Apple to Face iPod Clone Attack

chr1sb writes "The Age has a commentary piece outlining how Apple's domination of the online media market is continuing to grow, but speculating that significant competition from the likes of Nokia and Motorola will rapidly relegate Apple's presence in the market to a corner, just as clone manufacturing of IBM PCs dominated the initial success of the Macintosh. From the article: 'The iPod/iTunes system will move into a niche with Macintosh computers because Steve Jobs has again stuck with closed architecture and total control. This will happen quickly because mobile phones are being turned over about every year.'."

Re:Um.....no

[Sentry21]

I like having the camera, but it is a pain to get pictures off it (I have a RAZR).

Just use the 'browse device' feature of your OS's bluetooth support and grab it out of /pictures/ - ten seconds, start to finish, I do it with mine all the time.

Re:Um.....no

[matthew.coulson]

Fortunately, the Razr can be easily reflashed [motox.us] to enable all the good stuff.

Not much good for the general public, but this is SlashDot, right?

Ogg Vorbis Plug in for iTunes

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a plug in for iTunes that enebles playback and encoding of ogg files

http://www.illadvised.com/~jordy/ [illadvised.com]

Re:hardware matters little

[NMerriam]

On the contrary, Apple got this market precisely because it had/has the best UI.

Argue whatever you like about particular pet features/compatibility, but Apple is #1 because they saw what an UI mess most MP3 players (both software and hardware) were and simplified them both so that normal people were capable of operating them without having to know anything about the underlying technology.

Very few competitors have even matched the simplicity of operation, and none have surpassed it yet. Until they do, consumers simply aren't going to be interested in jumping ship without massive financial incentive. And I don't see how anyone can undercut the iPod by a significant margin given Apple's huge volume discount on parts and continued willingness to forego profit for market share.

Re:Ogg Vorbis support

[Moghedien]

Rockbox [rockbox.org] supports Vorbis. Works fine on my iPod.

They did, but they separated.

[Crash Culligan]

for the ROKR (I know it was, at least supposedly, a total pos) and another model or other thats supposed to be better than the ROKR (both are supposed to work with iTunes, right?)

Correct me if I'm wrong (about my argument or the phones), but that looks more like cooperation than competition...

That was cooperation all right, but it fell through. I remain hopeful, though, for events and reasons completely different. And my hope even comes with its own half-assed speculation. Follow:

Apple and CompUSA got together many years ago to create an Apple Ghetto Store within each CompUSA. It sucked. Apple pulled out, created their own retail outlets at a time when critics said they were crazy to do so, and they took off.

Apple and Motorola got together years later to create an iTunes/phone. Judging by the reports, it sucked too. Apple pulled out.........and the rest of the story hasn't been written yet. But you can probably guess the rest.

It's a wonderful dream, but probably won't work. To create the standalone Apple Stores, they needed retail space in many different malls, with relatively little competition between them (distance is a limiting factor on competition). Mobile phone carriers have almost total overlay of coverage, which makes them bitterly competetive. Furthermore, they're competitive in a "screw the customers who want to leave" scorched-earth kind of way. To make the sales of an iPhone work, they'd need either to set up their own network (and they don't have enough experience with that yet) or build the iPhone to work with existing digital networks, which will do their damndest to lock whatever phone the customer tries to put onto it seven ways to Sunday.

I don't think Apple wants to build a phone which the customer will want to throw away annually, even if it means a boost in sales.

Re:Um.....no

[Anonymous Coward]

So, how many online music stores can you buy music for your iPod from?

Any that support MP3. Next question?

Re:Ogg Vorbis Plug in for iTunes

[HAKdragon]

This, however, does not allow for ogg vorbis files to be played on an iPod, which is the issue that people bring up when they talk about OG and iPods.

Re:So are iPods.

[Dionysus]

Both those points depends on the service providers and phones.

1) My cellphone plays any music I put on it (as long as it is a supported format, like mp3). My provider (T-Mobile) doesn't have a say in how I use my phone.

2) I work out with my phone, and still doesn't have to recharge it until at night. And my phone (Nokia) has terrible battery life. Sony Ericsson sells cellphones with great battery life (the K-series of phones). My brother can go a weekend, listening to the radio and talking on the phone, without recharging. Listening to music doesn't drain the battery that much (playing java games, now that is a battery drainer)

Re:Your childish insults add nothing to the thread

[Weaps]

Apple doesn't make it's money on the iTunes Music Store. [theregister.co.uk] They make the money on the iPods themselves. [theregister.com] The RIAA gets the benefits of your iTunes purchase.

You have it backwards

[monkbent]

What you don't seem to grasp is that the iPod devices drive music sales on iTunes. Apple can afford to break even or to lose money on each iPod sale because the average iPod buyer loads the iPod up one $.99 song at a time through iTunes.

Actually, Apple breaks even with the iTMS, and makes they're profit on the iPod itself.

Re:Ogg Vorbis Plug in for iTunes

[Ford Prefect]

For something which doesn't hard-crash recent versions of Quicktime, you might prefer the official Xiph.Org QuickTime Components [xiph.org]. I haven't seen an official Universal build for use on Intel-based Macs, but I'm sure that's just around the corner.

Re:Ogg Vorbis support

[SonicRED]

I purchased an iPod Nano last September and I now play Ogg Vorbis files on it every day without issue. I've converted my entire collection from Mp3 to Ogg in fact. Previously I was convinced that deviating from Mp3 would limit my choice of a player in the future but I no longer have that concern.

The solution is Rockbox [rockbox.org].

MP3, OGG, FLAC, AAC, ALAC, AC3 and WavPack playback.

You also get gapless playback, crossfading, a real EQ (not just presets) and ReplayGain support. Not to mention the rapidly growing collection of games and plugins and other random features such a real JPG viewer that doesn't require conversion. It also frees you from having to use iTunes or GTKpod or other software to interface with the player. You simply copy the files and folders over directly and navigate whatever file structure you choose on the screen (mine is /Artist/(Year) Album)/).

The reality of the situation is that you're going to end up using Rockbox on your iAudio anyway. The Cowon firmware is pretty terrible and doesn't have a lot of the features mentioned above. This is the case with my friend who also ordered the U2. I paid $50 more for my Nano but got twice the storage space, a color screen, and a form factor that is ridiculously small in comparison. We both use Rockbox.

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