The amount of capital that Apple has the ability to throw into a project and the amount that FiiO can are on two drastically different levels. While the iPod "worked and continues to", Apple have issued firmware updates all the way back to the original iPod Video days. Apple, even with all of it's money and engineers are always issuing new firmware and updates for almost all of it products, including some pretty big bugs that slip through the cracks.
While I agree that Apple has more capital and resources the biggest difference is the formats that their players (iPod) can play, not including any IOS devices which have much stronger CPUs and memory onboard with a much more robust OS. I've been using the X3 since it's release and now use the X5 and I've read every single post on both threads as well as most of the other threads containing info on the Fiio DAP's so I'm very familiar with the ups and downs that have come and gone for Fiio. As I see it the two biggest problems that Fiio has created for themselves is:
i) trying to accommodate so many formats of music
ii) keeping the cost of the player down by not spending enough on more internal RAM and a faster CPU.
When one considers that iPods only support 5 formats at a maximum resolution of REDBOOK CD (16bit/44.1kHz) quality and managed with iTunes one can appreciate how much more difficult it is to support 9 or more music formats at all resolutions from very low 32bit mp3 to very high 24bit/192kHz lossless and all of it is managed on the device itself. Not to mention leaving the crucial disk formatting left to the end user (until Fiio included formatting on the device itself) and you have a cesspool of variety just waiting to cause problems. How can they predict what the user is supplying for music formats or how that music was created. What if the disk was formatted improperly? Does that become Fiio's issue or the users? This is how Apple, iTunes,and iPods keep everything running smoothly. They've created an ecosystem that
ensures everything runs smooth.
Some of my perspective on the state of firmware and updates:
I'm just a middle aged dude who remembers the good 'ol days of playing music from a Walkman with really crappy headphones and enjoying every second of it. The music sounded horrible and the hiss was quite high, but I could listen to and enjoy
my own music on the go, no radio for me. Neat. Simple yes, but not high fidelity. To create a playlist I would spend hours copying songs from one cassette tape to the other to get the perfect "mix tape". When CDs came along I still made mixed tapes because I didn't always like all of the songs on the CD. No previews of songs, no single song downloads, just spent hours at the store browsing music for the enjoyment of it.
We have it so good now that I think some perspective has been lost and the demands that some people put on companies are pretty unrealistic. With the X5 we get outstanding SQ on the go and the experience keeps improving with each update, however there are bound to be some speed bumps along the way for a relatively new entrant in the DAP market. The firmware updates are a way for the company to continue improving their product and I really appreciate that so I don't need to purchase new hardware for new features or fixes. I also appreciate how Fiio is
directly interacting and listening to their end user customers and not just pushing out updates that nobody wants. Let's see Apple do that.
I like Apple products by the way. I own pretty much all of what they sell from laptops and desktops to iPhones, iPads, and iPods. I'm not really a Fiio fanboy (I do love the sound from my X5/e12 combo) and I typically don't go around pushing my thoughts on to people who aren't interested in hearing them, but it gets a little tiring when I constantly hear complaints about a company spending a lot of time and resources to
improve a product for their past and present customers. If someone doesn't like a product then go buy something else. If you don't want updates go find an old cassette Walkman.
Rant over.
|
