If I were to design an ipod killer, I would set the player aside and concentrate on designing a media/music organizer/podcast catcher and music store, utility first, and design the player around this software. When the player is unhooked from the computer, a smaller, handheld version of the persons’ home music library is accessible, intuitive, and ready to go. I don’t want to have to do tech support for my device every time I hook up the player to the computer. I don’t want unpredictability, and bugginess, or three applications in the place of one elegant solid application. If I’m subscribed to a video podcast, I’d like the player to download the program, sync to the player, and by the time I’ve poured my morning coffee, I can unhook the player and not worry if the device is able to play the video. A five minute video podcast, shouldn’t take 15 minutes of file translation, tech support, testing and re-synching to the device.

Finally, nothing has captured my attention like the ipod has. I didn’t understand it until after I returned my ho-hum creative device for an ipod classic 80g. Aside from the capacity issues, the devices are virtually the same. Ipods are continuing to be the industry standard due to quietly maintaining a high standard of quality through 5 generations of the same player.

Just as Kleenex is generica for facial tissue. Ipod is equated with all mp3 players.

let me know here and we can figure out a way of getting this to you….

The price goes to Restiffbard. The iTunes Applescript does the job exactly the way I wanted it. Thanks a lot for your suggestions though, they will undoubtedly come in handy at some later point in time….

had a similar problem a while back where i wanted to split large mp3s (live sets) into parts, while there are quite a number of apps out there that can do it, i found most of them to be bloated or they required you to buy it, so i ended up writing my o…

have spent some time converting and tagging all thee 42 hours into mp3. i was wondering if poeple here are interested in it, as I have already spent a lot of time making it IPOD compactable….

Ever seen other digital device batteries?

What most fail to realize is that music is so different from other types of entertainment. It’s extremely personal and quality and eventually quantity become extremely important to the individual music lover.
The iPod succeeds because of it’s seemlees intergration with iTunes\ITMS.
It works, it’s simple.
Has anyone ever figure out how to use all the functions available on cell phones? Can you imagine the interface that a music service on a cell phone is going to have? Not to mention price per download.

Cell phone with reasonable capacity will have mass appeal, but I don’t believe it’s going to have the impact that all the mouth-pieces would have you believe.

Darryl

I know the IPOD is popular, but I actually RETURNED the IPOD I bought (I am a loyal mac user), and by choice do not have a portable music player at this time as I have yet to find anything that’s up to my standards. If there are others like me, there’s still a market waiting to be tapped.

The decisive factor was IBM. It was the leader in the computer field and was known for its first-class support. IBM was computers. Of course, what people didn’t realize was that its reputation for leadership and support was acquired manufacturing and maintaining mainframes. Its PC quality and support were at best mediocre. The Computerland dealer in our town told me that half of the first shipment of PCs were dead on arrival, but people still went crazy and drooled over those grey boxes that weren’t near as fast or sophisticated as the 8-bit Apple ///.

The same thing happened with Windows. People who had been struggling with MS-DOS for years sincerely thought Windows 3.1 was the second coming and Windows 95, well, that was the rapture. It was emotional, not rational. Macs were always cheaper to own and worked better than DOS or Windows machines, but nobody ever got fired for buying IBM and later Microsoft. I might also mention that the reliability of the Macs meant far fewer consultants and maintenance personnel were required, a fact that did not go unnoticed by the consulting folks.

The iPod is in a similar but not identical position. It does not have the bedrock emotional support of the corporate IT types that has kept the MS in the top position and justified the large corporate IT staffs necessary to feed the MS beast. It depends on a relatively fickle market.

Still, the overwhelming market dominance and the emotional attachment of most folks to their iPods means that they will not jump to a competitor’s product without considerable justification. It works well with little or no hassle. I would like to see a wireless or bluetooth link to iTunes to eliminate the cable. The only flaw I can think of is that when I turn it off it occasionally forgets where I stopped in the middle of an ebook and forces me to search for the spot while driving down the road. Overall, it’s a first-class product.

But I don’t think they will. Sony have consistently demonstrated that they do not “get it”. It has taken them years to release a music player that plays MP3s without requiring prior conversion to ATRAC. Players that they have produced have had appalling, fiddly user interfaces, and that’s to say nothing of the software on the computer. As some of you will doubtless be aware, Sony cannot make software. At all.

So it won’t be Sony. And, given now that Apple have the whole car integration thing going, any company that wants to pull it off will have to use the Dock connector. I think people underestimate how significant the Dock-connector-in-cars thing actually is - it makes the iPod the standard for digital audio players (or, should Apple ever choose to go down that route, Apple-licensed ones).

Without wishing to be complacent in the manner you describe, I think it will take a lot - an awful lot - to dislodge Apple from their dominant position now.

But how much more innovation can they squeeze out of it? An iPod camera? An iPod pod that you embed under your skin?

There’s always the risk that they cram too many features into it and tick of consumers (europe, anyone?) who rather have multiple gadgets than cram everything into one device.

But all the requirements for an iPod killer are good and true. Perhaps the single biggest attraction, one that Jobs is billing, is the seamless integration between music store, software and iPod. And somehow i don’t see competitors coming up with that sort of integration, simply because they don’t control everything like Apple does.

Good article overall. I liked it.

walter: I must say I DO love the latest and the greatest! At least within spending distance. For instance, my brand new 20″ Cinema display, it’s awesome, sure I could have gotten something for 400bucks… But it’s so nice!

Where my point REALLY comes in is that if they had tried to sell me this 20″ lcd with speakers and a cellphone built in, a mini lcd telling me the temperature in the room/outside/in cupertino, a wifi signal booster, some sort of candy dispenser or something, etc… THEN i would have resisted like mad What if I want to upgrade my candy dispenser!?!?!

THEN WHAT!?

The only opening would be if someone could combine a giant jukebox with a scanner - scan in your CD’s and this jukebox auto loads your “non-ipod” player with your tracks - no need to rip anything - other than that, right now, nothing on the horizon.

http://metroxing.blogspot.com/2006/01/ipod-anthropology.html

The real problem for these companies is they are shooting at a target that is constantly moving. Apple set the standard with the mini and as everyone was trying to match and one up it, but by the time they got to market Apple had killed the mini and moved on to the Nano. Now as everyone is setting their sites on the nano and the new iPod, Apple is getting ready to kill both of those products with something even cooler. If Sony wants to win this game they need to anticipate where Apple is going next and one up them before they deliver their product so that the iPod can look like it is trying to play catch up for once.

I’m sure it could happen but I wouldn’t bet against Apple yet.

There is a lot of talk about advertising going to be popping up in iTunes in future. No thanks. If that happens I will write a blocker and offer it free to all who like their devices because they do what they want - without being advertised at. I think it would be a mistake and would allow for improved competition. One of the great things about iTunes is that it works without annoyance. Keep the advertising on the iTMS, sure. But not in my iTunes client.

I don’t know about everyone else but I can say that for myself I would never be especially interested in combining devices like this. I have my laptop, I have my iPod, I have my cellphone, I have various other little gadgets…

If my iPod breaks I get it repaired, yet I can still make phone calls. If my phone breaks at least I still have music… and so on. This also applies to upgrades. “Oh man I need to store more music on this thing!”… instead ofgetting the newest gen iPod you end up spending a freaking fortune on a new musicplayer/phone/internet browser/email/calculator/whatever device. No thanks.

This whole movement of people seemingly obsessed with having EVERYTHING in one (it’ll perform various sexual favors too!!! WOW!) is pretty pointless. My iPod and my Cellphone together are negligibly heavy and are no hinderance in terms of convenience. Having one less device in my pocket means nothing to me, especially when the iPod is so nice to use and etc etc etc, a million reasons why people already have them.

In short, I’m sure others will ( / do ) appreciate having music on their cellphones, but I, for one, am not interested in the least.

Then, reality bites back. I do not accept the whole idea of proprietary batteries for ipods. Also, to pay extra bucks for having radio is not very appealing.

Regarding your post, I believe there is only one way to destroy the ipod supremacy in the short-medium term : Celular phones are getting real killers (check all N series from Mokia) but they still lack some of your must-have points. If they work their interfaces, why someone would still get an ipod if their cels could not only play music but much more ? It is not a matter of style or fashion but simply being cheapo. There is no doubt that even Apple would like to have their own
cel service and they surely are working on this right now.