just bought. For the same $20, you'll probably get 4 or 5 times the listen-able music.

I like going into a cool record shop as much as the next guy, but sadly they are almost extinct. The internet is the new record shop.

Re:I helped with this

[Kesh]

Y'know, you could just offer to sell the gift card to some kid on the local campus, a relative or *gasp* a friend, right? Then you'd have the cash to spend however you want.

Also, those socks have terrible DRM. I mean, you can only use them on your feet! Talk about restricted use. I mean, maybe you can use them as a rag, or a hand puppet, but you have to do some serious hacking to get any other serious use out of them. ;)

Re:I helped with this

[mackyrae]

If an artist only writes one or two good songs for every 15 they release, they suck. Why are you buying their shit anyway? Besides, if a cd is $12 at the store, and has $15 tracks, it's $15 on iTunes and therefore more expensive than getting it at Best Buy (where cds are often $9.99 for 15 tracks).

Now, memory, that's something you need to buy online. I got a $50 Best Buy card and figured I'd add $50 cash and get a gig of memory for my laptop. I saw the memory I need for $90 online, but BB charges $180! Double the price...not good. Their cds are rather cheap though.

Re:I helped with this

[identity0]

Professor Morris? Is that you?!?!

So, how's that homebrew Perl-on-ASCII music format working out? And do you still use your backyard whiskey still?

Re:I helped with this

[MightyYar]

Consider yourself very luck if you only like songs by artists that don't suck. Much or most of my collection is by artists that tend to put out a whole decent album, but perhaps as much as 1/3 is comprised of artists that have between 1 and 3 good songs on the whole album. And I'd wager that the general population has a bigger appetite for the one-hit-wonder than I do.

I don't use iTunes much myself, instead choosing to use allofmp3 for my RIAA shopping and CDs for my independent artist shopping.

As someone else pointed out, the album price at iTunes is almost always $10, no matter how many songs. If allofmp3 weren't around, I'd probably spend more on iTunes (but I'd still be avoiding RIAA tracks).

All I'm saying is that I'd happily accept an iTunes gift card... send 'em this way :)

Re:I helped with this

[DragonWriter]

If someone bought me an iTunes gift card I'd slap them in the head with it.

Most people I know would only buy an iTunes gift card for someone they know uses iTMS.

Presumably, your friends know about your distaste for iTMS. What are you going nuts about?

I mean, seriously, if someone posted that most of the gifts they bought for people were, say, Garth Brooks CDs, I wouldn't go berserk about how I hate Garth Brooks and would be angry if someone bought me one of his CDs as a gift, because, you know, I'd just assume that someone who said that had lots of friends that they knew wanted Garth Brooks CDs.

It's fantastic that they let you burn a copy of YOUR music that you purchased to a regular audio CD, but the fact of the matter is that what you're burning is sub-CD-quality sound and yet costs the same as the CD would if you had bought it in the store. $10-$12 is the going rate for popular CDs in brick and mortar shops.

Why would you assume that a CD burned out of iTunes collection would contain an identical set of songs to any "popular CD" available in brick and mortar shops?

Re:I helped with this

[remove office]

I'm guessing that someone who might have thought of getting you a gift, you already gave this rant to and they decided just to get you some nice socks.

You mean like these?

Re:I helped with this

[larry bagina]

If an artist only writes one or two good songs for every 15 they release, they suck. Why are you buying their shit anyway?

1. Greatest hits/box sets: These often include a couple new/unreleased songs. If you are a fan and own all the original songs, it's silly to buy a new CD for 2 new songs.
2. Compilation CDs of various artists, soundtracks, etc. (again, new songs from a variety of musicians, you might only be interested in a few of the songs).
3. re-releases of old material: In a grasp for even more money, records from the 60s and 70s are being repackaged with outtakes.
4. Singles: Some bands release CD singles backed with outtakes or live recordings.
5. iTunes exclusives: They have a fair amount of stuff you can't even get on CD
6. Special Guests: a lot of rap/hip hop music (if you can call it that) features other people.
7. Remixes: house/techno/trance music...

Re:I helped with this

[mackyrae]

I buy those things. I am a huge AFI fan, so I own all of their albums on both CD and vinyl. I have a CD EP that has 3 tracks which match the cd and one track that is found there and on a few compilations (I have one of those compilations too). There's always a hidden track on the cd which isn't on the record, and there's usually one or two songs on the record that aren't on the cd (Sing the Sorrow is the only one where the US cd and vinyl match). I have 3 copies of one of their cds. I have a red Japanese one, a silver US (half of the first pressing), and a black one (limited to 5000). I still need to get a UK copy of that. I have 2 vinyl singles from them and 6 cd singles. If I only want music from one artist on a compilation, I buy that artist's albums instead of getting a cd that's 99% crap. It just makes more sense that way. The iTunes exclusives are the only thing I miss out on, and I bet they'll end up as "special tracks" on compilations anyway. That's what usually happens. They promote a compilation by saying "and LOOK! you get THIS bonus track!"

I would argue that if you're a fan, you're more likely to shell out the cash for the collector's value.

Re:I helped with this

[Lars T.]

If an artist only writes one or two good songs for every 15 they release, they suck. Why are you buying their shit anyway? So what makes you think you can get a CD full of good songs at Best Buy?

Re:I helped with this

[mackyrae]

Because they have somewhere in the range of 5000 (and that's a conservative estimate...how many are in a 100 x 100 ft area?) artists in the stores plus a crapload more available online. There's got to be something good in there.

Re:I helped with this

[Anonymous McCartneyf]

I used to find the CD selection at Best Buy decent: not as good as the specialized record stores that tended to get priced out of the market or the multimedia bookstores, but better than Wal*Mart or Target.
That was a few years ago, though. The selection (at least for the sort of music I like) isn't what it used to be, though, or wasn't last time I was there. And the problem with shopping at Best Buy is that it involves shopping at Best Buy. I hate stores that look and feel like warehouses, and I used to get headaches from their background music.

Re:I helped with this

[Anonymous McCartneyf]

How cheap CDs are at Best Buy, or most other mass-market stores, depends on which CD you're trying to get. They have CDs for $9.99. They have CDs for $13.99. They have CDs for $17.99. And if you are trying to get a set with two CDs, you will often have to pay $29.99 or more, esp. if they use the double-thick jewel cases. (That last sort of pricing makes "piracy" tempting.)
If all normal albums at iTunes are $9.99, then people will get albums there simply because they know how much it'll cost without leaving the house...

Re:I helped with this

[mackyrae]

I've gotten 2-disc sets at Tower Records (which is an amazingly overpriced place) before. Never really seen them for $29.99. Usually around $25.

Re:I helped with this

[Anonymous McCartneyf]

The prices in the record sections of bookstores get more outrageous than that. I've never seen $9.99 albums at any of them, and that would be where I've seen most of the $35 albums.
The price of a 2-disc set is partly dependent on the packaging. If the case of the 2-disc set is no thicker than a normal jewel case, or is cardboard, then it rarely costs much more than $20. But some 2-disc sets come in cases that are as thick as two normal jewel cases (or thicker), and the RIAA seems to think that those can sell for twice as much as single-CD sets.

Re:First Post!

[baryon351]

Similar here. It'd be easier to count the number of relatives who *didn't* get iPods as christmas presents. That'd be me, my mother, and my two year old nephew. Everyone else closely related that I can think of has a new nano, shuffle or iPod, and they're anywhere from 8 to 71 years old.

DDOS'ed by their own marketing success!

[mmell]

That's hilarious!

Somehow, I doubt that Apple feels too badly about this; and I'm sure they're scaling up their server farm to accomodate this, their most recent success.

Re:DDOS'ed by their own marketing success!

[kha0z]

I doubt they are doing too much about it. A large spike in consumer demand due to high holiday season sales can be expected but not entirely predicted. After a few appologies to the angry consumers, the demand will return to its usual flow (perhaps a bit higher due to new users) so scaling will probably be kept to keep up with the new user base increase. Although, I think this will help them better predict consumer demand spikes on their network better in the upcoming holidays.

Don't get me wrong. I love my iPod and I am an avid Apple user. However, it doesn't make sense to massively scale a network or server farm for unusual seasonal spikes. Then the rest of the year you have idle network and server equipment.

In the end, Apple made a pretty penny! Which I am glad to see since I am an enthusiast of their products.

Re:First Post!

[Praedon]

Is the ipod still the best portable multimedia player out there, or is there something else that can seriously give them a run for their money?

Re:First Post!

[CrazyTalk]

And I GAVE them as gifts (Christmas party grab bag, etc.), so I guess I contributed to the mess.

Doting on the iPod

[mr_matticus]

Actually, most iPod owners could easily have a bumper sticker or wear a T-shirt that says "iDoted" with regard to the little music machines.

Re:Doting on the iPod

[CelticWhisper]

There's an Illinois Department Of Transportation joke in there somewhere for those bold enough to seek it out.

Re:Doting on the iPod

[Lucan Varo]

No love for obscure humor. from Dictionary.com: dote 2. to show a decline of mental faculties, esp. associated with old age. Just for everybody who didn't get the original joke.

CNN confirms it!

[fatboy]

CNN confirms it! iTunes is dieing!

I didn't notice

[93 Escort Wagon]

Well, I was using iTunes last night and it was as responsive as ever. Ripped a CD, listened to a podcast...

Oh, wait, did you mean the iTunes Music Store?

brought to you by Mr. Pedantic(TM)

Re:I didn't notice

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just called "iTunes Store" now, Mr. Pedantic.

Re:Apple and iPod...

[CrazyTalk]

Mod parent down as troll!

Sales were supposed to be weak weren't they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quote: "Perhaps Apple was underestimating just how successful they were going to be?"

I thought the press was saying the iPod wave had crested and the sales were on a downward spiral....
What if Apple believed those reports and scaled back iTunes?... Naaw not likely. But it is nice to see Apple get suprised once in a while.

Re:Apple and iPod...

[geekboybt]

Best competition? There's stuff from Sandisk and Creative, as well as Microsoft's Zune. But none of them have the marketshare of the iPod, or the vast amount of accessories. Whether or not the store is "as populated with songs as they say it is" is really a matter of opinion. It suits my needs, but mine may not be the same as yours. You're free to install iTunes and browse the store anonymously (without creating an account) for free. You can even preview the 30 second clips without an account, though the system will nag you every 4th or 5th preview to log in. If money's a factor, you can always go the route I did - go to the Apple Store online and look in their refurb section. Everything on there is backed by the same warranty as the new stuff. They used to have (and may still have) first gen (black/white) 2Gb nanos for $99, for example.

It's Win/Win for Apple

[mrshermanoaks]

Apple sells a ton of iPods, and then gets press about how many iPods they sell. You can't just do a news story about Apple selling a lot of iPods for the holidays, that's the story we hear every year. You need a situation where they sell so many damn iPods that their service is overwhelmed. That's a story. And you're further reinforcing the idea that "everyone" owns an iPod and nobody owns a Zune. Yeah, it was a pain for people for a day or so. If I read a story about how many iPods were returned because people had trouble with the iTMS, that's something else. But do you think those iPods went back? Doubt it.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[mongoose(!no)]

What if Apple throttled down their servers to make news about this...

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

I'm eyeing the Zune. So far, every single detractor I have heard about it is a software problem. Lot of problems, to be sure, but most of them amount to "not an iPod" or "not what I wish it was". Very few of the complaints are in any way reflective of an inability to do the job: play music and video in a portable format.

Compare iPod: can't change the battery, case easily scratched, screen not large and bright enough. Those are hardware. Once you have those problems, you have to just get a different player. However, the software is rock-solid.

So of the two things you could get right, Microsoft chose to focus on the physical device that needs to be shipped and examined and repaired, while Apple chose to focus on the readily copied and distributed software that would otherwise need to be downloaded from the web.

Overall, I think Zune made the best choices of where to fail. Both sides are failing a little, but the Zune doesn't have any failures that can't be fixed free of charge later on down the line.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[c00rdb]

Compare Zune: Bigger screen with the exact same resolution, bulkier to carry, less efficient interface (deemed by most), no options other than color for the hardware....

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[plopez]

You get my 'tinfoil hat' award for this one. More likely, like all corps., Apple just went cheap on thier hosting. Or if they internally host, went cheap on setting up thier systems. They are a large corporation and therefore clumbsy and clueless from time-to-time (though not as bad as some, e.g. HP or MS who make 'F-troop'
look downright organized).

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[UnknowingFool]

Very few of the complaints are in any way reflective of an inability to do the job: play music and video in a portable format.

True. But I think some of the problems that Microsoft was also marketing. In order to beat Apple they may have hyped certain features that did not turn as people expected. i.e. Zune has wireless. Technically true but when you use "wireless" most people expected full 802.11 connection not Zune to Zune limited sharing. Every company does some hyping on features in marketing, but to me, every feature that was touted had some sort of caveat to it.

can't change the battery, case easily scratched, screen not large and bright enough.

The first one is also a problem on the Zune. The last one is a function of competition. As I recall, Apple is on version 5.5 of the iPod. Video was introduced in version 5. If MS didn't come out with a screen just as large, they would already be behind. The next version of iPod might have a larger screen and thus MS would be behind the competition.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[c00rdb]

In "no options other than color", I was referring to the fact that you can get an iPod nano, iPod shuffle, or iPod video. Also the fact that you can get iPods with different hard drive capacities. What form factors or storage capacities can you choose from when you pick out a Zune exactly?? Oh yeah and btw you can get an iPod nanos in many different colors and the original iPod in black or white (red special edition sometimes).

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[EastCoastSurfer]

I finally played with a Zune in BB the other day. It was a display model and could have been busted by someone, but I was able to play a video on it. The interface buttons felt like cheap plastic, especially the wheel thing they have on it. The form factor I also found poor. It's thick and boxy. The bigger screen seemed okay, but the brightness didn't look any different than the ipod right next to it. I guess if you really wanted a portable video player the zune might* be a better option. I couldn't see wearing something like that to the gym or carrying it around just for music though.

As far as scratching goes, I'm pretty sure anyone who gets any of these players usually gets some sort of case with it. So that seems like a useless point.

Most are saying Zune 1.0 lost this round, but that's typical MS fashion. It'll be interesting to see Zune 2.0.

*I also watched a fast action skate video on the zune and (I'm guessing b/c the screen is the same res, but bigger?) I could see more pixelation than I do while watching similar speed surf videos, etc... on the ipod.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

What I was referring to is the fact that you couldn't do that when the iPod first came out. The iPod came in one style, one size, and one color. The Zune comes in three colors. That's more than Apple had.

Another comment mentions that the iPod is on v5.5 or something like that, while the Zune is on 1.0, which is a major point when I'm considering the two. The Zune also went from concept to shelf in eight months, which is amazingly fast and undoubtedly involved a few cut corners - so I'm much more forgiving of things that can be fixed later. I'm not as forgiving of hardware problems that mean "buy a new one after we fix it".

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[badasscat]

Bigger screen is better. Same resolution is the same. Verdict: Zune.

Bulkier to carry because of bigger screen. Verdict: no points awarded.

You've obviously already made up your mind, because these two arguments make no logical sense.

The only thing a bigger screen with the same resolution lets you do is look at images from further away. So instead of holding the stupid thing at arm's length, now you can hold it at *more* than arm's length. Or, alternatively, maybe you can get a tiny bit bigger image (at the same resolution) if your habit is to press your player up to your nose. But either way, it has never been an advantage to throw a bigger screen in a portable device with the same resolution - how many 17" laptops do you see running at 1024x768? If you're going to increase the bulk of the device, you'd better have a good reason for it.

It's the same logic that determines the proper TV size for a room. If you've already got the right size for your room, there's no point at all in buying a bigger screen with the same resolution. You're not going to see any more detail in the image. You'd need to go up in resolution at the same time you go up in size for your purchase to have any practical effect other than taking up extra space and draining your wallet.

The logical choice in any portable device is to have the highest resolution screen possible in the smallest, lightest form factor. You can make the screen as "big" (relative to your vision) as you want just by how you hold it; what you can't do is adjust the weight, size or balance of the device. Those are chosen for you before you buy.

Buy an iPod and enjoy it. Or, buy a Zune and try to convince yourself that you made the right choice.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

How do they make no logical sense?

1. People complained that the screen on the iPod was too small.
2. Therefore, Microsoft made the Zune screen bigger. Point.
3. A bigger screen is more bulky, so the Zune must be more bulky than the iPod. Awarding a point to the iPod for this would be ridiculous. That's like saying "it's bigger, which is good... but it's also bigger, which is bad."

> You can make the screen as "big" (relative to your vision)
> as you want just by how you hold it

How you hold a mobile device is part of the design. The screen must be the right size when you hold it the right way.

> Buy an iPod and enjoy it.

I already said I was eyeing the Zune. What part of that did you think meant "I'm still making up my mind"? Apple screwed up a bunch of things Microsoft didn't. That doesn't mean Microsoft didn't screw up, but I don't really mind the things they screwed up. No "Plays For Sure" support? It was a stupid program, so I didn't waste my money on it. Three days or three plays? Don't care! Restrictive DRM? Apple isn't any better. Podcasts? WTF do I want those for? I don't want to listen to some loser NPR wannabe whining about "Pro-Choice Vegans for Jesus" not getting enough respect.

I'm not the one trying to change YOUR mind. Think what you want. There's plenty of room for you to listen to your little faggoty white iPod while I pack a big manly brown Zune. And when I run across you at a diner or something, I'll say...

Wait for it...

MINE'S BIGGER THAN YOURS!

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[WiseWeasel]

For a portable device, bigger is worse. You can't put it in your pocket as easily, or go jogging with it as easily, and it's heavier and more obtrusive. If the screen is the same resolution, then you don't gain much with the extra bit of size, as you're just scaling the pixels up. If it was a stationary device, then I would agree with you that a larger screen is an advantage. For a portable device, however, it is a disadvantage for a majority of potential customers. If it's not as easy to carry around, then people will be less likely to use it. I personally went with the nano, as I don't care about watching video on a little pocket device, and the size and durability makes it perfect for use on the go. I wouldn't even consider purchasing either the Zune or the Video iPod. As soon as you start valuing built-in screen size (beyond a practical minimum), you're getting away from a small portable device, and into a no-man's land of devices that are too large to carry with you, but too small for stationary use. This is the exact same reason UMPCs (like the Origami) and PDAs fail to gain any market traction.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[c00rdb]

Who cares how long it's been on the market? That's like saying "Oh I'll buy this TV because it's first gen and it's real good for a first-gen tv, rather than buying a far superior model that took 5 revisions to get there." Your reasoning makes no sense from a consumer POV. Oh yeah, and of course they COULD, for instance, open up the wireless so there's no limits and you can share anything, that's not a hardware problem, but I'll bet you they won't.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[torqer]

There are indeed 3 colours of iPods. Black, white, and red http://www.apple.com/ipodnano/red/

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[Neil Hodges]

Compare iPod: can't change the battery . . .

I thought you couldn't change the battery on the Zune.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

So you are comparing the 2006 Zune with the 2001 iPod?

Oooookay, yeah, I guess that would even the field.

And the Zune is not a version 1.0 product - it is based on the Toshiba mp3 player. Toshiba has been making mp3 players for a long time, so I really think that you should compare the current generation of devices. "Apples to apples" if you will.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[mgv]

So of the two things you could get right, Microsoft chose to focus on the physical device that needs to be shipped and examined and repaired, while Apple chose to focus on the readily copied and distributed software that would otherwise need to be downloaded from the web.

Overall, I think Zune made the best choices of where to fail. Both sides are failing a little, but the Zune doesn't have any failures that can't be fixed free of charge later on down the line.

Right. Like windows XP, it doesn't have any failures that cant be fixed by a software upgrade. Its called Vista. Let me know when microsoft sends you a free copy.

If you seriously think that they will fix software problems for free, you should go have a talk with all the people who bought into "plays for sure". They got a deal worse than software upgrade. It was forced obsolescence of the worst kind. The software upgrade that those people deserve would be to remove the DRM off their music so that they can at least move that onto another player before their hardware dies. Let me know when microsoft offers that.

But I can see that you really believe that microsoft will look after you. After all, they are the ones fighting the RIAA to keep the cost of a song down and there is no way that they would just donate money to them now, like for every player that is sold.

Michael

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[gordgekko]

bulkier to carry

God, I wish this would die. The Zune is marginally larger and heavier than the latest iPods. If the Zune is a huge brick, that means every previous iPod was a monster as well.

And before someone resorts to that tired accusation of "shill", I own a 5.5G 80GB iPod and a Mac (along with two Windows XP machines).

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[DragonWriter]

I'm eyeing the Zune. So far, every single detractor I have heard about it is a software problem. Lot of problems, to be sure, but most of them amount to "not an iPod" or "not what I wish it was". Very few of the complaints are in any way reflective of an inability to do the job: play music and video in a portable format.

"Not what I wish it was" (especially if a competing product is what the customer wishes it was) is a complaint reflective of an inability to do "the job".

Compare iPod: can't change the battery, case easily scratched, screen not large and bright enough.

Personally, I think the iPod screen is large enough for anything where I wouldn't want something much bigger than a handheld device (like a real TV or at least my laptop), the battery thing is something of a problem, though I'm not sure its that big of a dela, and I wouldn't keep a protable player out of a carrying case, anyhow, so the scratching deal is literally a nonissue.

So of the two things you could get right, Microsoft chose to focus on the physical device that needs to be shipped and examined and repaired

The Zune is considerably bulkier, the video iPod is a much more comfortable size for pocket or belt clip, IMO. That's a pretty big deal in a portable player for me, and definitely a hardware issue.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[gordgekko]

The Zune is considerably bulkier, the video iPod is a much more comfortable size for pocket or belt clip, IMO.

Considerably larger? My God, everything up to the 3G iPods must have been cinder blocks then. The Zune is marginally larger than the new 5/5.5G iPods. If you notice a difference then you need to hit the gym my friend.

- Proud iPod/Mac owner.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[DragonWriter]

Considerably larger? My God, everything up to the 3G iPods must have been cinder blocks then.

Comparatively, sure.

I'm not choosing between buying a 3G or earlier iPod and a Zune. I'm choosing between a current iPod and a Zune. (Well, no, I'm not, my wife and I just bought iPods. But the point remains; noncurrent hardware is not the competition for the Zune.)

The Zune is marginally larger than the new 5/5.5G iPods.

Correct.

If you notice a difference then you need to hit the gym my friend.

Well, sure, if I lost a little bit of weight in my waist, I wouldn't be bugged as much by larger belt-clip devices (though larger pocket devices would still be exactly as much of an annoyance as they are now, and the iPod I have is about as big as I'd like a pocket device to be.)

Yeah, maybe I'm pickier than the people that bought 1G iPods. So what? Is Microsoft only hoping to sell to people who would have bought 1G iPods but haven't noticed all the players introduced since?

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[gordgekko]

I'm not arguing your primary point, that the current generation of iPods is smaller than the Zune. I own a 5.5G 80GB iPod and when I had a chance to compare, it was smaller...but not so much that I wouldn't have switched to the Zune had I thought it had advantages that the iPod didn't.

And to be perfectly frank, the iPod's advantages are getting slimmer every day. Other than the wheel, I don't think it's head and shoulders above the Zune or Creative's offerings. But that's neither here nor there since we were talking about the size of the offerings.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[nolife]

If the screen is the same resolution, then you don't gain much with the extra bit of size, as you're just scaling the pixels up.

Come on. That is absolutely the lamest excuse I have ever heard for comparing video screen sizes. I know you are trying to prove a point but think about what you just stated. I do not know many people that only a 9in television in their homes (NTSC is the same resolution on a 9in TV as it is on a 36 inch TV, 1080 is the same 1080 on every size HDTV). My new cell phone has a screen that is about 0.3 inches in diagonal larger then my old one. It makes a huge difference. Some people value a slightly larger screen for watching video instead of a slightly smaller unit. I use a PSP for video and music on the go. If I want something small and do not want to lug around the PSP, I use my old RCA Lyra MP3 player I got on clearance for $30 a few years ago. To each his own.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[JayWilmont]

"That's like saying "it's bigger, which is good... but it's also bigger, which is bad." How do you not realise that every (design) decision has both advantages AND disadvantages?

There's plenty of room for you to listen to your little faggoty white iPod while I pack a big manly brown Zune. Hopefully for you, the 'manliness' of the Zune will be able to compensate for the crudeness of your remarks.

Podcasts? WTF do I want those for? Btw, there are some great podcasts on this thing called 'etiquette'.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

> How do you not realise that every (design)
> decision has both advantages AND disadvantages?

I do realise that. So you decide which is more important: to address a complaint, or to avoid what might be another complaint. I value action more than inaction, so I chose to assign the point for the larger screen rather than remove the point for making the entire device bigger.

If you choose the other direction, then the iPod wins 2-1 over the Zune, but you're retarded.

> Hopefully for you, the 'manliness' of the Zune
> will be able to compensate for the crudeness of
> your remarks.

I'm not compensating for anything. I'm ADVERTISING.

See this big brown media player? I laid a turd this big yesterday.

And it uses an iPod! LOLOLOLOL, you suck.

> there are some great podcasts on this thing
> called 'etiquette'

I don't think that runs on Windows.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

> a complaint reflective of an inability to do "the job".

Sometimes, yes. But there's a point where a wish and reality diverge. I'd like my media player to detect the song running through my head, and either find and play that song (or, lacking appropriate license, a similar one) if I like it, or find and play a song that will get it OUT of my head if I don't. But I can't legitimately expect any media player to do that, so inability to do the job isn't a valid criticism of either media player.

What I'm hearing as criticism of the Zune, where it applies to hardware, is either "I really wanted an iPod" or "I want something that's impossible with modern technology". The software and firmware criticism, however, is frequently valid and sensible; I just don't much mind a problem that can be fixed with a download.

> the video iPod is a much more comfortable size for
> pocket or belt clip, IMO.

I think that's really the biggest criticism that can be leveled at the Zune hardware with any real legitimacy. But this, too, depends - I, for one, don't expect to have this on my belt. I expect to carry it from one place to another in short bursts; I'll pick it up in the morning and take it to the car, where it sits on the seat. I'll take it into work and set it on my desk. I'll take it back to the car on my way home. And I might set it on a shelf in the garage while I work out. But I'm not one to go gallivanting all over creation, so I don't need it to be particularly portable. And since I'm a sizeable guy, my pockets tend to be bigger, so I can fit larger hardware into them.

So for traipsing to and from an elevator, a big boxy thing in my pocket is no big deal. If I was a jogger - whole different story.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

> Who cares how long it's been on the market?

Um... I do. Wasn't that obvious?

There are three components to any hardware device. Things that are software and can be cheaply and easily replaced at any time, peripheral capabilities that are hardware but designed to be replaced easily (though not cheaply), and mainline capabilities that are so tightly integrated any change in them requires buying a new device.

If the mainline capabilities are good enough, the rest are fixable. Bad peripherals are certainly commonplace for the iPod; you can't open a catalog without seeing some sort of dumbass bullshit for your iPod. "Waterproof iPod toaster with built-in fog machine!" (Someone reading this will go search for that because he actually wants it. Frighteningly enough, he might find one.) But bad software, firmware, and web infrastructure can be fixed right under my feet at low or no cost to me.

This assumes, of course, that you trust Microsoft to fix them. I do. You might not.

> Oh yeah, and of course they COULD, for instance, open up
> the wireless so there's no limits and you can share
> anything, that's not a hardware problem

No, it's a legal problem. I've wrestled with that question a little, and I came up with a few things.

1. You have to limit the DRM-protected stuff from the Zune web store. Contracts and whatnot.
2. Non-DRM media are still PROBABLY copyrighted material, because pirates vastly outnumber musicians.
3. If you really want it to be free, put a URL on it where the full non-DRM file can be downloaded.

So it looks like the 3/3 plan is really not something that needs to be opened up. You might not LIKE copyright (I certainly don't), but it's still the law.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

The Toshiba player is *also* better than an iPod.

Happy?

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

> Let me know when microsoft sends you a free copy.

Already got one. Five, actually, but the first four were technically betas. Microsoft sends me a LOT of free software.

> you should go have a talk with all the people who
> bought into "plays for sure".

Nondisclosure sucks. Suffice to say I've worked with several companies in the program, and the problems weren't coming out of Microsoft.

> I can see that you really believe that microsoft
> will look after you.

They already do. I'm very happy with the products and services Microsoft has provided me in the past, and continues to provide me to this day. I trust them to make decisions that are ultimately in my best interest over the long run.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

Except that it is only if you care about video. And if you care about video, there are better players on the market than Zune/Toshiba. In other words, the Zune is bigger than the competing music players and has a tiny screen compared to video players. Its one compelling feature is wireless, and they crippled it enough to make it uninteresting.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

Only if you don't think Microsoft is serious about this product. That happens a lot.

Novell didn't think Microsoft was serious about networking. Oops. But Microsoft's early network support was shit. Now it has no real competition.

WordPerfect didn't think Microsoft was serious about word processing. Oops. But Word for Windows 1.0 was shit. Now it has no real competition.

Lotus didn't think Microsoft was serious about spreadsheets. Oops. But Excel 1.0 was shit. Now it has no real competition.

Netscape didn't think Microsoft was serious about web servers. Oops. But IIS 1.0 was shit. Now it has no real competition.

History suggests that the iPod groupies are very, very wrong. You can whinge all you want about unfair competition, but losers always whinge that the competition was unfair.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

I have a feeling that we are talking about completely different things. I am only saying that the current iPod is better for most people than the current Zune, because it is smaller with better battery life for the same capacity. Zune has a really cool feature that would excuse the size, WiFi, that is unfortunately hobbled.

You seem to be talking about whether Microsoft will eventually dominate the market. That I cannot knowledgeably speculate on, but I very much doubt it. They can't really leverage their Windows monopoly in the MP3 player market the same way they have with software. iPods work with Windows just fine, and their built in Windows Media Player does not have any compelling advantages over iTunes. iTunes comes on the install disk along with your iPod, so everyone with an iPod will have it installed and it doesn't really matter if they build Zune-compatible software into the operating system.

In any case, I don't really care. The next time I need a new MP3 player, I'll pick one that suits my needs best. Last time it was an iPod.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

> I have a feeling that we are talking about completely
> different things. I am only saying that the current
> iPod is better for most people than the current Zune,

I am primarily concerned about which is better for ME.

You're probably more concerned about which is better for YOU.

Most people, they can make up their own minds.

All I'm trying to do here is explain why I made the choice I did. I don't know why people feel so compelled to argue with me about it. If you don't like my decision, piss off. I don't know you. Go buy an iPod. I don't care.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

You are being quite rude.

Let's go back to your original post, shall we?

Bigger screen is better. Same resolution is the same. Verdict: Zune. If you can see the individual pixels, which you can on both the Zune and the iPod from normal viewing distance, then it's a wash. If you have poor eyesight or are older, then the Zune would offer an advantage.

No options other than color: the iPod didn't even start with a color option. Verdict: Zune. What? You are penalizing the iPod for a choice it didn't have 4 years ago? The iPod is available in more colors than the Zune, I believe.

Winner: Zune, beating iPod 2-1. Even by your own criteria, that statement is false. Not to mention that you had to resort to scoring a point in Zune's favor for something as subjective as color. How about overall aesthetic design? Shouldn't that count as much as color?

But don't take my word for it - look at the sales numbers. I'm glad that you are happy with your Zune. Actually, I'm not, because your kind of being a jerk towards me for no reason. We're just talking about stupid gadgets - no reason to get personal.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

> You are being quite rude.

When I say that I personally would prefer a Zune, that's not rude. What's rude is when people start jumping around like fucking monkeys demanding to know why I made that decision, and then try to argue with me when I explain myself.

> no reason to get personal

This started out personal, you ignorant fucktard. This was all about ME thinking that I would prefer a Zune. Got a problem with that? Fuck all the way off!

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

I see that you are still taking this personally.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

Let's go back to my original post, shall we? The REAL one?

"I'm eyeing the Zune. [...] Overall, I think Zune made the best choices of where to fail."

And then, several posts later, here you come complaining that I'm comparing today's Zune with the original iPod. You complain that it's an unfair comparison, and that I'm not even doing it right, and that I am being rude.

But this is MY decision about MY priorities!

Apple FUCKED UP when they released the initial iPod. In fact, they frequently fuck up. They release hardware with major problems, then say "oops" and fix it in the next version... which previous owners have to buy all over again! How do they get away with this? I don't trust a company that does this. I especially don't trust a company that does this, yet still has legions of weirdo cultists who rail against any criticism of the Most Holy. That's just creepy.

So my decision isn't so much about a product as it is about a company. I don't trust Apple, because they clearly can't be trusted. I don't trust the various Plays-For-Sure hardware partners, because I've seen the underbelly of that program and it's pretty rotten. Which leaves Microsoft, and there's no detractor anywhere remotely close to the massive stench coming off the competition.

Now go drink your Kool-Aid.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

But the original Toshiba was fucked-up, too. It encrypted every song that you threw on it, effectively making the transfer speed equivalent to USB 1.1 speeds. It took forever and a day to update the music on it.

For its day, the original iPod was simpler, slimmer, and more elegant than anything else out there with similar capacity.

I am not criticizing your choice to buy a Zune - it seems to be a very capable player, and you are willing to put up with the larger size and weaker battery to gain the screen real estate. I was simply pointing out that, for most people, the iPod seems to be a better fit. You were trying to compare them using "objective" criteria, which in my opinion was a flawed analysis... that's all. Yes, I have an iPod, but I'm no Jim Jones cultist - it just happens to be a nice MP3 player... they got the engineering trade-offs right for what I was shopping for.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

> But the original Toshiba was fucked-up, too.

The original Toshiba was not a Zune. The original iPod, however, was and is still an iPod.

> I am not criticizing your choice to buy a Zune

That's true. You're criticising:

- the Zune itself
- the hardware predecessor of the Zune
- the suitability of a Zune for others
- the criteria I've used to choose the Zune
- my etiquette

Which, in the end, really doesn't OBJECTIVELY differ from criticising my choice. So pardon me if I still think you're a retarded fuckwit.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

Well, I certainly don't need any criteria to rate your etiquette.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

This is Slashdot. What did you expect?

Moron.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

Whatever, all you had to say was "I bought my Zune when I worked at Microsoft."

Nice astroturfing. I can't believe I actually gave you any time at all. Maybe you should find an Apple employee on here and have it out.

And you had the nerve to say I was the one drinking Kool-Aid, while you are the one who has been assimilated.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

And all you had to say was "do you work at Microsoft?", but you didn't.

It shouldn't matter where I work. It does, of course, so I don't volunteer the information. But it only matters because people are small-minded and ignorant. I have never concealed my work as a contractor at Microsoft. If you ask the question, that's because it matters to you - demonstrating that you're small-minded and ignorant. If you go searching for the information on your own, it's because you're small-minded and ignorant AND you have no respect for people's privacy.

Now explain to the good people here how I conspired to mislead them by promoting the Zune as something I personally liked while using my real name. Seriously, I'd like to hear this one myself.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

Not everyone is going to get suspicious and Google "CDarklock Microsoft" like I did.

It's called disclosure. It makes you dishonest. It matters where you work for a reason, because it reveals your bias. It also explains how you can get so worked up over a discussion about a freakin' MP3 player. I'd hate to enter a political discussion with you. Christ, this doesn't even matter!

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

> It's called disclosure.

No, it's not. Disclosure is for material facts that directly impinge on your ability to offer an impartial analysis. I am not offering an impartial analysis; I am offering a personal opinion. It is therefore expected to be subjective, and to incorporate bias from any and all sources.

> it reveals your bias

You mean like the bias that led you to search for my connection to Microsoft?

> It also explains how you can get so worked up

You mean, if I didn't work at Microsoft, you wouldn't be such a retarded fuckwit?

You loser. You were so stupidly incapable of believing I could prefer the Zune to the iPod, you went searching for a conspiracy. You are such a complete jackass.

And I'm not "worked up". I think this is FUN. I think you're FUNNY. Because you don't even realise how STUPID you look.

> I'd hate to enter a political discussion with you.

You sure would. Because then you'd have to look even STUPIDER.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

Yes, yes, it's a real stretch to think that someone who works at Microsoft might defend the Zune.

What planet are you from?

I never disputed that the Zune has a bigger screen, nor that someone might prefer it for video. Where are you getting that I'm such an iPod fanboy? I bought one a long time ago, when video wasn't even an option and the only other options were the giant Jukebox and the crippled non-Microsoft branded Toshiba. If I bought one today, I'd probably pick a Nano or one of the Sandisk flash players - I still don't care about video.

What I was calling you out on was your completely bogus analysis that used completely subjective criteria in some really lame attempt to look impartial. It was such a bad analysis that you actually had to compare the present-day Zune to the 1st generation iPod to make the Zune come out on top.

Then you start calling everyone a fuckwit who disagrees with you. Very mature, very nice reflection of your employer.

But yes, I'm the one who looks stupid. Honest to God, it's just sheer morbid curiosity that even has me still putting up with your continuous flame war baiting. Everyone else gave up on you after the first reply.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

> some really lame attempt to look impartial

Where did I ever claim to be making an impartial analysis? This is my personal opinion of the Zune based on what matters to me. I've said that several times. I've even outright stated that if I were a jogger, I would not make the same choice.

> Then you start calling everyone a fuckwit

No, if you check, you'll find that this is a title I've reserved exclusively for you.

And it's RETARDED fuckwit.

> very nice reflection of your employer

I'm not speaking on behalf of my employer. I'm speaking for myself and nobody else. Your inability to understand this is not my problem.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

> very nice reflection of your employer.

You know, I just wanted to revisit this.

If you work at Microsoft, YOU CANNOT WIN.

If you speak clearly and effectively and offend nobody, you're a corporate marketroid with no ideas of your own.

If you just say what you think without concern or regard for the party line, anyone you offend will blame your employer anyway.

And if you don't offend anyone, you can't possibly be saying anything of substance.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

Or, you could accept that your opinion on matters in which you have a conflict of interest is not very useful to the others trying to have an intelligent discussion.

You don't see many Fords in the Chevy parking lot, and I wouldn't expect to find WordPerfect or MacOS on your computer. There's nothing wrong with that - I have my own biases. But when a Ford employee shows up on a forum dissing Chevys, that's not very interesting, now is it?

Also, it is extremely hard to take anything you say seriously when you seem so unbalanced. All I did was criticize your analysis of the relative merits of the Zune vs. the iPod - as did several other people. In fact, I did it more politely than the other people, who simply openly mocked you. If you didn't want an open discussion, then why on earth did you post to a public forum instead of your blog?

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

> matters in which you have a conflict of interest

What conflict?

If the Zune fails miserably, guess what happens to me? Nothing.

If the Zune becomes the market leader, guess what happens to me? You got it - NOTHING.

I don't get anything if you buy a Zune. I don't lose anything if you don't. Your decision is completely irrelevant to me. Where exactly is there a conflict?

> All I did was criticize your analysis

But your criticism was retarded. I made an analysis of the things that mattered to me, and you came up to complain that those aren't the things that matter to other people. Guess what? I don't care. I don't choose things based on what other people want, I choose them based on what I want. You simply don't have any rational basis to disagree.

But, being a fuckwit, you just can't quite grasp this concept. You have completely missed the point. You started to get the idea earlier, when you noted we seem to be arguing entirely different things, but then you got retarded again. And here you are being ESPECIALLY retarded:

> If you didn't want an open discussion, then why on earth
> did you post to a public forum instead of your blog?

My blog IS a public forum, idiot. And if I didn't want an open discussion, I wouldn't still be having one.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

Your reasoning didn't, and still doesn't make any logical sense.

One of the reasons that you listed for buying a Zune was that it came in more colors than the original generation iPod. That does not make any sense, not on any level, no matter how much of a fuckwit I am. You also claimed that the Zune was a 1.0 product. It is not, as it is a re-badged version of the newest Toshiba player, which has been around almost as long as the iPod. That you took such offense to these two benign points and had to resort to vulgarities is actually what tipped me off that you must be a shill, or at least work for Microsoft.

You seem to be taking offense that I would say you are biased. Of course you are biased - we all are. It's just human nature. However, it is important to disclose a known bias, and you should certainly be disclosing that you work for Microsoft in any discussion about their products. There are many reasons, but mostly if you don't it makes it look like you are hiding something. If a congressman who sat on a panel overseeing farm subsidies was taking money from the farmers' lobby, you'd want to know about that, right? You are proclaiming a love for Microsoft's product while taking money from them... that's pretty much the definition of a conflict of interest, and it certainly should prevent you from presenting yourself as a neutral party.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

> That does not make any sense, not on any level

It makes sense to me. It doesn't have to make sense to you.

> That you took such offense [...] is actually what tipped me
> off that you must be a shill, or at least work for Microsoft.

Hey, if I didn't work for Microsoft, what exactly are the chances that you could tell me how to make my decisions?

NONE, you RETARDED FUCKWIT.

I don't need to consider sales figures when I buy something. The very idea that you can criticise my decision because I didn't make it the way you would is simply beyond reason.

> You seem to be taking offense that I would say you are biased

No, I'm taking offense that you don't understand the difference between a Congressman taking money from the industry he is charged to regulate, and an employee expressing a personal preference for a product his company makes.

> it certainly should prevent you from presenting yourself as a
> neutral party.

Yeah, a neutral party who can't comment at length on "Plays For Sure" because of confidentiality, and who has a page and a half of Google search results admitting he works at Microsoft. Not to mention massive criticisms of open source dating back to 1993.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

I don't need to consider sales figures when I buy something. True, but in an earlier post you said that you were taking future sales figures, of future Zunes, into account. Personally, I would only take market share into account if I planned on buying accessories, which I rarely do. For a Zune, market share is more important because of the WiFi feature.

The very idea that you can criticise my decision because I didn't make it the way you would is simply beyond reason. I didn't criticize your decision. I criticized your logic. If you wanted to buy a Zune because the moon was aligned with Venus, that's fine with me. You could even "just like it". Just don't expect everyone to be on board with that sort of logic on a tech board where the relative merits of gadgets are discussed all the time.

No, I'm taking offense that you don't understand the difference between a Congressman taking money from the industry he is charged to regulate, and an employee expressing a personal preference for a product his company makes. Um, no offense meant? I was using an extreme example to illustrate my point. If you don't like that example, that is fine. Here's another one. You're on a car board and you see a post about the new Toyota Camry. Everyone is talking about the Camry, and this one guy starts talking about the Chevy Malibu and why he chose that over the Camry. Later you find out that this guy was a Chevy employee just chiming in because the topic made a passing reference to the Malibu.

For God's sake, you haven't even bought a Zune! That makes it even worse - like you are pumping up a product for your company that even you won't spend your own money on.

Yeah, a neutral party who can't comment at length on "Plays For Sure" because of confidentiality, and who has a page and a half of Google search results admitting he works at Microsoft. Not to mention massive criticisms of open source dating back to 1993. And yet you continue to insist that you have no bias!

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

> in an earlier post you said that you were taking
> future sales figures, of future Zunes, into account

No, I said I was taking future SUPPORT into account. I believe Microsoft will fix the problems with their software and give me the fixed versions for free. Apple, on the other hand, has a history of having HARDWARE problems which are "fixed" by releasing a whole new product... and as a valued customer, you get to pay full retail price for it.

Amusingly, that policy has the interesting side effect of inflating sales figures. Perhaps I'm not the one who needs to take stock of his decision process.

> Just don't expect everyone to be on board with that
> sort of logic

Give me any rational and logical reason why the iPod is objectively better than the Zune, and I'll tell you exactly why that rational and logical reason either doesn't apply to my situation or isn't important to me.

There is no rational and logical reason why I should buy an iPod. There may be such a reason why YOU should buy an iPod, but don't confuse that with objective reality.

> I was using an extreme example to illustrate my point.

No, you were using the WRONG example. And now you're using another one! I've been here on Slashdot for years. I've only been at Microsoft for nine months - and that as a contractor. So what you're actually finding out is that since joining the community, a member has gone to work at Chevrolet. Is it in any way irrational to presume that he may POSSIBLY have a greater awareness of and respect for Chevrolet as a company? Would it be fair to claim that simply by taking this job, he has made himself unreliable as a source?

I don't think so. I think you have to identify a marked alteration in behavior before you can suggest that someone no longer deserves his reputation. I think before you start crying "conspiracy" and "astroturfing", you have a responsibility to run those claims through a few sanity checks.

> you haven't even bought a Zune!

Since I explicitly said I was "eyeing" the Zune, I fail to see how anyone was misled.

> And yet you continue to insist that you have no bias!

You are, as I have said repeatedly, a retarded fuckwit.

I AM NOT REQUIRED TO BE UNBIASED. That's not a denial of bias. It's a denial that bias is relevant. As you've said, EVERYONE is biased. The problem here is that YOU DON'T LIKE MY BIAS, so you want me to compensate for it by APPLYING A BIAS YOU LIKE BETTER.

This amounts to saying "I don't like your opinion, please have a different one". That is simply not rational. You demand reason and logic when they suit you, then ignore them when they don't.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

No, I said I was taking future SUPPORT into account. I believe Microsoft will fix the problems with their software and give me the fixed versions for free. Apple, on the other hand, has a history of having HARDWARE problems which are "fixed" by releasing a whole new product... and as a valued customer, you get to pay full retail price for it. That's not how I read this post. But you wrote it, so I'll have to take your word for it.

Give me any rational and logical reason why the iPod is objectively better than the Zune, and I'll tell you exactly why that rational and logical reason either doesn't apply to my situation or isn't important to me. I wouldn't dream of dissuading you from your mythical Zune purchase. I was not arguing which player was better for you, just that your logic was rubbish. You were comparing current model Zunes to past-model iPods. Also, you seemed to be under the impression that the Zune was an all-new product, when in fact it a re-badged Toshiba - so I corrected you. You seem to have interpreted this as a "don't buy a Zune" recommendation, when in fact I've agreed that a Zune is a good choice for someone who needs a bigger screen than the iPod has, even if the resolution is no better.

I AM NOT REQUIRED TO BE UNBIASED. That's not a denial of bias. It's a denial that bias is relevant. As you've said, EVERYONE is biased. The problem here is that YOU DON'T LIKE MY BIAS, so you want me to compensate for it by APPLYING A BIAS YOU LIKE BETTER. At least you finally admit bias. Sheesh. You seem more balanced to me now. I couldn't understand how someone smart enough to be a contract programmer for Microsoft could argue that he wasn't biased.

This amounts to saying "I don't like your opinion, please have a different one". That is simply not rational. You demand reason and logic when they suit you, then ignore them when they don't. I'm here because I like hearing different opinions from my own. In fact, the more different it is from mine, the more interested I am because I want to learn other ways of thinking about the same thing. I criticized you for being rude to me, and for hiding an obvious bias - not because you have a different opinion. I just wanted to point out what I perceived as some flaws in the logic from your original post, and have a reasonable discussion about the gadget in question.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

> That's not how I read this post.

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you made an honest mistake. Instead, it seems you've just completely invented a "sales" connection for a post that doesn't say anything at all about sales. Sorry for giving you so much credit there.

> You were comparing current model Zunes to past-model iPods

That's about the decisions made by the company that launched the product. Apple made certain decisions when they launched the iPod. Microsoft made certain decisions when they launched the Zune. I'm comparing the choices each company made. Apple chose to do the best job on the software; Microsoft chose to do the best job on the hardware. I like Microsoft's choice better.

> At least you finally admit bias.

Yes, I did in fact finally use the word "bias". You win. Of course, I was always offering an opinion, and bias is inherent in any opinion, and I never denied bias, and I outright stated that I wasn't making an impartial analysis. You just seem to have particular trouble connecting the dots if I don't say the exact word you want.

Which, in case you forgot, is because you're a retarded fuckwit.

> I criticized you for being rude to me,

And then you ran a search, where you undoubtedly discovered that I am universally rude to the stupid. No bias there.

> and for hiding an obvious bias

Where did I hide it again? On my public blog under my own name? Man! However did you think of THAT?!

> I just wanted to point out what I perceived as
> some flaws in the logic

It wasn't more than two replies into that discussion when I told you that I only care about what matters to me, not what matters to you, and that other people should make up their own minds.

Which is fundamentally an admission of bias before you ever made the accusation. You simply weren't paying attention.

How rude.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

Apple made certain decisions when they launched the iPod. Microsoft made certain decisions when they launched the Zune. I'm comparing the choices each company made. Apple chose to do the best job on the software; Microsoft chose to do the best job on the hardware. I like Microsoft's choice better. That's great, but even if Apple made the wrong choice for the 1st generation, their current product is solid. I don't know what design choice you are talking about, since I have the 1st generation iPod. It still works, though I'm on the second battery.

Where did I hide it again? People shouldn't have to Google to find out you work for MS when you are pimping their products in an otherwise unrelated discussion.

It wasn't more than two replies into that discussion when I told you that I only care about what matters to me, not what matters to you [...] That's quite mature of you. More like, you saw an opportunity to pimp the Zune when it was mentioned in passing.

And then you ran a search, where you undoubtedly discovered that I am universally rude to the stupid. No bias there. Right, like I really went through and read all of your old posts. Glad to hear that you consider yourself rude. On that, we agree.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

> I don't know what design choice you are talking about

Did I say "design choice"? No! I said "choice". Stop making shit up.

> People shouldn't have to Google to find out you work for MS

If you don't announce where you work, why should I? I'm using my real name, and I didn't click "Post Anonymously". Why isn't that good enough? Do you normally take the advice of complete strangers without checking them out? Because that's stupid. If you're stupid, that's not my problem.

> More like, you saw an opportunity to pimp the Zune

Don't try to guess why I do things. The confirmation hypothesis prevents you from being even CLOSE to correct.

> like I really went through and read all of your old posts

You searched for information and didn't read it? Wow. That's really stupid. Why am I not surprised?

Oh, yeah, because you're a retarded fuckwit.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

Did I say "design choice"? No! I said "choice". Alrighty... so what "choice" are you talking about?

If you don't announce where you work, why should I? When the topic turns to a discussion about the relative merits of robotic assembly equipment in the semiconductor industry, I'll let you know. It's not my fault that you happen to like to post on topics that involve the company that you work for. In fact, you started this one.

Do you normally take the advice of complete strangers without checking them out? The advice of one complete stranger? No. However, you can easily fact check. A complete stranger might just give you some insight that you didn't have. Also, on Slashdot, people will attack a weak argument or illogical statement, as others and I did to you. Occasionally, one actually learns something from a discussion on Slashdot.

You searched for information and didn't read it? Right, I'm sure that you read every search result that comes up when you Google. I Googled "cdarklock microsoft" and immediately found what I suspected that I would find - why would I keep reading? Unless you are sleeping with Paris Hilton or Linus Torvalds, I doubt it would be juicy enough to entertain.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

> so what "choice" are you talking about?

How many times do I have to say it? Apple chose to cut corners on the hardware, and Microsoft chose to cut corners on the software. Neither of these was a design decision; both were marketing decisions. It's inevitable that corners are cut, and it's inevitable that someone ends up complaining because the corner you chose to cut was important to them.

It's arguable (I'd even argue it myself) that until Apple's iTunes was available, the software was the most critical point. We had MP3 players before the iPod; they all sucked, on hardware and software alike, because nobody saw how you could possibly make money off digital music. Apple was the first company to successfully demonstrate that there was a revenue stream in this game, and without that, you couldn't get the attention of the music industry... and that's where we got the selection that caught the attention of the consumer.

> It's not my fault that you happen to like to post on
> topics that involve the company that you work for.

It's not my fault that Microsoft produces so many best-of-breed products and services. We should all be so lucky; it's not like any of us are in this industry to make crap, or to work our eight hours and go home. If we're reading Slashdot, we actually give a shit. I've been here since long before I ever worked at Microsoft, and I'll be here regardless.

But if I have to announce to everyone that I work at Microsoft, I will never be able to have a rational discussion here. Every time I say "hey, there's a flaw in this idea" people will jump up and say "you're just trying to shut down the project because Microsoft is afraid of competition". It gives everyone this big dumbass excuse to claim that whatever I say doesn't matter, and there's no arguing with those people.

> However, you can easily fact check

You didn't check the facts. You checked A fact. It was not the right fact.

The fact you WANTED to check was whether I go around promoting Microsoft's products and services over alternatives when an objectively superior product or service clearly exists. Since I have never stopped recommending that any and all public web servers use a LAMP stack, and that if someone offers to sell you the "Web Edition" of Windows Server you should run away screaming, this is clearly not the fact.

Another fact you might want to check is whether my recommendations of products and services have changed since taking a position at Microsoft. Another is whether those recommendations changed when I became a Microsoft partner. And another is whether I've deliberately ignored flaws in Microsoft products. These are all good facts to check, and you can either go check them, or take my word that none of them are facts. I don't care which.

I would, however, prefer that you use Windows Live Search instead of Google. Not because it's better, but just because I work at Microsoft. If there's no real objective reason to use one product over the other, HELL YES my recommendation is to use the Microsoft product. I'm honest, not stupid.

> I Googled "cdarklock microsoft" and immediately found
> what I suspected that I would find - why would I keep
> reading?

Because working at Microsoft doesn't make me untrustworthy any more than NOT working here would make me trustworthy. The fundamental question you are asking is not about where I work, it is about whether I say what I really think or just what I've been told to think. Google won't tell you that; you have to do some reading.

You ARE aware that guilt by association is a logical fallacy, right? I mean, as long as we're complaining about a lack of logic.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

Amusingly, Arnold Kling has a couple interesting bits in EconLog today about bias and avoiding truth. If you're interested.

In this case, my opinion doesn't happen to match yours. You don't think I came to my decision "properly", so you're avoiding the truth (I can form opinions however the hell I want) by looking for bias. It's a classic "Type M Argument" - focused on motives rather than consequences.

Regardless of my logic, or lack thereof, I'm making a "Type C Argument" (focused on the consequences). I believe that selecting the Zune has preferable results to selecting the iPod, because I'm examining the consequences of choosing a player that receives inadequate or undesirable support from the company that produces it.

Whether you agree that this is an important consideration is completely irrelevant to the type of argument it comprises. The consequences of choosing the wrong color media player are infinitesimal, while the consequences of a too-small screen are real medical problems. I'm still talking consequences, while the opposition is reduced to talking motives.

Arnold Kling does not work for or at Microsoft.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

In this case, my opinion doesn't happen to match yours. Agreed.

You don't think I came to my decision "properly" No, I took issue with the logic that you used in your post.

, so you're avoiding the truth (I can form opinions however the hell I want) by looking for bias. I have no problem with you forming opinions however the hell you want, and far be it for me to tell you how to form opinions. However, when you post what others and I deem as illogical steps to a conclusion on a message board, what do you expect? If we disagree, you want us to just read it, shrug, and go away? Then why did you post? To get a bunch of "me too!" affirmations? Once you move the decision-making process from your head to a public forum, it's fair game.

It's a classic "Type M Argument" - focused on motives rather than consequences. I'll agree that ever since I found out about your MS employment, I am guilty of engaging in an "Type M Argument". I feel like I was driven to that, though. It's hard to stick to a Type C Argument when the obscenities start to fly.

Regardless of my logic, or lack thereof, I'm making a "Type C Argument" (focused on the consequences). Really? Calling me names is part of a Type C Argument? The post you directed me to says:

"Type M arguments deny the legitimacy of one's opponents to even state their case. Type M arguments do not give rise to constructive discussion. They are almost impossible to test empirically."

So was calling me stupid part of your plan to make my argument sound legitimate? Was calling me a fuckwit your attempt to engage in "constructive discussion"? I think that we were both engaging in a "Type M argument", and I would very much like to return to a "Type C Argument".

I'm still not sure where you see Apple skimping on hardware on the iPod. I've always found mine to be over engineered. Very sturdy - almost heavy, with a polished metal base and thick acrylic top. As a mechanical engineer, my first thoughts when I got it were that they purposely seemed to choose aesthetics over some very simple cost-savings. It's held up pretty well over the years, but the battery is too hard for most people to replace themselves and the click wheel periodically has to be taken apart and cleaned. My understanding is that the former problem is even worse on the newer models, but the latter has been addressed. The inside is also fairly impressive (though I'm not an EE). All of the connections are pretty well strain-relieved, and they seem to use expensive flex cables and connectors where they probably don't need to. They may do this for ease of refurbishing, but I can only speculate. The newer models (from my friends' experiences) seem to choke on certain song files and lock up. I don't know if this is software or hardware, since the songs are decoded in hardware, but you would hope that a properly-designed mp3 player wouldn't choke on a bad file.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

> I took issue with the logic that you used in your post.

How does that differ from a belief that I have not reached my decision properly?

You know, when I ask these questions, you never answer them. I can only assume that you're afraid to admit how stupid you are in public.

> when you post what others and I deem as illogical steps
> to a conclusion on a message board, what do you expect?

I expect you to understand what logic is and how to use it. Primarily by avoiding fallacy. If you don't, you have no right to criticise my logic.

> Calling me names is part of a Type C Argument?

It's not part of the argument at all. An argument, as we all know from Monty Python, is a connected series of statements intended to establish a definite proposition. Calling you a retarded fuckwit simply amused me. It had no bearing whatsoever on the merits of our statements. It simply communicated what I perceived as the implication of your collected statements.

However, amusement is no longer coming out of this exchange, so I'm just going to concentrate on demolishing your stupidity. Nobody's watching anymore, so I don't have to be entertaining.

> So was calling me stupid part of your plan to make
> my argument sound legitimate?

If your argument IS legitimate, it doesn't matter how it sounds. That's the beauty of logic: even if people don't agree with you, they can't claim you're wrong. They can only claim they disagree.

> Was calling me a fuckwit your attempt to engage
> in "constructive discussion"?

No. You've never been interested in constructive discussion. You want to have a fight. More specifically, you want to WIN a fight, so you keep trying to change the playing field in a vain attempt to discover some way you can win. You're not very good at this.

> I'm still not sure where you see Apple skimping
> on hardware on the iPod

I never said that. You just don't know how else they might "cut corners", so you're using the equivocation fallacy to build a straw man. This is bad logic. You're wrong before you even get started.

In a constructive discussion, you say "I don't understand; how can you say Apple 'cut corners' when the iPod clearly is not made from inferior components, does not have shoddy construction, and is better designed than any previous digital music player?"

But since you just want to fight, what you do instead is choose a clearly inappropriate synonym for the phrase you don't understand (using a thesaurus if necessary), and hope your opponent is too stupid to understand what happened.

Unfortunately, I'm not stupid.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

How does that differ from a belief that I have not reached my decision properly? The difference is that there is no proper way to make a personal decision. The music player that you buy should make you happy and, really, that's all there is to it. When you make really illogical statement like (paraphrasing) "I'd buy a Zune because it is better than the iPod of 5 years ago," expect criticism of your logic.

You know, when I ask these questions, you never answer them. I can assure you that I am not ducking any questions intentionally. Maybe I'm too stupid to comprehend your sentences. How about you ask me a nice, easy, direct question and I'll try to answer it as best as my feeble mind can?

I expect you to understand what logic is and how to use it. You should hold yourself to such a standard.

It's not part of the argument at all. Ahh, I see. How convenient for you. So you can reduce my argument to "you're stupid", but I cannot reduce your argument to "you work for Microsoft". Gotcha. Any new rules? Oh, right, no synonyms. I was not aware that replacing "cut corners" with "skimp" would infuriate you so.

Okay, without the use of synonyms, would you please describe where "Apple chose to cut corners on the hardware"?

But since you just want to fight You misunderstand. I wanted to discuss. Not fight. If I wanted to fight I would have fought. I don't like to fight, and I generally save it for situations where something rather than ego is at stake. If this is a fight, then you win.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

> there is no proper way to make a personal decision

Then you have no right to criticise the way I made my decision. You can explain how you made yours, but it has no bearing on the validity of mine.

> How about you ask me a nice, easy, direct question

Okay. Why is it important that I work at Microsoft, when I don't have anything whatsoever to do with the Zune?

> You should hold yourself to such a standard

I do. Show me the fallacy in any logical argument I have advanced.

> How convenient for you. So you can reduce my argument to
> "you're stupid", but I cannot reduce your argument to "you
> work for Microsoft".

Yes. Consider Bob, a theoretical individual evaluating digital music players. He decides he would rather have a Zune than an iPod, because he believes Microsoft will provide better support for the Zune than Apple will provide for the iPod. Does Bob work for Microsoft?

Well, not necessarily. You cannot demonstrate through any preponderance of evidence that an individual who holds my opinions must necessarily work for or at Microsoft. That makes your argument definitively incorrect.

Now consider Joe, a theoretical individual who tells Bob that he is making a bad decision. To explain why, he appeals to the popularity and success of the iPod, while decrying Bob's decision as illogical.

But the popularity and success of the iPod are not logical factors in this decision. They represent the argumentum ad populam and argumentum ad crumenam fallacies, respectively. Therefore, Joe's decision is itself illogical. To justify this by claiming Bob also made an illogical decision is to commit the tu quoque fallacy. To justify it by questioning Bob's personal circumstances and motives is to commit the ad hominem fallacy. The list goes on, and on, and on.

And while fallacious reasoning is certainly common enough outside of formal debate, to use it in an objection to someone else's failure to make a logical decision is stupid. If I am required to use proper formal logic, then so are you. It is required either for all parties or for none. If it is required for all, you are not using it, which is stupid. If it is required for none, you have no cause to object, which is stupid.

Therefore, I submit that your real name is Joe. QED.

Okay, I'm amused again.

> Oh, right, no synonyms.

The problem is not that you chose a synonym, but that you chose an inappropriate synonym. The "no synonyms" argument you now advance is another straw man. You habitually use fallacy in your arguments. This in and of itself is evidence of ignorance, not stupidity, but your argument frequently accuses me of being illogical. And that's stupid. See above.

> would you please describe where "Apple chose to cut corners on the hardware"?

The injection molding process used to produce the iPod was a new and relatively untested process using a combination of plastics previously unusable in consumer hardware. (In fact, the iPod could not have been produced without this process.) It would have been prudent to perform a long-term test of the resulting product's real-world durability and performance, but no such test was performed. As a result, the propensity of the iPod to scratch was underestimated, and customers were unhappy.

And that's "cutting corners", but not "skimping". Quite the contrary - it was a cutting-edge process on the very forefront of manufacturing technology, and promised to provide a great many advantages over older processes. It wasn't cheap, either - which exactly matches your analysis that the iPod was over-engineered; it was. A lot of excellent minds worked on it from beginning to end, and the internals were intended to be the best money could buy. The problem is that not enough testing and analysis were done AFTER the iPod moved from the drawing board into reality.

Notice the very definition of the straw man argument here: you took an argument, twisted i

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

Why is it important that I work at Microsoft, when I don't have anything whatsoever to do with the Zune?

First of all, that question is contradictory. Of course you have something to do with the Zune - you work at Microsoft. I think that what you meant is "Why is it important that I work at Microsoft, when my job function has nothing to do with the Zune and I receive no compensation based on it's success or failure?" Please forgive me if I have taken too much liberty here in restating the question, but frankly your original was a leading question because it would have required that I agree that you have nothing whatsoever to do with the Zune. If I stated a question like that, you would accuse me of using tricks - that is why I'm being so pedantic.

If you work at MS, you are presumably aligned with the company. Of course you will find faults with the company, but you likely have some degree of loyalty towards MS. Given two completely equal products, you would probably pick the MS one because you have a bias towards the MS product. This bias is active even when two products are not equal, however.

The only reason you working at MS even entered into the discussion was because you were acting like a MS shill. There was a discussion going on about a MS competitor's product, and someone mentioned the Zune in passing as part of a marketing discussion. No one was talking about the relative merits of a particular player. Out of nowhere, someone posts about how they are "eying the Zune", as if it were in any way related to the discussion at hand. Next, this person states his rationale for choosing the Zune, and then gets really bent out of shape when people dispute his reasoning. Is this person a satisfied Zune owner? No, he says he's eying it, which means that he is not already an owner. Is this person mentally unstable? Maybe. Another possibility is that this guy works for MS. This would explain the motivation for such behavior quite neatly, and is easier to research than mental instability. A quick Google confirms the suspicions... a MS employee is what we are dealing with here! Perhaps I have grossly misjudged you. Do you have an alternate explanation for your motives that I have overlooked?

Should it matter that you work for MS in a technical discussion regarding their products? No, as long as you disclose that you work for MS from the outset and make an otherwise well-reasoned argument. Yes, it will give the MS haters something to harass you about, but those people have already made up their minds and it is pointless to engage in a discussion with them.

Show me the fallacy in any logical argument I have advanced.

Comparing a product from 2001 that is not available for purchase with a product from 2006 is not logical, especially considering that there is an updated version of said product.

I think that you were trying to argue that, based on the support that Apple offered its customers with the 2001 iPod, you would prefer to take your chances with Microsoft. Rather than clarify your statement, you personally attacked me. We may have had a simple, honest miscommunication, but you tried to turn it into a flame war. It is very hard for me to dissect your posts, trying to pry the insults from the "logical arguments". Perhaps that is why I fail to see your "Type C" argument.

Yes. Consider Bob, a theoretical individual evaluating digital music players. He decides he would rather have a Zune than an iPod, because he believes Microsoft will provide better support for the Zune than Apple will provide for the iPod. Does Bob work for Microsoft?

Well, you certainly aren't Bob. You started talking about the Zune in a thread which really had nothing to do with the Zune. Still, it's interesting to see how you perceive yourself, and your behavior in this "discussion".

argumentum ad populam and argumentum ad crumenam

Oooo, Latin. I think you mean populum. While I agree that it would be a fallacy to as

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

> Of course you have something to do with the
> Zune - you work at Microsoft.

I give up.

Seventy thousand people work here, and I not only know each and every thing they do, but automatically approve of and support it.

It's that whole Borg thing, you know.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

You know very well that isn't what I mean. Do you think the janitor that scrubs the toilets at Ford drives a Chevy? How about IT guy at the Coke bottling plant - think he brings a Pepsi in his lunch? Hell, it's a news story when a MS employee blogs about his iPod, PRE-ZUNE! See here. The guy says that he was getting harassed at MS for having an iPod - I imagine it would be even worse for him now.

Whether or not you think that you are biased or loyal or whatever, I think that you would be better off disclosing that you work for MS when pimping their products.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

> The guy says that he was getting
> harassed at MS for having an iPod

I get harassed for having a Motorola RAZR instead of a Windows SmartPhone. I also get harassed for wearing a tie instead of some witty t-shirt from an edgy online vendor. I even get harassed for coming in at five instead of showing up at ten. I survive; I explain why I do these things, and most people leave me alone. It's a weak person who can't defend his own choices.

Besides, I'm "the guy with the tie". Everybody knows me. Everybody can find me.

> I think that you would be better off
> disclosing that you work for MS when
> pimping their products.

I do, when I'm pimping their products. I'm ripping Alex St. John a new one over his letter on Gamasutra about Vista security. Well, I work on Vista. It's sort of important that people know that before I say anything else.

But I wasn't pimping the Zune. I simply said I was eyeing one. I explained why. I never at any time said YOU or ANYONE ELSE should buy one. I never said it was a superior product. In fact, I outright said that *both* the Zune and the iPod were less than ideal, but that the Zune's failures were more acceptable TO ME than the iPod's. And since I have zero involvement with the Zune's development, testing, and support... it really shouldn't have been important whether I worked at Microsoft or not.

And besides, with the iPhone on the way out, screw the Zune. I'd rather carry one device than two any day.

So fuck your accusations of bias, asshole.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

The iPhone may or may not be any better than the existing "smart" phones out there. It sure looked cool, though. The innovative thing is the interface - I'm not sure I like what iTunes is growing into with it tackling syncing of a phone now. Time will tell - I can't wait to play with one.

You definitely were pimping the Zune, though you may not even realize it. If you go back and read, the comment that you replied to was discussing the possible marketing ramifications of the iTunes Store slowdown. The Zune was mentioned in passing, but any competitive player could have been mentioned in it's place. You pipe in singing the Zunes praises... it would be a stretch to say that your post was even on-topic. At first I thought you were just a fanboy, but a fanboy would own a Zune if he were more than 12. I'm having trouble coming up with an alternative motive for your post other than "I'm sensitive about the Zune 'cuz I work at MS." Enlighten me.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

> The iPhone may or may not be any better
> than the existing "smart" phones out there

It can't possibly be worse. I spent eight months working on them in the mobile devices division.

But since I don't work there anymore, disclosure isn't necessary, right? Or do I still have to disclose it just because it impacts my opinion? Can I not say anything, because I have a *negative* opinion of the smartphone? Or do I just have to say "hey, I work at Microsoft" before everything I ever post about anything that Microsoft sells or used to sell or might decide to sell?

> You pipe in singing the Zunes praises...

Yeah, I sure did:

"...every single detractor I have heard about it is a software problem. Lot of problems, to be sure..."

Wow! What massive praise! Especially the conclusion: "Overall, I think Zune made the best choices of where to fail."

Yeah, I'm pimpin' that shit all over the place, boyeeee.

> it would be a stretch to say that your
> post was even on-topic.

I was responding to the parent's statement that "you're further reinforcing the idea that "everyone" owns an iPod and nobody owns a Zune". The whole post was about how everyone always talks about how many iPods Apple sells, and that's all you ever hear.

So I said something different, and everyone jumped up my butt. Wow, I guess this is why nobody talks about anything except how many iPods Apple sells. It's simply not socially acceptable.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

Well, then I apologize if that was really your intent. I don't think that you expressed your intended message very well, and I think that you misunderstood the original posters intent - I don't think that he was dissin' the Zune, just using it as a convenient example.

I think that it is not only relevant, but actually interesting that you worked in the mobile devices division.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

> I don't think that you expressed your
> intended message very well

There's always a question there. Did I not write properly, or did the audience not read properly?

I thought I was pretty fair in my analysis, but the overwhelming response was that I was overlooking how great and popular and successful the iPod was. What's unfair, in my opinion, is to take something that's been out a couple of months and compare it to a mature product's sales figures and popularity. That's a comparison invited by people who don't like competition, and it's simply not rational.

> I don't think that he was dissin' the Zune

I don't either. Why do you mention this? Did you get the impression that I thought he was being derogatory?

> I think that it is not only relevant, but
> actually interesting that you worked in
> the mobile devices division.

When does it *stop* being relevant? I've worked at or with some thirty to fifty different companies in my career. Chances are, if it's in the IT world, I've got some sort of history with it. When someone brings up processor architectures, do I need to mention that I once worked for Intel back when the 486 was still cutting edge technology?

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

That's a comparison invited by people who don't like competition, and it's simply not rational. It depends. If the person is looking for a player to buy, then they should probably look at the players that are available right now and make a pragmatic decision. It certainly would not be rational to run out and buy a Zune because FUTURE Zunes might be good, unless there was some sort of lock-in to worry about (as in HD-DVD vs. BlueRay). If the person is looking for a company to invest in, then considering the long-term outlook of the players is more reasonable. It also makes sense to consider the long-term when you are thinking about lock-in. For instance, buying a bunch of iTunes songs wouldn't make much sense unless you wanted to lock yourself into an iPod forever. Buying a next-gen DVD player right now would be a bit risky since no one wants the format that "loses". And then the people who "root" for Apple or MS are going to be much more interested in things like market share than in the technical merits of each player. I don't mind Apple doing well, but I'd like to see their market share come down a bit. It's not good for the market to have such a dominant player.

I don't either. Why do you mention this? Did you get the impression that I thought he was being derogatory? Yes, I did. Initially, I thought that your comment seemed weirdly defensive. I'm still not sure why a conversation about the marketing of the iPod took a turn towards discussing the merits of the Zune.

When does it *stop* being relevant? That's a very good point, and I can't come up with an answer. Basically, it comes down to a judgment call - where to draw the line? I'm not sure exactly where the line should be drawn, but I think that matters concerning your current employer are certainly still behind it. Your employer 15 years ago is another matter, and you'd just have to be honest with yourself I guess.

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[CDarklock]

> unless there was some sort of lock-in
> to worry about

But there *is* lock-in: I can't move songs from the Zune to the iPod or vice-versa. And once I buy the hardware, I'm stuck with that hardware - the people I know who bought iPods frequently had a problem within a couple months, and had to replace them. That's $200. I don't really think that's a lot of money, but I don't exactly wipe my ass with it either.

So when I was thinking about maybe getting an iPod, I waited a couple months to make sure it didn't end up with a problem. And then they announced a new model coming out in a couple months. So I'd wait till that came out, and think about it, and wait to make sure it was stable. And then they'd announce a new model. There was no long-term viability to the iPod, and I really disliked the lack of competition. I hate monopolies. (The irony here is not missed.)

The Zune makes me nervous, too. I don't like to commit to hardware. I like to see something perform in the real world for a few months before I get it. I want to buy it, and have it in my house and working as advertised for five to ten years. So I'm not interested in putting money down on the Zune until next month at the earliest.

And now that the iPhone has changed the playing field, I won't be picking up a Zune unless I'm convinced the iPhone isn't a better deal. If I'm convinced the iPhone IS a better deal, I'll be picking one up around September. And I'm somewhat less fussy about phones, which I expect to have hanging around for two to three years, so the iPhone even has a lower bar to meet than the Zune does. Right now, I'm betting on the iPhone, but the fat lady hasn't sung yet.

> I'm still not sure why a conversation about
> the marketing of the iPod took a turn towards
> discussing the merits of the Zune.

You'd have to ask the person who complained that nobody was even talking about the Zune. It wasn't me.

> I'm not sure exactly where the line should
> be drawn, but I think that matters concerning
> your current employer are certainly still
> behind it.

I think the judgment call is primarily around how much it affects your decision making. I don't work for Microsoft; I work for a contract agency. That contract agency is nationwide and works with pretty much every major player in the tech industry. They work with Microsoft. They work with Google. They work with Nintendo. They work with Apple. They work with RealNetworks. But these associations don't drive my decisions.

It's not reasonable to expect that I should disclose working for a contract agency that works with Nintendo when I say that Nintendo is probably going to outperform Sony in the console wars this round. I have never actually worked at Nintendo. I don't have any involvement with that part of my contract agency. And I don't think anyone would argue about that.

So when I work at a company like Microsoft, which is huge and does hundreds of different things, I don't really see the difference. Microsoft has a team that designed and produced the Zune, but I don't have anything to do with that team. I don't even know where that team is or who's on it. Working at Microsoft doesn't bias me toward the Zune, because it doesn't alter my understanding of the Zune in any practical sense.

Working on the Vista team instead of the Zune team, there's no realistic difference from working at RealNetworks on digital media instead of at WildTangent on casual games. Not only are the two not communicating, their jobs are so fundamentally dissimilar that the idea of disclosing "I work at a company in the same geographic region" is simply absurd. It's like saying you work across the street from a company, or that you live in the same neighborhood with someone who works at a company, or that you drive past that company on the way to your local grocery store. It's not even remotely sensible.

Microsoft is not a cult. It's a business. We do not have any set of overriding beliefs that drive our d

Re:It's Win/Win for Apple

[MightyYar]

I keep my music as MP3s, so lock-in isn't a problem for me. The few AACs that I have are unprotected, and presumably play even on the Zune. For people who go hog-wild at the iTunes Store or the Microsoft Store... yeah, they are locked in.

You'd have to ask the person who complained that nobody was even talking about the Zune. It wasn't me. Ahh, I think I see the source of my misunderstanding. I read that message differently than you did. The message that you replied to, as best as I could figure, was talking about how even bad news was good news for Apple. His reasoning is the press will say that so many people are buying iPods that Apple can't keep up, which reinforces the notion that everyone owns and iPod and nobody owns a Zune. I don't think that he was complaining about this notion, just pointing it out. He could have replaced "Zune" with "Rio" or any other competitive player, and it wouldn't have affected his statement. So you don't have to click, here's the entire comment:

Apple sells a ton of iPods, and then gets press about how many iPods they sell. You can't just do a news story about Apple selling a lot of iPods for the holidays, that's the story we hear every year. You need a situation where they sell so many damn iPods that their service is overwhelmed. That's a story. And you're further reinforcing the idea that "everyone" owns an iPod and nobody owns a Zune. Yeah, it was a pain for people for a day or so. If I read a story about how many iPods were returned because people had trouble with the iTMS, that's something else. But do you think those iPods went back? Doubt it.

I've never worked for a company anywhere near the size of MS, and certainly never in the consumer space, so you are right that I have absolutely no idea how it feels to work for such a huge entity. I believe you if you say that you have no bias toward a particular MS product, in particular the Zune. However, had you started with a disclosure that you worked for MS, it would have disarmed me immediately. I couldn't very well accuse you of astroturfing, and you still could have laid out reasons why you believed the Zune to be better. I probably would have still argued with your reasoning, however, as you had not clarified it yet.

And of course, someone would have replied to you with some anti-monopoly rant, but that can't be helped on Slashdot.

Yes

[Rix]

Creative's products are better. Especially if you want to play videos in a format people actually use (divx).

Re:Yes

[DECS]

Which is why Creative is losing huge amounts of money. While DIVX might be popular among people who don't pay for things, it's not something that NORMAL people use. And by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots.

Creative stuff is generally big and bulky - not exactly the mass market stylish and simple product that Apple's been churning out with the iPod.

--

Inside Apple's iPhone

Re:Yes

[TheRaven64]

Depends on what you mean by better. I don't care about video, but I do care about size. The direct competitor for the iPod from Creative seems to be the Zen Vision M (their product line-up seems quite confusing, so I might have missed something). It is about 50% bigger by volume than the iPod.

Oh, and for the record, DivX is a specific implementation of MPEG-4. The iPod also plays MPEG-4, including MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) which gives much higher quality for the same bit-rate (look for anything encoded with X.264; there's a lot of it floating around).

Re:Yes

[krakelohm]

And by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots.
Classic.

Re:Yes

[mrchaotica]

Either that was sarcasm, or you've been living under a rock for the past 50 years.

Re:Yes

[fermion]

I always hear about the competition, and I don't think that the iPod is all that great, but it is a good system for the average person. iTunes automagically loads CD, and stores them in a DRM free format. iTunes loads music onto the iPod. If you choose to use the store, it is easy to get the music, and will work with the iPod.

The biggest problem with the competition are two fold. First creative and Sandisk do not have a great reputation. I would never buy a creative again because I lost a $300 investment because of a cheap piece of plastic. I don't know about Sandisk, but they also seem more concerned about price than quality.

Second, there is a question about online purchased music. When purchasing music, people do seem want a format they can depend on. We have LPs, tapes, and CDs. There are arguable better formats, but the other formats never achieved critical mass. Likewise, the old formats die quickly. We still have cassette tapes, but how many 8-tracks do you see? The LP market is absolutely speciality. The advantange that Apple has is that is recognized the the DRM defined a format, and the format would drive the market. No one is going to buy an LP when all they have is a cassette player. Likewise, the mistake that MS made was to not take the format seriously. They have shot themselves int he foot by changing formats midstream. Who is going to trust them only to end up with useless content in a year?

So while other music players may be better in certain areas, like playing movies, they are not neccesarily better on the core needs, and importantly do not play the predominate only DRM format.

Re:Yes

[nsayer]

Especially if you want to play videos in a format people actually use (divx).

Hilarious.

The only digital video format that could reasonably be described as a format "people" (i.e., a non-trivially-small fraction of them) use would probably be MPEG2 (as in ATSC & DVD). After that probably comes all of the flash being watched by YouTubers.

Re:Yes

[kkwst2]

Or, perhaps, he just chose the wrong adjective. Replace "normal" with enlightened or emotionally healthy. Just because it has become normal doesn't mean it's right.

Re:Yes

[Brian Gordon]

"People" don't deal with digital video on their computers at all. MPEG2 doesn't count since it's universally supported by DVD players, and universally unsupported by portable media players. Flash doesn't count either since it takes a real power user to download and convert it. I'd say that even including microsoft's format (WMV), MPEG4 is by far the most used digital video format since it includes DIVX (used by mini-dvd camcorders and I believe the itunes video store) and XVID (used to encode movies for download).

Re:Yes

[jonnythan]

This is a repost of something I posted previously:

The 30GB iPod takes up 31% less volume than the Zune and 42% less volume than the 30GB Creative Zen Vision:M.

The 30GB iPod has 15% less mass than both the Zune and the 30GB Creative Zen Vision:M.

The 80GB iPod has 167% more storage space than the Zune and takes up 12% less volume than the Zune.

The 80GB iPod has 33% more storage space, takes up 38% less volume, and has 12% less mass than the 60GB Creative Zen Vision:M.

The 80GB iPod has 167% more storage space, takes up 26% less volume, and has 4% less mass than even the 30GB Creative Zen Vision:M.

No one makes an MP3 player comparable to the iPod in the capacity/form factor department. Same goes for the Nano. iPod owns the market because Apple has no real competition.

Re:Yes

[Admiral Ag]

I agree. Apple just seems to be very good at making iPods cool and simple. Even my thesis supervisor, who suffers from technophobia, can't stop prattling on about his iPod.

However, the Creative players are much nicer and better value than the Zune, IMHO.

And you made my sig. I thought the robots comment was hilarious.

Re:Yes

[Lars T.]

Fuck Creative after they pulled that Patent-crap with John Carmack when he _co-invents_ Carmack's Reverse
Looks like the Creative fanboys have mod-points today. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20040728-4048 .html

Re:Yes

[MojoStan]

The 30GB iPod takes up 31% less volume than the Zune and 42% less volume than the 30GB Creative Zen Vision:M.

The 30GB iPod has 15% less mass than both the Zune and the 30GB Creative Zen Vision:M.

The Zune's screen is 20% larger than the 30GB iPod with video capabilities.

The 30GB iPod plus iPod Radio Remote ($50) has only 2% less mass than the Zune.

And for all those Apple fans claiming most people don't need and FM tuner: most people don't need all that shit that gets bundled with the MacBooks either.

Re:Yes

[The Evil Twin]

Funny you say this. In the smaller form factor arena I've been selling the Sandisk Sansa to people expressly because it's BIGGER than the Nano (about 10:1 ratio). Yes, people want this player because it feels better built and less fragile than the nano. Oh and it's cheaper and has a nicer screen.

The full size iPod however is the clear winner in the HDD based arena (The Zen sucks in so many ways, quality being the biggest), and at that point size is also a factor (where smaller is better).

Re:Yes

[macshome]

True the Zune might have a larger screen, but it is the same QVGA resolution as the iPod. I've wondered if video is stretched on the Zune because of this, but I haven't seen one yet to take a look.

Re:Yes

[toddestan]

No one makes an MP3 player comparable to the iPod in the capacity/form factor department. Same goes for the Nano. iPod owns the market because Apple has no real competition.

Apple may not have much competition in the market when it comes to the drive space/size ratio. However, Apple also chooses not to compete in the market of players that have FM tuners, or support alternative formats like WMA or OGG, or have easily replaceable batteries (before you flame me, remember the Nano/Shuffle has their batteries soldered in), or come in colors other than white or black (don't laugh, the MP3 player is as much as a fashion accessory as it is a geek toy nowadays). It all depends on what you want to define as a "market".

Re:Yes

[jonnythan]

Those markets are virtually nonexistent. No one cares about those things. The very few people who do are the tiny percentage of the market that have MP3 players other than iPods.

Re:Yes

[toddestan]

Those markets are virtually nonexistent. No one cares about those things. The very few people who do are the tiny percentage of the market that have MP3 players other than iPods.

The iPod's marketshare is only about 30-40% or so, depending on who's numbers you believe. 60-70% of the market is hardly "virtually nonexistent".

Re:Yes

[UnknownSoldier]

> Looks like the Creative fanboys have mod-points today

No kidding! Maybe some of the mods will actually _read_ the link, and see the _facts_ for themselves.

Thx for including the link -- was too lazy to include it :-)

Cheers

Proof?

[repetty]

A couple anecdotes and an analyst who uses the technical term "blew up" are a pretty week foundation for a news story.

I have drawn these conclusions:

1. The iTunes service has operated just fine
2. It's a very, very slow news day

--Richard

Re:Proof?

[0tim0]

Well, I was trying to help my niece set up her new Shuffle and buy some songs with her gift card on Tuesday -- and we were locked out of the music store.

So, there you go, anecdotal evidence ;)

--t

Re:Proof?

[Dunbal]

1. The iTunes service has operated just fine

      Funny, why is CNN running the story then? I know their standards have dropped a lot in recent years, but SOMETHING must be wrong with the site.

Re:Proof?

[fatboy]

Well, I had trouble purchasing a song 2 days ago. From what I could gather, the servers used during the checkout of my purchase were responding with an error "503 Service Unavailable". IIRC, the dialog box had "Retry" and "Cancel" buttons. I had to click retry a few times, but I was able to get my copy of "We are the ones" by Zombie Girl. :P

Re:Apple and iPod...

[ShorePiper82]

I can't answer the competition question for you (I myself use my iPod nearly all day. office/headphones commute/car-stereo connection and then home/stereo connection).

it's difficult not to find what you are looking for in the iTunes store. Granted, underground style music is not going to be available, but there are things that arn't necessarily mainstream available as well. You can download iTunes and check for yourself (without having to own an iPod). There is no cost (I believe they may require a paypal account at the minimum in order to access the store, but that's only to limit entry to potentially paying customers). One could easily just set up an account, browse, and never pay)

Re:First Post!

[ack154]

Actually, I don't think I know anyone that got an iPod as a gift this year. At least, not that I heard of. I know of two people that got Zunes (somehow...) and my sister got a Sansa because my mom didn't want to spend the extra for a Nano (wanted something small and simple, but with a screen). So I picked out the Sansa as a "next-best" sort of thing for her.

Clearly they were caught short.

[CODiNE]

Heh... from the article

"No doubt it was a very, very popular gift, and no matter how well you plan on the server side of the equation, there are always times when you get caught short."

How I love differences in US and UK English... yes I imagine they were caught short indeed!

Re:Clearly they were caught short.

[Citizen of Earth]

yes I imagine they were caught short indeed!

But I'll be rooting for them.

Re:Clearly they were caught short.

[DocSavage64109]

Aren't both countries definitions based on being "caught short" of something?

Does the phrase really depend on what they where "caught short" of?

Re:Clearly they were caught short.

[CODiNE]

I suppose long ago there was a longer phrase such as "Caught short of cash" in the US and it ended up being shortened to "Caught short". A similar phrase in the UK may have been "Caught short of a restroom" which later shortened and became familiar with a different meaning.

Dear Apple,

[TheOldSchooler]

I bought my wife an IPod Nano and an I-Tunes gift card. I am so sorry.

Re:Dear Apple,

[neopipil]

My wife bought me an ipod nano. I am not sorry.

Re:Dear Apple,

[antdude]

You have a wife? I am amazed (still single and over 30 years old). [grin]

Re:Dear Apple,

[prator]

What? The guy posts a joke, and you insult his wife? Sorry if I missed some sarcasm or humor buried in your post.

Re:Dear Apple,

[Vitriol Angst]

Perhaps Apple was listening to the Enderle group (one guy), who projected that iTunes purchasing was waning (due to the metric that fewer songs were purchased per ipod than the year before).

I also understand, that people are driving less -- if you count all the many cars that are not driving, sitting in junk yards.

>> For $.02, I was willing to predict that iTunes would be swamped this Christmas, merely by realizing that my Niece had to have a new Nano to go jogging, while the larger iPod was just for "fun."

Re:Apple and iPod...

[NineNine]

I'd get a Sandisk. Somebody handed me an extra iPod Nano that they had the other day, and I've since had it lock up on my twice, and iTunes (the software... not the store) sucks balls. If I wanted an MP3 player right now, I'd get a Sandisk one. They're cheaper, they do a lot more (hopefully, without locking up), and you don't have to use that god-awful iTunes software.

Signing in.

[Spazntwich]

I was gifted with an iPod shuffle for Christmas, and haven't even bothered to try out the iTunes store yet.

This post is about as useful as an alligator both on fire and LSD.

Re:Apple and iPod...

[aristotle-dude]

I never invested money in an ipod, due to some of the rantings and ravings about it. What would be its best competition out there on the market? Also, is the ipod store as populated with songs as they say it is? Why do you base your purchase decisions based on how you feel about the views of others? Give different players a try on the displays, ask questions from the store staff and buy which ever one you find to be the best.

I have a feeling that you are trolling but I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt.

Content Delivery System

[NewWaveNet]

Doesn't Apple host the actual content with Akamai? I know their website did.

Re:Content Delivery System

[serber]

Last I recall the iTunes Store runs on Akamai's EdgeSuite infrastructure - EdgeSuite Delivery and EdgeSuie Enterprise look about right.

Sorry..belay that post.

[Overzeetop]

Yes, I've heard of the S/93-AOL stuff, but had filed it somewhere inaccessible.

I thought something actually happened this past September on the usenet and I somehow missed it. There are times I'm just too busy to get on and catch up. There was a bit of panic that my source for audio and video on the net might be somehow threatened. Luckily, it's just iTunes that's borked.

Imagine the poor carriers...

[djblair]

I'd imagine only 10% of the tracks filling up all the new iPods are legal downloads. Everyone else is firing up their favorite P2P app to get tunes. I can tell you from experience that NOTHING is worse for routers than all the traffic from P2P connections. I wonder what kind of headaches major ISP's faced.

Re:Imagine the poor carriers...

[nisse-j]

What kind of routers are you refering to? Home NAT routers or real, ISP-class routers? I can assure you that the latter won't be bothered specifically by P2P activity, due to the fact that they don't track connections, something which NAT routers obviously do.

Re:Apple and iPod...

[shotgunsaint]

Well, personally, I have an iPod mini and I love it, but I'm far from being a fanboy. SanDisk makes a very nice flash based player with a beautiful, albeit small, color screen. Everything I've seen from Creative has been pretty nice, although they want more for their products than their Apple equivalents cost. My only piece of solid advice would be to stay away from the Zune. I've played with one, and the interface was clunky to say the least, not to mention the thing weighs exactly 800 pounds. Plus, the battery life is very weak on the Zunes. Just curious, what rantings and ravings have turned you away from the iPod? You don't HAVE to use the iTunes store. I certainly don't, and won't buy DRM'd music. Any mp3 ripped from your collection or acquired in less savory ways plays just as well on the iPod.

Re:Apple and iPod...

[fittekuk]

You know, it goes much beyond simple technical things and DRM. I know at least 4 people who got iPods for Christmas. None of them are technical, and none of them want one of the competing products. For normal (read: not slashdot crowd) people, iPod is the thing to have. It's going to be pretty tough for someone to take a lot of market share away from Apple. My brother is about as anti-computer as you can get. He tolerates it so he can type and read/send email, but only as little as required. He still uses HotMail - I tried showed him GMail, but he is not interested. He knows Hotmail, and does not want to even try something else. Yet, what did he want? An iPod. I personally like iPods, but I did mention some other competitors. Doesn't want to even hear about them. iPod period. There are lots of people like him. iPods are "cool" - normal people don't want the others. If they bought one, their friends would say "What is that thing? Why didn't you get an iPod?"... Right or wrong, it happens.

Looks like The Register has huge egg on its face..

[Archeopteryx]

...they were talking of the FAILURE of iTunes just a month a go!

Not paying

[petro6]

I love iTunes and my iPod. The iTunes Music Store... not so much. I just am surprised that so many pay good money for lossy, DRM-crippled music files. I know its about having the music on demand, but for crissakes, if you need that much music NOW you may want to take a look at general level of patience. My brother got an iPod and a card for the iTunes store. He got some music, but then had problems when the site went down. I think there is more worry about the fact that syncing libraries will only go one way (unless the music is bought through iTMS and you have access to your account), but I'm still not convinced that $.99 songs are worth it for lossy files, DRM, no cover art, etc. Just me?

Re:Not paying

[orgelspieler]

Hey, bro. I'll elaborate on my tale a bit. Basically, after I had paid for the content, I could not "authorize" any more devices because the store was down. And I didn't just try once, but about a dozen times before I got fed up with it. I was finally able to get through last night. All in all, it wasn't too bad, but they should have known exactly how much traffic to expect. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that every single iPod and iTunes gift card ever sold in the last few months was going to be used on Christmas.

But you're right, the bigger problem is the inability to "Sync both ways" as advertised on the Apple site. That's true whether or not their servers are up. It's crippled by design. At first I blamed the RIAA, but I'll bet it is also part of keeping the iTunes-iPod-ITMS monopoly. That suspicion is supported by the ease of transferring purchased music compared to ripped music.

FYI: the cover art is included if you buy an album. I don't know if it is the same for just one song. What would be really nice is if it included all the program notes (I listen to a lot of classical music). It wouldn't be that much data, just a kB or so.

Re:Not paying

[beelsebob]

While I agree with you mostly, I should add an FYI... With iTunes you *do* get the cover art, and in fact with most albums you get a pdf copy of the cover booklet too.

Re:Not paying

[petro6]

I meant the kind of cover art you can hold and flip through. (of course there are clear advantages of having a .pdf of liner notes, if you are inclined to copy+paste them to the notes of a given song) Also referring to cool album things like stickers, posters, or other things as with the Pick of Destiny (Tenacious D) album a pick_of_destiny__? Of course not to many artists/publishers do stuff like this, but damned if I'm not happy when they do.

Re:Not paying

[thestudio_bob]

That's really the funny thing, it was the RIAA at first. NO ONE was thinking how DRM could lock in a manufacture of a product. It wasn't even a blip on the radar, RIAA was to worried about piracy and locking up there product. Do you really think the music companies would have signed on with Apple knowing what they know now. Of course not, they are totally screwed because one company has such a large chunk of the market and they no longer have any room to negotiate. I doubt that Apple if realized it at first, only when the iPod started taking off and eating up the market share did they start smiling.

Re:Not paying

[MoneyT]

The limitations on the sync back to the computer make sense from the standpoint that you want to keep the RIAA happy so they don't pull out completely. You need to keep RIAA fears of hundreds of iPods creating a physical world napster at bay. So you only allow transfer of purchased songs, as they require to identify you as the owner to play. Now the RIAA is happy because you assure that the person recieving the songs is authorized to play them. And, it's a reasonable policy because as far as Apple or the RIAA would be concerned (officially any way), you can only get your legal music from iTunes or a CD. If your HDD crashes or you move to a new computer, your transfered songs can come from your iPod and you have the original CDs for the rest. Sure it would be nice if you could transfer everything, but it took what, 3 years to get the RIAA to allow purchsed transfers? Give it some time. Baby steps.

Re:Not paying

[orgelspieler]

That's pretty ironic. I don't think they ever saw it coming. But RIAA has a track record of making short-sighted decisions that end up being to their detriment in the long run.

Re:Not paying

[orgelspieler]

Where does the booklet go? I just downloaded Mahler's 3rd, and I wanted to read the program notes. Is there an option you have to select, or is it automatic? It downloaded the cover art, but that wasn't terribly impressive.

Re:Not paying

[kcarlin]

If there is one, it will be downloaded and appear with the other album materials in your iTunes library. I have found that new albums are more likely to have the notes than back catalog items.

Re:Apple and iPod...

[System.out.println()]

If money's a factor, you can always go the route I did - go to the Apple Store online and look in their refurb section. Everything on there is backed by the same warranty as the new stuff. They used to have (and may still have) first gen (black/white) 2Gb nanos for $99, for example.

For Christmas I got a refurb'd 60GB iPod video. I'd told my parents that I had no need for 80GB, but 30 was too small (they really should stick a 60GB in that $300 hole) and pointed them to Apple's refurb site. Since the 5G 60GB is for all intents and purposes the same as the current generation aside from the capacity, it seemed like a good call.

Re:Apple and iPod...

[Prophet of Nixon]

I've had a Sansa e260 for a month or two now, and its never locked on me, and has generally been far more robust than my ex-iPod. I'd say its the most reliable mp3 player I've seen since the original Rios. Its not perfect though, it only plays one format of video (quicktime based I believe, I messed with it once and never looked again, though it does come with a converter), the big center button really should be the play/pause button yet isn't, and it comes out of the box with a firmware problem that causes incorrect song listing refreshes when music is moved off of the device (though this is easily fixed with a new firmware, and is likely fixed out of the box on newer units). Its reliable though, gets a great battery life, and works just like a usb stick to load and unload files (you won't need anybody's crappy music organizer program).

Impossible. Forrester says iTunes is SO OVER.

[slyborg]

http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt /0,7211,40858,00.html

If only Bernoff could find a rock, or maybe a pile of Zunes big enough to hide his pudgy bulk beneath.....

Microsoft may have been just too late

[Shivetya]

to get into the game. Simply put the iPod has had time to establish dominance. It has become part of culture. I know many people who refer to buying an iPod but don't consider it the same as an MP3 player. Being late to enter the market of any product which sparks public interest will leave all others behind, it doesn't hurt that most of the early competitors were trapped under MusicMatch (or whatever that horrid product was)

I think another thing the gave Microsoft issues, and it continues to hit the other players, is that there are too many competeing services for those machines whereas for an iPod the only thing most consumers will associate with it is iTunes.

Honestly it would not matter how good the Zune is, whether in features or price, I just cannot give someone any old MP3 player, kids want iPods and thats all they are going to settle for. With prices below $100 its hard to justify the little you save by not buying one. You would really just have to hate Apple not to buy one. Now when Apple can inspire this type of loyalty for their PC products it will be time for Microsoft to be wary. Right now I know of only 1 new MAC over out of dozens upon dozens of iPod users at work, new and old. The so called "halo" effect the iPod is claimed to have on this site and elsewhere doesn't seem to exist where I live.

PS: I am still waiting on a MacBook Pro is something similar to either the plain Macbook or smaller.

Re:Microsoft may have been just too late

[EastCoastSurfer]

The so called "halo" effect the iPod is claimed to have on this site and elsewhere doesn't seem to exist where I live.

I was in Denver last week (stuck b/c of the snowstorm) with time to kill and went into an apple store for the first time. They were selling ipods as fast as they could unpack the boxes. Anyway, there were tons of people looking at MBs (a few buying). I think the halo effect is there and starting to work, but moving from a $100-$200 purchase (which can be an impulse buy for many people) to a $1000+ purchase takes time. Also, keep in mind that many people don't need to buy new computers very often. The real test will be over time as these 'new' ipod lovers PCs die will they look at apple for their next computer?

PS: I am still waiting on a MacBook Pro is something similar to either the plain Macbook or smaller.

Why not just get a MB then?

Re:Microsoft may have been just too late

[powerlord]

Also, keep in mind that many people don't need to buy new computers very often. The real test will be over time as these 'new' ipod lovers PCs die will they look at apple for their next computer?

Exactly. I just built my computer a year ago. I don't need to upgrade it every year, thank you. On the other hand, I'm looking forward to maybe upgrading in a year or so, and am very looking forward to telling MS and Vista to "Go take a Hike".

My only complaint is that there is no "mid-size" desktop in Apple's lineup.

They've got:
- The "small little HTPC wanna-be" in the MacMini
- The "Small Office Server" in the MacPro
- The "Integrated to heck" iMac

I already have an LCD (or want to upgrade separately) so the iMac is out.
I would like a 64bit CPU, so the MacMini is out (unless they refresh).
I might like RAID, but I don't need 16GB of RAM, so the MacPro seems like I will pay far more for most of what I won't need.

They need a lower end MacPro (or some other machine) to sit in the middle between the iMac and the MacPro.

Re:Microsoft may have been just too late

[Darth]

Why not buy an iMac, hook up your LCD and have a dual headed system?
(granted, you would have to buy a mini-dvi to vga connector, but they're only $20)

Re:Microsoft may have been just too late

[dawnzer]

There is so much truth about the need to buy a computer thing. I bought a very nice Dell desktop about a year and a half ago and I am nowhere near the point where I need to upgrade. It is definately not a gaming machine, but I upgraded everything I needed to when I bought it to make sure I wouldn't need to do this again for a few years and use it as a home computer comfortably including a 19" flat panel monitor.

Enter the fiance. He has a _very_ nice MacBook Pro that he works from home on. He also has gaming PC with the largest CRT I have ever seen. He wants me to get a Mac Pro (and give my current desktop to my 12 yo daughter). Why would a family of 3 need 4 computers?!? Because he wants me to get a 30" Cinema HD Display.

*bangs head on desk*

Re:Microsoft may have been just too late

[Shadyman]

Of course! You need to have one for the Asterisk, one for the media center, one for the...

Re:Microsoft may have been just too late

[MartinB]

My only complaint is that there is no "mid-size" desktop in Apple's lineup.
 
They've got:
- The "small little HTPC wanna-be" in the MacMini
- The "Small Office Server" in the MacPro
- The "Integrated to heck" iMac
 
I already have an LCD (or want to upgrade separately) so the iMac is out.
They need a lower end MacPro (or some other machine) to sit in the middle between the iMac and the MacPro.

Yeah, I thought like that for a wee while. Then I realised - the iMac is way faster (compared to normal desktop needs) than even the higher end of the old PowerMac lines (I've consistently bought the 2nd top of the range since the PMs were introduced), and it has a video out, and supports dual-head usage.

When I upgrade this G4 dualie, it'll be a 20" iMac I go for, using one of the monitors I have here to continue my dual-headed goodness.

Re:Microsoft may have been just too late

[powerlord]

That sounds good and I'm probably going to look at them again, but I' more interested in a RAID-1 set up for the hard-drives ... something that most Intel hardware out there supports, with the exception of anything from apple, short of the PowerMac and XServe.

Re:Microsoft may have been just too late

[Lars T.]

On a related note I encountered family this holiday that got an "iPod" but not the Apple one. It was an off brand of some player that does everything an "iPod" does. Was it this, this, this, or this "iPod"?

Re:Microsoft may have been just too late

[valintin]

It was just an MP3 player, not a fake iPod. I'm sure there are plenty of people fooled by fakes, but my point was that there are people that don't know what an MP3 player is. They think that the thing you get to play music while your out and about is an iPod. I don't recall the brand, but my Uncle would literally have said something like, "The iPod I got is a Zune."

Re:Microsoft may have been just too late

[Reaperducer]

I have that last one. Bought it in China as a gag since I already had the real black nano. I've keep telling myself that some day I'll do a head-to-head comparison of the two, but I never do. Suffice it to say that the knock-off for all of its "extra features" is a petrified turd at the side of the road compared to a real iPod.

Non-standard headphone jack. 'Nuff said.

Re:First Post!

[Dunbal]

Actually, I don't think I know anyone that got an iPod as a gift this year.

      Maybe it's not just that people got iPods at Xmas, but rather thousands of teenagers getting a gift certificate, or permission to download some songs on dad's credit card as a 'present'.

i don't have an iPod...

[redi6]

but right now, i'm wearing an iPood tshirt

http://www.jinx.com/scripts/details.asp?affid=-1&p roductID=456

Systems and Spikes

[MrGHemp]

In the brick-and-morder storea if you suddenly had a spike in sales... no one blamed you if you didn't get a new store constructed in a day or two to meet the demand. Plus if the demand spike only lasted a day or two did anyone expect you to construct an extra store and have it just sit dormant until that one or two days next year when you had the sales to support using it? No. So part of me doesn't wonder if some of these big online applications don't kinda expect to have there hardware taxed for a day or two, and consider the cost of doubling there hardware costs to only handle one or two days of traffic spikes not worth it?

Guess I'm wondering if Apple suspected this would happen but considered the cost of increasing there server capasity to handle it (maybe even doubling it) not worth it?

Re:Systems and Spikes

[dingDaShan]

especially if they are using expensive mac hardware sheesh... can't afford too much of that

Re:Systems and Spikes

[UnknowingFool]

Who says increasing server capacity would have prevented the problem. Maybe the problem was in the network/bandwidth area? I'm not an expert in these matters but the problem may have been more systematic than not enough servers to handle the transactions.

Re:Systems and Spikes

[DECS]

Well if I go to Amazon and the server doens't respond, I might shop around and enventually place an order elsewhere. However, if I'm cashing in an iTunes gift card, and the iTS doesn't respond, I'm going to try it again later until I get my $20 of music.

Note that Apple's brick and mortar stores are so busy right now that they frequently use roaming people with WinCE handhelds to place credit card orders. I expected the Apple Store to be slowing down after the holidays, but it was crazy busy with people buying stuff. Apparently, the people who got non-iPods took them back and set out to buy an iPod.

-

Inside Apple's iPhone

Re:First Post!

[jrmcferren]

I was part of the mess too, I got an iPod on Christmas eve, I was looking for podcasts on Christmas day and I noticed the problem. I thought it was a normal Christmas day overload not an issue. I had no problems on Tuesday.

Re:Apple and iPod...

[robert899]

I recommend the Sandisk m200 series for those who want a mp3 player without all the extra features. I ripped all my cds and created a few playlists and now its all on my 4GB m260 with room to spare. Oh and it runs for 15+ hours on a single AAA battery.

Stupid....

[mark-t]

To automatically download album artwork, it requires that you log into your itunes store account, which requires a credit card number to complete, even though there is no mention of any fees involved with doing so.

Idiotic, if you ask me.

Re:Stupid....

[SeanMon]

You do not need a credit card to have an iTunes Account.
I've been buying music from it since it first opened with gift cards.

Re:Stupid....

[mark-t]

You may not need a CC to have an itunes account, but the itunes software says you must log into the itunes store to download album artwork and step 3 of the 3 steps for creating an itunes account is entering credit card info. If you cancel this step, you still can't download album artwork until you "log into the itunes store"

Re:Stupid....

[EastCoastSurfer]

Idiotic, if you ask me.

Why? They are providing you the cover art for free in an easy and convenient way. In return you have to sign up for an account that they hope one day you'll use. You don't have to ever buy anything.

Re:Stupid....

[geekoid]

I just downloaded album art last night, and it didn't require my to do anything except request the art.

Re:Stupid....

[mark-t]

Not a lie... I just got one and it's not possible to download artwork without creating an itunes store account, and it did not appear possible to complete said account creation without entering CC information... trying to just create an itunes store account without a CC does appear to create the account, but the itunes software still won't actually log me into the account unless the CC information has been entered, which as I said, is required to download album artwork.

What I think is stupid is being asked for this information before I've even been told exactly how much I'm going to be paying.

Re:Stupid....

[mark-t]

I have no problem signing up for an account, but why should they need my credit card number to create the account if I don't ever have to buy anything? It would make more sense to ask for such details when I first want to use the account for something that actually costs money.

Re:Stupid....

[mark-t]

Wierd... I tried to and it wouldn't let me without creating an itunes store account. If I cancel the step where it asks for CC information when creating the store account I'm back at square one, and still can't download album art.

Re:Stupid....

[teg]

Because they want the threshold for the next step, you actually buying something, to be as low as possible.

Re:Stupid....

[mark-t]

Then it would make more sense to me to leave it as an option, for people that either do not have a credit card, or people who do not want to give out their credit card number before they know how much they are going to be spending.

Re:Stupid....

[SeanMon]

If you have a giftcard, click "Redeem" on the front page of the iTunes Store (it's in the top-right box). When you create an account while in the process of redeeming the giftcard, you can select "Payment: none."

I do agree that it is silly that you have to have a credit card or a giftcard to create an account.

Re:Stupid....

[gordgekko]

So your point is that you either need to spend money before you open an account or you must turn over your credit card information to open an account.

Hey, win win!

Another reason why I ditched iTunes and use a WinAmp plug-in for my iPod.

Re:Stupid....

[mark-t]

Would you mind telling me how? as I said, when I try to download album art it says I have to log into the itunes store first, and when I cancel at the step for entering the CC information and try to download album art, it still says I have to log into the itunes store first.

Re:Apple and iPod...

[mrbooze]

What are people doing to their iPods? We've had three iPods of different generations in this house for several years, and we've never had one "lock up" on us ever. Hell, I've dropped my mini on the concrete more times than I can count and still never had a problem.

I've got another friend who has had several problems with his iPods, though. I just don't know what people are doing to them to cause these problems.

Ah yes, Christmas.

[shaneh0]

It's a chance to tell somebody "I love you this many dollars worth"

Re:Ah yes, Christmas.

[CrazyTalk]

I don't recognize the reference - perhaps you'd care to explain it instead?

Re:Ah yes, Christmas.

[JoGlo]

Neither do I, and it looks like I'm not alone in that. Please explain?

Re:First Post!

[Ucklak]

While I'm not an iPod owner, I heard this Zune thing was poised to take over the portable media market.
It did record numbers for November. It'll probably beat last years sales for December too.

Oh, Great

[Beer_Smurf]

Now in addition to being swamped, they are going to be slashdotted by everyone checking if they really are swamped.

Or maybe it was Taiwan being offline

[heroine]

The internet was overall extremely slow after XMas, mainly due to Taiwan going
offline for an earthquake. All the traffic to Asia had to go through the Atlantic cables instead of the Pacific cables.

Re:Or maybe it was Taiwan being offline

[kalidasa]

Good thought, but I doubt it. I had no problems browsing, and just slowdowns adding to my cart, but when I tried to redeem a gift card, iTunes threw some kind of error that looked more like an overloaded server error than a comm error.

Re:Or maybe it was Taiwan being offline

[banuk]

you mean it wasn't everyone trying to fill those new seagate hard drives with porn?

iPod is here to stay

[lokiomega]

It has evolved from a gadget toy to a veritable status symbol. Having a hanging iPod from your belt on in your pocket says "I am cool" and, no, no other mp3 player will do, unless it's a nifty phone that does both. Sad world, but this is why iPod will ALWAYS be the dominant player, no matter how much it sucks compared to so-and-so.

Re:iPod is here to stay

[Neil Hodges]

Sad world, but this is why iPod will ALWAYS be the dominant player, no matter how much it sucks compared to so-and-so.

This reminds me of MS Windows in many ways; just having a PC is a (albeit low) status symbol, and Windows ships by default with them. Thus, having a PC means having Windows. Plus, the fact that there are less-popular alternatives adds more to this similarity.

ever wondered...

[rucs_hack]

Ever wondered what an iTunes store looks like while it burns? :-)

slashdotted?

[SnarfQuest]

I wonder how much of a load this article is adding to those servers?

Re:Apple and iPod...

[gregtron]

The indie kids will have to do the internet equivalent of buying musty lp's in an underground vinyl shop: troll websites and order cd's with a credit card.

OP had a senior moment

[Overzeetop]

No, OP had a senior moment, but some moderator was kind enough to "laugh" at the "joke". ;-)

Only one reason this is happening

[Anonymous Coward]

Conformists..

Re:Apple and iPod...

[c00rdb]

I wouldn't get a Sandisk.

Re:I don't get it...

[Pojut]

lol, yeah I know, a lot of double speak in that. What I meant by saying that I'm not anti-apple or iPod is that I won't say to someone "oh you were stupid, you should have gotten this instead." Nor will I tell someone to NOT buy an iPod if they plan to. I would make sure they know what else is around, but if they still want an iPod, be it because of the accersories, the image, or whatever other reason...well that's fine, I won't stop them.

Unlike OSS people that say that windows is for morons, I would never tell someone they are a moron for buying an iPod. Perfect example: I own a 2004 RSX Type-S Aspec. I know that for the price I paid for this care (~$31,000) I could have bought a 350Z. I know that I could have bought a car that drives faster and is more luxorious and has more recognition for the same money, but it did not have the same APPEAL to me. I wanted the RSX in that configuration, regardless of what else was out there.

My car analogy and people that blindly flock to buy or ask for an iPod are ALMOST the same; the difference is, most of them are unaware of what they are saying that they DON'T want.

That's nice

[Rix]

I don't want to have to re-encode everything I download, though.

Re:That's nice

[CronoCloud]

Since most of the portable video "out there" seems to be in MPEG4 SP or h264 AVC that means your options are either a video iPod or a PSP.

Re:I don't get it...

[syrinx]

the interface is ATROCIOUS

Well, considering everyone points to the interface as the best part of the iPods, you're in the minority there. Sure you weren't using a Zune?

The carbon uses a standard mini-USB cable

My original iPod uses a standard Firewire cable.

it can also be used as a portable hard drive right outta the box

So can every iPod.

And lasts at LEAST 15 hours if not 20 hours on a single charge (25 if you keep the bass output and volume down)

My 5G iPod lasts that long as well. (Not 25, but I'm assuming you're exaggerating.)

BOTH players can play a multitude of file formats, contain no DRM restrictions

Same with the iPod. (ITMS files are DRMed, yes, but that's not the iPod.)

Basically, bully for you that you like the Rio stuff, but you should know that calling iPods "shit incarnate" makes you sound like a blathering anti-Apple zealot.

Or maybe . . .

[photomic]

. . . Stevesy got his stock options in ITMS gift cards.

Re:I don't get it...

[Pojut]

in response to your last point, I feel the same way about just about every other MP3 player I have EVER used...in fact, the carbon and the karma are the only two that I actually LIKE.

But this article wasn't about ALL mp3 players. It focused on iPods. I felt it to be quite stupid express my dislike for any other player. However, I would call most players shit incarnate. You, good sir, sound like a hairy mass living under a bridge.

Why was everyone downloading?

[SeaFox]

Every iPod includes a CD with iTunes on it.

Re:Why was everyone downloading?

[Kredal]

Uh, no. The new slimmer packaging for the iPod Nanos and Shuffles tell you to go to Apple's site to download iTunes... No reason to include a CD.

Re:Why was everyone downloading?

[SeaFox]

Wow, that's cheap of them. I guess part of it is the slimmer packaging really.

Re:Why was everyone downloading?

[SeaFox]

Ah, thank you. That does make more sense.

Re:Why was everyone downloading?

[TheRaven64]

That must suck for people who don't have broadband (yes, there are some, and many of them have extensive CD collections). Since all iPods can act as USB mass storage devices, why not just put it on the device itself?

I used to own a serial adaptor for my Psion Series 3 palmtop. It came with a blob of flash in the middle of the cable that contained all of the drivers etc. required to use it. I don't see why iPods shouldn't adopt this model. Sure, download a newer version of iTunes if you want, but at least provide the software required to use it...

error -48

[wilf]

now i just wish apple would sort out those darn sync-ing problems for us apple owners with non-US regional settings!!

Re:Apple and iPod...

[ericdano]

Oh? And what software doesn't "suck balls"? iTunes is a great piece of software.

Lock up? I have a 1st gen one that works, never locked up, a 3 gen that the hd finally died on (was using it a lot as a portable firewire HD), a 5th gen that I use all the time, and a new 2nd gen shuffle. None of these have locked up.

So, maybe they don't like you or something.

Re:First Post!

[Sciros]

There's also Archos. Their players aren't small by any standard, so if you're looking for a *music* player look elsewhere. But if you want *multimedia* and a lot of functionality (including proper wi-fi) then Archos is from the research I've done a very good choice. Their flagship product (the 604 Wifi) is about the same size as the Creative Zen Vision W (widescreen) but has a bit more capability. Though an Archos is more of a "Sharper Image gadget for rich folks" than it is a mainstream player. Nevertheless, because I don't carry around a music player with me 24/7 and just need something I can throw in a backpack and place on my desk at work/home or have lyin around in a car on long distance trips, I think my next player will be an Archos.

Re:First Post!

[SuluSulu]

I don't know about that, the traffic problems at iTunes will zune be over.

Huh?

[Reality Master 101]

This is a good thing? In my world, when a web site crashes because of holiday traffic, I call them incompetent.

On the other hand, knowing Jobs' history, I wouldn't be surprised if he took half the servers offline to manufacture a "crisis" just for the publicity.

Re:Huh?

[Reality Master 101]

what in jobs' history did he do before that manufactured a crisis for publicity?

He has shown a distinct willingness to be less than truthful when marketing his products. The most notorious case that comes to mind was the "twice as fast" debacle, which was a complete lie. But there's a long history of things like that.

Re:Huh?

[Karlt1]

"He has shown a distinct willingness to be less than truthful when marketing his products. The most notorious case that comes to mind was the "twice as fast" debacle, which was a complete lie. But there's a long history of things like that."

Are you trying to say that when companies market a product they only choose to advertise facts that put their product in a positive light? I'm shocked!

Do you remember the old Intel ads where they claimed that thier new chips made browsing the Internet faster when almost everyone was using dialup?

Re:Huh?

[Reality Master 101]

Are you trying to say that when companies market a product they only choose to advertise facts that put their product in a positive light? I'm shocked!

No, I'm saying I actually can't think of a company that tells lies as bald-faced as Apple.

Do you remember the old Intel ads where they claimed that thier new chips made browsing the Internet faster when almost everyone was using dialup?

Except that was actually true. It didn't make the connection go faster, it made the browsing experience faster. I don't know if you remember how horribly slow the HTML renderer of Netscape 4 was, but a faster processer definitely helped. Pages did pop up faster. Of course, a faster processor helped with other web technologies as well, such as Java and Javascript.

Compare that to the "twice as fast" lie. Apple told people a Mac was twice fast as a PC in huge block letters, and then in tiny print at the bottom, it mentioned that it was based on a single, utterly useless artificial benchmark. And when you compared real applications, a Mac was slower in almost every case. That's not advertising "facts" to put themselves in the best light, that's a flat-out, pedal-to-the-metal lie. It would be like Ford advertising that they get "twice the gas mileage" over Chevy, if both are driven one mile per hour, but gets worse gas mileage at any other speed. If Ford did that, would you give them the same pass you do Apple? I highly doubt it.

Re:First Post!

[compm375]

Stuff by COWON America is pretty good. They support a whole lot of audio formats, such as mp3, wav, flac, ogg vorbis, and wma (including DRMed, though it requires a firmware update on all but their newest player). I just got an iAudio x5l, and I am quite impressed by it, especially the 35hr. battery life. The only downside as far as I'm concerned is the video, which is only 160x128 xvid at a bitrate of about 256kb/s, but they have a model specifically for video playing called the A2.

Why didn't Apple post a NOTICE?

[dpbsmith]

We experienced the slowdown, particularly whenever iTunes needed to access our account. Long pauses, and frequent fairly cryptic error messages ("the iTunes store cannot perform this function at this time. Please try again later." or something like that). We all said "It's probably slow because of millions of people who got iPods on Christmas day," tried repeatedly, eventually got through.

There were however some somewhat scary error situations in which it apparently rejected valid combinations of account names and passwords.

What I don't understand is why Apple wasn't able to post some kind of notice, visible in iTunes, saying that the store was slow because of high volume.

DOS Hostage situation?

[XHIIHIIHX]

Are there really that many people with Alexa installed (aka nerds) who don't already have an IPOD and would get there christmas present a day early? And I thought Itunes had it's own browser and wouldn't report to alexa anyway?

Re:I feel sorry for Best Buy etc

[geekoid]

Interesting.
I jst made a few phone calls to people I know that work in places like that(all managers) and a VP I know of a certian large electronics chain, and they don't see anything like that wit the iPods. Sure there are returns but nothing on the scale you mention.

I am curious to see how this shakes out by the end of January.

I do know that on some of the older models, HP built them and those had HD problems.

Re:First Post!

[AndrewNeo]

Can I be a part of your family? I've never gotten a present worth over $100 from any member of my family.

Re:First Post!

[ack154]

Ya, I don't know any of those this year either actually... :)

Re:Apple and iPod...

[NineNine]

iTunes is a great piece of software.

If you call a program that installs Quicktime, Java, and is HUGE and buggy, "great", then I've got some "great" shit to sell you...

Re:Apple and iPod...

[funkatron]

At least indie people can order cds, dance music seems to still be stuck on vinyl. Not that I mind; all the Cd players I have access to are an absolute pain to mix on.

Why doesn't Apple use peer to peer distribution?

[SilentStrike]

Why doesn't apple leverage some bittorrent like technology? They have hundreds of thousands of people running their software with the content they need to distribute. It seems like such an obvious solution to problems like these. Maybe they could even incentivize leaving "upload mode" on by giving users a free song for every N (N = 100, 500?) their machine distributes.

Jupiter Called

[dave562]

They have this thing called a "load balancer" that they want to sell you.

Re:Jupiter Called

[KangKong]

Not Juniper?

Re:First Post!

[dangitman]

Ewwww! You just got cow on my America!

Re:First Post!

[JazzLad]

Yep, my wife and I spent a combined $35 on each other this year.

Yes, I know this is OT. Feel free to mod accordingly.

Re:First Post!

[dangitman]

I know of two people that got Zunes (somehow...) and my sister got a Sansa because my mom didn't want to spend the extra for a Nano

Ahh, so that explains why murder rates have risen recently.

Packaging

[fupeg]

Since I own stock in Apple, I sure hope this was because of tons of iPods being sold and overwhelming demand for ITMS downloads. However, it might have been caused by Apple's change in packaging. When I bought a Nano in October 2005, it came in a cardboard package, approximately the size of two CDs. It needed to be bigger than a CD because it contained a CD -- a CD with iTunes on it. If you buy a Nano or Shuffle (not sure about the video iPod) this year, they come in a clear plastic package that's a rectangular solid similar in size to a soda can. The packaging can be smaller because it does not contain a CD with iTunes on it. Instead, you have to download iTunes from Apple. So maybe that was the cause of the traffic in Christmas morning. Lots of first time iPod owners all trying to download iTunes. That's a 35 MB download, compared to the ~4 MB downloads for most songs on ITMS. Steve Jobs was touting that the smaller packaging was more environmentally friendly (maybe cheaper, too?)

Re:Packaging

[/dev/trash]

You would think that iTunes would be on a separate pipe altogether.

Re:Packaging

[WMD_88]

I thought not putting a CD in there was stupid. If they wanted to make the packaging smaller, they could've used those tiny CDs instead of full-size ones.

Re:Packaging

[lakeland]

Why not put itunes on the ipod? Every ipod has a capacity > 35MB.

Up next on CNN

[Saikik]

The War on Downloaders

reality check-building to capacity

[way2trivial]

if you expected a 4 fold ncrease for 72 hours, then demand to drop to more moderate levels- you might decide to take the service hit rather than make a huge capital
  investment that would cover your 'brownout'

Re:I don't get it...

[crabpeople]

Yeah. And dont try and do *crazy* things like renaming exsisting playlists in itunes, deleting songs off the player while away from the pc, or expecting the ipod to get recognized by itunes in less than 5 minutes. Seriously, I have no idea why people love itunes so much. It doesnt follow any of the most common windows UI conventions. You can't for example, drag a song onto a playlist and hover over it making the playlist pop up. Infact now that I think of it, I dont think apple knows that hovering over something for 3 seconds is an action. Pretty much everything you do in itunes requires a click of somesort. Really annoying when your used to mouseovering things to get their attention.

Re:I don't get it...

[crabpeople]

"My first Karma, drive got click of death"

I dont know much about rios, but as I understand it that behaviour is normal. Simply throw rio karma against a desk or other solid object and blamo! fixed!

Re:First Post!

[drsquare]

If you can give multiple ipods for christmas you must be loaded.

Re:Apple and iPod...

[Nulagrithom]

Actually, indie is starting to pull away from CD's, at least the indie that I'm associated with. Some bands are setting their stuff up online for download instead of having CD's made and mailing them out. I remember one of my favorite bands that came through town, The Blakes, talking about choosing between record deals they had on the table for their new CD. In the end they went indie and set up their new CD online through Snocap for $11, $6 of which goes to Snocap. Of course the CD's are available to be ordered, and they can be purchased at shows the Blakes play at, but I imagine this will become more and more the trend as online sales boom and CD stores close, stores which indie bands can't get their record in to anyway.

Re:First Post!

[leenks]

I love the spirit of Christmas. Soon *everyone* will know that Christ was born with a pair of Nike trainers on his feet and an ipod in his pocket!

Re:Why doesn't Apple use peer to peer distribution

[/dev/trash]

ask the riaa

Re:?iTunes encoder which cuts the black bars?

[CronoCloud]

For encoding video to my PSP, I use pspvc http://pspvc.sourceforge.net/ which is ffmpeg based, but is easier to use and "just works" You could also use it to encode for your iPod.

Dear Apple,

[initialE]

We crashed your servers, What did they drop?

Huh

[Kaemaril]

Well, that certainly explains why it took 40+ minutes to download an album, whereas normally it's 90 seconds tops.

more marketing research required by competition

[SethJohnson]

And by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots.

That comment, sir, got you added to my friends list.

Your other observations about the importance of market research in determining a product's feature set are stating the obvious, but valuable nonetheless. Extremely granular market research that determines who will pay how much for this product over that product because of which features is what should have sent the Zune designers back to their drafting tables.

Seth

Re:I work for a PR company and you are incorrect

[Kumba]

I think you're mistaking Apple for Sony here....

What's "portable" video?

[Rix]

The Zen Vision:M plays the same files I'd play on my computer, or burn and play on my dvd player.

Re:What's "portable" video?

[CronoCloud]

Portable means having a good quality of video for a smaller file size, and the MPEG2 you're burning for your DVD player doesn't fit that qualification. Especially since the Zen Vision M's screen is 320x240. Why play MPEG2 on it when you can use video specifically designed for good quality, low file size and that looks good at 320x240. Meaning MPEG4 SP/MP or h.264 AVC. You could still play those files on your computer, though admittedly not on your DVD player.

Re:What's "portable" video?

[OriginalArlen]

Portable means having a good quality of video for a smaller file size Ye gods, what are they teaching the kids at school today??

Definitions of 'portable':

Definitions of portable on the Web:

• easily or conveniently transported; "a portable television set"
• a small light typewriter; usually with a case in which it can be carried
• of a motor designed to be attached to the outside of a boat's hull; "a portable outboard motor" wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Re:What's "portable" video?

[CronoCloud]

Literalist.

Look, owning a portable video device means you want good quality but a small file size. That's what I meant.

That's why I'll never buy anything from iTunes

[Rix]

It isn't a dependable format. If I pack away a collection of iTunes encrypted music for 15 years, will I still be able to play it? Doubtful. Add to the fact that it locks me into one manufacturer if I want to listen to music I've purchased without cracking it, and it doesn't seem a very good deal to me. What if Apple starts producing things you don't like? Or someone else produces things you like much better? Lack of iTunes support in competing products isn't a deficiency in them, it's a deficiency in iTunes.

Also, I'm not American, and it's not illegal for me to pirate my music (and arguably not my video), so I really don't have any reason to put up with DRM in the first place.

Re:That's why I'll never buy anything from iTunes

[Lars T.]

It isn't a dependable format. If I pack away a collection of iTunes encrypted music for 15 years, will I still be able to play it? Doubtful. It's doubtful you can still play MP3s in 15 years? Only if you have the volume TOO LOUD.

Re:I work for a PR company and you are incorrect

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

Mod him up as brilliant.

Re:First Post!

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not know of a single family member or co worker that got an iPod for Christmas.

Your post was modded as interesting. In theory, my comment should be moderated just as "interesting" as your post as we are sharing the same exact subject and material but with opposite results.

Let's see if there is a bias in the moderation around here.
I have a feeling how this will work out because I would not classify one person posting about knowing a bunch of people that got an iPod for Christmas as "interesting".

Here's one for you. I know of at least 10 people in my family (ages 18-80) that got snow globes for xmas!

I know tons of people that got iPods this year, +5 interesting
I do not know anyone that got an iPod [silence...still silence...no moderation)

But it has a 60GB drive in it

[Rix]

h.264 certainly will give a smaller file size for similar quality, but it's also much more processor intensive to decode, and would eat the battery much faster. Further, why go to the trouble of re-encoding things to some esoteric format, when I've already got lots of stuff in divx that I can just throw on the device and use? And why would I want to keep two archive copies, one for the PMP and one for the DVD player?

There's also the fact that the Zen can output at 640x480 to an external display.

Let's step out of the reality distortion field...

[Rix]

The iPod owns the market because of good marketing. Period. Apple would have to majorly screw up at this point to lose that. If an iPod meets your needs best, fine, that's nice. Have fun. But there's no need for a religious crusade against people who's needs are better met by other things.

My Zen is slightly thicker, but otherwise the same size as an iPod. It fits in my pocket, and that's all that matters from my perspective. 60GB is more than enough for me, so more isn't really much of a selling feature (again, to me. If it is to you, wonderful). The LCD on the Zen is much nicer for watching videos on, though not in the sunshine. However, if I'm out and about in the sunshine, I'll have other things I'll want to look at. It's a trade off, which works out in favour of the Zen for me.

I don't personally like iTunes very much, and have no intention of buying music from a DRM service, so that has no effect to me. I *do* bring my media player over to friends places to share music. This is perfectly legal in Canada, where I live, and I don't particularly like the idea of Apple trying to force American laws on me. I know it's possible to get at the music files in other ways, but why would I want to put up with that hassle if I don't have to?

Re:First Post!

[CrazyTalk]

Multiple $5 iTunes Gift Cards? I would hardly call that "loaded".

my ipod...

[opc.chr0n1c]

i modded my ipod to look and works just like a v1.5 firmware PSP, it's amazingly slick and i don't have have to pay itunes when i wanna listen to music!

software updates

[ElephanTS]

I had to fix a family member's Ipod mini on Xmas day and found that the ipod software updates were overwhelmed too. I wonder if many of the new pods were downloading updates too - it was nearly 20Mb I think. Seems like they come through the store now. Got it in the end though.

Re:Apple and iPod...

[yoasif]

Not to disagree with the gist of your post, but as far as I know, iTunes has never been bundled with any Java VM.

Re:Why doesn't Apple use peer to peer distribution

[WMD_88]

That's not actually true. All the files on Apple's servers are unencrypted, and stay that way until the iTunes client encrypts them. That's how DVD Jon was able to make a iTMS client that sent you unencrypted files.

Re:First Post!

[ben there...]

The iriver clix sure does. It looks much better, has a potentially more intuitive (and customizable) touchscreen interface, doesn't waste space where a screen could/should be, and isn't too outrageous of a price. Works with Unbox too, which unfortunately isn't seeming to get as many shows as iTMS, but is still decent. Only real question is how good its software is compared to iTunes.

Apparently their marketing sucks though, as even though it got great reviews and top ratings, I never hear it mentioned in these discussions.

DRM raises the stakes

[EERac]

Obviously it's a bummer to not be able to buy new music for a day, but with DRM, there's more at stake. On Chrismas, I wanted to transfer some songs and videos I already owned to my new iPod, but I was using my powerbook which I hadn't authorized to play the songs. Even though I had the files, iTunes wouldn't put unauthorized content on my new iPod. When I tried to authorize my computer, I couldn't because the iTunes music store was down.

Even if the iTunes store is too flooded to handle new purchases, Apple has an obligation to keep rights management up and running. It's very disheartening to lose access to content you made the deliberate choice to buy legally.

Re:DRM raises the stakes

[DECS]

Yes I have that problem too because I go through Macs so often that I can't keep the five I'm using authorized at once.

I have lots of iTunes songs I bought, but don't seem to recall to authorize the machines, so they just sit around with tracks they can't play until I get a new iPod, and then have all sorts of troubles.

But its problably just you and I with that problem, since its such a perfect storm of improbability that causes the dilemma.

-

Inside Apple's iPhone

Re:DRM raises the stakes

[tetsuo29]

This is why I don't leave the few things I've purchased from iTMS on my system as "protected". I burn it to an audio CD and then re-import it. (If I think the quality has suffered noticeably, I up the bit rate to 192 to compensate.) I don't want any of the music I've purchased to ever not work because of the stupid DRM. Apple has left you an easy way around their DRM, use it.

Re:The new 'OUT OF STOCK' sign?

[plopez]

What's crazy is this is the way the industry wants us to go - and yet neither the Micrsoft LIVE servers or the Apple iTMS servers seem to be able to handle it when only a _fraction_ of the public opts to do it
That's what I mean. They pushed a huge promotion but had no surge capacity. They went cheap.

Peace.

VM to the rescue

[khchung]

if you expected a 4 fold ncrease for 72 hours, then demand to drop to more moderate levels That's one of the main selling point of using VMs. When your army of servers in the hosting facilities are really just virtual machines running on some super uber server along with other VMs, it will be feasible to rent 4x more computing power for a week, either by making more VMs or increasing the resource share of your VMs.

All rushing to buy: Akon - "Smack That"

[bodland]

::barf::
Worst AND most annoying song of 2006.

Re:First Post!

[yoder]

Yup, biases exist, even in this Utopian world of internet tubes. Digg is a hell of a lot worse than Slashdot has ever been though, where roving bands of like-minded voters descend upon random articles and wreak havok. Good, interesting articles are trashed, while crap is Dugg up. I don't even look at the popular articles on Digg anymore. I go straight to the new stuff that noone has had a chance to fuck with yet.

feasbility vs economics

[way2trivial]

what's apples margin on itunes sales? I propose (and my original post was tapped out on a phone) that they may well have been aware of the likely result, and the beancounters decided it wasn't economically viable.

to rent a quadrupling of service is certainly possible, but when you arrange something like this, for a short duration- you pay out the nose.

the original slashdot post suggested apple was unaware of the onslaught to come- My thought was, they likely knew- but couldn't reasonably accomodate.

Bigger IS better, if you want to WATCH it!

[beer_maker]

I bought the video iPod so I can watch videos ... so screen size matters to me. If I didn't have the iPod already, I might have bought a Zune just for that very feature. The fact that it displays at the same resolution would be fine, given that everything I watch has already been compressed in some lossy format. Call me when the HD portables come out, maybe I'll change my mind ...

And really, nobody likes running with a large iPod either - if you expect to be actively exercising while listening to music you buy a mini version, like the Nano, Shuffle, Sansa, Rio, etc.

I fall squarely in the other camp - I carry a PDA (in a hardcase no less) which fills a wallet pocket pretty full, and I like it just fine. I use it primarily for reading ebooks, and I find the screen to be just big enough. I can load it with a subset of my music if I so desire, but I usually just carry the iPod too if I'm going to be away from a computer (where I would just use iTunes instead.)

Re:Let's step out of the reality distortion field.

[Blondie-Wan]

Great. The Zen meets your needs, while the iPod doesn't. Fine. Nobody cares if you want to get something other than an iPod. However, your implicit assumption "all other people are idiots for buying and using and liking iPods" is a bit much.

The iPod didn't get to where it's gotten solely on brilliant marketing; it had to actually have some real advantages to back it up. Go and look at iPod reviews from the beginning, and you'll see them talk about how good the battery life is (believe it or not, it was once a real advantage, though other players have caught up with that), how fast the transfer times were (remember, the iPods started out using FireWire back when most other players used USB, and I don't mean USB2), how small and light it was (even now, most other players of the same capacity are bulkier, and it's always been that way, and this isn't just a fashion thing - people who exercise with their players, for example, have real reason to want them as light as possible), and its utter simplicity (yeah, Ok, so the Zen may make more sense to you; just remember it doesn't necessarily make more sense to most normal people). Note also how, while Apple has added tons of features and whatnot since the iPod's inception, it's done so without changing the fundamentals of how it works as a music player; they've wisely chosen to keep it a gadget that does one thing really well and simply has additional features, rather than turning it into a jack of all trades, master of none. Further note that, for all the talk of zomgDRM!DRM!DRM! and lock-in and whatnot, it actually plays more formats than most other players (MP3, AAC, WAV, AIFF, Audible, and Apple Lossless, and that's just the audio formats, not the video or image ones).

Sorry your archnemesis' iPod ran over your dog, raped your sister and stole your Bible, but as we say on Earth, c'est la vie.

Quite the contrary

[Rix]

It is very much apparent from the rapid response to a simple query about options other than the iPod, that the Church of Jobs members do care very much that someone would dare to get something other than an iPod. I've said nothing about the relative intelligence of Apple's customers. All I've done is point out that there are options which are better for me. I don't have any beef against Apple. I'm just not particularly impressed by their products. The rabid and fanatical response of the fashionistas speaks for itself.

The Zen is just as simple, if not more so, than an iPod. Creative designed the interface the iPod uses. mp3, aac, wav, aiff, audible and apple lossless is a pretty anaemic list of supported formats, most players will support more. On the video side, it's important to note that the iPod Video does not support the most common file format: divx. H.264 is a nice, but it isn't very good for portable players. It's advantage is higher quality in smaller files, but it does this at the cost of greater processing requirements, which translates into more battery draw. Given that video capable portable players have storage to spare, divx is clearly the better choice. Further, any video downloaded from torrent sites is likely to be divx, and thus unusable on iPods.

As for ease of use, how do I easily go to a friends place to swap music with an iPod? Don't scream pirate at me; private copying has always been legal in Canada.

Re:Quite the contrary

[Blondie-Wan]

The "rabid and fanatical response of the fashionistas" is simply a handful of people who came upon your post at more or less the same time and responded with their own points of view. That many people might come across your post within a short period can hardly be unexpected on Slashdot, a site whose very name has become synonymous with colossal server loads from scads of people checking a linked site at the same time, and that many of those people might have favorable views of a product that earned overwhelming dominance in a particular market is similarly predictable. It has nothing to do with caring what you want to do or what you want to use; it's simply your own arrogance in assuming what you like is appropriate for everyone else here, and it certainly isn't the product of some organized bunch of Apple zealots keeping a watchful eye on criticism and alerting its members to attack, as you seem to think. I honestly don't care whether you like your Zen or not, and furthermore, for your obviously much-needed edification, I personally don't want any company's products, no matter how good, to achieve a, say, Microsoft-like monopoly on the market for that kind of product; I personally don't want to see iPods displace all other players, though I'm quite happy to see them succeed. I really don't want to see them utterly crush everyone else, though, and I honestly don't care what you use. I'm simply responding to your statement it succeeded only because of marketing; as I see it, it's offered numerous other compelling advantages since its introduction (some of them only at one point or another, like the battery life or the fast transfer speed, others over the iPod's entire life, like the size and weight, or the ease of use).

I do acknowledge your assertion "most players will support more" formats is news to me. I was genuinely not aware most of the hundreds of portable MP3 players played more than six audio formats - most of the ones I've seen specs for note only two or three (say, MP3, WMA and maybe WAV, for example); I'm aware of the existence of a number that play many more formats than that, but the revelation such 7-formats-or-more-audio-formats models make up more than half of all players out there is a real surprise. Can you furnish any substantiation?

divx would indeed be a nice feature to have, for precisely the reasons you've stated. It's hardly a deal-killer for many of us, though, since (as I indicated in my own earlier post), the iPod is designed to do one thing (play audio, specifically music) really well, and the various other functions are just icing (how any of these devices plays music is most likely far more important than how it plays video for the overwhelming majority of users). I'd indeed love to see it added, though, and for that matter I'd love to see support for FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, etc. added as well, even if I probably won't use it myself.

Let's have a truce

[Rix]

There's no reason for us to be yelling at each other. However, I stand by my statement that I get jumped on by fanatics whenever I make a negative comment about Apple here; regardless of whether you're one or not. A lot of people *do* form an emotional attachment to the Church of Jobs, and lash out at "heathens".

DivX support is a major issue for me. I'd be unlikely to use video features much, or at all, on a player that didn't support it. From my perspective, there's no reason to include video support if it won't play divx.

What makes iPods useless to me, though, is the ham-fisted attempts to modify my behaviour, by "locking" an iPod to a specific iTunes instance. 90% of the music I get introduced to is from friends grabbing my player and dropping stuff on it. Not being able to plug it into any random machine to copy music onto and off of makes the iPod largely useless in it's primary function to me.

The lack of DivX support feels like the same thing to me. There's no technical reason not to include it, in fact it's quite the opposite. H.264 is a horrible format for portable video, it's a huge processor hog, and thus it sucks back the battery power, while a divx decoder sips conservatively. The only sane reason I can think of for not supporting DivX is to mollify the copyright cartel.