Well lets have an overall view of the common misconceptions about the iPod.
"The iPod is soooo expensive!"
These are UK prices where the VAT and increased COL inflate prices such that they are higher than equivalent US prices:
iPod 20G 4th Gen
£207.99
iRiver 20Gb
£199.99
Sony NW-HD3 20GB
£219.99
karma 20GB
£169.99
Granted the Karma is a bit cheaper, but that's because of the appalling build quality... and just look at it! So, compared to the iRiver there's an £8 difference. I know the dollar is weak as at the minute, but I don't think £8 = $100 or whatever the flamers claim the iPod is.
"The iPod looks crap"
Is that so? Well
ten million people don't think so. But of course that's just what the general public thinks, and they obviously have no clue about what makes good design or style since they're all idiots :roll:. It'd be great if some experts in the field had a say so we could get some solid benchmarks. Oh, what's this?:
iPod Wins Japan's good design award
iPod Wins Danish design award
iPod wins best internet Audio device
iPod Wins TWO InfoWorld awards
iPod Wins I.D. Magazine award 6 years in a row
iPod Mini Wins best mobile device award
iPod Wins BIMA Award
iPod mini wins CNET award
"Yeah, but the iPod has less features!"
What exactly? A radio and recording? So what? What's the point of a radio when you have your top 10,000+ tunes in your pocket? All the radio is going to do is subject you to adverts and Britney whilst hissing at any point of poor reception or electromagnetic activity. No thanks.
Recording? Does your music collection consist of hissy radio rips with the DJ talking over the ends of each track? Or do you have recordings of your own voice? Not exactly useful features at all.
Other music formats? can you buy music in these formats anywhere decent? no? The manufacturers of the competition of the iPod need something to put on the side of their boxes to try and dupe customers into thinking they'll use these features and that their player is superior, hence the addition of all these extra formats. Not useful really, since people are looking for a
MP3 player...
"Only children use iPods"
Cute, but wrong. Granted, some of the 10 million users are going to be young, but why's that so bad? What's wrong with building a product that the young and the old know how to use without problems? I digress. The point is that many, many of the users are adults. Think I'm lying? Then why have BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, Nissan, Alfa Romeo
and Ferrari all
teamed up with apple to offer iPod support in their next models? for the children that drive them?:roll:
"Quicktime resets all your file settings and is malware"
No. It
asks you in the installation process. Plus, quicktime is pretty much required these days for surfing the net just as flash, java and realplayer are since so many websites have extra features using these plugins. I'm sure anyone with even a small amount of browsing will have bumped into a quicktime movie or quicktime VR demo. Of course, you can uninstall it if you so please. It's installed simultaneously for simplicity.
"The iPod's batteries die really quickly"
This isn't the fault of the iPod. It is commonly known amongst tech people that you must initially fully charge and then fully discharge a li-ion cell before normal usage. It is then considered good practice to keep the battery charged up as much as possible (this is the advantage of this format of cell). If the initial charge/discharge of the cell is not performed it will negatively affect the cell's lifespan and reduce it dramatically. This will be true for any device using a li-ion cell or battery. It's written in the manual, but people often don't read them, especially when the interface is so good they feel it's not necessary. You can also replace the battery no problem.
"The sound quality is so poor I go into a state of shock"
Hmm... well on some unregulated tests the iPod does come out less favourably than one or two of it's competitors, but you must bear in mind that these differences are really only noticeable by audiophiles. Also, using the regular bundled earphones with any of the players will negate any kind of a difference since they are often bottom of the range (for example the Karmas come with Sennheiser MX300's which are the very, very bottom of the range products - at
£4
the only good thing about them is the sticker with the Sennheiser name on the side). Basically, if you're just a regular user who wants a decent all round player go for the iPod. If you regularly go into audiophile chatrooms and check out output graphs of frequency range responsiveness, etc then read around and see what others recon is the ultimate player in terms of sound quality (but bear in mind you'll likely be losing on many other features for that miniscule increase in SQ).
But apart from the mention of quicktime, I've only really been talking about the hardware side of things. A computer is but an expensive paperweight without software: software is as important as the hardware itself. Firstly, lets take a look at the software (firmware to be strict) of the
iPod. Sweet. Nice and simple and the benchmark of interfaces. So much so that
other companies
copy it
shamelessly. What does this say about the design? to me it shows that these other companies have spent time researching the interface, but cannot actually come up with anything better, and so keep the same design but change it just enough so they don't get sued! Of course none have a scrollwheel like the iPod which makes a significant difference since other designs don't allow you to scroll from A to Z in your music collection in *one smooth motion*. This is a great example of intuitive design, and is what makes apple apple.
What about connecting to a computer? Well iPod and itunes are packaged
together. It's already common knowledge that the iTunes music store is the best (in terms of volume of available music and price, as well as features such as playlists (inc. celebrity playlists, if that's your thing) and the neat preview function). But apart from the music store there's the functionality of iTunes itself. No other player offers these features:
-Super-fast searches, not just by name and artist but by year/genre/date added/bpm/etc, etc
-A very clear GUI. Most people would say the best, most efficient one.
-Access to a huge amount of ad-free internet radio stations
-Smart Playlists
-Very efficient shuffle method to provide a wide range of music
-Party shuffle as well
-1 click sharing over a network. no need to transfer files, it streams. it also does this in between PC's and Macs.
-Multiple editing of ID3 tags
-Ripping of CDs and the ability to play the CD as it's being ripped.
-Burning of CDs and smart spanning of disks
-Very clear display of track information with the ability to alter it to your needs
-Rating method so you can play your favourite tracks, etc
-Play count so you can play the most or least played tracks if you so please, or create a smart playlist to find all tracks that have been played only 2 or 3 times, for example.
-The possibility of streaming tunes across your home network to your home hifi
-The ability to find duplicate tunes and choose whether to delete them or not.
-Cross platform usage, so the same program works on my PCs and my macs.
-Dead simple connectivity to the iPod
-All of the above done is an amazingly simple and effective manner such that someone with limited or no computer knowledge can perform all the above tasks with no worry or training.
There are alternatives to itunes, but most of these are pretty poor. Winamp, although small in terms of memory has a poor interface and often looks far too cluttered because it tries to fit in a small area on the screen. Yes you can skin it, but must people don't desire this.
Foobar of course has the kernel streaming option that *can* make the sound better if you have a sound card and speaker setup able to distinguish the marginally superior sound quality. Of course, you sacrifice all of the above features for this little luxury, so this is why most people avoid that player.
WMP: I've seen some people actually using it. It's ok I guess although very short on features, although since MS copies everything apple does you can be sure it'll start to look like itunes soon enough .
"Man, you're such a fanboy"
Not really. I think I've got a decent eye for design and you can see that my above arguments are backed up with evidence. After research I'm still at the conclusion that the iPod is the best all-rounder player. I'm not saying it's the best in all fields: it certainly isn't. However, there's nothing that offers the features of iPod + iTunes and can match with compatibility, size, interface and post-sales service. Everyone's welcome to make their own minds up, but from what I've found the competition seems to be a fair way behind apple at the minute. Maybe this'll change in the upcoming years, I don't know. If it does and a better all-rounder is available, I'll be the first to say so.
It's very easy to have a go at the big guys; it's human nature to go for the underdog (just look at all the movies with the whole underdog storyline!), but I do feel that apple have worked hard at making their product as good as it is. Remember that the iPod became popular with very little advertising when it initially came out. The product sold itself. Yes, these days apple do stream out a lot of adverts, but with increasing competition they have to in order to stay afloat.
Well, that's my 2c.