SanDisk Baits Apple And Woos Rockbox

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.'"

Clever Campaign.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Apple got it's dominant position largely through a clever (and cool, and the early) advertising campaign. They're firmly fixed as the 'cool' mp3 player to get.

Everyone else who's tried to take on Apple has (as the article notes) has tried to differentiate themselves through technological features (doesn't work 'cause most people don't understand) or price (doesn't work 'cause people don't want a "cheap and nasty" music player). Differentiating by making iPod users seem like sheep [idont.com] is a pretty effective idea.... perhaps! (I am sure the inevitable replies will correct me).

The rockbox news is far more interesting - vendor supported rockbox would be a cool thing to have (wish Rockbox worked on my 3g iPod - soon I will have ogg goodness). But (according to the article), its just a rumour, not a confirmed fact) - the submitter should perhaps have linked to another article?

(Oh, and this [idont.com] was my favorite poster - allthough I think the "shackled" image is more appropriate for an iTunes Music Store mp4 than an ipod itself)

Re:open source vs. single license locked itunes fi

[mveloso]

You mean proprietary formats like mp3 and AAC? While iTunes only sells protected AAC and audible tracks, you can in fact use your normal mp3 and AAC encoded files on your iPod.

I think what you mean is you'd rather have Microsoft Plays-For-Sure DRM'd files instead of Apple's FairPlay DRM'd files, which is something totally different.

Re:open source vs. single license locked itunes fi

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

he only "proprietary" format is the DRM from the Music Store, and maybe ALAC lossless (I don't know if ALAC is open or not). It plays industry standard MP3 and AAC files just fine.

mp3 & aac are both proprietary formats too.

Re:open source vs. single license locked itunes fi

[Anonymous Coward]

Though he is correct that the iPod software provides no easy way to copy music back off the iPod (and stores them stripped of their names internally if you get access to the file-system)

Re:open source vs. single license locked itunes fi

[Anonymous Coward]

Strips the names, but not the ID3 tags. Import them into iTunes, and your file names are automatically rebuilt.

Re:More Info:

[ElGuapoGolf]

Anythingbutipod.com is not a sandisk site. They're an independent site that reviews MP3 players, as long as they're not iPods.

Yes they are.

[Andy Dodd]

The SanDisk units do not use mechanical hard drives, but use solid state flash memory. Thus their direct competitor is the iPod nano, Apple's solid-state player.

iPod nano 2GB - $199
iPod nano 4GB - $249
iPod nano 6GB - does not exist
The 2 and 4 GB SanDisk variants are $20 cheaper. Not sure how they compare on features, but in terms of price per GB, the SanDisks beat the iPod nano.

Re:Clever Campaign.

[JonasH]

If you need further confirmation (petur is a Rockbox developer), see this thread in the Rockbox forums [rockbox.org].

Re:Their right but

[prockcore]

Currently the SanDisk line required Window XP and WMA 10+

No it doesn't. I have a sandisk player, it mounts on my ibook as a regular drive.. I drag mp3s over to it, and when I unplug, the player itself automatically indexes the new files.

That interface is waaay better than iPod which requires special software.

Re:Clever Campaign.

[NMerriam]

So what if I have a big playlist ("My Top Rated 3+"), and I sort that by song name on my computer. Then on my iPod, I want that playlist to play by shuffling albums? Can't do it.

Set shuffle by album on the ipod. Select "My Top Rated 3+" under playlists and press play. Congratulations, you're shuffling your playlist by album on the iPod.

If you're talking about wanting to shuffle by album, but also play within those albums in alphabetical order by song title rather than album order, well sorry, you're SOL along with the other .00000001% of people who would consider such a feature important.

This is a portable music player with a 3" screen and limited controls, not a supercomputer -- for 90% of the people buying an MP3 player, ease of use is far more important than Random Esoteric Feature #2,736.

We should, as you say "look at iPod competitors as potential ways to make portable music more enjoyable than it already is". The problem is not that Slashdot is pro-apple, its that everyone who ever bitches about the iPod has clearly no sense of reality about what are features the mass market cares about, or how important the UI and simplicity are to the iPod's success.

Things like gapless playback and more format support (I'd love FLAC/APE/OGG) should be easy to add without changing the UI much, if at all. And we should continue to harp on apple until those arrive (probably needing hardware upgrades in the case of format support).

Better support for classical music is something that iTunes has been just lately getting upgraded for, so it will be another revision (or two) before the iPod inherits those features. It was a shame it took so long to get real attention. Unfortunately it seems a lot easier to add fields and options to iTunes than it is to get those new fields and options recognized on the iPod itself. It should be supported, but saying it would be nice to have is a far cry from most of the slashodt posts bitching about how "it doesn't sort by 14 things at once, therefore it suxxors and you are sheep for even looking at an iPod!!"

Re:How About Someone Actually BEAT the iPod?!!!

[Dragoonmac]

yamiPod can play, rename, and retransfer music off of an iPod for free.
http://yamipod.com/ [yamipod.com]

If chosing 30GB over 6GB makes me a sheep

[unassimilatible]

Then call me a sheep.

Sansa(TM) e270 MP3 Player 6GB: $279.99 [sandisk.com].

APPLE iPod Black 30GB: $279.99 [newegg.com]

Baaahhhh!

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