Yes, once again I am burning with jealousy as the Apple folks have the option to denigrate a cool firewire toy while I must still wonder if it is yet safe to add a USB jack-shit.0 device to my PC without smoking my system.
My take on the OS wars? None of them have any substance. Only one has style.
I mean, take a look at this.
About the skipping: You shouldn’t notice any skipping at all. Since it’s based on a HDD, any skipping probably means your unit is fucked, and fucked hard.
You shouldn’t have to worry about damaging the HDD, though…the Creative Jukebox (also an Mp3 player based on HDD) is rated to withstand something like 90 Gs or so when it’s playing (At least, according to what I’ve seen here and there…)
Btw, I forgot to add…I would never buy that iPod, and not because it’s Apple. The reason I would never buy it is because either A) I would lose it, B) I would break it C) It would get stolen, and in every case I would be down $400.
It’s a trinket, and I think Apple hopped onto the Mp3 player bandwagon a little too late to get a good niche of the market.
I quite like the look of that iPod thingy, I think the capacity of 1000 songs is going to be a plus; I like the idea of being able to put the whole of my music collection on the device and not have to decide in advance what I want to listen to when I’m out and about.
But will it connect to a PC?
<ducking and running>
or this
Back to the OP…the price tag just doesn’t jibe with what the product is…The vast majority of new purchasers of mp3 players will see a $400 price tag vs. a $100-150? (to be honest, I’m not sure of the exact price range of these things) player at Best Buy and go with the cheaper one.
Will SOME people buy the thing? Yes.
Will it make a difference in Apple’s goal of reaching the other 95% of market share: not likely
Compare this thing with some of Apple’s other products/decisions like iMovie and digital film making, iTunes(free) and CD burning/playing…or even their retail mall strategy. It just seems like the wrong (read expensive) product for the wrong time.
No need to d&r…it’s a fair question IMHO.
Jobs says “We have thought than when we get a little spare time, we will look at taking it to Windows. We know the experience won’t be as good, but we will probably look at that down the road.”
Hmm, what other high capacity MP3 player can be had for $400? Oh, that’s right. The Nomad jukebox. And not the “normal” one. This monster holds 20gigs of MP3s. And yeah, it’s a bit heavy. But if you have a problem carrying, what, 12 ounces, you’ve got bigger problems than choosing an MP3 player.
Let’s compare.
iPod: 5gigs storage. Mac only. 400 bucks.
Nomad Jukebox: 20gigs storage. PC or Mac. 400 bucks.
Tough choice 
Of course, I don’t need this handy comparison chart. I don’t have a Mac. I realize that the iPod can be used as a harddrive, and that is is light and small. But does Apple really expect a whole bunch of people to rush out and buy this thing? (Not that I’m saying people will rush out to buy the Nomad).
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by SPOOFE *
**
I myself purchased a MD player to put my mp3’s to some sort of portable device; the player is now used to record lectures and concerts. The problem with MD is that it takes the length of the song/CD to transfer…no faster transfer.
I purchased one of them faintzy CD-R/CD-RW/MP3-CD discmans. I can fit 700 megabytes of mp3’s on one cd, and play them in a device that plays my regular compact disc medium. Basically, I ripped all of the bands I listen to’s albums and placed them on mp3 cd. I love it 
Or, you could buy a MP3 capable CD player for a couple hundred bucks (or something like that) and buy 700MB blank CDs for about 40 cents each that can hold about 150 or so songs.
shakes head sorrowfully
Apple, Apple, Apple. On the eve of my freshman year I went out and bought a little pink iMac. I trusted you, even when my little pink iMac kept crashing (but I did download a shitload of mp3s without buying more memory, so I forgive you). I trusted you.
And then you come out with the G4 cube, which I thought was cool for about two minutes. I’m older now, and wiser, and it’s UGLY. And way too goddamn expensive! And then you come out with those weird patterned iMacs - dalmation and sunflowers and whatnot. Do you guys know ANYONE who bought one? Me neither… Then it was iTunes (which, admittedly, I’ve never tried), for the three Mac users on Earth who considered themselves too damn good for Macster. (Really, what other purpose did iTunes serve until Napster folded?) Now this.
In closing, I must add:
…myboyfriendgotXPbeforeitwasreleasedandI’vebeenusingitforamonthnowandILOVEit.
You’ve transformed me into the monster I so despise! Arrgh!
“10 seconds to download a CD - my MP3 (Intel - a nice one) takes about 2 minutes - no Firewire, just USB.”
Interestingly enough, last week Intel announced it was scrapping its connected products department, which made the MP3 player (as well as the kid’s microscope, digital camera, etc.).
Sounds like Apple is blazing a “killer app” trail that has already been proved ineffective.
True. But it did teach me a lot about patience… and, in my opinion, they’re a better medium overall. It’s too bad that there wasn’t more effort spent in advertising/developing the things. Pity.
That’s true. Another, cheaper alternative to the iPod. I repeat my “Jack of all trades” comment.
I could be wrong (hey, it happens), but I believe the Nomad can be used as a HD as well. At least that’s what a coworker of mine made it sound like.
I’m underwhelmed. It’s a nice toy that would have been a sweet addition to a revamped line of G4s or iBooks, but by itself, it’s certainly no big deal, and definitely not worth the week-in-advance hush-hush suspense.
If it had come out six months ago and at half its price… Nah. I’d still take my Rio Volt over it.
I’m still not sure what to make of the device. But you can’t fault Apple’s industrial design, the product design is as clean as it gets, and the menuing system is the best I’ve seen in a handheld device. I can’t imagine wanting to carry around more than about 5Gb of music at a a time, but surely we’ll see larger storage with time. I can see how people could carry around their documents (i.e. classwork) and use the Pod for its storage capacity as well. I might consider buying one, I was just thinking of buying a new expensive highspeed SCSI 9Gb drive like I already use, it is about $300, but if I could just clear out about 5Gb of space I’m using for mp3s, I wouldn’t need a new drive. iPod might be a viable alternative. But it would be a lot more viable if it were a lot cheaper…
There is one interesting question unanswered about the iPod. Apple obliquely hinted that it has a primitive sort of digital rights management. They say it registers to a home CPU, and you can freely copy from your home hard disk to your pod, but you cannot upload mp3s from the pod to any other machine. I guess Apple is afraid that these devices would be the perfect pirate machine, you could just plug em into any machine with Firewire and dump off 5Gb of mp3s in a few minutes. So we’ll have to see how the pod storage actually performs. I know this would make it hard for me to use the pod, I was thinking of moving my whole 5Gb mp3 collection onto a pod, so I could sync up what’s on my laptop and desktop. But if it’s a one way trip, onto the pod and never can be copied back, that would be rilly inconvenient. I guess we’ll know in a week or so when iTunes 2 is released.
Doggone it! If I’d only had James Randi monitoring this thread, I’d have won the million dollar challenge! I can predict the future!
Yeah, it may be overpriced, but it’s got “Earbuds engineered with Neodymium transducer magnets.”
Neodymium? Isn’t that what they use to power the Enterprise?
Woohooo!! The future is here!!
After sleeping on the issue, I think the iPod will do better than what the pessimists have been saying.
Consider: As an MP3 player, it’s certainly not an obvious winner. But how many MP3 players give gigabites of storage, fit in a hip pocket, and runs for ten hours on one battery charge? The iPod is the only MP3 player to offer all of these advantages, and they’re not superficial. Sure, you can carry around several dozen minidiscs with your MP3 library, but you’ll have to juggle discs to switch tunes, while the iPod has it all at your fingertips. And the Nomad Jukebox is twice the size of the iPod and only runs for 3.5 hours on its batteries, IIRC.
As a Firewire hard drive, it’s got enough storage to hold a fair chunk o’ media. You can put a Mac System folder on it and make it an emergency boot drive, or stick a medium-sized digital video project (20+ minutes) on it. Throw in the ten-hour battery and the Firewire connection, and it starts looking rather handy.
Now, I don’t think the iPod is perfect – knock $100 off the price and throw in some Windows-compatable interface software, then we’ll talk. But price reductions will come soon once Apple starts mass-producing these things and take advantage of economies of scale. As an entry-level consumer electronic, it’s got potential…
I believe the “enforcement” is more of a token gesture to satisfy the music industry more than anything else – while iTunes 2 won’t let you download music from the iPod to your Mac, there’s probably nothing that will stop you from mounting the iPod as a Firewire drive, and then just copy files to/from it as usual.
Those iMacs only have one mouse button.
Weird…
