WSJ on iPod vs. Rio Riot

[MacDEF]

http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20020228.html

 

[Flasken]

Thanksfor the link - I've been waiting for this..

Sheez, just as I expected, not a SINGLE word about sound quality.. THIS IS A DEVICE MADE TO PLAY MUSIC!

 

[jcorkery]

The reviewer seems to prefer the iPod mainly because of its small size and the speed of the Firewire port. I'd imagine his opinion is also swayed by the fact that the iPod looks so cool.

Personally, I'm also enamored with the iPod's beautifully-designed, compact appearance, but even if money were no object, I still wouldn't buy one--and I even have a Firewire card already installed in my PC. While Firewire will provide a considerable speed increase with file transfers, I don't find this to be the real bottleneck in the process. Compared to the time it takes me to decide which songs deserve to be stored on my own MP3 player and rip/encode them, file transfers via USB are a flash! It probably takes me somewhere around 15-20 minutes to upload a CD-R's worth (650MB) of MP3s, so I just set up the file transfer, walk away, and come back a little while later. Also, I think most people probably add songs to their devices incrementally, not several GBs at a time. Granted, Firewire is obviously better, but I'm not convinced that it creates a very wide gap in functionality vs. USB when you take real-world usage into consideration. I guess if you're the type of person who tries to do everything at the last minute (e.g. load a couple GBs worth of music an hour before you have to catch a flight), Firewire is probably the only way to go.

Interface? I hear that the iPod's is the best in the business (which isn't surprising since it's an Apple product), but I don't have any real complaints about my own MP3 player's interface. It was slightly confusing at first, but I quickly got used to it after experimenting with it for about 10 minutes. I can easily find any song within 5 seconds or so, but I usually just select a playlist and put it on shuffle play--or all songs by a particular artist--very easy to do. I've found that I don't really need to spend much time fiddling around with the interface at all.

The iPod might use the smallest-sized hard drive in the industry, physically, but it's also the smallest capacity and most expensive. When you consider that its competitors are able to use 40GB drives, 5GB is absolutely miniscule. If sound quality is important to you and you want to encode your MP3s at the highest bitrates or use uncompressed audio, 5GB will fill up very fast. It always baffles me when iPod reviewers are so forgiving of and willing to downplay this fact.

I think a fairly valid analogy would be an expensive, flashy sportscar vs. a "gets the job done just fine" sedan. The sportscar is only a two-seater, it's fast and it looks cool. The sedan can hold a lot more passengers, it goes fast enough for normal day-to-day use, but it isn't going to turn many heads! When you consider the rumor that Apple released the iPod as a tool to sell more Macs

, you get a pretty good idea of their target market.

 

[e-r0ck]

I'm just upset that the iPod is regarded as THE HD-MP3 player. I almost always have to reference it to explain mine and a lot of people think its the first one ever. Not a big deal, but it kind of upsets me... I'm not so sure why, but it does.

The iPod is probably the best, but those expensive hard drives kick me in the ribs. I can't bring myself to spend 400 bucks for a 5 gigabyte hard drive. And I couldn't imagine upgrading that with a larger hard drive once they come out. The price would give me a stroke. Looks bonus though

 

[leon]

Me.. I'm waiting for the rumored price drop. I like the sound of paying $299 (or less?!) for the iPod. Think what you get for $270 on the MD front, and what you get with the iPod... reduces the # of complaints for me pretty well. And the interface really is inspiring.

 

[MacDEF]

Quote:

Originally posted by jcorkery While Firewire will provide a considerable speed increase with file transfers, I don't find this to be the real bottleneck in the process. Compared to the time it takes me to decide which songs deserve to be stored on my own MP3 player and rip/encode them, file transfers via USB are a flash! It probably takes me somewhere around 15-20 minutes to upload a CD-R's worth (650MB) of MP3s, so I just set up the file transfer, walk away, and come back a little while later. Also, I think most people probably add songs to their devices incrementally, not several GBs at a time. Granted, Firewire is obviously better, but I'm not convinced that it creates a very wide gap in functionality vs. USB when you take real-world usage into consideration. I guess if you're the type of person who tries to do everything at the last minute (e.g. load a couple GBs worth of music an hour before you have to catch a flight), Firewire is probably the only way to go.

Even adding just ten songs, FireWire is so much faster that it's worth it. But beyond that, keep in mind that the iPod also doubles as an external, bootable hard drive. USB is a joke for hard drive usage, while FireWire is completely usable. The fact that the iPod also works as a high-speed external hard drive makes it completely worth it to me

Quote:

Interface? I hear that the iPod's is the best in the business (which isn't surprising since it's an Apple product), but I don't have any real complaints about my own MP3 player's interface.

That's what I thought when I used a friend's Nomad. Then I tried an iPod -- my first reaction was "wow!" My second, after a few more minutes playing with the iPod, was "I can't believe I thought the other ones were easy!"


Quote:

The iPod might use the smallest-sized hard drive in the industry, physically, but it's also the smallest capacity and most expensive.

It's the most expensive, but it also has a myriad of advantages in terms of feature set.

Quote:

When you consider that its competitors are able to use 40GB drives, 5GB is absolutely miniscule.

I agree; but keep in mind that when the iPod was released, the 5GB limit was there because the ultra-small hard drives used in the iPod were only available in a 5GB size, and cost $399 all by themselves. Toshiba has since announced bigger drives, so I would expect 10GB or 20GB iPods very soon.


Quote:

If sound quality is important to you and you want to encode your MP3s at the highest bitrates or use uncompressed audio, 5GB will fill up very fast. It always baffles me when iPod reviewers are so forgiving of and willing to downplay this fact.

Because in most places where the iPod will be used -- portable environments with ambient noise -- uncompressed audio won't provide significantly better sound than high-bitrate MP3. It's only true audio geeks like us who would even consider uncompressed audio

 

[jcorkery]

Quote:

Originally posted by MacDEF It's only true audio geeks like us who would even consider uncompressed audio

Geek? You callin' me a geek? Well... my wife would wholeheartedly agree!

 

[Lizard_1]

Quote:

Originally posted by e-r0ck I'm just upset that the iPod is regarded as THE HD-MP3 player. I almost always have to reference it to explain mine and a lot of people think its the first one ever. Not a big deal, but it kind of upsets me... I'm not so sure why, but it does. The iPod is probably the best, but those expensive hard drives kick me in the ribs. I can't bring myself to spend 400 bucks for a 5 gigabyte hard drive. And I couldn't imagine upgrading that with a larger hard drive once they come out. The price would give me a stroke. Looks bonus though

This expensive drive happens to move albums in a single minute, those 20 gig ones recharge or does it overnight

 

[jcorkery]

Quote:

Originally posted by Lizard This expensive drive happens to move albums in a single minute, those 20 gig ones recharge or does it overnight

That's because of the Firewire port. The small hard drive is what drives up the cost of the iPod, not the Firewire port. Loading 5GB of files onto my player via USB (not that I'd ever do that, unless its hard drive crashed and I had to reload everything) would probably take less than 2.5 hours. Yes, that's still a pretty long time, but "overnight" makes it sound like it would take 7-8 hours!

Like I mentioned before, Firewire is obviously better than USB, but for me, personally, I don't think it's worth the sacrifice in HD capacity. I'd like to upgrade my player's 6GB HD to at least 20GB, but instead of doing that I might just buy myself the upcoming Nomad Jukebox 3 which will have USB, Firewire and a 20GB hard drive--and it'll probably be a little bit cheaper than the 5GB iPod. (Oh, yeah--and it's supposed to use a lithium ion battery which should last about 10 hours.) That'll give me a "sedan" that goes just as fast as the expensive "sports car." It still won't look as cool and I won't be able to fit into really tight parking spaces, but I can live with that.

By the way, does anyone know what a 20GB iPod might cost if Apple does decide to release one?

 

[aeberbach]

Using a 1.8" card-based hard drive was definitely a mistake.
Had Apple decided to use a laptop drive instead

- the unit would have been slightly larger
- capacity would have had equal or better than any other
- it could have been (at minimum) around $100 cheaper.
- battery life equal or better
- user upgradability

They could have owned the whole market...

 

[e-r0ck]

Quote:

Originally posted by aeberbach Using a 1.8" card-based hard drive was definitely a mistake. Had Apple decided to use a laptop drive instead - the unit would have been slightly larger - capacity would have had equal or better than any other - it could have been (at minimum) around $100 cheaper. - battery life equal or better - user upgradability They could have owned the whole market...

I completely agree with you there. Although everyone with an iPod likes to make fun of my mp3 players size.

I also think that everyone should include a USBv2.0 port on their units as well. Mainly because it's the fastest "plug and play" port you can get right now, but also because of it's compatability with regular USB cards. For me, Firewire has always been a negative thing because I use many different computers and only one has Firewire when they ALL have USB.

 

[MacDEF]

Quote:

Originally posted by aeberbach Using a 1.8" card-based hard drive was definitely a mistake. Had Apple decided to use a laptop drive instead - the unit would have been slightly larger - capacity would have had equal or better than any other - it could have been (at minimum) around $100 cheaper. - battery life equal or better - user upgradability They could have owned the whole market...

Actually, it would have been significantly larger (which would have taken away a HUGE advantage it has), battery life would have been less (the Toshiba ultraslims are more energy-efficient), and they are already user-upgradable. Up until recently, there weren't bigger 1.8" drives, but there are now.



Quote:

Originally posted by e-r0ck I also think that everyone should include a USBv2.0 port on their units as well. Mainly because it's the fastest "plug and play" port you can get right now

That's not true at all. Despite Intel's claims, FireWire is significantly faster than USB2.0. USB2.0 is an attempt at squeezing bulk transfer speeds through a technology made for pointing-device data. It's an improvement on USB1.1, but it's doesn't come close to FireWire for speed and functionality.

Quote:

but also because of it's compatability with regular USB cards. For me, Firewire has always been a negative thing because I use many different computers and only one has Firewire when they ALL have USB.

More PCs have FireWire than USB2.0 right now.

 

[aeberbach]

If you check the specifications you'll find that the power consumption of those Toshiba drives is only marginally better than the IBM Travelstars. (really! Grab both spec sheets and see for yourself) The really efficient hard drives are the IBM Microdrives, but they are limited to a maximum capacity of 1G. That leaves you with the option of a larger unit that takes all your CDs, or a smaller unit that forces you to make some tough choices.

Probably e-r0ck was thinking of a dual interface, like the SimpleDrive Deluxe - that way it wouldn't be just the tiny minority of Mac users and Firewire equipped PCs that could buy an iPod.

But I know better than to try and convince you that any Apple products is less than perfect.

 

[Lizard_1]

Quote:

Originally posted by jcorkery Like I mentioned before, Firewire is obviously better than USB, but for me, personally, I don't think it's worth the sacrifice in HD capacity. I'd like to upgrade my player's 6GB HD to at least 20GB, but instead of doing that I might just buy myself the upcoming Nomad Jukebox 3 which will have USB, Firewire and a 20GB hard drive--and it'll probably be a little bit cheaper than the 5GB iPod. (Oh, yeah--and it's supposed to use a lithium ion battery which should last about 10 hours.) That'll give me a "sedan" that goes just as fast as the expensive "sports car." It still won't look as cool and I won't be able to fit into really tight parking spaces, but I can live with that.

The iPod is more than just a player, I use it as a storage device and I can take for granted its speed to transfer data between laptops. But that battery, depending on how you play this thing, it had lasted up to 13 hours at times, though it average 9 hours for me

I don't think those who own an iPod would just set it to play and put it out of sight

 

[jcorkery]

Quote:

Originally posted by Lizard I don't think those who own an iPod would just set it to play and put it out of sight

Why not? I guess since it's so pretty you just have to gawk at it even when you don't need to? Maybe that's a bad thing, because you're so mesmerized by the looks of the iPod that you can't concentrate on the music anymore!