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

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