“There are two types of people in New York: Those who have an iPod and those who want one,” writes Mary Huhn and Maxine Shen for the NY Post. “The power to cram a jukebox worth of tunes into your shirt pocket is revolutionizing the New York social scene. There are iPod parties, jackets, fan clubs and Web sites galore. People are using the portable MP3 players as alarm clocks, address books and surrogate pets. Get some addicts talking about their little white obsession and they’ll never shut up.”
Huhn and Shen write, “Inevitably, in true Apple tradition, the original has since been put out to pasture by the latest model – which came out last July, costs $500 and holds up to 7,500 songs on 30 gigabytes of space, which no other MP3 player on the market can match. Good luck finding one – the sought-after machine is sold out at many Manhattan outlets including SoHo’s new Apple store, though at press time, CompUSA and Best Buy had them in stock.”
Huhn and Shen make a boo-boo by incorrectly reporting, “While the first model only worked only with Apple’s Mac computers, computer programmers found a way around that by creating software – called MusicMatch – to adapt the iPod to Windows-based PCs.”
In fact, Apple themselves created the Windows iPod version, not some band of programmers creating “MusicMatch” in a feverish attempt to bring the iPod to Windows. MusicMatch was an already-existing software product. Apple’s original press release announcing their release of the Windows version of the iPod is here.
Otherwise, a fun article from the NY Post here.
How can professional writers make such a mistake? Aren’t they supposed to check their facts before publishing? Simply by reading Apple’s readily-available press release on the matter, shows them to be completely wrong. Obviously some moron told them this and they accepted it as gospel and printed it. Still, the NY Post is better than the NY Times with their completely FAKE stories.
I seem to remember (It might be a senior moment mind you) that the first iPod was Macintosh only. Didn’t it take a couple of months to get a Windows version out? Isn’t the article basicly correct?
The NY Post article is factually incorrect. Apple introduced the Windows iPod not “computer programmers creating software called MusicMatch.” Whether Apple did it after a Mac version was available first is moot.
There was a project early in the life of the iPod that allowed you to mount it on a PC and manage the tracks but it was very fragile. I think it was XPlay or something like that. I also think that MusicMatch could talk to it through XPlay…. Actually a Google search (how anyone gets their facts wrong anymore amazes me!!) on XPlay finds all you need to know.
That’s not the only mistake…there are certainly other MP3 players that can match 30 GB capacity…the new Archos jukeboxes, in fact, have 60 GB and are cheaper than the iPod!
Marc,
Earth to Marc – those are ALSO-RANS that make a cheap product that is not in the same league quality and prestige-wise with Apple’s iPod.
iPod is the King of the portable digital music players. No contest.
The Post article is more correct than this article. Apple released a Windows version later, after third-party software–XPlay–allowed iPod use with Windows. Then Apple got an iPod compatible version of MusicMatch and bundled it. So most of the work had been done. Apple did little more than bundle what already existed. And that was the second, not not the first, version of iPods.
Ok, here’s the facts: There was a Macintosh only iPod. Mediafour created an application called XPlay which would allow a Mac iPod to play with a Windows PC. Then Apple released the Windows iPod 8 months after the original iPod release that utilized a special version of MusicMatch. MusicMatch is created independent of Apple (though they probably had help from Apple in adding iPod support) and MusicMatch is in no way related to XPlay.
I’m getting my ‘pod today. I’ve been looking & checking, the iPod is da bomb.
NY Post is a pile of sh*it.
the Post is a trumped up tabloid. next.
Consider this … if they can’t get these simple facts straight, just imagine how flawed reporting of bigger and more complex issues must be (politics, economics for e.g). Even if those reporters are more qualified they still don’t have access to objective information (if there even is any) and often have to second guess their information sources’ hidden agendas. Even worse, they might even have some of their own. Consider yourselves warned!
NY Post got it mostly right. I’m not sure about how Windows people got iPods to work on PC’s when they first came out (I thought it was XPlay), but iPods were definitely Mac-only out of the gate.