News iPod license to print money

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/07/14/ipod_sales/

Apologies for the woeful Shop Job - I was in a hurry! (and I'm rubbish at Photoshop? )

 

Oh, and the topic is "iPods: love 'em or hate 'em? How many do you have?"

I know several of our staffers own them, and some more than one - a mini for the gym and a bigger iPod for travelling etc In fact, my sister bought a Shuffle off eBay just the other day. Personally, the lack of screen, and the fact that it randomises your tracks *on purpose* would put me off the Shuffle forever. I like to listen to entire albums, and in the original order, thank you very much.

 

iPod - good concept, great styling, but there are better alternatives to those who have a modicum of technical knowledge - look at the Cowon I-Audio M3 for example - FLAC and Vorbis compatibility, smaller than the iPod and with better battery life.

iPod mini - decent little player, but to my mind all the mini HDD players are a bit pointless - if I want something small to take to the gym, I'll grab a 1GB flash player, which will be cheaper, have better battery life and be much more durable (thanks to no moving parts) and smaller and lighter than a mini, with ample storage for workout beats. A mini isn't capacious enough to store even a moderately ambitious music collection at anything like CD quality, so I really don't see the point apart from as a fashion accessory. This isn't just applicable to the iPod mini though - all the mini HDD players fit into the same worst-of-both-worlds place in the market IMHO

Shuffle - gay. What's the point in having 10-15 albums on a player if you can't choose what you want to listen to? Sure it's reasonably priced, but for similar money you can have a competitor's product with a screen, better battery life and so on. I don't even really like the Shuffle's styling - too minimalist for me, but that's a question of opinion.

As far as I'm concerned all the iPod range have become far too much of a fashion accessory, and have lost ground to competitors in terms of technology. But it's worked well for Apple - after all, the iPod does pretty much exactly what Joe Average needs it to do, it's pretty and shiny, and it's had a cracking advertising campaign. Gotta salute Apple's marketing and aesthetics departments.

 

Gimme a Zen anyday.

 

I wouldn't object if someone offered me one, but I like my music rugged and cheap (256MB flash based job - £35).

Nice advertising campaign though.

- H.

 

the problems i've had with ipods on clients machines - pain in the ARSE.
connect an ipod to a mac first and you have to reformat to use it on a pc? what bollocks is that we have to deal with.

Nice looks if you like anemic white but apart from that expensive and flawed.

I'll take my Gmini 400 which does everything an ipod does and plays games, shows photos, plays DivX movies and has TV plus a compact flash slot. How much did it cost for a 20gb version? at the time the same as for a plain BW 20gb ipod.
It's such a shame the marketing is winning things for the i(cow)pat.

 

Amen to that, brotha'

Zen mini

It's *all* about consumer wants and advertising. Nothing to do with battery life, or display or whatever. People will blindly put up with not having it as long as it's white, says ipod on it and they can blag about it to their friends to make them feel more socially secure.

 

due to technical type person i am i do not like being charged more for something that i can by in a differnt case far cheaper.

people by them for the branding, which is exactly the reason i wont buy one

 

I initially bought into the IPOD marketing hype and bought myself a 20GB unit. A few months later I sold it. It was pretty useless for me. I tried it in the car and spent more time trying to find a song than actually listening to my music. I'd consider buying another one when they integrate a Sirius satellite radio receiver into it. This way I can listen to Howard Stern when he leaves FM.

 

Well, I know this is odd of me to defend a mac product, but iPod shuffles rock for certain things. And here's why:

I bought one for my fiancee a while ago, and she loves it. The minimal design is with intent. Yeah, you can get things with a longer batt life, but (for instance) the sony one featured on the article requires a AAA battery. Which means you have to buy batteries. And who needs 70 hours of play for 16 hours of music!? That's just dumb for most people (maybe if you're on vacation or you do a lot of 3-day+ travel, where I'd then consider a zen micro anyways). Horses for courses.

My fiancee plugs hers in when she comes home from work. It recharges, and refills its entire song list with new selections. Automatically. It's small, so it fits into her purse easily. The lack of a screen is not a problem, it's meant to function like your own private little radio station...it doesn't require her to generate playlists or navigate menus to be able to just play a random selection of her music (If she wants to, she can make a playlist and the thing will upload it in order for her...and if you're making a list, don't you KNOW what songs are in your collection? Makes an LCD pointless). And you know what? No LCD means nothing to break. It doesn't require a case, or a cover, or anything. She takes it in the morning, puts the headphones on it, hits play, and has plenty of tunes for work all day, then the gym. Where, since it doesn't have a hard drive, it doesn't stand any real chance of damage, doesn't skip on a run, etc. When she comes home, it pops into her USB port, automatically charging, requiring no extra cabling, and automatically refilling again for another day.

Mix that with iTunes, which aside from the DRM and the lack of a boolean search is probably the best legal music delivery system to date...smart playlists (for if she DOES want to upload one to her shuffle, she doesn't have to update the stupid list every time she gets a new song), easy interface, podcasts, recorded radio shows...

To me, that's brilliant and it hits a corner of the market that all these other players ignore. I think the zen micro is wonderful for the bigger size market, but everyone says "Shuffles are so stupid..." To me, they're the one truly innovative thing that no one else has been able to touch.

Just my $.02 worth. That and another $1.00 may get you a cup of coffee. Let the flaming begin.

 

As a very anti-apple person i was horrified to find i bought an ipod mini this weekend lol.

I spent a lot of time trying out the different MP3 players available and for me it was the best soloution. I originally bought an olympus M:Robe as its the sexiest MP3 player ever made but at full volume i could have a normal conversation with my gf with out us talking loudly. Not good enough for me which is a shame as otherwise it was excellent.

Other options where the Zen micro. Too much treble which i think would make it uncomfortable for long listens and the controls were too sensitive. Zen touch had the same control problems and it was too big. I dont need to carry all the music i own as i just use it for the commute to work so the 20gb is not nessecary for me. If it was 20gb and the same size as the micro it might have been different

That left me with the Ipod mini. It has by far the most responsive controls out of all of them and loads tunes quickly. Its the perfect size, fits in the hands well and has the best sound quality imo. Its a very open and 'true' sound without overblowing the bass like most others i tried. I personally dont care if it doesnt play vorbis etc as i would never use it anyway.

The other deal clincher for me is the amount of accessories you can get for the ipod. makes living with it easier. Itunes is a pain though and i really wish it would just do drag and drop instead of synching. It also keeps on duplicating my files for some reason

I still hide it though so people cant see i have an ipod.

On the subject of sony MP3 players. If they could sort out the quality control issues, ditch atrac recording and get rid of sonic stage which is the worst music software ever made then they might have a chance.

 

QFT
i love my zen xtra, its huge but its indestructible

http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=213&subcategory=214&product=11519

edit:

damn that looks awesome, when (if? ) my zen dies that looks very promising site doesnt mention flac support tho..

 

my girlfreind has one but it's mis behaving with choppy sound (the day the warentee ran out)

 

dont wanna sound like a fanboy, but sony rules
ive always found sony one of the best portable and non portable audio equipment (at least price/quality compared) i really like the 70hours batterylife maybe gonna buy it if my minidisk gives up.

 

I don't have an iPod. I've got a 4GB MuVo² atm which, apart from the really crappy controls, is great. Might swap it for a Zen Micro or something soon though.

I have to say I'm quite tempted by a Shuffle though, just for when I running. Small, light, and random tracks. Perfect.

 

Ooo i never saw that zen!

 

to be fair i havent seen it anywhere but on creative's site yet, not available to buy

 

Yeah, new firmware enables it: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=cowon+m3+flac&meta=

 

tool.

anyway,

i like my ipod. it has a great user interface, IMO the best of any mp3 player, and you really can't beat an intuitive interface. i've had an iriver player, but the interface was awful. they are getting better though; maybe my next player will be an iriver again.

i thought VERY seriously about the iAudio M3 player. i mean, really, i was about to go out and buy one. but the fact that the screen and most controls were on the remote put me off ultimately. the M5 and X5, though, look very very nice.

anybody who likes creative players doesn't know what they're missing though. seriously, they're the cheapest peices of ******** i've ever used, and everyone i know who has owned one concurs with me - not to mention creative's horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE, support and business practices.

 

Surprised nobodys mentioned the Iriver H300 series. I own one of these bad boys and although its slightly bigger than your ipod it plays movies, ogg and uses drag and drop explorer so no annoying software (specifically sonicstage im getting at here).