Ironic you post this... one of my classes this term is all about engineering design, design team structure, etc. Right now the professor is going on and on and on about the iPod and what a revolutionary thing it was and how great the design is -- accompanied by required reading from magazines and trade journals kissing Jobs' ass and again going on and on about the wonderful design of the iPod. I've also noticed that about 1 of every 5 people around campus have a music player, and probably half of those people are using iPods. Why is such an expensive product so popular, especially with "poor college students" who have access to better and cheaper products?

All I can figure -- Apple did a great job of marketing the fuck out of it, and made it trendy. It's a fashion accessory. Just like every other piece of technology Apple makes.

I like my MP3 player. It can play movies, view ebooks, give me gps coordinates, wardrive, and browse UER. Plus if I really wanted I could run Linux on it. Oh wait... it's a PDA

I don't understand why people buy one-function devices like MP3 players, ebook readers, or those retarded little "wireless detectors" when a PDA and some memory cards will work just as well. Sure you can't store 50 hours of music, but while you're recharging you can download more.

Addendum:

After thoroughly investigating the Neuros site, I must make the following corrections to my article:

1. The Neuros will not play DRM files of any kind, so you can't play files you bought from any music store.
2. The Neuros *may* not allow you to simply drag files onto the device. You may have to use the software. That's the jive I got from the reviews I read -- I could be wrong though.
3. The Neuros's boxy design makes it excessively uncomfortable to put in pockets.

So, perhaps the Neuros isn't as good as it looked at first. Oh well. There's other players that are good: For example, the Creative MuVo2 4gb is tiny, and seems pretty damn cool.

-av

I have to agree with you somewhat here Av. I am a Mac guy, and I do think that the iPod is a nice mp3 player. That being said, I bought a 6 GB Creative Nomad Jukebox about 5ish years ago, for something under 300 dollars. It can function as a storage device, and hold music, it has a headphone out as well as two speaker outputs, which appearently can be both used to produce a (fake) 4.0 surround setup. It has some EAX spatialization shit that I never use (concert hall, club, etc..) and headphone settings (wide, full ear, earbud, etc...) as well as audio input, which can record at DAT quality I believe. Does not run the longest, and is the size of a cd player, but I can throw in a bigger laptop drive if I want, and it works as well as a discman, except skipless and with many special features. Not as powerful as an iPod, but many years (7-8?) old design, and still working fine.

Also as a rant, my friend with too much money just bought a $1000 Apple LCD display, where I was advising him to buy a Dell 2005FPW for $600 which is basically the same screen, but with a bunch of really cool features thrown in (swival for portrait mode, dvi and vga in, PIP, PBP, composite in, s-video in, one button switching of inputs...). His only defense was that the Apple was one was much higher quality (I do believe it is slightly better quality, but also he isn't a graphics professional, so I think the difference is negligable) and that it looks nicer. So basically he's buying the Apple monitor with less features for $400 more. Hmmpf.

I can't think of many quality metrics for LCDs other than contrast ratio and resolution. I've never seen anything like color gamut quoted, and I doubt anyone does that. But hey, the Apple one uses clear plastic, so whewt or something?

The Dell one is supposed to be 500:1 contrast, while the Apple is supposed to be 400:1, but I also have heard that Apple quotes a more accurate number then many other manufacturers, and that the same actual LCD is being used in both the Apple and Dell monitors.

The Apple ones are now a sexy metal - like the Titanium PowerBook, or G5's, not like the older ones which look like the current keyboards.

Gamut would be cool, I have heard that the Apple has better/more accurate color reproduction.

I did some price checking and found a nice little pocket mp3 player from Lexar Media that runs on JumpDrive Sport USB keys. They are fully funtional USB keys that can be used for storage and play ANY music format out there. For $100 cdn you get the mp3 player, a set of earbuds, a 128mb USB stick and 2 AAA batteries. Has backlight, equalizer and bookmarking features. No drivers are needed for the Drag and Drop music/file transfer, there is a driver needed for Windows 98 and older operatiing systems and for intergration with Windows Media Player (ugh!) there is a downloadable driver for that. a 256mb USB JumpDrive Sport for this is about $100. For anyone looking for a nice mp3 player to hold some music but not to totally replace your trusty old discman, look for this thing. I considered buying an iPod but said fuck it when I saw the price.

That and an iPod really aren't in the same ballpark though, an iPod IS meant to replace your discman, where the little flash memory players are more aimed at being used to carry a couple songs to listen too while working out, or waiting for xxxx or whatever.

However, the item Jesus mentioned is competition for the new iPod Shuffle.

-av

I didn’t know there was such a thread on here…

Anyways, this is what I think.

Proprietary firmware
First off, AV, you’re the first one to complain about this. Apple put out updates when needed. Many many people don’t give a damn about this. It’s maybe a good thing too because many inexperienced people would just fuck things up. I find the WMA sucks too. Never had much experience with OGG but it’s not a very popular format anyways. However ACC sounds pretty good and doesn’t use a lot of space. Only geeks would truely complain about this (although no offence made to anyone, this is just my opinion).

Music Store Exclusivity
ITunes is available in Canada. No problem.
http://www.apple.com/ca/itunes/

Battery Life
Apple has fixed this problem. The newer 4th generation iPods have 12 hour batteries. Now honestly, I never ran out of battery power and I use my iPod daily. Why? Because I never listen to more than 12 hours straight of music without being next to an outlet. They also have battery backs available. Also, the iPod uses a real hard drive, which sucks up on power. This is not a flash based mp3 player.

No Easy Drag-And-Drop of Music Files
Boo-hoo. How many computers does one person own? The principal is to have all your music in one box. I personally don’t find this to be an issue. I load all my songs on MY computer. Not on my friends. ITunes is also very easy to use compared to Musicmatch which comes with a lot of mp3 players (and I find musicmatch horrible crappy).

Price
Yeah it’s expensive. All Apple products are expensive. Agreed.

Lack of Features
Again, lack of recorder is no biggie. The iPod is a music PLAYER. The only possible use to record music is for djs to record their sets. I can’t find any other use to record from a line source ‘on the go’. No built in FM tuner is again not a problem for most. People want to listen to THEIR music, that’s why they buy mp3 players in the first place. Want the radio, go buy one of them small 1.29$ pocket radio tuners. Althugh I agree about the radio transmitter, you can buy the iTrip for like 49$ which works quite well. Sounds good in my VW Golf.

One thing you did not talk about here is the sound quality. Yes, the iBuds suck but many audiophiles use ipods with AKG, Shure, Grado or other audiophile headphoes. Why? Because the ipod is very musical. It sounds very good, something that many mp3 players don’t have. I’m ready to compare and test the sound on the ipod with a Rio or the one you suggested. The iPod also has a longer battery life (2 hours more) than the Neuros. And the fact that it’s available in bigger sources is useless. Who the hell needs 80 gigs of music in their pockets? I have a 40gig iPod and i don’t use anywhere near 40 gigs.

Anyways that’s what i think...

Allow me to respond to your points.

Proprietary firmware

WMA offers higher quality sound at a smaller filesize than MP3. It's a good format. The fact that you "find" it "sucks" doesn't change this. OGG is an open-source codec, unlike MP3 and AAC, which means nobody has to pay licensing fees to be able to write software that supports OGG.

Very few MP3 players have open firmware, but those that do are just going to be better in every way.

Music Store Exclusivity

So what if iTunes is available in Canada now? You're still forced to use the iTunes music store. You can't buy music anywhere else.

Battery Life

I realize that the iPod has a hard drive -- I was comparing hard drive player features, as stated in my article. 12 hours of battery life is acceptable, but it's surprising that it took them 4 generations to get that right.

No Easy Drag-And-Drop of Music Files

It's not a matter of how many computers one owns. I'll give you a real example. I'm over at my friends place, and he's got an awesome mp3 that I just love. With most other mp3 players, you just plug it in and drag the file onto the drive. Takes 20 seconds. After that, you can play it immediatly. But with the iPod, you first have to install iTunes.

Also, you can transfer some of your MP3's to your friend from your other MP3 player. Can't do that from an iPod.

The fact that iTunes is easy to use is not important -- the point is that you are forced to use it.

Price

Yes, it's expensive. But it doesn't do anything special or extra for that price. Would you buy a Honda Civic for $60,000 when you can get a BMW for $45,000?

Lack of Features

Maybe you don't need a recorder, but I would find one very useful. I'd use it at friends rock shows, or for voice memos, or whatever. My article wasn't comparing what YOU would do with an iPod, it was simply comparing missing features. Saying that "most people won't use it" does not excuse the fact that it is not even an option.

The iTrip has a range of about 2 feet, which means that in larger cities with many FM channels, it won't be able to overpower the local stations (even if you use an empty frequency) and won't work.



I didn't talk about sound quality because I don't have any technical data about the comparative sound qualities. Apparently you, also with no data, have no problems making conclusions on this point.

As for the size issue, once again I point out that this article was not about you. Just because YOU don't use all 40gb on your iPod doesn't mean nobody else will. If i had an 80gb mp3 player such as the Neuros, I'd probably keep 20gb of mp3s on it and fill the remaining 60gb with videos and games and stuff, so I can watch them on a friend's computer.

Why I would buy an Ipod?

Because it's a free country.

Posted by sympathy in chaos Why I would buy an Ipod? Because it's a free country.

Yeah. And after that, you can enrol in Amway, then order a Pasta Pot from a Seen-on-TV store, and finally order Viagra from those emails you keep getting. Bad consumer decisions are cool. It's a free country.

Mail order and Apple products aren't aimed at the same market.
You yourself made a point on why buying an iPod is a good decision.
For me, I've been using the iTunes software the moment it came out for PC's. Face it, Apple made a niche market into a cheap commodity.
It's basically the the Sony Walkman/Discman of hard-drive based players.

I did? I don't remember saying that the iPod was a good decision.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but the iPod was not the first MP3 player with an internal hard drive. The creative nomad jukebox beat it by like 4 years or so.

-av

Posted by Avatar-X I did? I don't remember saying that the iPod was a good decision. Sorry to burst your bubble, but the iPod was not the first MP3 player with an internal hard drive. The creative nomad jukebox beat it by like 4 years or so. -av

I never said it was the first, in fact I stated that mp3 players with hard drives were a niche market before the iPod showed up. That's an implicit acknowledgement that such a thing existed before the iPod.
My point was that before the iPod the Nomad Jukebox seemed to have it's biggest boosters among the slashdot crowd. But now, they're pretty much ubiquitous anyplace you go now.
The fact that "better" options exist is due only to the popularity of the iPod in the first place. The market for them simply wasn't as large until Apple's marketing created such a large demand for them.

Posted by Avatar-X So what if iTunes is available in Canada now? You're still forced to use the iTunes music store. You can't buy music anywhere else.

Wrong again, and who would buy music when you can get it for free of the internet, I download all my music and put it in my Itunes library and it goes straight to my ipod.

posted by Sinister crayon: Wrong again, and who would buy music when you can get it for free of the internet...

In the interest of not making it look like Av's the only one who thinks the way he does: If you want to buy music then you have to do so from the itunes music store. There are still some people that believe in supporting musicians by purchasing music.
The ipod is an example of consumerism at its best:
Is it the best product? No.
Is it the cheapest? No.
Is there any valid cost vs. value comparison that makes it a better choice? Not really.

It's an image.

A great piece, and if anyone would like to argue the worth of an iPod against comparable players, I suggest they also first look at my iPod work (it's along the lines of Av's but written a bit more recently discussing the iPod compared to many other products) before doing so as Av and I have both covered lots of points and different points (such as what is better) on the subject...
http://www.uer.ca/...fid=1&msgid=303950