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.'"
Might as well cut out the middle man (Score:5, Insightful)
I vaguely remember the days when culture had something to do with people, not just competing marketing departments...
Facts (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Clever Campaign. (Score:5, Insightful)
The funny thing is that anyone who changes their mind based on this stupid marketing campaign really is a sheep.
Re:Clever Campaign. (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple got its dominate position by creating a effective and user freindly UI to a useful and stylish bit of hardware. If the underlying UI & Hardware weren't up to the task, the ipod would have fallen flat when the first generation of users didn't like them. I owned a pre-ipod player, it had a painful UI, so despite its slick hardware, I hardly ever used it and bad mouthed it to freinds.
Re:open source vs. single license locked itunes fi (Score:3, Insightful)
The 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.
As long as you don't care about buying music online, there is nothing proprietary about an iPod.
Yuck. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Fighting Apple on their own terms," they say? I see it as more of a "sinking to their level."
the campaign is quite hysterical (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get it... (Score:3, Insightful)
It is obvious that these companies don't get it. Instead of trying to compete by offering a compelling and highly integrated product they've moved on to what is essentially name calling. Next they'll say that every time you buy an iPod Jesus cries and kittens die.
Just produce a must-have product and the sales will take care of themselves! Until that time I'll keep buying iPods because that is what iPod+iTunes is!
Variety of Models can be Confusing (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of Apple's strength is that there aren't ten trillion different models with model numbers to purchase, only 3 that come in difference sizes. Has anyone seen Creative's lineup of MP3 players? They have an MP3 player for every occasion.
Copying one part of Apple's marketing strategy alone is not sufficient to match their unparalleled marketing genius.
Re:iZZZZZZZ (Score:4, Insightful)
Your knee hath jerked too soon. First, engage brain.
The primary target market for Sandisk is people who don't have an iPod. Why? Because they already have a fucking mp3 player. Their targeted market segment (with this campaign, especially) is the people who can't afford an iPod, or who don't want to patronize Apple because of the lingering air of fanboyism that permeates their products.
These people will likely respond favorably to being led to believe that they are not sheep (though clearly anyone who buys based purely on advertising is indeed a member of the sheeple at large.)
Re:iZZZZZZZ (Score:3, Insightful)
The iPod owners aren't their target market. Those people are a lost cause.
Their right but (Score:5, Insightful)
So let's say it's tito raging against staline, or Franco against Musolini.
If they offer a rockbox version and find some distributors willing to support music and video distributions in some open format i'll be able to aplaud.
Right now I'll keep my PMA400 (archos PDA+Player Linux based
Re:Might as well cut out the middle man (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Might as well cut out the middle man (Score:3, Insightful)
What are they gonna do next... take on open source operating system, put a slick UI on it and call it their own?
Re:More Info: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:On Apple's Terms (Score:2, Insightful)
Uh, the iPod may have some strength but what you described is the iPod. 99% of all mp3 players you just connect to your computer and put your music on. No software required, no hops to make them work, and they work everywhere (on any OS) as long as you bring the USB cable. The iPod on the other hand does require software to be installed. And it won't function properly without it.
Re:iZZZZZZZ (Score:3, Insightful)
As opposed to the recent Apple commercials that feel as mudslinging as anything you see around election time?
"Finally, the Intel chip is freed from dull little boxes performing dull little tasks"
Re:Clever Campaign. (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, now I think about it, perhaps such a negative (and as others have pointed out, blatantly astroturfing & subculture mining) campaign won't work so well.
I do partially agree with you - I think anyone who changes their mind and buys a sandisk based on this stupid marketing campaign really is a sheep, but I think someone who sees this campaign and just thinks about it a little more next time they buy a mp3 player is not....
Apple shouldn't complain (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Clever Campaign. (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple got its position by having the foresight to think of their product as a "premium" device. They put in lots of storage capacity, made the thing as small as possible, made more than half the case out of metal, and designed an interface very carefully. When that was done that had a player that was much more expensive than the competing players but much more useful, and the market responded.
Consider that the supposed "iPod killers" today still often have plastic-only cases, are often twice the volume, and usually have a confusing interface (see the Zen Vision:M).
tried to differentiate themselves through technological features (doesn't work 'cause most people don't understand)
Nonsense; people know quite well what an FM tuner and a stopwatch and a voice recorder are. They just don't care, or not in large numbers (and various add-ons exist for the iPod anyway). I told my dad that other players included a built-in radio, and he told me that the reason he wanted an iPod was that radio now sucks.
Re:Apple shouldn't complain (Score:1, Insightful)
As far as this whole "ideology vs technology" thing, that hasn't been Apple's "turf" for damn near a decade.
If you have to buy useless consumer crap, you could do a whole lot worse than the iPod, IMHO.
Re:Apple shouldn't complain (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Might as well cut out the middle man (Score:5, Insightful)
Would this be the days when a diamond was forever, or the days when an apple a day kept the doctor away? Corporate manipulation of popular culture, despite your low user ID, probably predates you.
How About Someone Actually BEAT the iPod?!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
1)It has by far the most accesories of any portable player.
2)It's by far the thinnest of any Mp3 player. The closest resemblace to the iPod is the Samsung Z5 [samsung.com]. The only problem is the 4Gb Z5 isn't much smaller than my 30Gb video iPod.
3)Quality. Before video was a factor, the only serious competitor to iPod was the Creative Zen Sleek. [creative.com] I'm glad I didn't get one. It started out nice, but let's just say it wasn't built for durability. Consumers were posting all over the net (it should still be on CNet and Amazon) about rattling noises. It seems that the earphones jack wasn't soildered properly, and thousands of people where having problems about it comming loose and falling inside the player. That's a great way to steer people away from Apple.
But it wasn't only hardware quality that was in question. The "Plays For Sure" nonsense was wreaking havok, and several people weren't able to install the software on Windows 2000. If that wasn't bad enough, the people that COULD install the player complained about being forced to keep the songs on their harddrive (no manual update like the one present in iTunes).
Now before I hear any of the usual iPod propaganda, let me dispell some of the most common rumors:
1)You do NOT have to purchase music from iTunes. It sounds obvious, but I actually heard a saleman in Radio Shack tell someone that the only way to get music in the iPod was to buy it. You would think he was just trying to sell more pre-paid cards for iTunes, but once I spoke with him, he actually didn't know. As a matter of fact, you don't even have to use iTunes at all.
(Disclaimer: I must warn you that I've heard stories of 3rd party software corrupting iTunes.db. It works fine with everything else, but once iTunes detects the
2) You do not have to buy QuickTime Pro to import movies. That was true once upon a time, that was changed in iTunes 6.02. However, iTunes is still slow, and neither iTunes or QuickTime can encode muxed videoes with audio, so you're better off using a free alternative [videora.com].
3)There is an easy way to get your music back off of your iPod [drewfindley.com], but it isn't free.
Let's face it people : The iPod isn't perfect by anyone's standards, but it's the best player on the market by a landslide. If you want to bring Apple's domination of the mp3 market to a halt - give it some decent competition. Creative started now, so hopefully after a few years they'll have all the kinks ironed out. Until then, I can't recommend anything else.
If you are to read one post, pick this one! (Score:2, Insightful)
Whats with us, I thought
Examples like "iPod locks you to iTunes music store/iTunes the program", and that "iPods can actually play many open formats, like mp3......." etc? God, its 2006, "the consumers still pissed, can't take it anymore so i'm writing a list...", how so many of us dont know what the iPod CAN and CAN'T do?
I love my iPod dearly, wouldnt part with it for 10K, still rocking on my 15GB 3G, with like 2 hours of battery life.
Re:Might as well cut out the middle man (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Clever Campaign. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nah, don't bother replying.
Re:More Info: (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Clever Campaign. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think anybody has any proof of this. People buy iPods because they LIKE them. If they saw others using them on campus and decided to pick one up, then obviously they DID see how easy the UI was and how stylish the hardware is, because as you just wrote, they saw someone else using it.
You know, just because you're all technical geeks posting on Slashdot doesn't mean everyone else is a "sheep" or following a "movement" when they adopt something that is popular. The iPod really is a great product.
Re:Clever Campaign. (Score:1, Insightful)
Don't you (and the moderators) know the meaning of the word "largely?" The GP said: "Apple got it's dominant position largely through a clever (and cool, and the early) advertising campaign."
Your claim (that the iPod is a good product) is largely undisputed and redundant.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
It's nothing cultural (Score:3, Insightful)
I've bought music from iTunes. If I stop buying iPods between now and the end of my life, I've got to either lose that music on the go, or re-buy it (and add that cost to replacing my iPod).
The MS system isn't as slick - but at least I know I'll have more choices of vendors to buy from in the future (who might actually try to compete with each other) and sooner of later one of them is going to produce something much better than the iPod of that time.
Re:It's nothing cultural (Score:3, Insightful)
Face it: you're still just as locked in with "Plays For Sure [sic]" as you are with "FairPlay [sic]." The only good DRM is no DRM at all.