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SanDisk Baits Apple And Woos Rockbox 374

An anonymous reader writes "CNET reports that SanDisk is courting open source developers to port Rockbox to its popular MP3 players. SanDisk is currently the world's second most popular MP3 player manufacturer after Apple. Rockbox is an open source OS for most major MP3 players. The article also talks about SanDisk's subversive new anti-iPod advertising campaign which calls iPod owners 'iChimps' and uses a 'street graffiti style' to create the illusion of a 'counter-culture uprising against the iPod'. The writer says, 'SanDisk is the first company to market its player as an ideological rather than technological alternative to the iPod. To do so is to fight Apple on their own terms.'"
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SanDisk Baits Apple And Woos Rockbox

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  • Al Gore (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02, 2006 @03:22PM (#15456845)
    I hear Al Gore puts all his music in a Rockbox
  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday June 02, 2006 @03:23PM (#15456858)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02, 2006 @03:26PM (#15456881)
    I... don't know who to support! It's Apple vs open source software! My world is crumbling - fanboy fighting fanboy, zealot fighting zealot. Cats and dogs living together!
  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 02, 2006 @03:27PM (#15456905)
    Dear Rockbox,

    Oh no, not that! Nobody has ever accused iPod owners of being slaves to fashion before! I'm sure everybody in the world will now rush out to buy your heroic piece of shit music player now. What ever will we do???

    Love,
    Steve Jobs

    P.S. Why not just make unlicensed stickers of Calvin pissing on the Apple logo while you're at it? The rest of your ads are almost, but not quite, that cool.
  • iZZZZZZZ (Score:5, Funny)

    by Quiet_Desperation ( 858215 ) on Friday June 02, 2006 @03:29PM (#15456932)
    The article also talks about SanDisk's subversive new anti-iPod advertising campaign which calls iPod owners 'iChimps'

    What was the executive meeting for that one? "Hey, boss! Let's insult the hell out of our target market!"

    and uses a 'street graffiti style' to create the illusion of a 'counter-culture uprising against the iPod'.

    And nothing says "street cred" like a modern Western corporation. Hey, I be down wit dat, um, dogg... or word, or whatever. Shizzle-something.

    The writer says, 'SanDisk is the first company to market its player as an ideological rather than technological alternative to the iPod.

    Thanks SanDisk! I was just thinking this morning that, gosh, there simply is not enough mental illness^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H ideology in this world.

  • Re:Al Gore (Score:2, Funny)

    by jhsiao ( 525216 ) on Friday June 02, 2006 @03:31PM (#15456945)
    I presume he has the "I'm So Ronery" song from the Team America: World Police soundtrack in his playlist.
  • by deltagreen ( 522610 ) on Friday June 02, 2006 @03:31PM (#15456951) Homepage
    Don't be a sheep and copy everyone else. Be an individualist and buy a completely unique looking MP3-player that resembles nothing else [sandisk.com] :-P
  • Re:Facts (Score:5, Funny)

    by moorcito ( 529567 ) on Friday June 02, 2006 @03:32PM (#15456957) Homepage
    Second most popular? Hell, I didn't even know sandisk made an mp3 player.
  • by Infernal Device ( 865066 ) on Friday June 02, 2006 @03:41PM (#15457062)
    Good luck with that advertising campaign, Sandisk.

    adjusts iPod earbuds for slightly more comfort. Goes back to happily munching grass ...
  • by delire ( 809063 ) on Friday June 02, 2006 @05:03PM (#15457888)
    From where I sit, I welcome the competition.

    It's rush-hour on a Friday night. The train carriage I'm in has an odourous ambience of smug techno-arianism and revolting self-ordained hipness. I look over either shoulder and realise the source of my discomfort. All my fellow passengers have little or no surface features. To put it more clearly, they are in fact all silhouettes striking obtuse dance poses in what appear to be exaggerated representations of a person enjoying music in the privacy of their own home... the entire carriage is full of 2-Dimensional Private Dancers..

    One of these creatures hands me a single white earpiece and says something like "Do you feel it?". I hear what appears to be RadioHead's "Ok Computer" coming from the earpiece. Barely suppressing a sudden onset of nausea, I sidle away. I reach into my pocket and crank up an Ogg Vorbis rip of New Order's 'Bizarre Love Triange' on my iAudio and breathe deeply.. i'm going to make it. Down the other end of the carriage I make eye contact with the only other three-dimensional being on board. She smiles nervously and points to her Sony Discman..

    SanDisk, Bring The Humans Back.
  • by esper ( 11644 ) on Friday June 02, 2006 @05:12PM (#15457972) Homepage
    Sorry, but he's dead on about the clickwheel. It flat-out sucks.

    "Hey, guys, let's make something that looks just like a directional pad, but, instead of moving down a list when you press down, have it do something completely different!"

    "Yeah, and then - get this - we can have people move through lists by using a circular motion around the pad, and make the rate that it moves through the list variable, so that it's absolutely impossible to keep track of how far you've moved unless you're looking at the screen as you do it."

    "Sweet... and I know how to make it better yet. Once it starts moving, crank the sensitivity up so high that people wil end up jumping the cursor back and forth over the item they want half a dozen times before they can actually get it to stop in the right place."

    "Good, but that might actually be useful when using it to fast forward or rewind within a song. In that mode, it should stay as slow as possible so that users are stuck there, going around and around the wheel dozens of times if they want to jump ahead by more than a minute."

    "Oh, yes! That is an absolutely perfect idea! The only thing that's missing is to just say 'move your finger around the pad' in the manual with no indication of what that actually means."

    Yeah, that's a terrific interface alright...
  • by esper ( 11644 ) on Friday June 02, 2006 @05:15PM (#15457991) Homepage
    a G unit with an expensive pair of Nike shoes

    Damn... They're making Nikes in GUNDAM sizes now?

For God's sake, stop researching for a while and begin to think!

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