blessingx
HeadFest '07 Graphic Designer
Supplier of fine logos! His visions of Head-Fi
- Joined
- Mar 27, 2003
- Posts
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- 28
LostPhil, as you stated your personal experience could be countered with others. Either my move from Sony cassette to forgetting about portable audio to Sony MD to Creative Nomad Jukebox to Apple iPod - whose first glimpse I still remember and resulted a few months later with my buying a Mac (which I hadn't touched since '85) to run it... to others, likely younger, who can't remember a period when the iPod didn't 'strangle' the market.
And I'm sympathetic to the plight of 'dumbing down players,' but I neither think the Rio corp dying or the iRiver toslink removal (again not a single player going this route since?) was solely due to expense of features. It's certainly true there's economy of scale and I'm sure the iPods expanding marketshare had impact (the first couple years Apple effectively took the entire supply of Toshiba 1.8" drives, but iRiver/Creative just went larger). You have to though realize how quickly the marketplace itself was expanding (which is only now slowing) so there was room for others. It may be my proximity to a major US city and tech capital, but I've seen iRiver billboards. Creative had retail stores in the shape of Cambridge Soundworks brick and mortars. And every electronic store had a wide selection of competition. Sure iAudio and the like were hard to find, but did anyone really have to hunt to find a Creative player at Walmart, etc.? Rios were at Fry's, Best Buys, Circuit Citys, etc. And that's just the U.S. There were plenty of technology focused countries where the iPod was much slower to grow. But the iPod has now saturated the market. Along with MS undercutting its partners (at least as damning), it is sad that competition has greatly fallen off.
Advertising likely did create a general Kleenex effect of equating iPod with MP3 player and that surely drove the general public, but that takes time. Apple, a company that made computers remember, ramped up quickly. You don't get to the critical mass without struggle. And besides it's important to remember this whole market was Sonys to win or lose. They chose the latter after ruling portable audio for decades. Apple ran further with their Rip. Mix. Burn. philosophy (to the chagrin of the labels) and the rest is history. I really don't think the market could have been created, and certainly not as quickly, if there was no iPod. I think you're most wrong saying it was nothing to do with software integration. Tell that to a Sony SonicStage user and see if they hesitate recommending it to a friend. It had much to do with software integration (I'll give shiny metal, flashy ads, and a general Apple hipness some credit too as you've mentioned). Other manufacturers started copying every feature (and sure Apple did in reverse) except foolishly iTunes. They either slapped something together or lazily (or were afraid of offending MS) used WMP (and keep in mind MS funding DAP R&D and only entered the market after 'others failed'). Steve Jobs says the smartest move they made was putting the file controls on the desktop, not the player, which then became an appliance (like the vast majority of audio equipment). Maybe confirming your dumb-down theory. Maybe a smart design move which possibly was counter-intuitive for a computer company. We're seeing how those decisions play out especially with the iPhone and touch now.
Indeed it took awhile for gapless to show and many players had it earlier (and the iPod still not a user customizable EQ), and while Apple isn't altruistic with introducing features, line-out and lossless codec support were added to increase marketshare (including third party devices to help drive more iPod sales). Not after the market was already saturated. Suddenly the iPod had audiophile cred when speaker manufactures started testing their wares with iPods and Stereophile reviews it. There were plenty of (and still are) WMA/MP3 only players on the market.
And finally on the codec front, lets balance the lack of Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, Dvix/XviD criticism (which I want too), with the fact that aside of general DRM issues (which is a whole other thread) and ALAC (which as many have pointed out may have to do with Airport Express - and eventual Apple TV - transmission legalities), Apple instead of creating their own WMA/WMV, went with open standards of MP3 and AAC wrapped MPEG4 audio and later MPEG4 & H.264 video. One of the many mistakes people make in the early days was stating AAC was somehow created or owned/controlled by Apple. And if people feel locked into AAC, after Sony - one of originators, but slow to bump ATRAC on DAPs - and Microsoft have support, what if other manufactures had to go to Apple to license an alternative? Remember in the past most peoples previous default software player, WMP, didn't even come with a MP3 encoder.
I know my commentary is Apple only. Listen, I love Sonys warm signature. I'd like a Rio parametric EQ. Having a iRiver Toslink out would be high on my list of requests. But nobody forgets those traits. If anything we've got romantic MD users, Karmas perceived SQ instantly went up when discontinued, and the iHPs still command top dollar. As others have pointed out, bashing the marketplace leader is natural. Maybe best to bump against that natural tendency once in a while with a reminder though.
And I'm sympathetic to the plight of 'dumbing down players,' but I neither think the Rio corp dying or the iRiver toslink removal (again not a single player going this route since?) was solely due to expense of features. It's certainly true there's economy of scale and I'm sure the iPods expanding marketshare had impact (the first couple years Apple effectively took the entire supply of Toshiba 1.8" drives, but iRiver/Creative just went larger). You have to though realize how quickly the marketplace itself was expanding (which is only now slowing) so there was room for others. It may be my proximity to a major US city and tech capital, but I've seen iRiver billboards. Creative had retail stores in the shape of Cambridge Soundworks brick and mortars. And every electronic store had a wide selection of competition. Sure iAudio and the like were hard to find, but did anyone really have to hunt to find a Creative player at Walmart, etc.? Rios were at Fry's, Best Buys, Circuit Citys, etc. And that's just the U.S. There were plenty of technology focused countries where the iPod was much slower to grow. But the iPod has now saturated the market. Along with MS undercutting its partners (at least as damning), it is sad that competition has greatly fallen off.
Advertising likely did create a general Kleenex effect of equating iPod with MP3 player and that surely drove the general public, but that takes time. Apple, a company that made computers remember, ramped up quickly. You don't get to the critical mass without struggle. And besides it's important to remember this whole market was Sonys to win or lose. They chose the latter after ruling portable audio for decades. Apple ran further with their Rip. Mix. Burn. philosophy (to the chagrin of the labels) and the rest is history. I really don't think the market could have been created, and certainly not as quickly, if there was no iPod. I think you're most wrong saying it was nothing to do with software integration. Tell that to a Sony SonicStage user and see if they hesitate recommending it to a friend. It had much to do with software integration (I'll give shiny metal, flashy ads, and a general Apple hipness some credit too as you've mentioned). Other manufacturers started copying every feature (and sure Apple did in reverse) except foolishly iTunes. They either slapped something together or lazily (or were afraid of offending MS) used WMP (and keep in mind MS funding DAP R&D and only entered the market after 'others failed'). Steve Jobs says the smartest move they made was putting the file controls on the desktop, not the player, which then became an appliance (like the vast majority of audio equipment). Maybe confirming your dumb-down theory. Maybe a smart design move which possibly was counter-intuitive for a computer company. We're seeing how those decisions play out especially with the iPhone and touch now.
Indeed it took awhile for gapless to show and many players had it earlier (and the iPod still not a user customizable EQ), and while Apple isn't altruistic with introducing features, line-out and lossless codec support were added to increase marketshare (including third party devices to help drive more iPod sales). Not after the market was already saturated. Suddenly the iPod had audiophile cred when speaker manufactures started testing their wares with iPods and Stereophile reviews it. There were plenty of (and still are) WMA/MP3 only players on the market.
And finally on the codec front, lets balance the lack of Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, Dvix/XviD criticism (which I want too), with the fact that aside of general DRM issues (which is a whole other thread) and ALAC (which as many have pointed out may have to do with Airport Express - and eventual Apple TV - transmission legalities), Apple instead of creating their own WMA/WMV, went with open standards of MP3 and AAC wrapped MPEG4 audio and later MPEG4 & H.264 video. One of the many mistakes people make in the early days was stating AAC was somehow created or owned/controlled by Apple. And if people feel locked into AAC, after Sony - one of originators, but slow to bump ATRAC on DAPs - and Microsoft have support, what if other manufactures had to go to Apple to license an alternative? Remember in the past most peoples previous default software player, WMP, didn't even come with a MP3 encoder.
I know my commentary is Apple only. Listen, I love Sonys warm signature. I'd like a Rio parametric EQ. Having a iRiver Toslink out would be high on my list of requests. But nobody forgets those traits. If anything we've got romantic MD users, Karmas perceived SQ instantly went up when discontinued, and the iHPs still command top dollar. As others have pointed out, bashing the marketplace leader is natural. Maybe best to bump against that natural tendency once in a while with a reminder though.
