Apple has sold 500 million songs on the iTMS. Apple has also sold about 42 million iPods at last count.
That's a little more than 11 songs per iPod.
In comparison online sales of music made about 7% of the sales last year. so if there are 11 iTMS (tracks) purchases per iPod, there are probably 12 *new* CDs per iPod in the last year alone. If you include the fact that people have been buying CDs for over 20 years now, you probably have 11 iTMS tracks and 30 or 40 CDs, or about 450 to 600 tracks per iPod.
Apple doesn't give away pink iPods to celebrities to hype their products. Most of the iPod cool was earned the hard way: word of mouth, TV ads, and billboards.
The problem is pretty simple. Finding a couple songs out of several hundred CDs while on a subway or walking to the bus stop. No one else had solved it effectively before hand.
You misunderstand evolution if you think "we've lost the filter aspect of evolution."
Before evolution can filter productively, there needs to be a large genepool. The lack of a large gene pool means the entire species is wiped out when a selection criteria is applied.
So by encouraging a wide variety of individuals to reproduce, we ensure that there is a greater likelihood that humanity will survive, via genetic diversity, the next big epidemic, temperature shift, solar radiation shift, or other selective pressure.
How else should it work? Having 12 kids ensures several different copies of genes from each parent and each set of grandparents is spread through the gene pool. Diversity is the key to adaptation in evolution.
Not having kids is just stupid. If you work hard, it's for yourself. If you have a lot of kids it's for your species. We need both to ensure the future success of mankind.
Of course you're free to believe what you wish. The Apple I know releases premium priced premium product, has a solid if uninspiring implementation, adheres to the "Keep it simple" philosophy, and relies on consumer desire to move it's product.
In your synopsis you forgot to add, "good product" to your laundry list. If the iPod were not a decent product, the 'hype' as you put it would have died out at Gen2; now we're all the way up to Gen5 iPod, plus the Shuffle, Nano, and Mini.
You can infer the performance of the Core Duo from iMac and MacBook Pro reviews. The benchmarks also highlight the MBP and iMac, so there really was no need to talk about the Mac Mini Core Duo.
However no such review of a Core Solo machine exists because, as far as I know, there are no other Core Solo machines.
What are you talking about? The closest PC is an Aopen MiniPC, which uses the old Pentium M Dothan, not the new dual core, and is several hundred dollars MORE expensive.
Well, we're talking about, say, a 5 minute song, at 5mb a minute, or roughly 25mb of download.
It literally costs less to buy a CD because the bandwidth of a FedEx truck is in the thousands of terabytes, while the bandwidth of the average online store is probably only in the hundreds of gigabytes.
If you literally want lossless, you need to pay for it somehow. That either means driving 10 miles to a store (at 20mpg, $2.50 a gallon, 10 miles is $1.25), plus the actual CD for $14 including tax... or you stay at home and download it and have it in an hour... or you order it online and have it shipped when it can get bundled with other orders in your area and arrives in 3 days... the money/time is spent somehow.
Although Apple's fan base has made it clear they want a media center device with recording capabilities, they don't want to give them what they want. Why? because it will hurt their iTunes video download business?
Do you really believe that?
What about the fact that there isn't currently any indication that there is a profitable market for DVRs? TiVo can't sell them for a profit and is resorting to giving boxes away in exchange for monthly subscriptions? Or that cable and satellite TV companies also give away PVRs in exchange for a subscription?
Where is the profit incentive for an Apple PVR? In the iTMS, the iPod is the profit incentive; in a few years when iPods cost $99 we'll probably see Apple start to offer deals where you get an iPod for free if you purchase a $9.99 monthly subscription to the iTMS.
Right now however if Apple offered a $699 PVR, where would they see any profit? Would a $699 PVR sell better than a $599 Mac mini? I wouldn't think so.
Actually, there is at least one social practice the iPod made possible:
Carrying all your music with you; a soundtrack to your life.
Prior to the iPod you had three choices: 1) Unit based players, like a CD player or a tape cassette with limited music selection 2) Network based players, like a AM/FM radio with limited music selection 3) MP3 players, like the Nomad or Rio with crude design and usability
The iPod, in one package, provide three things the other three existing devices did not have: 1) Wide music selection (your entire music collection) 2) Easy music selection (not only your entire collection, but being to easily browse through it) 3) Portable music selection (smaller than everything out there with a comparable storage density; the Rio was smaller, but only could store 128mb!)
If you really want, amaroK, released in 2003, is more like iTunes, released in 2001, than iTunes is like amaroK, though there isn't any immediate 'cloning' going on.
Of course if you use Linux, you wouldn't have access to iTunes.
In 2005 only 7% of music was via music stores, and only 80% was from the iTMS; or about 5%.
So only 5% of all music from 2005, and probably only 1% of music owned, is locked to any device.
Meaning of the 80/100 people who own iPods, only one is seriously stuck because of content from the iTMS.
The rest, who have ripped to ISO standard MP3 or AAC, are free to move from the iPod to the music player of their choice.
The irony is, due to Apple's update and release cycle, that increasingly another iPod is their music player of their choice, from Photo to Mini to Nano to Video.
No one said you ever had to stick to iTMS or 128kbps. My stuff is 160kbps from my own collection of roughly 100 CDs.
Sometimes I want to decide; it's why I have a 30gb player but only 6gb of music. Most of the time I just want background music, so I let the iPod surprise me.
Except you need to distinguish between iTunes and the iTMS; because only one has DRM, the other is just a POA (plain old application).
In the same vein, people who are suckers because they buy from the iTMS are suckers because they buy DVDs with CSS or VHS with Macrovision.
I think consumers have already proved, in the past 20 years with the success of VHS and DVD, that they are willing to accept DRM. The precedent has already been set.
You've got the difficult job of reversing history.
With the iPod, you can download and use iTunes for free. You can download JetAudio basic, but need to buy JetAudio plus.. and it mentions JetShell for the X5.
With iTunes, at least, you can use it also on Mac or PC; it looks like JetAudio and JetShell is PC only...
Yes, but his point, which you conveniently (or perhaps unknowingly) ignore is still true.
Many people do many more stupid things than spend $0.99 at the iTMS without being called suckers.
They drive SUVs in suburban and urban environments. They lease, perpetually, or they buy new cars every 5 years. They choose not to invest in 401k plans. They choose not to save anything. They fail to pay off their credit cards in a timely manner, incurring interest and finance charges. They default on loans. They buy too many things, therefore incurring credit card debt in the first place.
Drag and drop is two more steps than it takes to update an iPod.
I just plug 'er in. There is no step two.
Also, about navigating with buttons, imagine what driving a car is like if you had to use buttons to turn left or right. Imagine what turning a door knob is like if you had to use buttons to get it to move, instead of twisting it. That's the strength of the scroll wheel.
But different strokes for different folks. It's the existence of folk like you that drive Apple to continually refine their interface and product.
Isn't it pretty powerful that Apple has 51% and Sony, at #2, has 16%? Perhaps not cornering, per se, but if last year they had 32%, and this year they have 51%, and they continue to grow at the same pace by next year won't they have 70% at a flat 19% a year (51-32)?
There are several ways to synchronize to a flash player:
iTunes will automatically resize (by reducing bitrate) when transferring to a iPod shuffle iTunes can use special playlists; one poster mentioned "least played". I use "most played". You can also select "most played but not played in the last three days" or "least played with greater than 1 star rating". Because iTunes uses a database, you can use some pretty fancy logic on your playlists iTunes can also do random synchronization
None of these solutions require, as you put it, "manually copy it over".
Also, if you have several dozen gigabytes of MP3s... that's why they invented a 30gb iPod and a 60gb iPod.
Q: Why does your average MP3 player need to be more intuitive? A: Because most people aren't as smart as you are.
Q: My Rave MP has up and down arrows instead of a virtual scroll wheel. The latter may be somewhat cooler, but it's not any more efficient. You can operate it just as fast, just as easily, with one hand. A: It's actually much more efficient. How many times do you have to press "down" to scroll through a list of 200 songs? Of 2,000 songs? How long do you have to hold the "down" button? With the iPod you can scroll through 200 songs in about the same time as 100 songs; or even 10 songs.
Q: You have playlists, shuffle, etc. Fast forwarding through a song is as simple as--get this--holding down the fast forward/skip button. A: If you've got a 4 minute song, how long does it take to scroll through 3 minutes of it? On an iPod with scroll wheel, it takes about 5 seconds. How long does it take to scroll through 5 minutes of a 6 minute song? It takes about 5 seconds on an iPod with scroll wheel.
Q: I use folders to organize my songs, and transfering them to the Rave is as easy as plugging it in and dragging and dropping from Windows Explorer (or more frequently, Nautilus. It auto-mounts just fine in Ubuntu.) Not having to run any extra client software at all is what I consider "integration." A: You don't have to organize your songs with an iPod. iTunes does it for you. Do you also organize your inodes? Your sectors, tracks, and cylinders? Your file tables? Or do you let the OS do that for you? Do you consider an OS as "extra client software" to enable you to access your hardware?
Q: And not only did it cost me well over $50 less than the equivalent iPod, it had features that the iPod lacked, like a digital FM tuner, the ability to record songs off of radio, and a built-in microphone for voice memos. A: Point to you. It costs $30 for an FM tuner, $30 for a Mic on an iPod.
Q: And finally, looks: It's a deep cherry red and roundish instead of pure white and squarish. So? It looks just fine and even if you hated the color you could easily hide it in a shirt or pants pocket. A: People pay for their looks. The iPod is deceptively simple; a screen, a wheel, and a button. That's it.
Q: Props to the Apple marketing department. Props to whomever put together the iTunes store. Props to whomever put together such a slick, minimalistic package and make it popular. I'm not knocking the iPod in any way, I'm just sick of people trying to convince me that all other MP3 players are ugly and nigh impossible to use. A: I'm trying to convince you the iPod is easier to use.
Q: I select the folder (or the playlist), I select shuffle, I hit play--what can possibly be simpler than that? A: The iPod is about the same, no advantage there.
Q: I drag and drop from the file manager I *already use* to organize my music--what proprietary client feature could make it easier than that? A: Not having to organize your music is easier:) With an iPod you take no action, such as drag and drop. You merely plug it in, and it auto-synchronizes.
Q: What could possibly be worth an extra $50? A: Let us list two things that may be worth the extra $50: 1) Not having to organize files 2) Not having to synchronize files 3) Being able to
Slashdot Mirror
Oops. I stand corrected.
It's the local licensing laws. You don't think Apple would love to open their net to sell to as wide an audience as possible through iTMS?
Well now at least 42 million iPod owners can claim to carry around hundreds of CDs on a subway or a bus station, all stored on an iPod.
Apple has sold 500 million songs on the iTMS.
Apple has also sold about 42 million iPods at last count.
That's a little more than 11 songs per iPod.
In comparison online sales of music made about 7% of the sales last year. so if there are 11 iTMS (tracks) purchases per iPod, there are probably 12 *new* CDs per iPod in the last year alone. If you include the fact that people have been buying CDs for over 20 years now, you probably have 11 iTMS tracks and 30 or 40 CDs, or about 450 to 600 tracks per iPod.
Apple doesn't give away pink iPods to celebrities to hype their products. Most of the iPod cool was earned the hard way: word of mouth, TV ads, and billboards.
The problem is pretty simple. Finding a couple songs out of several hundred CDs while on a subway or walking to the bus stop. No one else had solved it effectively before hand.
You misunderstand evolution if you think "we've lost the filter aspect of evolution."
Before evolution can filter productively, there needs to be a large genepool. The lack of a large gene pool means the entire species is wiped out when a selection criteria is applied.
So by encouraging a wide variety of individuals to reproduce, we ensure that there is a greater likelihood that humanity will survive, via genetic diversity, the next big epidemic, temperature shift, solar radiation shift, or other selective pressure.
Evolution works fine.
How else should it work? Having 12 kids ensures several different copies of genes from each parent and each set of grandparents is spread through the gene pool. Diversity is the key to adaptation in evolution.
Not having kids is just stupid. If you work hard, it's for yourself. If you have a lot of kids it's for your species. We need both to ensure the future success of mankind.
Of course you're free to believe what you wish. The Apple I know releases premium priced premium product, has a solid if uninspiring implementation, adheres to the "Keep it simple" philosophy, and relies on consumer desire to move it's product.
In your synopsis you forgot to add, "good product" to your laundry list. If the iPod were not a decent product, the 'hype' as you put it would have died out at Gen2; now we're all the way up to Gen5 iPod, plus the Shuffle, Nano, and Mini.
You can infer the performance of the Core Duo from iMac and MacBook Pro reviews. The benchmarks also highlight the MBP and iMac, so there really was no need to talk about the Mac Mini Core Duo.
However no such review of a Core Solo machine exists because, as far as I know, there are no other Core Solo machines.
What are you talking about? The closest PC is an Aopen MiniPC, which uses the old Pentium M Dothan, not the new dual core, and is several hundred dollars MORE expensive.
l http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/myaopen/MINIPC.html
We are living in a world where the Mac is cheaper AND more powerful than the similar PC. The comparable system from AOpen is $686 to Apple's $599!
http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/myaopen/MINIPC.htm
http://www.apple.com/macmini/whatsinside.html
Well, we're talking about, say, a 5 minute song, at 5mb a minute, or roughly 25mb of download.
It literally costs less to buy a CD because the bandwidth of a FedEx truck is in the thousands of terabytes, while the bandwidth of the average online store is probably only in the hundreds of gigabytes.
If you literally want lossless, you need to pay for it somehow. That either means driving 10 miles to a store (at 20mpg, $2.50 a gallon, 10 miles is $1.25), plus the actual CD for $14 including tax... or you stay at home and download it and have it in an hour... or you order it online and have it shipped when it can get bundled with other orders in your area and arrives in 3 days... the money/time is spent somehow.
Shouldn't price also be concommitant with download size?
So if a lossless song is 5x bigger than a 128kbps song, shouldn't it be approximately 5x more expensive?
The lossless song should, at your rate, bet at least $0.99
My own take is, after making my own DVDs and selling for a smattering of profit:
$0.50 128kbps
$0.75 256kbps
$0.99 320kbps
$2.99 lossless
This doesn't follow that 5x pattern because I've included profit margins in each price category.
Do you really believe that?
What about the fact that there isn't currently any indication that there is a profitable market for DVRs? TiVo can't sell them for a profit and is resorting to giving boxes away in exchange for monthly subscriptions? Or that cable and satellite TV companies also give away PVRs in exchange for a subscription?
Where is the profit incentive for an Apple PVR? In the iTMS, the iPod is the profit incentive; in a few years when iPods cost $99 we'll probably see Apple start to offer deals where you get an iPod for free if you purchase a $9.99 monthly subscription to the iTMS.
Right now however if Apple offered a $699 PVR, where would they see any profit? Would a $699 PVR sell better than a $599 Mac mini? I wouldn't think so.
Actually, there is at least one social practice the iPod made possible:
Carrying all your music with you; a soundtrack to your life.
Prior to the iPod you had three choices:
1) Unit based players, like a CD player or a tape cassette with limited music selection
2) Network based players, like a AM/FM radio with limited music selection
3) MP3 players, like the Nomad or Rio with crude design and usability
The iPod, in one package, provide three things the other three existing devices did not have:
1) Wide music selection (your entire music collection)
2) Easy music selection (not only your entire collection, but being to easily browse through it)
3) Portable music selection (smaller than everything out there with a comparable storage density; the Rio was smaller, but only could store 128mb!)
If you really want, amaroK, released in 2003, is more like iTunes, released in 2001, than iTunes is like amaroK, though there isn't any immediate 'cloning' going on.
Of course if you use Linux, you wouldn't have access to iTunes.
Except they aren't locked in.
In 2005 only 7% of music was via music stores, and only 80% was from the iTMS; or about 5%.
So only 5% of all music from 2005, and probably only 1% of music owned, is locked to any device.
Meaning of the 80/100 people who own iPods, only one is seriously stuck because of content from the iTMS.
The rest, who have ripped to ISO standard MP3 or AAC, are free to move from the iPod to the music player of their choice.
The irony is, due to Apple's update and release cycle, that increasingly another iPod is their music player of their choice, from Photo to Mini to Nano to Video.
No one said you ever had to stick to iTMS or 128kbps. My stuff is 160kbps from my own collection of roughly 100 CDs.
Sometimes I want to decide; it's why I have a 30gb player but only 6gb of music. Most of the time I just want background music, so I let the iPod surprise me.
Except you need to distinguish between iTunes and the iTMS; because only one has DRM, the other is just a POA (plain old application).
In the same vein, people who are suckers because they buy from the iTMS are suckers because they buy DVDs with CSS or VHS with Macrovision.
I think consumers have already proved, in the past 20 years with the success of VHS and DVD, that they are willing to accept DRM. The precedent has already been set.
You've got the difficult job of reversing history.
Hmm, it depends. What is it's software like?
With the iPod, you can download and use iTunes for free. You can download JetAudio basic, but need to buy JetAudio plus.. and it mentions JetShell for the X5.
With iTunes, at least, you can use it also on Mac or PC; it looks like JetAudio and JetShell is PC only...
Yes, but his point, which you conveniently (or perhaps unknowingly) ignore is still true.
Many people do many more stupid things than spend $0.99 at the iTMS without being called suckers.
They drive SUVs in suburban and urban environments.
They lease, perpetually, or they buy new cars every 5 years.
They choose not to invest in 401k plans.
They choose not to save anything.
They fail to pay off their credit cards in a timely manner, incurring interest and finance charges.
They default on loans.
They buy too many things, therefore incurring credit card debt in the first place.
Drag and drop is two more steps than it takes to update an iPod.
I just plug 'er in. There is no step two.
Also, about navigating with buttons, imagine what driving a car is like if you had to use buttons to turn left or right. Imagine what turning a door knob is like if you had to use buttons to get it to move, instead of twisting it. That's the strength of the scroll wheel.
But different strokes for different folks. It's the existence of folk like you that drive Apple to continually refine their interface and product.
iTunes already runs seamlessly on the only operating system that can remotely be considered competition for Windows; OS X.
Why would they port iTunes to an operating system that can be considered competition for OS X?
Isn't it pretty powerful that Apple has 51% and Sony, at #2, has 16%? Perhaps not cornering, per se, but if last year they had 32%, and this year they have 51%, and they continue to grow at the same pace by next year won't they have 70% at a flat 19% a year (51-32)?
There are several ways to synchronize to a flash player:
iTunes will automatically resize (by reducing bitrate) when transferring to a iPod shuffle
iTunes can use special playlists; one poster mentioned "least played". I use "most played". You can also select "most played but not played in the last three days" or "least played with greater than 1 star rating". Because iTunes uses a database, you can use some pretty fancy logic on your playlists
iTunes can also do random synchronization
None of these solutions require, as you put it, "manually copy it over".
Also, if you have several dozen gigabytes of MP3s... that's why they invented a 30gb iPod and a 60gb iPod.
Point by point explanation for you then:
:) With an iPod you take no action, such as drag and drop. You merely plug it in, and it auto-synchronizes.
Q: Why does your average MP3 player need to be more intuitive?
A: Because most people aren't as smart as you are.
Q: My Rave MP has up and down arrows instead of a virtual scroll wheel. The latter may be somewhat cooler, but it's not any more efficient. You can operate it just as fast, just as easily, with one hand.
A: It's actually much more efficient. How many times do you have to press "down" to scroll through a list of 200 songs? Of 2,000 songs? How long do you have to hold the "down" button? With the iPod you can scroll through 200 songs in about the same time as 100 songs; or even 10 songs.
Q: You have playlists, shuffle, etc. Fast forwarding through a song is as simple as--get this--holding down the fast forward/skip button.
A: If you've got a 4 minute song, how long does it take to scroll through 3 minutes of it? On an iPod with scroll wheel, it takes about 5 seconds. How long does it take to scroll through 5 minutes of a 6 minute song? It takes about 5 seconds on an iPod with scroll wheel.
Q: I use folders to organize my songs, and transfering them to the Rave is as easy as plugging it in and dragging and dropping from Windows Explorer (or more frequently, Nautilus. It auto-mounts just fine in Ubuntu.) Not having to run any extra client software at all is what I consider "integration."
A: You don't have to organize your songs with an iPod. iTunes does it for you. Do you also organize your inodes? Your sectors, tracks, and cylinders? Your file tables? Or do you let the OS do that for you? Do you consider an OS as "extra client software" to enable you to access your hardware?
Q: And not only did it cost me well over $50 less than the equivalent iPod, it had features that the iPod lacked, like a digital FM tuner, the ability to record songs off of radio, and a built-in microphone for voice memos.
A: Point to you. It costs $30 for an FM tuner, $30 for a Mic on an iPod.
Q: And finally, looks: It's a deep cherry red and roundish instead of pure white and squarish. So? It looks just fine and even if you hated the color you could easily hide it in a shirt or pants pocket.
A: People pay for their looks. The iPod is deceptively simple; a screen, a wheel, and a button. That's it.
Q: Props to the Apple marketing department. Props to whomever put together the iTunes store. Props to whomever put together such a slick, minimalistic package and make it popular. I'm not knocking the iPod in any way, I'm just sick of people trying to convince me that all other MP3 players are ugly and nigh impossible to use.
A: I'm trying to convince you the iPod is easier to use.
Q: I select the folder (or the playlist), I select shuffle, I hit play--what can possibly be simpler than that?
A: The iPod is about the same, no advantage there.
Q: I drag and drop from the file manager I *already use* to organize my music--what proprietary client feature could make it easier than that?
A: Not having to organize your music is easier
Q: What could possibly be worth an extra $50?
A: Let us list two things that may be worth the extra $50:
1) Not having to organize files
2) Not having to synchronize files
3) Being able to