Why iPod anyway? (Score:5, Interesting)
by schestowitz (843559) on Wednesday February 02, @05:05PM (#11551709)
(http://schestowitz.com/)
With SD Cards reaching 1GB in size, why don't people just use PDA's for music?
A mystery or just an impending trend?
--
Roy Schestowitz, schestowitz.com [schestowitz.com]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:1)
by .Spyder78. (453998) Alter Relationship on Wednesday February 02, @05:10PM
(#11551767)
(http://www3.sympatico.ca/convex)
Because bigger is better, didn't ya know? If it has more GB's, it has to be
better. I'm waiting for the 100gb music player so I can store
2398462439875342 songs on it for 1,000,000 hours of music bliss... ...yeah, I
know the battery only lasts 15 hours. So??
--
end of line
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:1)
by schestowitz (843559) on Wednesday February 02, @05:20PM (#11551912)
(http://schestowitz.com/)
Okay, I see the points you all make, but allow me to say this: -1GB is enough
for a day's worth of music, right? When you get bored, reload the PDA.
-Battery life - my Tungsten will handle about 5 hours of playtime. -The
screen of a modern PDA is far superior. -Have you seen Palm MP3 players? Very
highly functional.
--
Roy Schestowitz, schestowitz.com [schestowitz.com]
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
actually.. (Score:1)
by .Spyder78. (453998) Alter Relationship on Wednesday February 02, @05:32PM
(#11552056)
(http://www3.sympatico.ca/convex)
I don't know if it was just a fluke that you replied to mine but.. I was being
terribly sarcastic. ;)
--
end of line
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:actually.. (Score:0)
by schestowitz (843559) on Wednesday February 02, @05:36PM (#11552117)
(http://schestowitz.com/)
I know, but you were the first to reply. I had to complete my statement and
defend it.
--
Roy Schestowitz, schestowitz.com [schestowitz.com]
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:5)
by Leo McGarry (843676) Alter Relationship on Wednesday February 02, @05:39PM
(#11552145)
-1GB is enough for a day's worth of music, right? When you get bored, reload
the PDA.
Hence the iPod shuffle, which is smaller and easier to use âand cheaper âthan
any PDA.
Here's the thing: most people don't carry PDAs. Of those who do, very few are
interested in listening to their headphones while they have their PDAs on
them. They're interested in listening to music while, for example, they run.
It's a royal pain to carry a PDF around with you when you run, not least of
which because if you drop it, you are going to break the screen, which means
buying a new one.
So now Apple has a $150 music player that's smaller than small and so easy to
use it's almost like magic. Plug in to computer âwait briefly âunplug âplug
into ears âhear music. Poof.
Basically, a PDA makes a lousy iPod because it's not got nearly enough
storage, and it makes a lousy iPod shuffle because it's far too big and
expensive.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:1)
by Golias (176380) Alter Relationship on Wednesday February 02, @05:49PM
(#11552256)
If you are the sort of person who already has the need to lug around a PDA,
and you can get enough battery life out of it, then by all means use it for
your MP3 player and save yourself the hassle of carrying yet another device.
I, on the other hand, don't even wear a watch. I sometimes carry a mobile
phone (which is the very smallest one I could afford), and I almost always
have my iPod with me. It's like having a "pull-out" faceplate for your car
stereo which you can still listen to while you're out of the car.
I used to carry a PDA, but then I realized a few things about it:
1. All my work appointments happen when I'm at work, in front of a computer
with a perfectly good appointment program.
2. All my contacts are stored in my phone, and I don't look them up or even
pay attention to the numbers - I just select them and hit "call."
3. When I'm not at work, I prefer to let my time be largely unstructured.
4. Clipping a PDA to your belt is a perhaps a rather metrosexual look, but the
best alternative (wearing a belt-pouch, a.k.a. "belly bag" a.k.a. "fanny
pack", a.k.a. "man purse") is downright full-on Richard Simmons gay. Jeans
pockets provide room for a wallet, an iPod, a money clip, a phone, and keys.
Walking around with anything more than that requires some kind of luggage
space.
--
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:1)
by amberp (852278) Alter Relationship on Wednesday February 02, @05:57PM
(#11552355)
"1,000,000 hours of music bliss"
That means, if you start listening now without repeating any song and
listening contineously, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year, then also it
would take you 114 Years to listen to all of your collection just once.
are you alien or something ?
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
by dknight (202308) Alter Relationship <<damen.knight> <at> <gmail.com>> on
Wednesday February 02, @05:11PM (#11551779)
(Last Journal: Thursday January 27, @04:24PM)
while PDAs have decent general-purpose use battery life these days, mp3s kill
them pretty quick. besides that, they're still generally bigger than an
ipod... pdas also tend to be more expensive and you still wind up with less
space than an ipod.
--
18 fans, 7 freaks. 25 people with too much free time
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:2)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 02, @09:07PM (#11554842)
All it needs is no wireless, and the pda can be officially dubbed "lame".
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:5, Interesting)
by yetdog (760930) Alter Relationship on Wednesday February 02, @05:11PM
(#11551783)
One word: style. It's chic to have one of these, and it extends to the
interface. A pretty looking piece of dung is still a piece of dung, but Apple
has managed to take something that looks amazing and make it work just as it
looks.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:2)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 02, @05:33PM (#11552075)
Well that obviously is the case but I put the thing in my pocket and listen to
it. I don't give a crap what it looks like.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:3, Informative)
by Jheaden (169061) Alter Relationship on Wednesday February 02, @05:14PM
(#11551818)
(http://lifeuniv.blogspot.com/)
Two words... Battery Life
Most PDAs I've used just don't have the battery life that a dedicated device
has. I know mine doesn't (HP iPAQ 1945), although that is the low end of PDAs
anymore.
--
Get a free Apple Mac Mini [macminis4free.com]
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
by astebbin (836820) Alter Relationship on Wednesday February 02, @05:14PM
(#11551821)
Well.... considering the fact that my iPod has 40gb, and my Palm only has two,
I'll go with the iPod. Plus, the iPod mini is smaller and fits easier in the
pocket than a Microsoft PocketPC.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)
by pdbogen (596723) Alter Relationship <pdbogenNO@SPAMtamu.edu> on Wednesday
February 02, @05:14PM (#11551823)
(http://www.geocities.com/pdbogen)
Interestingly enough: The lack of a good player, no worthwhile eyes-off
interface, and battery life. My iPod lasts a lot longer than my PDA would, if
my PDA were playing music (empirical evidence)
That, and a 1GB SD card comes up on Froogle for $54. This is a third the price
of the 1GB iPod shuffle, but does not include the cost of the playing device,
which is almost certainly at least $100.
So, you've got a comparably priced solution, with a worse interface, and
shorter battery life. Of course, a PDA is still a PDA, in the end.. So it
really depends on what feature set you are most interested in.
Anyway, I have a 40GB iPod, which would be about $2,200 in SD cards, and it
cost me less than $200 (thanks, freeipods.com)
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:2)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 02, @05:53PM (#11552316)
and it cost me less than $200 (thanks, freeipods.com)
It cost you less than $200 from _free_ipods.com, eh? Interesting.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:1)
by SeanAhern (25764) Alter Relationship on Wednesday February 02, @10:17PM
(#11555600)
(Last Journal: Wednesday January 26, @07:15PM)
$0 is less than $200, so it still fits, no? ;-)
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:5)
by pdbogen (596723) Alter Relationship <pdbogenNO@SPAMtamu.edu> on Thursday
February 03, @02:03AM (#11557954)
(http://www.geocities.com/pdbogen)
It was actually about $170. I have a 40GB iPod. I got a 20GB free, which I
traded in for a refund at an apple store and paid the difference for a 40GB
and a wired remote kit.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
so then why shuffle? (Score:1)
by Neuroelectronic (643221) Alter Relationship on Wednesday February 02,
@06:38PM (#11552955)
if the price for twice as much ram and a player is the same as a shuffle, then
why get the shuffle? anyway I only spent $60 on my SD-mp3 player, and it had
built in ram as well...
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:2, Informative)
by foo12 (585116) Alter Relationship <f5jqo3j001@nosPAm.sneakemail.com> on
Wednesday February 02, @05:14PM (#11551826)
(http://homepage.mac.com/nteske/)
To match the capacity of an iPod, you'd need to buy 20, 1GB cards. That's
about $1500 for media alone.
--
http://homepage.mac.com/nteske/
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:5, Interesting)
by mingot (665080) Alter Relationship on Wednesday February 02, @05:17PM
(#11551854)
For me the attraction to the iPod (or at least hard drive MP3 players) is
being able to put my entire music collection on it. I have about 19 gigs of
music files and it's hard to get a decent subset of that because I'll
inevitably want to hear a song I didn't put on the 1 gig sized playlist over
the course of a day. Add that to the fact that I'm LAZY and don't want to
waste time building a playlist every night and the "fire and forget" nature
of the hard drive players become must have.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:0)
by Enevitable (783991) Alter Relationship on Wednesday February 02, @05:21PM
(#11551914)
I would imagine that the quality from a PDA would not be as up to par, as a
device devoted solely to the playing of music, plus as others have said, the
iPod is more of a status symbol now
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
I suspect the issue is battery life (Score:5)
by sczimme (603413) Alter Relationship on Wednesday February 02, @05:23PM
(#11551945)
With SD Cards reaching 1GB in size, why don't people just use PDA's for music?
A mystery or just an impending trend?
It seems most people already lament the battery life of their portable
devices. If a PDA's battery already is marginal [in the owner's opinion] then
the additional power consumption caused by playing music for an extended
period of time would be Considered Harmful.
The power drain would come primarily from driving the speakers: even the small
ones in headphones consume a certain amount of power. That, and the device
would not be able to shut itself off or otherwise use some power management
features.
I also suspect that 1GB would not be enough for some people. (Please - no
inane comments about that urban-legend quote from billg.)
--
What is it, Leftenant Sebastian? I'm arranging matches.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:1)
by Loco3KGT (141999) Alter Relationship on Wednesday February 02, @05:25PM
(#11551970)
(http://www.stevegula.net/)
What the hell do I need a PDA for? I have an iPod. It holds contacts, has
games, plays music, has a calendar, etc.
PDAs are for dorks and people who think they have a busy life.
iPods are for music.
(those lines not meant as trolling but an accurate response you would get from
a large chunk of the population)
--
Damn, I lost my "excellent" Karma.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:5)
by MoonBuggy (611105) Alter Relationship on Wednesday February 02, @05:27PM
(#11551990)
(http://www.spinningatom.com/)
Many people don't need PDA functions, and even for those of us who do the
standalones have advantages:
1) Price - a 4GB SD card will cost much more than a flash based 4GB MP3
player.
2) Size - iPod minis and shuffles are smaller than any PDA on the market and
even the biggest current iPod Photos compare favourably on pocket real
estate.
3) Capacity - 60GB SD card or even CF microdrive? I don't think so. Fair
enough, most people don't need the full 60, but even the sensible 20GB
capacity doesn't have any real competition from publically available cards,
and plenty of people like to have their whole music collection with them to
choose whatever they feel like hearing.
4) Ease of use - iPods are set out (extremely nicely) to play and organise
music. PDAs are not, and as such have loading times, fiddly small buttons and
touchscreens that are hard to use one handed.
5) Battery life - big fat backlit colour touchscreen or small, clear,
functional monochrome display.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:5)
by Winterblink (575267) Alter Relationship on Wednesday February 02, @05:27PM
(#11552000)
(http://winterblink.com/)
Probably because I don't want to be carrying around 40 of them to equal the
space on my iPod, and then have to swap them out all the time. Also, with my
iPod I can shuffle my whole music collection at once.
--
"Don't try to be a great man, just be a man"
-You, ten years from now
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:2)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 02, @05:48PM (#11552248)
I think that with SD cards reaching 1 gig in size I wonder why more people
aren't going with flash MP3 players with expansion slots.
Of course, the Ipod has a better interface than the flash mp3 players. Most
flash players are based on the assumption that good navigation isn't
necessary due to the small storage size of the device.
As flash storage continues to get larger someone is going to have to figure
out that a flash device with a worthwhile nav system and an expansion slot
(or two!) would be a good idea. Of course, it would have to be in a price
range to make it look good next to the Ipod Mini - say $150. It wouldn't be
hard to make a better interface - just leave behind the idea that the device
needs to be smaller than the average lighter. Base it around a bunch of old
Palm Vx screens, they've gotta be sitting in a warehouse somewhere.
I know that's what I keep lookin around for. I kinda hoped the apple
flash-player would do this, but in fact they decided to go as completely
opposite from what I wanted as possible. =| Too bad that apart from the Apple
chic the shuffle has absolutely nothing to recommend it.
Still shopping...
Adam
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:5)
by multipart/mixed (163409) Alter Relationship on Wednesday February 02,
@05:52PM (#11552298)
(http://wes.zapto.org/~wes/maximus/)
The answer is obvious... if I'm listening to tunes on my Palm, I can't surf
the 'net.
--
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
I use a PDA (Score:1)
by xstonedogx (814876) Alter Relationship <xstonedogx@gmail.com> on Wednesday
February 02, @06:32PM (#11552854)
(http://xstonedogx.heroesmarket.net/)
The iPod is obviously a vastly superior mp3 player, because that is what it
was designed to do. However, a PDA is a better solution for some people,
myself included.
Here's why:
I already own the PDA. I use it for all the typical uses (calendar, contacts,
birthdays, games, reading news and documents, et cetera). A $50 SD card is a
much more economical solution for me than a $399.99 iPod. An iPod would just
be one more (expensive) thing I would have to carry around. Other, cheaper,
mp3 players might not have the cost issue, but would still be one more thing
to carry around.
I don't need more than a 1GB of portable music. When I'm in the mood for a
different set of music, all I need are CONFIG_MMC, CONFIG_MMC_BLOCK, and a
Perl script.
Battery life, as many iPod fans here have mentioned, has never been an issue
for me. I've never had to stop listening due to low battery. RealOne Player
for PalmOS actually takes battery life into account and shuts off the display
when the Palm is only being used as an mp3 player.
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:5)
by Anonymous Codger (96717) Alter Relationship on Wednesday February 02,
@07:39PM (#11553806)
> With SD Cards reaching 1GB in size, why don't people just use PDA's for
music? A mystery or just an impending trend?
Feh. When the Shuffle came out I thought, "Hey, I can use my PDA and save a
hundred bucks." It's a Viewsonic PocketPC I got through MSDN, with Windows
Media Player built-in. I stuck an SD memory card in it and loaded up a couple
CDs worth of MP3s. Built a playlist and tried to listen.
What a joke! I can only play one song, then I have to pull out the stylus and
go through the menus to start another. The repeat and shuffle settings do
nothing. Try to skip to another song, and it hangs with an "Opening" message
until I go to the playlist again and manually open another song. Having to
stop what I'm doing every 4 minutes or so to start another song sort of
breaks up my activity.
It's designed to work better than this, but it just plain doesn't work (well,
it is Microsoft software, what do you expect?). I finally gave up - I'll
eventually pick up a Shuffle and have a player that works.
--
No sig? Sigh...
[ Reply to This | Parent ]
Re:Why iPod anyway? (Score:5)
by vought (160908) Alter Relationship on Thursday February 03, @11:58PM
(#11568004)
(http://homepage.mac.com/vought)
Because PDA sales have been delining for the past three years and are now at a
five-year low.
That's why.
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