Portable Mp3 player for $99

Andrew Konkol sent us another portable MP3 Player, except that this one has 64 megs of memory and costs only $99. And of course, its not available until mid '99 (which by my math is only a few weeks away...

Comments

Cripes! no wonder we have monopolies!

[Cid Highwind]

Look at the responses here. Every post seems to say (I paraphrase) "Their page looks like crap, and it's on a user account, therefore they must be scam artists"

Have we all been brainwashed by the mass-marketeers to the point where we are no longer capable of believing good things can come out of a small startup company? It's no wonder the computer industry is becoming monopolized if we are afraid to buy from the upstarts. What the dominant OEMs seem to have done is ingrained in our minds that a slick public image and a top-of-the-line web site = a reputable dealer. They have succeeded in making a huge barrier to entry into the harware market. Web design costs money, something these guys probably don't have a lot of. I for one would rather see them put all their money and time into developing a better product.

I understand

[Lupus Rufus]

You're pissed that while some people complain that the "glory days" of computing have "ended" (I tend to disagree; the grassroots manner in which free software is taking over the world can only be described as a glorious revolution), people will write off a new face in the computing world because they seem to be marketing their product quite badly. Thus, the computing world of the 70's and 80's has been twisted into the corporate mess of the 90's.

While I too lament the dominant force which media, marketing and corporations wield in our consumer society, I think in this particular case the naysayers have it right. Why do I think this? Basically one word: capital. Mass-producing a piece of hardware requires vast resources, and even constructing a prototype (which looks as nice as this one does) requires a decent amount of cash. Now, I'll accept that this could be a labor of love, the prototype painstakingly constructed, squeezing every penny available for what it was worth. But in this case, I would expect that the inventor would be proud enough of his invention to post information on his site. For an example of how I would expect such a project as this to happen, look at the Empeg. The site is not as squeaky-clean as, say, Diamond, but it is full of pictures and tech specs. The love is clear. With the fellow linked to above, I'm not so sure the love is there.

Hardware (especially consumer-grade hardware) has traditionally been made by companies with many resources to speak of. Think IBM, Intel, Sun, Apple, DEC, AT&T, Microsoft (in recent years), and so on. Occasionally people break onto the scene, but their products are almost never as polished as those produced by the big companies. Not that that is a bad thing necessarily, just that the polish of this product in particular is incongruous with the lack of polish on his web page. Also, why go to the trouble of drawing the thing when purportedly the real thing is sitting next to the computer ready to be photographed?

Now of course, software is a totally different issue. Writing a piece of software requires no tools other than a computer, persistence, ingenuity and programming experience, altogether not requiring much capital at all. In fact, it is precisely this low cost of entry that got all of our favorite geeks on their way to fame and (for some) fortune: Richard Stallman, Bill Gates, Marc Andreesen, Linus Torvalds, and all the rest. And in fact, you can expect shitty marketing from a programmer (in fact, shitty marketing probably means the product is better). All I'm saying is that you can't look at hardware the same way.

-josh

Ok, ok. I'm off topic. But I think it's important.

[mountain]

I'm going off on a tangent here so, bear with me.

I've read a few articles along the lines of, 'where have all the {can't think of the right word (but if I could the guys who founded Apple, Microsoft(pre-'90) and GNU/Linux would be described by it)} gone'. And I've wondered myself, why can't someone come along with something wonderful and great and new; that will change the world (as we see it).

With responses like these it's not hard to see why no one's able to make revolutionary products in their garage. Everything's marketing. There's no such thing as a better mouse-trap, just a better marketed one.

Ahh, hell I had a brilliant point to make. Some of you who read this will get the gist of what I'm trying to say. And others won't. I've completely lost my train of thought trying to hash out my point into words. Bugger it.