quote: I disqualified the shuffle because when listening to an audio book, I have to be able to set what order I listen to the mp3s in. The inability to do that is an absolute deal-breaker.
you don't have to shuffle.
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He may not need to shuffle, but surely it would be nice to be able to alter the playback sequence on the fly for his purposes. I mean, come on, it's not like the iPod ABSOLUTELY MUST BE THE BEST CHOICE FOR EVERYBODY WE ARE APPLE OF BORG WE WILL ADD YOUR UNIQUENESS TO OUR OWN FULL STOP
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quote:As I said earlier, the suffle is no good to me, as I cannot listen to my audio book files in order.
You've been misinformed about the shuffle. I own one, and you can absolutely listen to the files in any order you choose.
Edit: You do have to establish that order before you load the songs onto it, though. Once they're one the player it's either shuffled or not. Either way, you already have a player that you like so it's not really an issue.
Edit2: Really? What software did you use to load the files? Itunes?
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When I borrowed my brother's shuffle, I was unable to get it to play the files in the correct order.
But even if there is a way, the lack of a screen is still a serious lack. I might consider a screenless shuffle, but only if it were much cheaper than the Zen Nano, instead of more expensive.
I'm sorry, but for my needs, the Creative Nano is a much better product for the price than an iPod shuffle or an iPod Nano.
edit: Yes, I used iTunes to load the ipod shuffle.
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I don't even really like apple that much. I don't own any apple products and i've been resistant to buying an ipod for many of the reasons already mentioned in this thread. But I do feel the prices have become much more comparable with other brands.
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quote:Originally posted by twinky: The iPod Nano is smaller than the Zen Nano as well. That surprises me, actually.
I wouldn't say that. I've got my Zen Nano and Bev's ipod Nano right here. While the ipod is about half the thickness of the zen, its footprint is over twice the area.
edit: That's not correct. My measurment must have been in error. The footprint area of the ipod is less than double the footprint area of the zen. It's still quite a bit bigger, though.
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That's odd, Porter, because I've never had that problem with my shuffle.
I'm not saying that you should buy one, anyway. I'm glad you found something that does what you want it to and I'm not an apple shill. I've directed as many people away from iPods as I have towards them.
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I didn't check the dimensions of the first-gen iPod Nano, only the second-gen, but I think the second-gen is slightly larger; in any case, the total volume was smaller than the Zen Nano. Unless I can't do arithmetic, the Zen is 18% larger by volume.
Since its most likely storage location is probably a pocket, being thin is to the portable audio player's advantage.
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quote:Originally posted by twinky: He may not need to shuffle, but surely it would be nice to be able to alter the playback sequence on the fly for his purposes. I mean, come on, it's not like the iPod ABSOLUTELY MUST BE THE BEST CHOICE FOR EVERYBODY WE ARE APPLE OF BORG WE WILL ADD YOUR UNIQUENESS TO OUR OWN FULL STOP
I don't think I've heard anyone even remotely suggest that this is the case.
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quote:Originally posted by twinky: He may not need to shuffle, but surely it would be nice to be able to alter the playback sequence on the fly for his purposes. I mean, come on, it's not like the iPod ABSOLUTELY MUST BE THE BEST CHOICE FOR EVERYBODY WE ARE APPLE OF BORG WE WILL ADD YOUR UNIQUENESS TO OUR OWN FULL STOP
I don't think I've heard anyone even remotely suggest that this is the case.
You don't think Porter was just essentially dogpiled? To the point where he felt he had to apologize for not having purchased an iPod Shuffle or Nano? I'm using hyperbole for effect, yes, but the point stands.
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quote:Originally posted by El JT de Spang: That's odd, Porter, because I've never had that problem with my shuffle.
You say you have to set the order beforehand? Do you set the order in itunes, or can the shuffle just find the correct order according to filename and track title?
Here's a few more interface question about the shuffle -- is it possible to have two (or more) different playlists on a shuffle and go back and forth between them? With the Zen Nano, this is extremely simple. I just put them in different directories on the player.
Also, does it remember its exact place in the middle of a file if you turn it off and then come back to it?
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: I'm pretty sure that the smallest 2GB player out there is the mobiBLU.
The mobiBLU US2 is a smidgen larger than the current iPod Nano, but the Nano is about 30% larger than the mobiBLU Cube2, which claims to be the world's smallest digital multimedia player.
That's an awkward form factor, but it does look nice.
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Size is overrated for mp3 players. If it fits in the same pocket, does it matter if it's 3/8 of an inch thicker or weighs an extra ounce? For a laptop, where you are adding a few extra pounds to lug through the airport, sure. I have a somewhat bulky mp3 player (for a flash based model, anyway). However, it has a screen, plays (and can record) FM radio stations, can be upgraded via SD card, and has a replaceable battery. It came with a free car FM adapter so I can listen to it in the car. All for less than half of the closest capacity iPod model at the time of purchase. *shrug* I don't mind people buying something because it is trendy, but many of the so called 'Apple fanboys' want people to believe they are the only viable option.
Maybe I'm strange but an extra two tenths of an inch is not a big deal.
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quote:Originally posted by twinky: You don't think Porter was just essentially dogpiled? To the point where he felt he had to apologize for not having purchased an iPod Shuffle or Nano? I'm using hyperbole for effect, yes, but the point stands.
No, I don't think that at all.
My posts, for example, have nothing to do with his decision to purchase one device or the other. They have everything to do with the process of comparison between products. The products in question could have been a DVD and a Blu Ray disc of the same movie.
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quote:You say you have to set the order beforehand? Do you set the order in itunes, or can the shuffle just find the correct order according to filename and track title?
It needs to be "set" in iTunes, but the default iTunes ordering is by track number or, if that's not available, by track title.
quote:Here's a few more interface question about the shuffle -- is it possible to have two (or more) different playlists on a shuffle and go back and forth between them? With the Zen Nano, this is extremely simple. I just put them in different directories on the player.
No, the shuffle doesn't support multiple playlists due to its lack of a screen.
quote:Also, does it remember its exact place in the middle of a file if you turn it off and then come back to it?
Yes, all iPods do that by default.
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quote:Originally posted by twinky: You don't think Porter was just essentially dogpiled? To the point where he felt he had to apologize for not having purchased an iPod Shuffle or Nano? I'm using hyperbole for effect, yes, but the point stands.
No, I don't think that at all.
Then I can only suggest you read Porter's 3:20 PM post. Additionally, he's made clear repeatedly that his comparison is predicated on only the features that are useful to him.
quote:Originally posted by TheTick: Size is overrated for mp3 players. If it fits in the same pocket, does it matter if it's 3/8 of an inch thicker or weighs an extra ounce?
I agree with you in principle. As I said, I was just curious about relative dimensions, and felt like doing a little multiplication. My own portable audio player is a 30GB iPod Photo -- capacity is a lot more important to me than size. [Added: Provided we stay in "pocket" territory, that is.]
quote:Originally posted by TheTick: I don't mind people buying something because it is trendy...
The main thing that's annoyed me about Tom's posts so far is his implication that trendiness is the only reason to buy an iPod. [Added 2: Or any Apple product.] For my own purposes, I'll stick with iPods simply because no other vendors can be bothered to make their products work half as well with Macs as iPods do, and I'm not planning to switch to Windows in the near term.
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quote:Here's a few more interface question about the shuffle -- is it possible to have two (or more) different playlists on a shuffle and go back and forth between them? With the Zen Nano, this is extremely simple. I just put them in different directories on the player.
No, the shuffle doesn't support multiple playlists due to its lack of a screen.
This too would be a deal-breaker for me. In fact, I first bought a sandisk mp3 player, but it didn't allow multiple playlists, so I returned it to the store.
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quote:No, the shuffle doesn't support multiple playlists due to its lack of a screen.
This, by the way, is why the shuffle will never be my primary mp3 player -- I need the screen. I never know what I'm gonna feel like hearing ahead of time. So I use the shuffle just for working out (and, truth be told, had it not been a gift I'd have bought another player for this purpose. A cheaper one, most likely) and my 30 gig ipod (that's now 4 years old) for when I'm driving.
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quote:Then I can only suggest you read Porter's 3:20 PM post. Additionally, he's made clear repeatedly that his comparison is predicated on only the features that are useful to him.
Once he pointed this out, I stopped bothering discussing it, because he had qualified his comparison process as completely subjective.
Read the posts directed at him. None of them are aggressive about his choice. The only posts I'm seeing are a) mine, or b) correcting his misconceptions about the products (e.g. the shuffle's ability to play songs in order).
If you think that's dogpiling, well, okay. I completely disagree, but okay.
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It's not the only reason - yours is an excellent one - but it IS a main reason that many folks get iPods without even looking at other players that may be cheaper/more useful for them.
edit: curse my metal body, I wasn't fast enough!
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quote:For my own purposes, I'll stick with iPods simply because no other vendors can be bothered to make their products work half as well with Macs as iPods do
What do you mean by that, Twinky? One of the things that I like about my Zen Nano is that it doesn't try to "work" with anything. I plug it in, and it shows up as an USB drive. That's it.
I like not having to bother with a program like iTunes or Media Jukebox in order to load my player.
Actually, there was software that came with it that probably does all kinds of superfluous stuff, but I never even installed it.
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quote:Originally posted by TheTick: It's not the only reason - yours is an excellent one - but it IS a main reason that many folks get iPods without even looking at other players that may be cheaper/more useful for them.
Can you reference this, please?
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quote:For my own purposes, I'll stick with iPods simply because no other vendors can be bothered to make their products work half as well with Macs as iPods do
What do you mean by that, Twinky? One of the things that I like about my Zen Nano is that it doesn't try to "work" with anything. I plug it in, and it shows up as an USB drive. That's it.
I like not having to bother with a program like iTunes or Media Jukebox in order to load my player.
Actually, there was software that came with it that probably does all kinds of superfluous stuff, but I never even installed it.
This was the reason I was so hesitant to get a new mp3 player. At the time, I had a Creative Nomad 2, which functioned as a drag'n'drop, and I loved it, but for some reason every other player that Creative and anyone else had come out with during that time period (this is 4-5 years ago, IIRC) came with proprietary software.
Then I fell in love with iTunes and it became a moot point. But I definitely can see "no forced software use" as a huge, huge reason to choose against the iPod. It was my rallying cry for at least a year.
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quote:The main thing that's annoyed me about Tom's posts so far is his implication that trendiness is the only reason to buy an iPod.
No. Apple products are very good for people who don't need a lot of features and are willing to pay a premium for the option of not having features. I'm not speaking tongue-in-cheek here; that is precisely what they offer, and some people -- especially Apple zealots -- see a high value in a limited featureset.
Since then, I think the popularity of the iPod has become an issue of groupthink and a user base that passed the "blue event horizon;" once it became common enough, it became able to support a third-party economy. This made it roughly self-supporting.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Since then, I think the popularity of the iPod has become an issue of groupthink and a user base that passed the "blue event horizon;" once it became common enough, it became able to support a third-party economy. This made it roughly self-supporting.
Tom -- I'm not familir with the term "blue event horizon". It appears to be a reference Pohl's Gateway, which I haven't read yet. Would you mind explaining the term to me?
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quote:For my own purposes, I'll stick with iPods simply because no other vendors can be bothered to make their products work half as well with Macs as iPods do
What do you mean by that, Twinky? One of the things that I like about my Zen Nano is that it doesn't try to "work" with anything. I plug it in, and it shows up as an USB drive. That's it.
What filesystem is it formatted to? My iPod came FAT32 formatted for Windows use, but I reformatted it to Mac OS X's native HFS+ so I could use it for document backup. That part of it is drag and drop, just like your Zen Nano. I could even use my iPod as a boot disk if I wanted, since there's more than enough room for a full OS X install, my document backups, and the music I want to put on it. As far as I'm aware, formatting any other player to HFS+ would destroy its music playback capability, so the iPod is my only option.
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: ...some people ... see a high value in a limited featureset.
Yes, particularly true if the features are intuitive and easy to use. As fugu aptly noted on the last page, you're ignoring design to focus on functionality, when that's a false dichotomy.
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What functionality would you miss out on by keeping your iPod formatted to FAT32, which is what I assume my Zen Nano is formatted to?
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Document backup would be partially functional, but there would be losses, quirks, and irritants because of the way HFS+ stores file metadata (and the way FAT32, um, doesn't). I would completely lose the ability to run applications from my iPod, up to and including the operating system itself.
Using the iPod for backup would go from "it just works" to "cumbersome, not fully functional, and annoying."
Added: To give an example, I don't think volume indexing would work on my iPod if it were FAT32 formatted, so the instant-search goodness that is Spotlight (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotlight_%28software%29) would be lost to me when trying to find a particular file. With about 2 GB of document and application backups on my iPod, that's a significant issue.
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Tom, you're definitely right that Apple values a limited feature-set. But what else do you want out of a music player? Or music organizer software?
To me it's like choosing between a novel in which the author includes every detail that comes to mind about the setting of the story, and a novel which cherry-picks what's important to the plot. The first author is not doing his job.
Of course, the quality of the novel will be highly dependant upon the author's ability to evaluate what is and is not important about the story.
Is Apple really leaving out the wrong things?
iTunes organizes, catalogues, downloads, burns, rips, and plays music. The function of the software is to perform the tasks most people will want to do with their music. And it does.
Same with the iPod, OSX, etc.
Re: Apple relies on groupthink for many products, Apple fanboys please stop trying to assimilate us
There are zealous idiots in any group which is passionate about what it believes in, but so far, not in this thread. I believe Apple makes superior products. That's all. And don't worry; Microsoft still has majority market share by far.
It's necessary for Apple advertising to adopt a 'righteous underdog' aspect. Because Apple still is the underdog.
So what if Apple is good at marketing? If Steve Jobs is so charismatic that Apple fans joke about his Reality Distortion Field? That doesn't have anything to do with the quality of Apple's products.
Here is a response to many of the common complaints regarding the iPhone. It's slightly sarcastic, but makes its points.
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quote:The function of the software is to perform the tasks most people will want to do with their music. And it does.
Absolutely. Apple has built an industry on identifying what most people want, then making any other options unavailable.
I'm not being critical, mind you. This can be extremely difficult, and can produce a wildly popular product. In fact, one of the traditional graphic design rules for creating a "luxury" brand is "Less is More." When you're doing a direct mail ad, for example, trying to attract a lower-class audience, you want to clutter it with zillions of bullet points and crazy headlines and exclamation points; the exact same product being marketed in a luxury lifestyles magazine should have at most ten or twelve words, in a low-contrast font, spread widely across the page. The idea that you only include those things which are absolutely necessary produces the perception of "simplicity," and simplicity is regarded as a luxury brand.
In my experience as a developer and a sysadmin, though, the ten to fifteen percent of people who want to do something else with their product will not always accept "we can't do that" as an answer. They'll want to know why, and will either demand workarounds or simply purchase a product that does have the feature or two they require, even if the price of that feature is an extra button or two on the user interface.
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Simplicity isn't just about the appearance of luxury, most importantly, it's less work for the end user. Computers were invented so you could spend less time at your desk, not more. And 9 times out of 10, simplicity is also more beautiful.
You haven't answered my question though. What are the features Apple is missing but should include? Why are iTunes and the iPod "crippled"? Because so far your last paragraph could be used as an argument for all sorts of feature bloat.
Please don't take this as a character attack. Really, I'm happy as long I can buy my own Apple stuff. I'm curious to know what you think is missing.
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quote:What are the features Apple is missing but should include?
Things I consider desirable in a media player (regardless of whether or not the iPod does it): 1) Software neutrality 2) Ogg, MP3, and WMV support 3) Playlist control on device 4) File storage (ideally DnD) 5) Removable/replaceable battery 6) Voice recorder 7) One-handed operation 8) External speakers 9) Video and image playback 10) FM tuner/recorder 11) Outlook-synchronizable tasks, calendar, and contacts 12) eBook reader 13) Removable flash storage
I'd want more (much more) in a PIM, but I'd settle for the above featureset in a Nano-sized device.
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quote:It's necessary for Apple advertising to adopt a 'righteous underdog' aspect. Because Apple still is the underdog.
Not in the mp3 player market. They are the exact opposite of an underdog.
And generally speaking, Apple avoids an aggressive advertising attitude completely in their mp3 player ads. The iPod commercials have never been an attack on their competitors in any way; they're simple and fun, the same ideas adopted in the design of the player itself.
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quote:What are the features Apple is missing but should include?
Things I consider desirable in a media player (regardless of whether or not the iPod does it): 1) Software neutrality 2) Ogg, MP3, and WMV support 3) Playlist control on device 4) File storage (ideally DnD) 5) Removable/replaceable battery 6) Voice recorder 7) One-handed operation 8) External speakers 9) Video and image playback 10) FM tuner/recorder 11) Outlook-synchronizable tasks, calendar, and contacts 12) eBook reader 13) Removable flash storage
I'd want more (much more) in a PIM, but I'd settle for the above featureset in a Nano-sized device.
Just so I can reassure myself that your expectations are too high for the current technology market, can you name an mp3 player that has all of the above features and is the same size or smaller than the Nano?
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: My Sansa does most of the things on that list.
The big ones I don't see happening in a Nano-sized package with the other features: 6, 8 and 13. Maybe 13, assuming the unit does not utilize a micro drive for any internal memory.
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My Sansa (e270 I believe) does 6 and 13. It has an internal 6GB flash memory and you can insert removable MicroSD cards (which come in up to 2GB), and there's a little button on the side that turns on the voice recorder, I use it to record lectures at school. It doesn't have it's own speaker, but buying an accessory that'll fit on it for speakers is easy enough, so it doesn't bother me, nice though it would be.
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1) Software neutrality - Fair enough, the iPod isn't software neutral. 2) Ogg, MP3, and WMV support - I don't find OGG is too common. WMV is a Windows specific format. The Windows version of iTunes has a converter too. 3) Playlist control on device - Check. Smart Playlists - Check. 4) File storage (ideally DnD) - Check. 5) Removable/replaceable battery - Okay. 6) Voice recorder - Most people don't need one. You can also get an attachment to do it. 7) One-handed operation - Check. 8) External speakers - You want these built in? 9) Video and image playback - Check. Notes, Calendars, Games - Check. 10) FM tuner/recorder - Again, most people don't need it, and you can get an attachment to do so. 11) Outlook-synchronizable tasks, calendar, and contacts - Well, it synchronizes perfectly with a Mac, and supports vCards and iCalendar calendars. 12) eBook reader - Converting ebooks to iPod readable text files is simple. 13) Removable flash storage - Personally, I'd rather not.
A lot of your criteria involve Windows-friendliness, which is fine. They won't matter to Mac users of course.
Also, I don't know of another mp3 player that does all this stuff.
eBook support, I agree would be nice.
These are my criteria, in no particular order:
1) Easy, intuitive navigation 2) Physical size 3) Storage space (music and files) 4) Firewire 5) Calendars 6) Video and Image playback 7) Support for major audio and video types 8) Effortless synching of all functions 9) Reliability 10) Battery life (one of the iPod's weaknesses, but performance depends on the treatment of the battery) 11) Extendibility 12) And yes, object design. I'm going to be carrying this around everywhere. I want it to look good, just as I want my watch to look good*.
I want as few removable parts as possible. I like a music player that is a single object - one pod.
*In case you are wondering, my watch cost about $20 or $30.
Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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Why would you even want external speakers built in? I don't get it.
Oh, and I haven't seen you around in a while rivka. Welcome back, if you did indeed leave for a while. Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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