Will the iPod Ever Die? 470
Azhar writes "Will we always prefer the iPod's glossy slim design over all the others? Or at one point of time will the iPod revolution actually fade? Lets have a look at what could happen and why."
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Will the iPod Ever Die?
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'Ever' seems a bit optimistic (Score:5, Insightful)
Article Text (Score:2, Informative)
The iPod has dominated the MP3 player (and portable video player) market so far. It began the ultimate revolution in how we listen to our music. Competitors have come and gone, while the iPod stood strong, but really, will the iPod ever die? Well there are a few points that say NO and some that say YES.
NO! It will not die! (at the bottom of the article we look at the possibility of it actually dying, but for no
TFA (Score:3, Insightful)
Really
Re:TFA (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't like the iPod because it's too popular and has white ear-buds, just say so. Don't try to spread mis-information for some pathetic anti-iPod agenda.
Re:TFA (Score:5, Informative)
I have many gigabytes of music on my computer that I ripped from my own CDs. There's not a single DRM-encumbered track on my computer, and I play them all with iTunes, iPods, and mp3 CD-ROMs made with single click burning from iTunes. (My car stereo plays mp3 CD-ROMs.)
Furthermore, iTunes' restriction that it won't copy mp3s off of an iPod and onto a computer is merely proforma to mollify the recording industry. There is nothing built into the iPod to prevent you from copying mp3s off of it and onto your computer. In fact, there are a number of free programs out there that let you do precisely this.
|>oug
DRM and iTMS aren't mandatory. (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole "I hate the iPod because I don't want to pay $0.99 a song" is silly. Nothing about the iPod requires that you buy your music that way. In fact, I'd argue that if you want to get your music from a CD, the iPod is probably still the best player, because iTunes is the easiest ripping/syncing/library-management software around -- naturally that's debatable, of course.
Your points about the lack of a microphone and a line input are well taken, because they're actual capabilities of other devices which the iPod does not have. But the DRM thing is a rather silly point and it gets brought up a lot. If you're buying another player as a sort of "protest vote" against DRM, that's your choice, but it's not really a limitation of the device. Apple isn't Sony, and you can use an iPod just fine without ever paying a cent into the iTMS or buying a single DRMed song.
plenty of DRM in iPod (Score:4, Insightful)
DRM probably has driven some key aspects of the design of iPod. For example, the fact that the iPod doesn't present its contents as a file system, like many other MP3 players do, is probably due to DRM. The fact that it's hard to get music off the device is also driven by DRM concerns. Likewise, the fact that the iPod does not support syncing to multiple machines well is probably influenced by DRM. Lack of iTunes support for third party MP3 players, and lack of third party support for iPod is another consequence.
Getting MP3 files off an iPod is not hard (Score:3, Insightful)
That may sound a bit harsh, but it's only hard if you're a moron. Seriously, if you know a small bit about the Terminal, you don't even need any kind of third-party app to copy MP3 files from an iPod. It's all there as plain old files, just inside invisible (to the Finder, that is) folders. It's not hard at all.
Yeah, it's not as easy as it should be, although it has got nothing to do with DRM - in fact, you can copy DRM'd
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FUD. The iPod shows up as a mass-storage device. All of the files on it can be read out of it with normal file-manipulation tools. The names of music files are obfuscated, but if they were tagged with the appropriate type of metadata before they were put there, it's not much work to throw together some
Re:plenty of DRM in iPod (Score:4, Informative)
Also if you didn't know, Apple just added in the latest revision of iTunes the ability to synch to multiple machines, and iTunes has existed for longer than the iPod. The very first versions of iTunes has (and still may, I don't see why they wouldn't) supported Rio, Diamond, and Creative MP3 players.
So in that respect all your assertions are off base.
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You simply add the original artist to "Composer" or "notes," or whatever other
Re:DRM and iTMS aren't mandatory. (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is, that's the way iTunes works. Any music player worthy of that name should also work that way in 2006. Music, by its nature, already has metadata associated with it, wether you want it or not. Year, type of music, artist, composer. album, track number, disc number, etc. The fact that you don't put the metadata in your files is your problem, not mine.
When you decide to put a track in a single directory, it limits you to a single metadata field (ex: artist directory, album sub-directory). You can't, however, make a "Best of the 1980's" from those files afterward. With smart playlists and metadata, it's done with a simple rule. Want a "Best Rock Tunes of the 80's"? Two rules. No need to handle files and directories. That's what metadata and smart playlists are all about. You make the smart playlists and define which fields to use and which parameters you want to apply to fiter those fields.
How do you handle tracks that should be in multiple directories? Aliases? I don't think your iRiver handles aliases... (and if it does, then fine for you).
Once you let go of the "I have to manage my files myself" syndrome and let iTunes do it, you'll be making your computer work for you. Until then, do your directories thing if you think it's good enough, and do the work your computer should be doing.
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Nope, never (Score:4, Funny)
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it, but I predict that within 100 years, computers will
be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive
that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them.
Next up (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Next up (Score:5, Funny)
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems.
Please try again later."
Ask and you shall recieve.
Short answer: No, long answer: Maybe (Score:4, Funny)
iPod is that rugged? (Score:2)
Who's "we"? (Score:5, Interesting)
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So, I think the article is US/Europe/Japan centric... from their perspective the world is a much smaller place. Our countries are "secondary" markets, and they don't enven include us when they calculate the Digital Audio Players marketshare. It's sad, but is true.
Not even worth a mention. (Score:5, Insightful)
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The iPOD is ALREADY dead, in case you haven't noticed the Zune is CHEAPER, has WAY MORE FEATURES, and has WIRELESS.
Now, you would think that with a zillion dollars in he bank, Microsoft could afford some lessons in appropriate capitalisation and sublty for it's astroturfers.
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Can that be true? (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't this a huge mistake? Isn't the biggest drawback of DRM that you are locked into a specific implementation? That people are worried that the songs they've "purchased" will turn out to be useless next year? This seems to confirm people's worst fears that MS will obsolete their entire song collection just because it's more profitable to do so.
I can't imagine anyone dumb eno
Will the iPod ever die... (Score:5, Funny)
Battery Replacement Service (Score:5, Informative)
Out of curiosity, which other brands offer a similar service? I have a feeling the brand I stick with will be the one to offer the best post-purchase support. For one thing, it shows confidence in their product.
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Re:Battery Replacement Service (Score:5, Insightful)
Most other manufacturers of comparably sized digital music players have only a 90 day warranty period and a $30-$50 cost for battery replacement. For $15 more per battery replacement (a rare occurrence), I could get my preferred product.
I do indeed rock.
Re:Battery Replacement Service (Score:4, Funny)
Why oh why won't they just let me pay them to do it!?
Excuse me, I've got a letter writing campaign to start.
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The (discontinued?) H20 didn't feature a user-replaceable battery, good to know the new H10s do.
2.5" video support is useless (Score:2)
Re:Battery Replacement Service (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it a fair comparison? (Score:2)
Battery Life (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Battery Life (Score:4, Insightful)
The moment companies start to design products without a limited lifespan the sky will *actually* fall.
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Not pointing fingers or anything, not intending to flame or troll, but it's just.. sick.
Stuff from the 80s still works? (Score:5, Insightful)
Notice the pattern:
In the 2000s, everything built in the 1980s lasted forever; things made in the 2000s break after a few years.
In the 1980s, everything built in the 1960s lasted forever; things made in the 1980s break after a few years.
In the 1960s, everything built in the 1940s lasted forever; things made in the 1960s break after a few years.
In the 1940s, everything built in the 1920s lasted forever; things made in the 1940s break after a few years.
In the 1920s, everything built in the 19th century lasted forever; things made in the 1920s break after a few years.
And yes, I've done research on this. My grandparents are over 90 and swear that everything made since the Great Depression is crap and never lasts. I've found early newspaper op-ed pieces from the 1910s that claim the very same thing, just pushing back the date a little.
(The secret, of course, is that the things made in year X that only last a few years are long since discarded, and we only remember the things that last any decent length of time)
Repeated post from a while back. I can't believe people still believe the "stuff made today is shit, while everything made in the past lasted forever" meme.
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It is very unusual. According to my grandparents, memes used to last forty to sixty years before getting replaced. Now a days, your typical meme lasts a few years at best. Case in point: hot grits + Portman = L.A.M.E. This 'shitty stuff' meme is quite the exception.
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Indeed, this is among my favorite myths. Another factor affecting that perception is the process of commoditization. Microwave ovens are a great example. Today you find all kinds of people bellyaching about how microwaves now are crap compared to "the one my [mother|grandmother|aunt] had back in '79", but this is not entirely true. You can get a good, solid, bulletproof microwave oven [microwavespecialties.com]
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"Will this server ever die?" "Yeup, /.ed" (Score:3, Funny)
Well, lets slashdot it and find out.
Yeup.
The pithy answer: Only when the customers do (Score:2)
Will the Walkman ever die? (Score:5, Insightful)
July, 1983 - The Sony Walkman has dominated the portable cassette player market so far. It began the ultimate revolution in how we listen to our music......
Back to the present, the Walkman ceased to dominate the industry 15 years ago or more. The iPod will someday share it's fate. TFA is a lame blog article written by some fanboy who thinks he is creative, insightful, and discerning.
You know Taco, if it is a slow news day, it's better to leave the front page alone than to post "stories" like this just for the sake of filling space.
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Yea! And this in the middle of a breaking news: Firefox's source code leaked!
I have the link to prove it: Firefox's leaked source code
Grab it before Mozilla Corp. manages to shut down the server!
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OMGWTFBBQ! Someone edited my post to remove the link... Are Slashdot and Mozilla working together to take over the world!?
Conspiracy! How's that for a SLOW NEWS DAY..
DRM and Open Standards killed the WalkMan (Score:2)
The cassette walkman and CD walkman worked were icons of Sony. They were simple to use and people could easily enjoy the music without having to understand the technology too much.
That all changed with the MiniDisc player (MD)
The MiniDisc player was one of the first players to introduce DRM to the music world (and people didn't really get it [trying to explain DRM in the late 1990's was a nightmare... yes, even worse than today]). Also, ATRAC/ATRAC3 wasn't
My Walkman broke earlier this year (Score:3, Interesting)
My Walkman broke earlier this year. Will I get an iPod? No. I use Yahoo Music Unlimited on my laptop now. Listening to local FM on the walk to work was my only reason to have a mobile player of any kind. If I get another mobile player, it'll have to support Yahoo's DRM and it'll have to have recording off FM. I've been looking at some of the Sandisk players. As far as I'm concerned, the iPod never lived. It just doesn't interest me. I like the PC platform and things associated with it, simply becau
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Well, I do! The perfect music player would be integrated directly into your nerves from the ear. Failing that, it could be operated into the ear canal. Failing that, it could be a set of headphones that didn't require a cord. For s
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And the iPod's solved this how? The 30gb iPod is bigger than the Nano. The 60/80gb iPod is bigger than the 30gb. Any more than that and you'd need two iPods.
I can think of several tech advances that will revolutionise the
Apples and oranges (Score:2)
I certainly hope the Zune won't just replace th
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Just one thought about the iPod, where is internet and connectivity? I guess that in several years, a music player that does not allow you to get a tune from your friend player or just immediatly after having seen a commercial in the tube will seem pretty lame ( what you have to connect that to your computer ? How quaint )
of course it could happen. (Score:5, Insightful)
If Apple forsakes their loyal customers, and abuses said loyalty, they will lose their biggest cheerleaders.
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Or if someone comes out with a clearly superior product. I don't see any on the shelves at Best Buy that fit that bill, I haven't heard of any on the horizon, and I don't imagine Apple, the company that it currently is, allowing that to happen. To a certain degree, the question with Apple is, what happens when Jobs retires? Last time he left the company, they went from a company that was constantly pushing the envelope to one that could barely keep up.
But until Jobs leaves or loses his mind, I don't see
Well (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Well (Score:4, Interesting)
DRM and Open Markets
http://digitalcrusader.ca/archives/2006/10/drm_an
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All fads eventually die (Score:3, Insightful)
iPod is a fad? (Score:3, Insightful)
iPod itself may become the Sony walkman: ubiquitous, until CD comes around.
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If nothing else, with the amount of time we've been around intelligent life that makes things like iPods may turn out to just be a fad
What will ultimately kill the iPod (Score:3, Insightful)
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You do know that Sony is a Japanese company and that iPods are assembled in China, don't you?
Sure, the iPod will die. (Score:5, Insightful)
The iPod will die. So will Windows. So will the Toyota Prius. So will Toyota. So will GE, the sole surviving original Dow Jones Index company. So will the United States of America. So will life on earth. So will the sun. Even Jack LaLanne will eventually die (oh, wait...)
And your point is?
Dont know about the iPod... (Score:2)
I'd say it is about cost. (Score:2)
Many folks have large collections of bog standard MP3's. I know I keep my CD collection in a
Will the ipod never die? No! (Score:5, Funny)
Next question?
It will change. (Score:2)
Apple isn't completely safe (Score:2)
(Article is slashdotted, so I can only react to the submission/summary.)
I realize that some people really like the iPod, but it never particularly appealed to me. There are a lot of people (in absolute terms, not relative terms) who don't see that product as particularly impressive.
What that means, is that they'll never get all the market. There's room for competitors. I doubt anything Microsoft can offer will ever be that competitor, but there will be someone. A few years ago, I though the Neuros wa
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Dont worry, you didn't miss anything.
A Better Question is ... (Score:2)
Not necessarily (Score:3, Interesting)
Even though more advanced gadgets/control methods will come, people may still prefer the familiar click wheel interface of the Nano for basic music listening. Perhaps it will not be made by Apple, will have much higher quality/capacity or be a part of a multi-function gadget, but I think the design itself has made a lasting impact.
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The interesting question is... (Score:2)
Apparently every human being dies sooner or later, but my fanboy club says I'm living forever since I'm better than the rest of the humans. Makes sense right?
Let's see, but I bet I won't die ever.
Ever die? My iPod ALWAYS dies (Score:2)
If this keeps up, I'll have to go back to vinyl.
I once commented about ./'s lack of breaking news (Score:2)
Honestly, I read comments here all the time of people being rejected for posting a real tech story, yet THIS somehow gets on the page?
Slashdot has truly lost its focus.
And When It dies, your DRM files will be worth ?? (Score:2)
Oh come on... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think... (Score:2)
I mean, did 640K ever extinct? It was "enough for everyone" back then, but now...
That's what's gonna happen to iPod. It's cool and all now, but after some time it will get replaced by something even more cool. Maybe a next-generation-updated iPod, who knows...
Since when... (Score:2)
Given these... how does this constitute "news" for anybody, much less nerds?
Seriously, slashdot. I want
Slashdot like Apple in mid 90s ? (Score:4, Insightful)
The news business, even in it's blog form is a tough business indeed. When the mother of all blogs (i.e Slashdot itself) needs to go trolling for clicks with a front page link to a teenage fanboy's blog related to iPods, it's a sad day indeed.
This article is neither "news for nerds", nor "stuff that matters".
But it's a predictable click gatherer - and it's been promoted to the front page by the Cmdr himself, not a junior apprentice editor.
The Cmdr hasn't lost his marbles - quite the opposite, he has a business to run - and this business is desperately competing with the shrill upstarts with editorial models solely around popularity, rather than quality.
The unwashed masses supply more clicks than even moderately intelligent and critical thinkers.
Populism at work, because populism pays. So now we have editorial control trying to emulate populism. Not the first and not the last time that will happen.
I understand that, but I see a fatal disconnect with Slashdot doing it. Slashdot doesn't do populism best. Slashdot's strength is (was) in quality control (editorial control , followed by discussion with moderation and meta moderation).
However, when the first input (editorial control) to the process isn't even remotely attempting quality control, all other quality control processes are becoming rather irrelevant.
Or to put it more bluntly, if the whole story is a troll, the comments, moderations and meta-moderations can't untroll it.
So I think Slashdot is losing it's way in this battle and like all good things will slowly fade away.
Reminds me a bit of apple in the early to mid 90s. They tried to emulate the populists of their day in their industry, when that's not what they did best.
Why am I mentioning apple?
Because against all odds, apple found its way again and came back - and found that their original essence could get them back into their highly respected and quite nicely profitable niche and they even could become the number one popular choice in another field.
Here's to hoping that Slashdot can do the same, because I miss Slashdot without its original essence.
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So as long as mp3 players are around ipods will be. And Apple will have a large share of that.
It will also be interesting to see if Apple can take the brand beyond being an mp3 player, so that when the next method of playing music comes along, ipod won't mean something old.
Walkmans in my head for instance still mean a cassette player.
iPod may not always be around (Score:2)
The beauty of digital media is that Apple has already done that: iPod currently plays AAC, MP3, Audible Audio, AIFF, and WAV. The only current format missing from this list that I strongly desire Apple to add (and you can sign a petition here [petitiononline.com]) is OGG Vorbis.
More than one trusted brand (Score:2)
Re:Forgive the troll.. (Score:4, Funny)
Interfaces are entirely subjective, though. If you like your iRiver, that's great.
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The batteries themselves are great, I'm using an iPod 1G battery in my iRiver HP-120, but the iPod's OS and the continuous transcoding of MP3 -> AAC kills the batteries. My iRiver runs for nearly 30 hours on the 1G batteries.
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Huh?!? The iPod doesn't transcode MP3 to ACC. The iPod directly decompresses the MP3 file and performs a D/A conversion. The resulting signal is sent to the headphone amp.
In fact, an iPod doesn't have a codec (coder/decoder). It only has a decoder. iTunes has the ability to transcode MP3->ACC, but not in real time. Even though iTunes has this ability, transcoding between lossy compression formats is foolish because reduces the qualit
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I've got mod points but I"ll respond instead.
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Who said Apple isn't big? (Score:2)
I needed a new laptop. Windows was frustrating me and I wanted to switch to a Unix-like system anyway. I needed to use the following commercial tools: Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Fireworks (as it then was), Macromedia Freehand (as it then was), Macromedia Flash (as it then was). Wine was not officially supported by those companies and would re
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1) you deleted files from your iTunes library
2) you set your iPod to sync automatically
3) you connected your iPod, the sync occurred, and the change (deleted files) was reflected.
How is this not what you expected? You already *got* alerts that you were about to delete something.
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Plus, the warning iTunes shows when you delete files reads:
So, yes, it does indeed explicitly warn you that removing songs from the library removes them from the iPod.
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Your problem is not with iPod, Apple, or consumer products that just don't hold up.
Your problem is that you are a huge pussy who can't stand up to your wife.
so sorry.