Creative, Apple Battle for MP3 Player Market 529
kurtz_tan writes "Creative Technology is spending 100 million in a marketing blitz to 'regain its rightful place in the audio industry' by trying to dominate the MP3 market which is now led by the Apple iPod (54% of the market last year for MP3 players that use hard disks). Creative is second with 16.5%. Does Creative Zen sound as cool as Apple iPod ?" And reader TheMediaWrangler writes "The Register reports that Apple will build a stockpile of flash-based iPods to be shipped as early as January or February of 2005. AppleInsider had the original scoop."
Statistics (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Statistics (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Statistics (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Statistics (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Statistics (Score:5, Informative)
Although the iPod holds a whopping 92% slice of the pie for hard drive-based players, this figure shrinks to 65% when flash models are tallied as part of the mix.
Re:Statistics (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Statistics (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Statistics (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I'm one of 'Creative's market share' and my comment is "probably never again"
I've never seen such bad software (both Windows drivers, and on-board software), and having a bigger hard drive for less money than the iPod is starting to wear thin as an excuse for it.
Spend advertising money all you like, I'm not buying my replacement jukebox until it comes with Linux drivers that are guaranteed to work.
Re:It's not so bad (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's not so bad (Score:3, Interesting)
Simple. Playlists, both standard and smart.
I only have a 10GB iPod and have probably 40+GB of music. I have smart playlists that filter based on mood, genere, etc. On top of that, I have a lot of my full albums as playlists (just select the songs and drag them to the playlist section and it'll create
Re:Statistics (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Statistics (Score:2)
I think it's cruel for anyone to write a story with percentages in it mere days after a general election.
Panic button ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Statistics (Score:2, Funny)
But seriously, you can make any group of numbers say what you want with some creative interpretation. Apparently 88% of grads from my college find work in their field. Where our graduating class it was more like 40%.
Re:Statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
Will someone please tell the writer of that article that the HP iPod is literally a rebranded Apple iPod? That puts Apple's marketshare at 91%.
Re:Statistics (Score:3, Insightful)
iPods in New York City (Score:2, Interesting)
The NYC iPod game (Score:5, Funny)
Re:iPods in New York City (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, here's this neat thing but since everyone else has it, I'm not going to try it and see if it really is as neat as it seems. Because I'm different.
It's a freaking music player. Try it, don't try it, but letting its popularity affect your decision is just stupid.
Re:iPods in New York City (Score:5, Funny)
Re:iPods in New York City (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:iPods elsewhere (Score:5, Insightful)
More likely, it's a public transportation thing.
People who take trains, busses and ferry boats to work were the first ones to buy Walkman radios back in the day. This is pretty much the same trend. Having headphones means not having to talk to the weirdo sitting next to you on the bus. Having an iPod instead of a radio means you won't lose the signal when you go through a tunnel. For somebody who spends two hours a day in such an environment, $400 probably doesn't seem like a lot of money to spend on making the time more pleasant.
People mostly drive to work in "Jesusland", so even when they listen to iPods during their commute, nobody else sees them.
Disclaimer: I live in the suburbs of a "light blue" state and drive to work. Nevertheless, I would rather go without the use of my legs than go without my iPod.
P.S. Not to nit-pick, but if you shade by percentage of victory in each district, and most states are actually solid purple. I think that people are making a little too much of "cultural differences" between the states.
Re:iPods in New York City (Score:3, Informative)
Could be. The L train is iPod central.
It's gotta be about more than cash (Score:5, Insightful)
Ephpod and Itunes? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It's gotta be about more than cash (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's gotta be about more than cash (Score:5, Interesting)
overpriced? cheaper than most retailers, dude.
Re:It's gotta be about more than cash (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's gotta be about more than cash (Score:5, Insightful)
iTMS is also a good deal if you only care about one song!. Yeah, if I want the whole album, I'd rather pay the $10 at a retail outlet to get lossless audio, liner notes, etc, but if I only want 1 track, $0.99 + instant gratification is very attractive.
Re:It's gotta be about more than cash (Score:3, Informative)
I'd say one track + instant gratification + hymn [hymn-project.org] (so I can actually do what I want with the music I purchase) is even more attractive.
Re:It's gotta be about more than cash (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually iTMS is quite the deal if I want to check out Tresor [tresorberlin.de]'s back catalog which is either expensively imported or discontinued.
Tresor, a small, independent label.
Re:It's gotta be about more than cash (Score:5, Interesting)
Most hardware devices need specialized software to interface with it. You might think that just using it as a disk and managing your files yourself is better, but as someone who once handled their music that way I can say that is not true. But you can't understand until you've tried something better as I have.
"I don't want its main strength to be that it's tied to an overpriced music store that forces me to burn/crack/transcode to be used on half my audio hardware, or a inferior audio player (I'll stick to eMule, my own CD collection and Foobar, for the time being)."
I still buy all of my music on CD. So far nobody has showed up at my house and forced me to buy anything on the iTMS.
"Apple's offering, despite the nice physical design and great navigation, is too much bloat for way too much money in my eyes."
Wow usually people like you are complaining that iPods don't do ENOUGH stuff. How is it bloated? Your statement really is quite funny considering how easy they make managing and listening to music. You obviously haven't spent any time using one, so how can you say such things?
"And the physical design and navigation are quite bluntly just flat-out inferior to Apple's."
So what aspects of the design and, more importantly, what aspects of the navigation and UI of the Creative devices do you find to be superior to the iPod? I'll expect very detailed answers since you have obviously used both and are forming your conclusions based on fact. And I'll pretend like I don't already know it all comes down to the fact that it is cheaper.
"But the lack of ITMs? In my eyes, that's a good thing."
Yeah I hate having the iTMS as an option that is available to me if I wish to use it. Damn it I wish it was not available to me at all! I hate having options!
Re:It's gotta be about more than cash (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe you should RTFM. When you first use the program it asks you if you want to let iTunes 'organise' your songs for you. Just click 'no'. Simple.
For the most part, the justification for the iPod's price is the extra features it supports
Re:It's gotta be about more than cash (Score:3, Insightful)
And given that Apple have been piggy-backing on Free and Open Source software they should give back to the community by Freeing/OpenSourcing iTunes.
This makes no sense to me. First off, Apple has given *greatly* to the OSS community, from open sourcing Darwin, Rendevous, to helping improve GCC for the PPC, to others, Apple is "ESR Approved", and I have never heard anything but good words about Apple from the OSS community.
Second, iTunes isn't built on open source technologies. It's all Apple.
Third, as a
Re:It's gotta be about more than cash (Score:3, Informative)
If it's your favorite band, then chances are you already own their CDs and will just rip them. I find iTunes much more useful for expanding my musical tastes in new directions than reinforcing what I already like.
$100 Mil on Marketing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:$100 Mil on Marketing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:$100 Mil on Marketing? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not like Creative to compete based on features - they're far more interested in getting a big enough piece of the market that they can slow down progress to a point where they can maximize profits on whatever the current generation is.
Re:$100 Mil on Marketing? (Score:3, Interesting)
Non-pro and non-prosumer sound cards have matured for now. You hit 48KHz, 16-bit, surround sound, and you're basically done. In my experience, the other 3D stuff is more gimmick than quality. I have a Soundblaster around here somewhere but it's such a pain to deal with that I just use motherboard sound, which has also matured.
Now, if we standardized on a new super-MIDI or something that allowed for the really sophisticated effects
A long history of "innovation" from Creative (Score:5, Insightful)
Original SB:
Adding a gameport and DAC to the ADLIB FM synthesizer. This product was an incredible success, and got them very rich. Unfortunately they haven't done anything since besides let others innovate and then buy them out.
First PCI soundcard with SB compatibility was made by Ensoniq. Creative bought them out to get this technology.
First decent 3D soundcards were made by Aureal, which you already covered.
The chip in the SBLive was developed by EMU, which Creative bought out.
The Soundworks speakers had nothing to do with Creative until they bought them out.
The Aureal is still basically the same technology that's in the SBLive. I guess they ran out of innovative companies to buy out.
Unfortunately for Creative they can't exactly buy out Apple, so I'd say they're in trouble.
Huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
You mean the Creative Touch or Zen vs the iPod?
Inferior really is relative. The difference between the products, to me, is great enough that buying a Creative Zen Touch is like wasting $200 while buying an Apple iPod isn't.
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Informative)
I'd be willing to deal with Creative's quirks for $30 less and twice the capacity of the cheapest ipod.
Amen! (Score:2)
Re:Amen! (Score:2)
Re:$100 Mil on Marketing? (Score:2)
Are you talking about Apple or Creative? Both in my opinion are feature poor for the price.
Re:$100 Mil on Marketing? (Score:2, Interesting)
I have looked at the Zen Touch and Zen Micro [creative.com] and they might rate a distant second place but the click wheel is still by far superior. The Rio Karma [digitalnetworksna.com] is fine but not in the same class as either
Re:$100 Mil on Marketing? (Score:2)
Re:$100 Mil on Marketing? (Score:2)
Good luck getting an average consumer to act on this startling revelation.
In the image-sensitive society we're living in, technical superiority comes second place to being appealing to other people.
Re:$100 Mil on Marketing? (Score:5, Insightful)
First, prettier is definitely a factor. Second, "more features" doesn't mean "superior," either.
To hell with a gadget that does a million things poorly. The iPod is successful because it does the few things it does very well, and looks like a million bucks while doing it. Also it's not that much more expensive than its competitors, making it an affordable luxury.
-Isaac
iPod Killer? (Score:4, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Spending Millions? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Spending Millions? (Score:2)
My Nomad Zen just died, I switched to iPod (Score:5, Interesting)
And it's about half the size!
Re:My Nomad Zen just died, I switched to iPod (Score:5, Informative)
Re:My Nomad Zen just died, I switched to iPod (Score:2, Informative)
Re:My Nomad Zen just died, I switched to iPod (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:My Nomad Zen just died, I switched to iPod (Score:5, Informative)
Really? That's interesting since the MP3 format spec [mpgedit.org] pegs the maximum bitrate of an MPEG-1 layer 3 frame at 320kbit/sec. I'm curious as to how one gets higher.
Re:My Nomad Zen just died, I switched to iPod (Score:3, Interesting)
$100 Million? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is something i've always found strange.
Karma is a bitch (Score:5, Informative)
They had a special team in their R&D center in Scotts Valley design that product, and then after it was done, they laid off most of the people in that project team and outsourced them to a less-experienced team in Singapore.
Consequently, some of the team was picked up by Apple which went on to develop the second rev iPod.
Re:Karma is a bitch (Score:2)
Outsourced? (Score:3, Informative)
Considering, "The worldwide corporate headquarters is located in Singapore" (Creative's Corporate Site [creative.com]) you can't really call it outsourcing (unless they outsourced management as well).
Prefrences (Score:5, Insightful)
The iPod does its few tasks with a 'very good' rating for all of them. FireWire transfer = Very good. Biggish screen, backlit but (for the most part) no colours = Very good, sound quality = Very good, battery capacity = Very good (12 h), expandability = Very good (lots of accessories, much more than the others), design = Very good, UI = Very good.
The reason for for its success is the average 'Very Good' rating that users and critiques give it.
What about the others? Well, usually they have one outstanding feature but that is not enough to raise the overall user experience to the iPod level.
We geeks often put on blinders when it comes to gadgets and forget what people want. And while we may choose another product because we evaluate OGG-support to be an 'Excellent' feature, most people do not. They see like this: FireWire transfer = Very good. Small screen, backlit but (for the most part) no colours = bad, sound quality = Very good, battery capacity = Very good (12 h), expandability = bad, design = bad, UI = fair, OGG support = WTF?
And the round goes to iPod. In my work, I have tried out a huge number of iPod 'killers', and frankly they don't reach to the knees of iPod for an average person. I saw this hot chick on the tram today, she had a 2001 Creative Nomad. It was twice or three times the size of my old portable Sony CD player. Apple chose the right direction early and are now reapling the benefits.
Does It Sound As Cool? (Score:4, Funny)
Hmm. "cool"? So that's how they spell "asstastic" at Creative Labs these days!
Let's see. The iPod wins hands-down in functionality, usability, and appearance. So who cares if the Zen sounds cooler? We're only talking about audio output devic---hmm, that didn't come out quite right.
*backpedaling furiously* Umm, I mean, they're both solid-state, so they all sound cool! And it's winter! So gimme a nice warm set of vaccuum tubes powered by a backpack-mounted car battery or give me death, man!
Creative has way too many staffers (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why the Creative products will never be as good. 600 people in R&D for their player? What are all those people doing, reading fark?
You'd think they'd hire 5 people with imagination to replace the 450 people who aren't doing anything except meeting with each other.
Yea, well... (Score:2, Insightful)
So what? Unlike the iPod, however, Creative's players CAN'T play back AAC files sold by the most popular online music store in existence!
Illegal, immoral, or whatever, Real was on the right track. It's like trying to break Microsoft's OS monopoly: "Yea, well our OS runs the GIMP!" Unfortunately, *most* people don't care.
Software (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't say I'm particularly impressed with iTunes, mind you, but at least an iPod appears as an external drive when I plug it in. I don't need to cart around extra software to install.
Creatives products are junk (Score:4, Insightful)
The iPod, while not jam-packed with features, is fast and stable.
Creatives products (at least the older ones i have seen) are slow and buggy.
The iPod is sleek and minimalist, Creatives products are covered with chrome trim and raised, plastic buttons with a little hole you have to push a paperclip into to reset it.
The iPod's elegance and simplicity extends to its custom written and polished software package. Creative just bundles whatever crap it can license the cheapest.
I gladly bought an iPod, I wouldnt touch a Creative player with a ten foot pole.
Re:Creatives products are junk (Score:3, Insightful)
As a person who has owned both... (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that... (Score:4, Interesting)
Wait... Flash-based players? (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple still needs to watch out... (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a 3rd gen iPod and while its nice some of the accessories are just junk or wear badly, like the apple remote control.
People too easily dismiss the competitors to the iPod while ignoring the big picture. There isn't just one iPod killer, there are dozens. One of them may just get the idea right. Look bad to the 80s when Apple was flying high with their PC. Yet there were dozens of "others" coming along using someone elses product.
Also, don't forget there are many people who don't like Apple either and that is something many still like to ignore.
Re:Apple still needs to watch out... (Score:4, Insightful)
As a long time Mac user and developer, I have to agree here. It seems like for every Mac zealot, there are ten anti-Mac zealots, especially in the business world. I just wish I could understand the source of this resentment; it's not like Macs are common enough to breed contempt via familiarity that Windows suffers from... And the "boycott" that the FSF once held against Apple has all but been forgotten once Apple migrated to a BSD-variant for it's OS, so it's not some kind of grudge...
Re:Apple still needs to watch out... (Score:3, Insightful)
I LOVE (!!) MacOS X, but I can't stand the classic OS.. I defend OS X all the time
Re:Apple still needs to watch out... (Score:3, Interesting)
This would explain disparagement, but not vitriol. I actually got into an argument with an Apple-basher at college once, and it was during the System 7/Win95 era, where you concern mattered less.
That, and that it has so few games..
The worst flamage is in the developer and business spheres, not the h
Re:Apple still needs to watch out... (Score:4, Informative)
Here there actually is a difference. The Mac version of the graphics card has firmware that allows it to be recognised by Open Firmware, rather than the antiquated PC BIOS. Just be glad that you're not buying a graphics card from Sun - they're identical to the Mac ones (both use Open Firmware) but Sun will charge 2-3 times what Apple charge.
When recommending what Mac to buy I say "Get a DP 1.8 with 80 GB disk, 256 MB RAM and without the superdrive.
I'd be more inclined to recommend the 15" Combo Drive PowerBook (with RAM upgraded to a minimum of 256MB, from a 3rd party supplier), or the SuperDrive model if they can afford it (the illuminated keyboard is very nice, and I've got a lot more use out of my SuperDrive than I thought I would). I do very little that taxes the 1.5GHz G4 in my PowerBook (and I do quite a bit of video editing and compiling on this machine). The PowerBook, of course, comes with a screen (and a very nice one, at that) and has the added advantage that it can be easily used in bed or in the garden. Since it's silent, and has TV out, it can also be hooked up to a TV for watching DVDs or other movies on a larger screen.
Re:Apple still needs to watch out... (Score:3, Informative)
Flawed analogy, Apple didn't dominate the PC market as it does in HD-based players today. It had good marketshare, but not overwhelming.
iPod vs. Zen (Score:2)
The other issue I think we have is iTunes. Most other players rely on MusicMatch Jukebox or WMP to work, both of which are not as easy as iTunes is. If Creative wants a change, they don't need to make an "iPod killer", they need to make an "iTunes killer."
Why Flash? (Score:5, Interesting)
I notice recently the anti-Flash hype within Apple has settled down to imperceptible...
The biggest argument made is that disk is cheaper for lots of storage. Well Flash is definitely not cheaper, but it does offer a different kind of convenience.
Say Apple sold a Flash player for $100 with minimal memory bundled but with an SD/CF slot.
Now, you can buy 1GB CF cards for arounnd $50 these days, and 1GB SD cards for around $60. And I've seen them go for $40 after rebate. Afvter rebate prices basically presage the sticker price in 4 months time...
So if you sell $100 iPods to "kids" or people who don't want to plunk down a larger bag of cash at once, then you can lock them in by selling them an "upgrade" 1GB (or the forthcoming 2Gb cards) for around $50 every few months.
Carrying around several SD cards is no big deal, they are tiny. You can get a caddy that holds 10Gb and is smaller than the end of your thumb.
Organizing different artists or genres on different cards also offers an easy, physical way for people to manage their collections without resorting to extreme tagging and playlist noodling.
One advantage of the Flash media model is also that the price of "upgrades" basically halves every 9 months or so. So if you don't want to add 5GB now, you can settle for adding only 1GB, knowing that in a year's time you could spend the same amount of money for another 2GB.
Consider also the possible business advantages of selling these low-end cards for Apple. The selling price of the cards could be subsidized by including bundled songs for a fee - a great way for record companies to distribute new music gratis. Or snippets of songs as adverts, jungles, or ringtones. This could lower the retail price of an Apple-branded "media card" by 10-20%.
Yes, even given the continued growth in capacity of flash media, they will never equal the price or capacity of hard disk media. However, at what point does enough space become too much? Lots of people seem to be happy with their iPod Minis, and they have a tiny capacity compared to some other options available.
It seems like lots of people are happy with just a few GB of music "on-hand" at any time. Hell, people get by with 256MB players! When and if Flash capacities reach the 4GB mark for $50 (I give it two years tops) then wouldn't a lot of the people who currently buy iPod Minis also consider a similar, half-priced iPod Flash?
That's a big market opportunity any way you slice it.
Of course, to really slim down Apple will have to do something about the iconic wheel interface. It's a nice design but it does take up a lot of front space on the device and constrains the screen size. Look at the iPod Photo - it's screen is lame and tiny ans resembles the old Archos Muldimedia players from a few years ago. At that time everyone lambasted them for releasing a "multimedia" player with such ridiculously tiny screens.
But Archos was just not thinking far ahead and went with maintaining their familiar audio jukebox interface. They learned from their mistake and upped the screen size on the newer models to take up most of the front panel.
What is the option for Apple? If they want to keep the wheel but shrinkthe devices *and* make the screen larger then they have to either A) put the wheel on the backside of the device, trusting users to navigate by touch, or B) convert the wheel into a software-simulation using on-screen display.
Apple has invested a lot of marketing collateral in their wheel design but it does constrain their effectiveness going forwward in a shrink of the iPod form factor for Flash sizes, especially for Asian markets where smaller is definitely much much better!
Secondary market for loaded flash drives? (Score:3, Interesting)
Just imagine the market for custom card mixes. Damn!
That would totally change the music industry.
I'm sure the Apple guys thought of it already. No patent for me
Why is nobody seeing the obvious here? (Score:4, Insightful)
What did we get? A smaller form factor, same storage as the original iPod, not "cheap"
People, Apple doesn't do cheap. The main reason Jobs dumps on flash MP3 players is they're too small - not enough room for a significant fraction of most people's music library. If there is anything to the flash iPod rumors, what do you bet it'll be a 4GB flash device, costing $250? And it'll be half the size of an iPod mini? And Apple will sell a zillion of them?
Citation, Please? (Score:5, Interesting)
Where did this quote come from? If it was said by somebody at Creative, that shows a remarkable sense of hubris and entitlement that is out of place in a competitive marketplace.
Just because you were first major player in the MP3 player market doesn't mean you are entitled to stay there. Look at Apple, they were first to the mass market with a GUI-based computer, and they didn't maintain any dominance there, did they? Apple's not even your real enemy; their iTunes player supported the Rio series in the early days, and still supports many of them on the Mac platform. Apple chose the high end player space; Creative chose the low end. Apple got lucky this time around. No sense whining about it...
Creative Loses Ugly MP3 Player Monopoly (Score:5, Funny)
Then came the first rift in the iPod's White Power Ideology: the iPod Mini. Suddenly it was available in, let's face it, some pretty girly pastels and the Cult of iPod had to adapt to pay homage to this new reality.
But now there's the U2 iPod. Black and Red. A testament to gaudy ugliness. It's like the A-Team Van was recycled with go-faster stripes. It out-blacks the iRivers and out-pimps the Creatives. Apple has definitely made a land grab for the ugly mp3 territory. Creative can no longer claim the Ugly Throne.
Well done. I hope the iPod Flash comes in hot pink.
UI/marketing (Score:3, Insightful)
Why I own an iPod (Score:5, Insightful)
So, when I decided I wanted a portable hard drive and music player in one, I looked at everything EXCEPT the iPod. In fact, I flat out refused to buy an iPod. I looked at the iRiver, the iAudio, and the Creative Nomad. (does every player need an "i" in front of it?). And you know what happened? I couldn't find a single player that did the following: play music, mount as a USB mass storage device, and have an interface that didnt suck. They all either had a horrifyingly proprietary setup (needs drivers just to mount it as a drive), or they had an interface that was either crappy, or just plain cheap (I'm talking to you, iRiver).
Finally, my dad gave me an iPod for my birthday, and you know what? I couldn't find anything to whine about. It did everything I wanted it to do, and it's engineered really well, and it was smaller, to boot. It even made me have an open mind, and I've come to respect Apple products. What I'm trying to say is, yeah, the iPod isn't the only player on the market, and even I'm sick of hearing about it, but for god's sake, somebody, PLEASE, make an alternative that just plays music and acts as a hard drive. Is that too much to ask?
-Jay
Quixotic Freedom (Score:4, Interesting)
I see. That's why you had to wait for iRiver to add video support to your player, presumably in response to Apple upping the ante. That's not freedom, that's market competition. Unless you and I have different definitions of open systems. Or did I miss that day when iRiver went open-source?
You want freedom, try the really free open-source Rockbox [rockbox.org]. They even managed to add 30fps video playback to some of the 4-year-old Archos Jukeboxes, along with talking menu prompts, user bookmarking, and other goodies. And lucky for you, there's moves afoot to port the Rockbox code to at least some of the iRiver [rockbox.org] devices.
Not! (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Quit making cheap, crappy players. Since they don't understand what makes the iPod so popular this one is going to be a big hurdle.
2. Better device firmware. If you have thousands of songs you need a easy way to manage and access those songs. Another big hurdle.
3. Design. They are hit and miss here. Make it cool like a mac, don't make it like a PC.
4. Mac Software. This one will kill them. Creative has missed so many opportunities to sell Mac product. Their outboard USB sound "cards" are a prime example. With just some simple software drivers their line of Exitgy and Audigy could have easily been Mac compatible. M-Audio is now making cash with basically the same thing. If they are not going to make Mac software then they will probably use some third party software like musicmatch for their PC jukebox software and not support the Mac at all.
With all the money they are throwing at it they could do it right....but past experience show, they won't.
Re:iPods play MP3s? (Score:2)
Re:iPods play MP3s? (Score:2)
Re:iPods play MP3s? (Score:5, Informative)
iPods have been able to play MP3's for longer than they have been able to play M4A's and M4P's... IIRC, the original 5 GB iPod didn't even have support for AAC (much less the DRM.) iTunes originated as a Mac MP3 player called SoundJam.
However, Steve personally didn't like the audio quality of MP3s and defaulted iTunes to burn them at 160 kbps instead of the traditional 128 kbps. This combined with the inital iPod's support only for the Mac platform limited its appeal until Apple integrated MPEG-4 and it's AAC codec into QuickTime. Once this occured, Apple finally had a "ideological" business reason to leverage the iPod onto the Windows platform: as a way to reinforce QT installations on PCs. QuickTime technology drives many of Apple's high scale packages, like Final Cut Pro, as well as making a good PR platform to keep Macs on the radar, so more visibility of QT verses Real or Window Media was in line with Apple's historical biases.
Re:Rightful my ass (Score:3, Interesting)
Even the cheapest of CRT's these days is good enough to compare the output from a poor video source vs a near-perfect video source.
Audio, on the other hand, is often neglected. Most consumers don't have a great set of speakers connected to their PC, and even if they do are still listening to MP3's (which aren't the purest of audio sources). Low S/N, poor reproduction, etc is fine in a PC because most consume
Rebuttal (Score:2)
Everyone thinks *their* favourite piece of software is the dogs bollocks. I submit that Media Center [musicex.com] is far superior in every way to iTunes. YMMV. I note also your comment about managing mp3 players with different software suites. Ever hear of plugins? I've seen Archos players managed with iTunes, and iPods managed with Media Center. Whatever ro
Re:Its also about the software.. (Score:2)
I've never seen one (apart from ipod) that needed proprietary software... but then I'd never get an ipod anyway. Having a 'cool' brand name does not justify charging double the price for the same product.
Re:A total waste of effort. (Score:5, Informative)
From http://www.apple.com/mpeg4/aac/ - Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is at the core of the MPEG-4, 3GPP, and 3GPP2 specifications
Re:Marketing Won't Save Creative (Score:3, Insightful)
Here me now, if a consumer can walk home with a 20GB Mp3 player for only $100, you are going to dominate the industry overnight.
Creating bookmarkable audiobooks (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20
Re:Apple put's this feature in their portable play (Score:4, Informative)
This index is the library file: Think of it as a card catalog in a library, or a directory at a mall, or a index in the back of a book. It allows the iPod to do three things: Be fast, efficient, and power thrifty.
Instead of scanning through the whole hard drive for ID3 info, it scans through an 11mb file stored in ram. This allows the iPod to be both fast and power thrifty when you're searching for a song, album, artist, or playlist.
As per copying the files and folders, you can copy them on and off the hard drive, because it's just a mass storage device. But going back to that index thing, iTunes (or another similar program) will copy the music into a specified Music folder so that the index and content are always in sync.
As per shuffling across a bunch of CDs, yes, you can do that.
You have one problem that would prevent you from being happy with the iPod: You want to do all the work and don't want the computer to do any of the work. By default iTunes will sort all your music by artist and album into their own folders:
Folder "John Coltrane" will contain folder "Blue Train" will contain all your music.
Then, with the iTunes interface, all you have to care about is: "Who is the artist?" or "What is the album?" or "What is the song?" or "What is the genre?" or "Who is the composer?" or "How many times has it been played?" or "What year was it recorded?"
That's the other thing about the index/database. iTunes uses it too, so if you want to, you have access to all your music in any myriad number of ways OTHER than artist-album.
Re:Hey, Wait... (Score:4, Informative)
1. I'm sure you're speaking figuratively, but for those who don't know, the Polish Cavalry didn't declare war, they were defending their country against invasion. "Going up against" might have been a better phrase.
2. Cavalry wasn't in fact obsolete in 1939 as is often made out. In fact, if you watch the newsreels of German troops entering Czechoslovakia in 1938 many are on horseback, with horse-drawn carts. The Polish cavalry of the time was similar, the units fought as dragoons, using the horses for transport (which was actually advantageous, as many of the roads in all of Eastern Europe were just unsurfaced mud tracks at the time, and vehicles would often get bogged down) and dismounting for battle. They used rifles, machine-guns and horse-drawn artillery. In fact the Polish cavalry had a particularly effective anti-tank gun.
3. The Panzers actually suffered considerable losses in the '39 campaign, the tanks were not the Tigers or Panthers of later years, but light tanks, and in the woods and fields of Poland often suffered at the hands of infantry and cavalry antitank weapons.
You might like to have a look at (for example, just a quick trawl through Google) this page [panzerworld.net] or this one [wordiq.com] or this one [axishistory.com] or this one [achtungpanzer.com].