For this three-month period alone, iPod sales reached 807,000 units, a 909% increase on how many it was selling 12 months ago – just under 100,000. The pocket marvels alone raked in $264m in sales for the quarter.
In March, Apple said it would postpone the release of its iPod mini – smaller, cooler, although less memory storage (only 1,000 songs, eh?) - outside the U.S. from April until July due to stronger-than-expected demand in the U.S. (yeah right. Beef up that consumer demand/frenzy perhaps?)
The point of this story? Well, it’s becoming clear that iPods – in London, L.A and New York at least – rule the world. Everyone has one. Be afraid, be very afraid.
Are you an iPod convert? Does your whole musical life in a little white box scare you? What’s on your iPod? Has it really made your life better?
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
- you have to pay extra for accessories to keep it protected
- sound quality could be better
- battery life isn't great, and they are expensive to replace
- bloody expensive, capacity-wise
The alternative being the Creative Zen Xtra. Sounds better, battery lasts longer, and you get 3 times the capacity for the same price (60GB for £300). http://www.nomadworld.com/products/Jukebox_ZenXtra/
There's also the iRiver iHP-120, which is £55 cheaper for 20GB, has a decent remote control, superior radio, Ogg Vorbis file support and upgradable firmware.
http://www.iriveramerica.com/products/iHP-120.asp
Just like iMacs, iPods look pretty. But I wonder if only 2% of the world will be using Apple devices once the market settles, like in the desktop world. No wonder their overall income has doubled...
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
"sound quality could be better" - Audiophile magazine rated the quality as "excellent", and only limited by the quality of the encoding.
Battery life is limited by the size of the battery which is smaller and lighter than most of its competitors. Is portability not important to you or do you enjoy lugging around a 'brick'.
"expensive" - Have you no appreciation of beauty and attention to detail? Ovbiously Jonathan Ives and his design team worked much harder obsessing about every millimetre than the iRiver's etc. designers and the user is then rewarded by this effort. Fact is, the iPod is a bargain considering the amount of _pleasure_ it gives to its owners.
Oh, and the iPod _has_ upgradable firmware.
And, if you have thousands of tracks to manage, the accompanying software iTunes is vastly superior to its competitors. Again, its about attention to detail.
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
The iPod gives absolutely no fucking pleasure to its owner until you put some music on it. It's the music that brings the pleasure or have some of the iPod urchins praising this thing to high heaven forgotten that? Going by some people you'd have thought Apple had redesigned the wheel. There's still the debate as to whether the iPod has done much to kill music off (or does every iPod owner actually pay for every song they own?)
Can you explain to me how if your source CD material that's been dithered down to 16 bit 44.1 KhZ suddenly be expanded to 192 KhZ resolution? Surely the original loss of data when dithering down can't then be plucked out from nowhere.
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
Source CD material (AIFF audio file) has a sample rate of 44.1kHz and a bit rate of 1411kbps. When you convert this to MP3 or AAC this sample rate is retained. The reduction in file size is achieved by reducing the bit rate (kilobits per second) which reduces the file size and also the sound quality. 192kpbs mp3 variable bit rate using the LAME encoder is a good compromise between it has only a tiny reduction in sound quality yet is less than a 7th the size of the file from a CD. Its certainly more than fine when using headphones or an iPod connected to a medium range hi-fi.
The bit rate you need depends on the music you listen to - classical, jazz, accoustic and other complex music all sound worse at lower rates while most pop and dance will sound good at 128kbps.
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
A crude analogy might be mashing up strawberries to make strawberry juice, pulling out some of the natural sugars and replacing them with additives and fake flavours, yes? In essence you are downsampling by converting something from CD to MP3 format and reducing the sound quality. A good sound engineer will say that they can hear the difference between recording at 44.1 KhZ and 96 KhZ so why pretend that stuff on an iPod is as good as CD quality? It seems ludicrous to section off classical, acoustic etc as 'complex' music and pop and dance as presumably simple music.
I still find it utterly perplexing that in the last couple of years there has been the swing from 48 KhZ recording in studios to 96 KhZ (mainly due to the impact of DVDs) and now the likes of Digidesign are releasing 192 KhZ recording gear yet everyone seems to love the iPod and its lesser sound quality. It's fine for what it does but it isn't as high quality. I like my high end transients thankyav'much!
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
(i would normally just let this go over my head, but i have to learn sometime...)
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
thats pretty much dumbed down to my level. much appreciated.
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
Check out the specs if you're a KHz / Kbps / Gb addict:
http://us.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=3&subcategory=21&product=9288&nav=technicalSpecifications
(Prices from www.nomadworld.com and www.apple.com).
I think it's great that portable MP3 is finally becoming mainstream, but I wish people would have the sense to shop around. Get past the buzz of the name iPod and you can find much more pocket-friendly options which don't force that horrible iTunes software on you.
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
is there somehting about the ipod that if the batter runs out you cant recharge it? you have to send it off to the manufacturer.
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
"yeah, so i was looking at iPods today...Then i got it up to the register, came to my *fucking senses*, and bought a thirty dollar discman instead"
"yeah, but the iPod doesn't skip"
"Neither does this. It's cushioned by about three hundred and eighty dollars, in cash"
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003-05-28&res=l
pure genius. oh, and "dimension",
"And anyway, there's space on the 40GB model for hundreds of CDs encoded at 192kbs variable bit rate using the open-source LAME converter (an iTunes plugin) which has the better sound per kb than AAC or normal mp3 (or WMA)."
do you just jack off in front of your mac or have they invented some kind of device where you can 'stick-it-in' now?
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
get an ipod, use it for a few weeks, and ull understand
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
When they clear up the batterylife and the cost so normal folk can afford them, ipod will truly rule the planet. They were raving about ipod selling a few million sets of kit the other day, sony sell 3 times as many walkmans still, cus theyr affordable.
maybe digital will rule the day but if someone smaller markets their product with the things ppl want at the right price , ppl will have it.
I have an imac, i wont slag mac off but they use the design of the machine rather than the functions to sell it.
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
(and it doesnt skip, its called "anti-shock")
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
easy as
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
£69.99
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
Guess you cant have it all.
Cheers!
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
Should be about £200, apparently. Anyone got any more info on these? MiniDisc rocks
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
No it isn't. They're £279.99 in a lot of places.
"i cant see myself forking out to get a ipod just quite yet. theyll probably be out of date in a year. hmmm"
What? So what if it is, does it mean you'll use it less? It doesn't automatically make it useless. Fool.
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
you seemed to have missed above that i had written that i bought it at the beggining of this year. no way you could have found it cheaper 4 and a half months ago. i tried.
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2004/01/20040109163553.shtml
Theres no plans to ditch the ipod..
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
I´m glad apple are getting more and more of the market share than the Greedy Mr Gates.
Look at it this way. Ipods are the Porsche. Others work just as well and are cheaper to run.
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
If Porsche represents superior engineering and performance then the iPod is not comparable. And whats the constant shit racking against Bill Gates? Do you think Steve Jobs is any less mercenary? Of course he isn't. The recent court case against Windows Media Player being included in Windows itself was utterly wrong in my opinion. Sure, Microsoft have done their wrongs and many of them but they got a product out that took computers away from command prompts and let people get into using the damn things.
No I don't like Apple very much :)
Steve Balmer (of Apple) loves his iPod
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
I will reply to merely one of your four, seemingly quite similar, posts;
it's not really a piece of hyped technological crap, is it? So, it's obviously not the quality of top of range stereo seperate like those made by say, Arcam, but we know that. It's about what it offers that other's can't. It's about the portability, and for some the storage and size.
I listen to music more out of the house than anywhere else now, it's just a fact of my life. You accept the quality isn't as good, but to quote some sort of band, the song still remains the same. Music isn't about fidelity are studio sheen, it's about the song.
your comments sound like that of a record/hifi snob. And they're really, really boring people. Trust me. I am one.
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
Re: March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
Oh one more thing the drive that's in the iPod mini (could be the iPod as well though) is a Toshiba MicroDrive, which if you bought it is like £450 quid, so some sneaky bastards buy the iPod minis, pull them apart and stick the drives in their digital Cameras... though I don't see how you can destroy a thing of such beauty.
March of the iPods – Apple makes a mint
Look at it this way. Ipods are the Porsche. Others work just as well and are cheaper to run."
What comparison are you drawing the iPod to against Microsoft here? The iRiver is better than the iPod (although not in style), but I don't see what your point is here.
"when if yr actually into MUSIC, y'll spend yr money on MUSIC. I don't own a portable music device, I own a great stereo system"
What the heck are you talking about? First of all, it's "you're" and "you'll"...
You realise that to LISTEN to MUSIC, that you have to BUY something to LISTEN to this MUSIC on?
So what, you own a great stereo, what's wrong with owning a portable music device? As you so aptly put it. The only difference is that you can't move around with yours (unless you have a generator, or something just as stupid as you).
I detect a hint of jealousy here.