How will apple fight back?
Not that apple is behind in the mp3 player race, but microsofts zune packs a serious punch. The overall features of the zune seem to be better than the iPod. But now the ball is in apples court. How do you think apple will fight back? I still think there is a shot of a shockingly good iPod to come. I don't think Apple will go through the Holiday season without a total redesign of thier iPod line. It just wont happen. I'm gonna go ahead and say October or November there will be an event invitation for a new iPod. What are your thoughts?
Comments
It's consistantly ahead in ease of use, better input method, looks, size and most importantly: cachet.
The Zune release changes none of those things.
nothing to see here, move along.
Brown.
The end. I will throw up if I ever see someone with a brown Zune... honestly, it's ugly. I don't think Apple is in all that much trouble... they're working on something great.
The iPod has consistantly been behind in "features"
It's consistantly ahead in ease of use, better input method, looks, size and most importantly: cachet.
The Zune release changes none of those things.
Constantly being behind in features IS a feature! Most folks voted with their pocketbooks and didn't buy the feature heavy MP3 players because the feature setup sucked! Fewer, more relevant and most importantly easy to use features won in the court of consumer spending.
Lamenting about how Creative, Dell, Sony or anyone else (carelessly) slaps on "features" thinking "the feature is the thing" has fallen into the trap the bloatware like MS Word is better only because it has more features. Who routinely uses features in Word that weren't available 10 years ago in Word 6.0? Is this paradigm of more for more better for its own sake?
I don't think so. One of iPods most important features is control of marginal feature creep.
The iTunes is the 'secret sauce' that Zune doesn't have. But, the wireless transfer of songs is an appealing feature. I'm curious how MS was able to put this in Zune without the record companies going ballistic, especially now that MS is opening a music store.
I believe the transfered songs are able to be played 3 times in a given amount of time, then one has to buy them (unless they have a lifetime subscription to MS's service). Something like that.
OTOH, now that I think about it, that would necessitate a lot of drive access on the host Zune...
My prediction: wireless sharing will DESTROY battery life. It will cause much more hard drive access, *AND* wireless sucks battery life like mad. ie, a great bullet point feature that fails to live up to marketing in real life.
Now *that* sounds like MS.
I believe the transfered songs are able to be played 3 times in a given amount of time, then one has to buy them (unless they have a lifetime subscription to MS's service). Something like that.
Came across that at Ars after I posted. That does make that feature a lot less appealing but I gotta think that the DRM will be circumvented and ZUNE could take off across colleges across the country as poor students 'share' their music collections.
I've used FM tuners solutions before and hated every one of them fiercely. The sound quality is poor and in radio saturated areas it's tough at best to find a station they'll work on.
Not full iPod integration, (ie text on the display, etc) but functional, and MUCH better quality than a crappy FM tuner.
But this...its disgusting !
Brown ? Hahahaha...it reminds me of what its similar to.
Please..iPod wont even feel a gust of wind.
Not that apple is behind in the mp3 player race, but microsofts zune packs a serious punch. The overall features of the zune seem to be better than the iPod. But now the ball is in apples court. How do you think apple will fight back? I still think there is a shot of a shockingly good iPod to come. I don't think Apple will go through the Holiday season without a total redesign of thier iPod line. It just wont happen. I'm gonna go ahead and say October or November there will be an event invitation for a new iPod. What are your thoughts?
After reading what you say here, I think we might see the new VPod before the end on the year. As it doesn't interfere with the new ones they just brought out.
This is the finest flash player out there in terms of look and feel. Other players have the iPod beat in terms of features, but I like the iPod's lossless compression and Audible support, as well as the cool new search feature.
-----
This revamped nano still lacks an FM tuner, a voice recorder, and video playback, so other premium flash players such as the popular SanDisk Sansa e200 series still have the iPod trumped on features. But then, the Sansa e200 doesn't do gapless, support lossless compression, or support Audible audiobooks. And the nano syncs with your Microsoft Outlook (2003 or later) contacts. It's a good bet that this will be Apple's most popular iPod yet, and with good reason.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2015696,00.asp
I think PC Magazine summed it up pretty well, I look forward to spending some money on the iPod line or to be more precise on the new Shuffle... my Girlfriend will probably get a Nano too
How anyone can look at that big brick and say it's a threat to Apple's iPod line is beyond me. It's a sad asian rip off, playing catch up and failing miserably.
c. 1986: "How anyone can look at that Windows 1.0 and say it's a threat to Apple's Macintosh line is beyond me. It's a sad rip off, playing catch up and failing miserably."
Just sayin'.
Never underestimate a massive marketing machine with essentially limitless funds aimed at clueless consumers.
Not that apple is behind in the mp3 player race, but microsofts zune packs a serious punch. The overall features of the zune seem to be better than the iPod. But now the ball is in apples court. How do you think apple will fight back? I still think there is a shot of a shockingly good iPod to come. I don't think Apple will go through the Holiday season without a total redesign of thier iPod line. It just wont happen. I'm gonna go ahead and say October or November there will be an event invitation for a new iPod. What are your thoughts?
Apple will fight back with the following strategy:
Apple will send a Hallmark Card saying "Our Deepest Sympathies"
We (haha..Apple) are miles ahead in technology and ideas. While Zune is being debugged, Steve and his people are already thinking 2 iPods ahead... similar to the engineers over at GM/Ford already working on 2010 model cars...