The best selling 1.5GB... that is like saying "my only car I have is the fastest car I have.
Fair call, though not THAT accurate. Creative also make one, the Nomad Muvo2, which is relatively good, and a respectable seller. There are probably others I don't know.
It's worth pointing out that while everyone is dissing Rio for their product here, we all owe a bit of a debt of honour to Rio. The original Diamond Rio was the FIRST portable mp3 player to be widely sold, and broke new ground that everything else since has followed. Their current "Karma" jukebox is rather good, by comparison with the iPod, with the exception that the hard drive is still only 20 gig, superseded by the iPods 30 and 40 gigs.
I think that this is just Rio's 15 minutes of fame. As soon as Apple releases all their new products today, the press is going to be covering anything Apple related. Not to be an Apple zealot, but since Apple has #1 MP3 player marketshare any new music-related products they release are going to be talked about more than any Rio product.
This is true. When the market leader releases a new product it will ALWAYS get more play. I've seen jukeboxes and players that impress me more than the iPod, or have features the iPod lacks, etc, yet they will not get any mainstream publicity simply because the product is too obscure.
One thing that really bothers me is that the profile of the iPod is so high that mainstream media are picking up on it like the entire concept of digital media is new. Creative had a Nomad Jukebox at 20 gig about 3 or 4 years ago. And no one paid attention. Why is this suddenly NOW an amazing technology?
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say something that might get me flamed. Apple does NOT innovate. What Apple do best is to take existing products, existing technology, and refine it very well. The iPod on release was NOT innovative. It's still not. It's just very, very good. And the other thing apple do so well. It's pretty.
PS: I think it's humorous that Rio releases a low-capacity MP3 player the day Apple is rumored to release one of their own
Yes and no. I DON'T think it's entirely coincedental, but I think there are two other factors to consider. One is that these drives have just been announced. There's going to be about four or five similar products announced around this time. And two, aside from Macworld, there is also the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) happening in Vegas (I think). I wouldn't be surprised if this announcement was as much about that than Macworld.
$250 seems pretty steep for 4gig, especially since I can get a 10 gig iPod for $299.
Again, partially fair, partially not. You can't compare two different form factors like that. It's a bit like saying "Why should I spend $500 for a Palm when I can get a Desktop PC for only$800?". Well, they're a little different, aren't they?! You're never going to be able to say a 4 gig should be a tenth the price of a 40 gig, any more than it would be 1/10th the physical size. Personally I find the iPod still rather bulky. Don't get me wrong, for what they are they've done quite well, but I wouldn't mind something MUCH smaller (dimensions and capacity) for only a little less money. Not that I'd buy an iPod. I'm a windows guy, and most of my stuff is in WMA.
I disagree with the average consumer being fine with 2GB of space.
Agreed. The way Apple are encouraging its users to use the iPod, people are basically expected to rip every single one of their albums to AAC. With a basic music collection you can easily fill 2 gig, but with every single CD you own? That's getting kinda big. PLUS you still want all that nice space for storage of video, files, etc. The simple fact is that space isn't that big a factor. It's not really any (or much) more expensive to make it 40 gig instead of 20 gig. Or 5. The only real factor in this is that small (VERY small) dimension disks can be used to make smaller form factors.
I really like these little buggers too though, and they support aac (if not fairplay drm):
http://www.daisymm.com/l/en/mpz/divagem_det.html
Hey, that's a cool thing! 256 meg still ain't all that great, but it will easily fill a bus trip to and from work. Ability to use SD cards is a bonus, though they're probably too expensive to actually do. Bluetooth is something really nice to see, though I don't think the technology is fully matured yet. I've been looking for an mp3 player to carry while touring on a motorbike (hence my obsession with "smallness") and bluetooth might be a real benefit.
Anyway, looking forward to the announcement! Just figured I'd provide my 2 cents.
Matt
