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.'"
Clever Campaign. (Score:4, Informative)
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: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.
Not Sheep (Score:2)
wait, I shouldnt have said that, I am one. Mmwuhh hahahahahaa!
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....
Re:Clever Campaign. (Score:2)
While this may be true, it's important to note that this particular changing of ones mind does not cause one to become a sheep, only reinforces that they are.
They may have purchased the iPod because they were a "sheep" already or may have become a "sheep" at this point, as well.
Re:Clever Campaign. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nah, don't bother replying.
If chosing 30GB over 6GB makes me a sheep (Score:5, Informative)
Sansa(TM) e270 MP3 Player 6GB: $279.99 [sandisk.com].
APPLE iPod Black 30GB: $279.99 [newegg.com]
Baaahhhh!
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Clever Campaign. (Score:3)
Guess it goes to show that a clever campaign by itself isn't going to be enough - lets hope they do support rockbox. Tt could become the firefox of firmware!
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:Clever Campaign. (Score:2)
bingo.
I agree.... advertising had little to do with it. (Score:4, Interesting)
Then, a friend of mine actually invited me to play around with his new 3rd. gen. iPod, hands-on. I was immediately fascinated. The scroll wheel made it so easy to navigate the menus, and everything was on an easy-to-read display screen. It even had some basic PDA type functionality (contacts and calendar synching), making it more justifiable to carry around than I anticipated. Then I realized one could even boot a Mac from one of these things and use it for emergency recovery in case of a drive crash. A quick look at the available accessories for it made me realize another key point; the iPod was the industry standard! Anything you could imagine wanting to add on to a portable player was available in an iPod friendly version. They even had clock radios with iPod docks on top of them.
Then it struck me. If you can't find some use for an iPod, you're just not trying hard enough. That's the beauty in these things. Photographers can take one around as a mass storage "vault" for their digital photos, instead of juggling a handful of memory sticks or cards. In the current form, you can watch podcasts with training videos for software products like Photoshop, or just the latest comedy skit while you're on the bus or train. It can totally replace music CDs (or even CDRs full of MP3 files) in your car. Take it camping with external speakers... 21st. Century Boom-Box! Battery life is excellent and they "just work", as Apple always promises of their products.
Re:Clever Campaign. (Score:2)
Re:Clever Campaign. (Score:2)
iPod is useful (It plays music well with a useful interface) and stylish (It looks good). Combined with a good advertising campaign, it becomes a market leader.
Most players which aren't either iPods, or from the WMP DRM camp are functional (They play music with some kind of interface) and possibly stylish (They're not the size of a housebrick).
Hence iPods or devices which use the WMP DRM system are at the top.
Re:Clever Campaign. (Score:2)
Um... Yeah. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you've never actually seen an iPod in person. They've always been able to browse by all three of those criteria.
The rest of your complaints are about as valid.
Re:Clever Campaign. (Score:4, Funny)
"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...
Re:Clever Campaign. (Score:3, Informative)
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 alo
Re:Clever Campaign. (Score:4, Funny)
Damn... They're making Nikes in GUNDAM sizes now?
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
Re:Clever Campaign. (Score:2)
And SanDisk is insulting every single member of the market that it is trying to gain. Historically, that sort of approach doesn't tend to work very well. [amazon.com]
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:Clever Campaign. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Clever Campaign. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Clever Campaign. (Score:2)
Well, people keep saying things like that, but I don't buy the argument.
Quite frankly, I have a 1GB iPod shuffle, and for my needs there is no technology missing from it. I use is, literally, 4-7 hours a day, 5 days/week. I
Al Gore (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Al Gore (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I can see this going over REAL well. (Score:2)
Rather than saying, "ours is cheaper, works as well, and is also capable of playing everything that an iPod can play" they're saying
"Why are you buying that? Because somebody told you it's cool. Ours is the same, but CHEAPER and equally technically capable! Only a mindless follower would buy an iPod with reasons like that to buy a Samsung instead!"
Seems like a pretty good idea to me. It's working for Vonage, which is ironic considering that they're one of t
Re:I can see this going over REAL well. (Score:2)
Re:I can see this going over REAL well. (Score:2)
This'll probably go over like a lead zeppelin.
Re:I can see this going over REAL well. (Score:2)
Re:I can see this going over REAL well. (Score:2)
Thanks to the swift boat crap, it was...
Re:I can see this going over REAL well. (Score:2)
They can only steal it if it's close.
Or, they can tell you it's close, ven if it's not, and then steal it.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...
Re: (Score:2)
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:Might as well cut out the middle man (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Might as well cut out the middle man (Score:3, 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.
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 t
Re:It's nothing cultural (Score:3, Insightful)
No, you don't know that. I mean, it hasn't happened so far, has it?
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.
Re:Might as well cut out the middle man (Score:2)
Who to support?! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Who to support?! (Score:2)
... and this brings me to a question: where's microsoft? shouldn't they at least have attempted to take over the mp3 player market by now?
Facts (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Facts (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Facts (Score:2)
As the second most popular
NEWS FLASH: iPod "Killer" Product/Campaign Launch! (Score:5, Funny)
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)
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: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.
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:iZZZZZZZ (Score:3, Interesting)
And nothing says "street cred" like a modern Western corporation. Hey, I be down wit dat, um, dogg... or word, or whatever. Shizzle-something.
I think you give suburban middle-class kids with lots of 'guilt money [investinkids.ca]' *far* too much credit. Take a trip to a local high school - you'll see more walking billboards than at a NASCAR event...
Corporations have figured out teens for some time [pbs.org] now.
Re:iZZZZZZZ (Score:3, Interesting)
When Apple dedicated its front page to Rosa Parks when she d
More Info: (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not so much that the iPod is without it's flaws, but for them to masquerade as a "revolution" counter-culture and have me find out that it's a sponsored astroturf really pissed me off. Not only that but the link to the SanDisk player on the site, also went to a SanDisk-sponsored page Anything But iPod [anythingbutipod.com].
I can judge for myself based on the qualities and features of a player for myself, but blogs are getting more and more worthless every day since big media will simply continue to masquerade with a false list of "satisfied customers" for everyone to see. A previous employer of mine has actually added astroturfers to their PR team that do nothing but spam forums with their excellent experience with the product they secretly happen to sell.
sigh...
Re:More Info: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:More Info: (Score:4, Informative)
Anythingbutipod.com is not a sandisk site. They're an independent site that reviews MP3 players, as long as they're not iPods.
Re:More Info: (Score:2)
It would have impressed us if we decided to trust it.
Re:More Info: (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:More Info: (Score:5, Interesting)
. Moreover, and this isn't flamebait, I prefer to use windows media player on my pc. I realize that this is not the norm, but I hated the itunes app. It took two updates and three restarts to install, forced me to dl quicktime, and of course was incompatible with my ogg and wma files. My nano had a smaller capacity than my collection, so itunes decided to just randomly select mp3s to synch and then I found it surprisingly non-intuitive to select music to be synched (keep in mind that I was more comfortable with WMP).
Finally, the image thing, looking around my gym I sort-of generated a stereotype for the type of person that used an ipod. It is a very stylish device, but I am not a stylish person... So it just felt too metrosexual for me. By no means is the iRiver perfect, I have lots of complaints... but they mostly fall under categories that are minor to me and it gets the important things right. Forgive typos... Blackberry.
Re:More Info: (Score:2)
Yuck. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Fighting Apple on their own terms," they say? I see it as more of a "sinking to their level."
So why not do it themselves (Score:2)
Who's the sheep? (Score:5, Funny)
Sad individual who needs to get with the program (Score:3, Interesting)
They've changed it to say "This site requires Flash and a sense of humor" but I thought the earlier message was a lot more funny.
Is it just me... (Score:2)
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!
Sandisk who? (Score:3, Funny)
adjusts iPod earbuds for slightly more comfort. Goes back to happily munching grass
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:Variety of Models can be Confusing (Score:2)
Re:Variety of Models can be Confusing (Score:2, Interesting)
I was just shopping for a Thinkpad for work - figured an R43 would be good. Turns out there's a bunch of R43's, with some silly distinction on the end. Different drives, different screens etc.
Apple's computer marketing has been very succesful for the same reason it's iPod marketing has been. You buy an iPod that holds 4,000 songs. Not an jPod II Model 3-8 with the optional FM transmitter.
On Apple's Terms (Score:5, Interesting)
It's cool for geeks to have an iPod cuz they're expensive, but for most of the world, iPods work. I've known people who have bought most others and spent days figuring it out. With an iPod you go home, install iTunes, rip a CD, plug it in(or sit it in the dock) and that's it. You don't have to click through 15 menus to copy music over, you just connect it with the computer and it does the rest for you.
Not trying to sound like an Apple Fanboy here, but it looks like SanDisk is only targeting geeks with this. The counter culture thing is cool, but when you tell your friends you're gonna go get a sandisk whatever it's called, they'll say "Oh, that's really hard to use. I just sold mine on ebay and got an ipod" what's all that counter culture crap gonna do for you?
I don't say this to say "Apple Forever!" I'm saying that everyone else needs to make it simple. I'm tired of calls from friends and relatives who got an MP3 player and can't get it to work, the others I tell to get an ipod and poof, no trouble. Just cuz you have an MP3 player doesn't mean you know what an MP3 is, what a computer is, or how or why the CPU is not the big black box that everything plugs into with the Dell logo.
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 i
It's the prefix (Score:2)
Definitely not taking them through price... (Score:2, Interesting)
Sansa(TM) e270 MP3 Player 6GB Price: $279.99
Sansa(TM) e260 MP3 Player 4GB Price: $229.99
Sansa(TM) e250 MP3 Player 2GB Price: $179.99
A bit high there. My music collection won't even fit on their highest end product. Not to mention any videos you might want to load. They do realize it takes a little bit more than direct attacks against "the fad" to gain customers over.
Yes they are. (Score:2, Informative)
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:Definitely not taking them through price... (Score:2)
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:Their right but (Score:2)
Re:Their right but (Score:5, Informative)
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.
SanDisk Baits Apple.... (Score:2)
Audible (Score:2)
Recipe for an iPod (Score:2)
Apple shouldn't complain (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Apple shouldn't complain (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Apple shouldn't complain (Score:2)
As for whether Apple will actually publicly "whine" about it, I expect not. That's not because Apple is a nice company, it's because SanDisk isn't big enough and doesn't have enough brand recognition to bother with.
What I do expect is that if they ever started feeling that RockBox affects them in any way, Apple would try to shut it down with threats of legal action for anything they can find--after
SanDisk not the first to approach Rockbox (Score:3, Interesting)
Insult me, please! (Score:2)
I bought the iPod because I have a massive collection of music that I wanted to carry around with me.
What does Sandisk have to offer? 6GB max? I've got 30GB of space in my iPod. I have fit all of my all-time favourite pieces on it. It doesn't contain every mp3 I have, but I'm not too sad that "I've Got A Boner For You" by the Teen An
Note to SanDisk: Learn about the "Lemmings" Ad (Score:2)
Lazy Bas*ds (Score:2)
Hey, it's open source. Why don't you port it yourself, instead of asking someone else to do your work for you for free!!
I love my sansa (Score:2)
1 - 2 - 3 Rockbox (Score:2)
Attention hardware manufacturers (Score:2, Interesting)
Hardware manufacturers! I'll make this easy for you. Here's what I want:
I don't care about video. I mean seriously, it's a
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 Sa [samsung.com]
I'm Mo'Blogging this. (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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.
Re:open source vs. single license locked itunes fi (Score:3, Informative)
mp3 & aac are both proprietary formats too.
Re:open source vs. single license locked itunes fi (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:2)