If you’ve been in a bubble today, at least in the technological sense, you wouldn’t have heard this, but Apple announced 3 new iPods today. I’ve said it before on here and I’ll say it again, I can’t stand fanbois. I am certain not one for anything (unless you count Phish, though they are certain not infallible like some people consider Steve Jobs and Apple).
The first “new” product is an upgrade to the iPod Nano line. It gets a bigger screen, the ability to play videos and comes in 8 GB or 16 GB flash memory. I don’t fully trust flash memory just yet. I’ve seen too many USB flash drives fail after many write/format cycles. I’ve also seen lots of people with iPod Shuffles that have died (both the original stick shaped one and the new square one). I have also known people with issues with their iPod Nanos. So I’m not sure that increasing the capacity of them would be such a great idea, especially since I know that it takes more power (and really, who needs 16 GB of music on them all the time?).
The next “new” product is a new iPod Classic. It’s a hard drive model and comes in up to 160 GB. My thought on this is that Apple is just trying to win people over by saying “we have a 160 GB portable music player” when no one will ever have a need for that. The only good thing about it is that it brought the prices down on the other models.
Finally, they released the iPod Touch, which is similar to the iPhone with a touch screen (for all the people who didn’t want to switch to AT&T to get an iPod/Phone/wannabe smartphone). It also has Wi-Fi capability, probably because they were getting pressure as Microsoft already had that in their Zune.
Now, my thoughts on all this… who cares? I have an iPod Mini that someone lost and I picked up (though I did try to find the owner). I wouldn’t have one otherwise. I don’t use portable music players and haven’t since I stopped taking the bus to high school (back then, we had discmen). If I were to own a portable digital music player, it’d be something that was a bit more “open” than the iPod. I am not a fan of the iTunes Music Store, nor am I a fan of the fact that Apple won’t license their DRM to other vendors (like MS did with Plays-for-Sure, even if they didn’t make the Zune compatible with it). I just don’t like DRM (as you can see by my nice Defective by Design banner/button on the right sidebar). Because of that, I won’t buy an iPod or songs from iTunes. In addition to not liking DRM, I also don’t like the low quality of the compressed music files. You might say you can’t tell the difference, but I can, even on my cheap Aiwa bookshelf stereo (I’d probably also notice the difference on an iPod with a pair of halfway decent headphones, unlike the ones included with the thing).
So after all this, I might sound like I don’t like Apple. That’s only partially true. I don’t like Apple because Steve Jobs has had every opportunity to rid iTunes music completely of DRM (or at least to license the code to other media player manufacturers). However, Steve-o likes his litte iTunes/iPod lock-in. Do you blame him? No one looks at Apple the same way they look at Microsoft in the eyes of the anti-trust laws, though Apple has a borderline monopoly on online digital music sales and portable music devices. The reason for this? Because all those DRM’d songs you bought off iTunes can’t be moved to a device that is not an iPod. I don’t like being locked into a single device like that. It’s anti-competitive. I liked Apple’s computers when they were still using the PowerPC processors and I had hoped they’d lower their prices when they switched to Intel. That didn’t happen. Instead, they got sloppy with their hardware. I like MacOS X. I like it a lot. However, I don’t like it to the point where I’ll spend extra money on a computer with the same hardware in a machine I can get for at the very least a few hundred dollars less than the nice shiny Apple because it has a picture of a bitten Apple on it. I don’t like the Apple locks OS X users into using their hardware. I’m all about openness. Sure, I use Windows and it’s definitely not the most open operating system in existence, but neither is anything that Apple releases (and besides, eventually I’ll have installed Ubuntu Linux on my machine here, but I just need a bit more time to myself when work isn’t as crazy).
That’s the end of my rant. Apple announced some shiny new stuff. The fanbois drooled, while the realists rolled their eyes.
There’s some decent comments on the BoingBoing Gadgets posting regarding the announcement.
Hey jimmy. As you know I am an apple “fanboi” and take offense to this post. Haha just kidding. I do love apple though and I think the products they released today are some of their best. The only thing I would have liked to seen differently was the starbucks partnership, instead of just free itunes store access in a starbucks, you should have free wifi access. That would have been a lot better. And some more feature that I’m sure will come eventually that would be cool would be a radio feature on the touch, a mail app, and some dashboard widgets. I know you probably won’t buy one of these but Elizabeth and I sure are and we can’t wait. You have to admit they are pretty, if nothing else. And they happen to be pretty revolutionary. I would have ordered mine tonight if I wasn’t saving for a wii!!! Ninendo and Apple should partner some how, I’d like to hear your thoughts on that. A lot of these companies “go together” such as Nintendo, Apple, Starbucks, Volkswagon, Not Toyota, but the prius specifically. Target marketing to that demographic has become easier and easier for each company. They just start coping each other even if their products aren’t related. For instance we just drove a Prius this weekend using Zipcar (which we love) and I felt like I was driving an iPod or a mac. In the sense that it did everything I wanted it to do and all of the features were laid out exactly where I wanted it to be. The marketing for these companies, I hate to say it, has become cookie cutter. That’s good if you’re like me and like these types of products, but for people like you Jimbo, you should get used to it, I don’t see this whole iLifestyle going away anytime soon.
Apple rules!
Yes, I realize most of this stuff isn’t going away. Unfortunately for the “real” Apple fanbois (you remember those guys who have owned Apple computers since the first Macintosh?), Apple has put computing on a back burner to continue down the road of gadgets. It’s really a shame because Apple computers used to be awesome machines. Now they really are nothing more than pretty things that cost way too much for what they are (well, at least the laptops).
I can understand where you get the Nintendo, Apple, Prius, and maybe VW comparison… but not Starbucks. The former are all about being different (though the new VW’s aren’t anything special and have lost the vision of what VW used to be). Starbucks is nothing more than corporate coffee. Sure, the company is ethical and nice, but the serve overpriced crap (just ask anyone who really really really likes coffee). Toyota is where it’s at for cars these days. They’re the most innovative and most reliable auto maker (though I am a Subaru fan).
I know you’re blinded by the gleam off the new iPods, but you should really look into some of the other portable media players. They have features that the iPod should have, but Steve-o doesn’t want you to have. Don’t hold your breath on the mail app and widgets and all that for the iPod. Apple still wants to sell the iPhone. They tried, and failed, with the PDA (remember the Newton?). The world of PDA’s now is in smartphones, which the iPhone tries to do, but falls every so slightly short of being.