What Should You Look For In A Music Player?

[MacBytes]

Category: Reviews
Link: What Should You Look For In A Music Player?
Posted on MacBytes.com

Approved by Mudbug

[hardchemist]

When the concluding paragraph says:

Choosing an iPod is similar to buying an Apple computer instead of a Windows computer. Either you can't live without them, or you think they're over-hyped and over-priced.

You have to wonder about the source of the article.
No other MP3/Music player out there has the same elegantly simple user interface as the iPod. Shouldn't that have been included in the closing paragraph? 80% market share isn't due to over-hyped and over-priced, it's due to innovation and user-friendliness.

[shamino]

The final paragraph doesn't bother me. It's common knowledge that there are a lot of anti-Apple zealots out there who discount all of Apple's innovations and then conclude that the devices are "overhyped and overpriced".

More annoying is the previous paragraph:

Apple's MP3 player is trendy and has lots of accessories to choose from, and it tends to hold more music than most people could ever listen to in one lifetime. But it is also a more expensive, proprietary device.

This is simply untrue.

Yes, it's more expensive than lower-capacity players, but the price is almost an exact match for other vendor's players with similar capacities. Compare the 20G iPod ($300) against other players with 20G hard drives. Sure, the 40G and 60G models cost more, but good luck finding a player with that capacity from another vendor. You can't claim "overpriced" without at least one other vendor to compare against!

And the claim of "proprietary" is also bogus. The hardware is just as proprietary as hardware from Sony, Panasonic, or Rio.

If the "proprietary" claim is referring to the fact that it doesn't play WMA files, who cares? WMA is also proprietary - you have to pay a substantial license to Microsoft in order to use it. And the iPod plays (without conversion) four popular non-proprietary formats - WAV, AIFF, MP3 and unprotected AAC. Plus two proprietary standards (Apple Lossless and protected AAC) and one through conversion (unprotected WMA).

Compare this against other vendors. I don't know of any that support as many different formats. Most typically only support WAV, MP3 and WMA.

[TwitchOSX]

Something that startes with "i" and ends in "Pod"...

/That is all

[hulugu]

Who hires these guys?

What a *****y article, nice summary there hotshot!

And, please will someone in the media gets this right? AAC is just as proprietary as WMP. The echo-chamber is vast and alive, shrugging facts from its great dumb hide, and swallowing only what has already been consumed before; an original thought its only true nemisis.

[shamino]

Originally Posted by hulugu

And, please will someone in the media gets this right? AAC is just as proprietary as WMP.

Much less so.

AAC is a part of the MPEG-4 spec, much like how MP3 is a part of the MPEG-2 spec. Both are controlled by an independant industry consortium, both have patents covering them, and both require licenses to use in commercial products.

WMP, on the other hand, is controlled by exactly one corporation. And a corporation with a history of abusing its monopoly position.

AAC is, IMO, far more "open" than WMP ever will be.

Of course, codecs like Ogg-Vorbis are completely open, but someone making a media player has to make some kind of concession to popularity.