I received a lot of angry comments to my last post. Perhaps because of a certain site I've been linked by.
Here are some of the responses I got:
Talk about desperate. If you want to compete with Apple, create superior products. Nothing out there now compares. Only this week I listened to Adam Curry complain about how lame the interface was on the new Rio he bought. Engaget has side-by-side pictures of the iPod mini and the new Rio look alike. One look at the iPod scrowl wheel and the Rio's lame slide bar tells you everything you need to know. The Engaget guy was also complaining about the sucky tech support from the Creative Zen folks. Until you guys create a decent product and a decent customer experience, you're not going to be in the game.
The point of my post was to discuss ways for the competition to break into Apple’s market share. However, many folks decided that I was somehow bashing Apple and got very defensive.
In this case, the commenter seems confused. The new Rio “look a like” (which looks nothing like an iPod) doesn’t have a “slide bar” as he called it. The Rio has a fairly traditional 4-way direction pad with a button in the middle. As seen here.
You suggest you should have celebrities complain about being able to buy only from the iTunes store. Where's the problem? It's a great store with a great selection. If you can get everything you need in one place, what's the problem?
I can’t buy tracks from Led Zeppelin or the Dave Matthews Band on iTunes. I can, however, get them from MSN Music. I also can’t get high quality audio files from iTunes. From MSN, I can.
“Have your personalities tell consumers that with Apple’s iPod, they were forced to buy music from Apple."
No wonder you guys don't get it. Since when does actively encouraging FUD create a better product?
But that’s not FUD. It’s marketing, but it’s true. You can’t buy music online from anyone except Apple if you want to transfer it directly to your iPod. That is, not counting Real’s Harmony program which Apple is taking steps to prevent from working.
And what does Microsoft give us? A proprietary codec - that's right, WMA is proprietary.
So are MP3 and AAC. I don’t see you complaining about those, though. Did you know that licensing WMA is far, far cheaper than licensing MP3 or AAC? And at least Windows Media’s DRM format is licensable. Apple’s FairPlay is not.
A particularly eloquent commenter left the following message:
“You also own an iRiver????! Dude, you own like 6 hundred dollars worth of complete cr@p. (LOL) Why would anyone read your blog at the point that you've made such F*ing st00pid decisions???”
Actually my iRiver 20GB player cost only $299 when I bought it about a year ago. It can play MP3, WMA, Ogg, and AAC with 16-20 hours of battery life and is the same size as my original iPod. Nowadays it lives in my car, hardwired to my stereo. And it works fantastically.
You write this whole column because you were too damn cheap to cough up an extra 40 bucks for an ipod?
Actually I owned a first-gen iPod. I loved it, until the battery died a slow and painful death about a year later. My Carbon cost the same as an iPod Mini. I chose the Carbon because it is smaller, has nearly three times the battery life, can store more music, doesn’t require proprietary software, and works with my music.
But that has nothing to do with my blog post. I wrote that because I too would like to see more competition in that market.
Hey, did you write this blog entry on a 450 dollar beige Acer piece of crap, or did you build it yourself? Go check out an Apple store some time sucker and see what yer missing, by the way does your Rio Carbon work with your Soundblaster card and your Joystick?
I also don’t know what that has to do with anything. And the last sentence makes no sense. I have been to the Apple store. That’s where I bought my iPod, actually. It’s a nice store. Although, when I bought my iPod, they asked me “What kind of Mac are you using this on?” They became very unfriendly after I said “I don’t own a Mac,” and suggested that they “shouldn’t even sell it to me.” Remember, this was a first-gen iPod, before Apple sold PC versions.
If you’re really interested in my computer, you can see what I have here.