>
>Sam:BeginRant();
>Is that irony?
>I like the iPod- it looks like a cool MP3 player. It'd probably be more
>useful to me if I had a Mac.
No doubt. It's not intended for PC owners. Otherwise it probably
wouldn't and COULDN'T be nearly as well designed.
>But it's hardly revolutionary. Has no one seen something like this before?
>Like the Personal MP3 Jukebox?
>"The unit weighs 9.9 oz. and is easily tucked into any palm-sized space with
>outside dimensions of 150 x 80 x 26 mm"
>"high capacity lithium-ion rechargeable battery... 12 hours playback time"
>It uses playlists, too.
>http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/electronics/3774.shtml
>
>Admittedly, it's bigger, but not that much, and it's only 50% heavier.
And designed by Compaq. Stay away!
Weight is everything. Why do you think that the Palm V/m5xx are so
popular (and the Newton wasn't). Size and weight. As an owner of both
Palms and Newtons, the Palm goes everywhere with me because it fits in my
shirt pocket and is light enough not to be noticeable. The Newton
doesn't and can't and never did. This is why the Palm V and the other
new thin and light PDAs from HandSpring, Sony, etc get so much attention.
Size and weight are a BIG component of the choice of portable
electronics. iPod wins big time here. ipod is 102 x 61.8 x 19.9 mm and
6.5oz. And firewire not USB.
>And it holds _four times_ as much.
Now THAT I'll give 'em points for. They definitely win here. But 20GB
still isn't big enuf for my entire collection! ;) Where's the 80GB
units? ;) And on the other points that I can see from the specs,
they lose.
(Anybody want to lay odds on how long it'll take someone to hack an iPod
and put in a bigger hard disk? I say less than a week after it ships....)
>Oh, and it's been around for a couple of years now. (at least the 6 gig
>version has)
>
>
>Oh, yeah, I guess it does cost $100 more ;O
Not bad! This is the closest I've seen so far (I did see it about a week
ago, it and the Archos units were ones I were looking at.)
I don't see Mac support mentioned though, so it's out of my running; I'm
not gonna call 'em and ask. If they're dumb enough to not mention it
when it has it, I'm smart enough to realize that I don't want to buy it
anyway. (It does mention Linux source, though, so it's possible it could
be made to work with OS X, but still. At least the Archos had Mac
software.
And I don't see any links to who actually makes the product, so I can't
get more details. Any ideas who makes it? I don't like the interface on
the unit from what I can see in the larger picture, either, but without
knowing who makes it and more info, I can't give it a fair eval. They
lose.
At least with Apple I'm not too worried about repair and local
availability....
>Sorry, SJ's hype just bugs me- "There's been nothing like this before. And I
>don't think there's another company that could do this" Yah.. .whatever.
Why? He's not doing anything that PC companies claim to have done with
stolen Apple ideas all the time. Like, for example, a major PC company
who recently claimed to be the first laptop with integrated wireless
networking. WRONG. Macs did it first. Years earlier. As usual.
I don't normally pay attention to such claims and hyperbole from ANY
company in any case, but I agree with him in this case. I DON'T think
that another company would take the time to do as good a job of computer
to MP3 player integration. That sort of thing IS Apple's forte and a
big reason they are still in business, after all.
As Newton owners, we should realize that much about Apple, at least.
- Bill
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Thu Nov 01 2001 - 10:02:33 EST