“Sure, sure, you’re hopelessly, helplessly in love with your iPod. That doesn’t mean your precious doesn’t have pimples. What about iPod’s notorious lack of endurance between recharges, the sealed case that means you may have to scrap the thing if the internal battery dies, and the proprietary digital-music format that joins you at the hip to Apple’s iTunes online store? Apple may hold more than 60% of the market for hard drive–based digital-music players, but even iPod devotees may have wandering eyes–and competitors are crying ‘Pick me!’ by delivering fetching new digital-music players that adopt some of the benchmark’s strengths while offering more flexibility and features,” Time Magazine’s latest issue reads.
The Time article then lists a group of competing players from Sony, iRiver, Creative, Toshiba that the magazine terms “iPod Killers” and describers their features compared to Apple’s iPod.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
Notorious lack of endurance?
• Apple’s iPod shuffle battery life between recharges is rated at up to 12 hours, the iPod mini at up to 18 hours, the iPod at up to 12 hours, and the iPod photo at up to 15 hours of music playback and up to 5 hours of slideshows with music.
Have to scrap iPod if the internal battery dies?
• Your one year warranty includes replacement coverage for a defective battery. You can extend your warranty to two years with AppleCare. During the second year, Apple will replace the battery if it drops below 50% of its original capacity. If it is out of warranty, Apple offers a battery replacement for $99. In addition, third parties such as our sponsor OWC offer user-replaceable iPod batteries starting at $US25.99 that offer up to 70% more capacity than original iPod batteries: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ipod/batteryreplacement/
Proprietary digital-music format that joins you at the hip to Apple’s iTunes online store?
• iTunes Music Store dominates the market with over 70% market share and over 300 million tracks sold to date. Most other online music stores use Microsoft’s WMA proprietary digital-music format. Is it any less “proprietary” because it’s from Microsoft? In addition, iPod shuffle supports MP3 (8 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, AAC (8 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Music Store, M4A, M4B, M4P), Audible (formats 2, 3, and 4) and WAV. All other iPod models support AC (16 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Music Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, and 4), Apple Lossless, WAV, AIFF.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
The de facto standard for legal digital online music files: Apple’s protected MPEG-4 Audio (.m4p) – December 15, 2004
This is just Time trying to play both sides of the fence – as usual.
More FUD…
Joined at the hip to iTunes they say?… Geez… considering that these other players keep you from using the most popular download store online, you could say that you’re joined at the hip to all the other crap out there…
Do I really want to be mixing and matching the stores I buy my music from online, winding up with different terms and conditions for each track from different stores? No thanks…
I have a 2G 10 gig iPod that I have used almost everyday for about 2 1/2 years now.
I have never had a battery problem, or any problem for that matter.
Keeps on goin’ strong. Actually, I am playing from it right now to my work computer here….
Time should be sued. My new mini gets 20 hours normal playback time on the battery. My old zen got 6-8 hours.
Why read articles by uninformed morons with no facts?
Time should be ashamed!
seriously MDN you need to mail your take to the editor, try to get it in the next time magazine. letters to the editor.
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“Apple may hold more than 60% of the market for hard drive–based digital-music players”
Isn’t it like 90% of the market for hard drive based players, and 60% of the entire mp3 market?
Folx,
Don’t iPods also support STANDARD WMA playback? They just don’t support WMA with MS DRM, but can’t you plan unrestricted WMA on iPods? Or is that only iTunes?
dont forget that EVERY BIGTIME PLAYER HAS INTERNAL BATTERIES.
BATTERY TECHNOLOGY IS NEARLY THE SAME ACROSS THE BOARD.
And scrapping is bull. You can get it fixed professionally for as little as $50 (third party).
Ogre…
iTunes can convert your unprotected WMA files to AAC for playback on the iPod. It’s a built in feature, and a giant F.U. to M$.
The iPod doesn’t support WMA natively, although the hardware could with a simple firmware upgrade.
Perhaps that’s Apple’s emergency plan if things go down the drain…
Hmmm.
Apple, the ever fickly company, has been very pro Apple for the past 12-24 months.
Why the change? Who got to them?
It could be just a piss poor freelance writer. Or it could be a quiet corporate advertising deal.
I guess we’ll have to watch their ad dollars in the upcoming months to see.
Either way, what a bunch of Ass Bags.
Time Magazine completely swallowed Microsoft’s and Sony’s FUD hook line and sinker.
This poorly researched BS comes straight from the mouths of the ‘iPod Killer’s’ PR flacks.
If this is an example of Time’s reporting then I wouldn’t believe a word they print. They should have charged their regular advertising rate for this piece of shit.
Thanks to Time, I just now realized — all these iPod owners … they’re … they’re … ZEALOTS!!!
It all makes sense now.
“Apple, the ever fickly company, has been very pro Apple for the past 12-24 months.”
?
What am I doing wrong? I recently bought a 20gb iPod and am hardpressed to get 5-6 hours from my battery.
Fact is none of this FUD will matter. Apple’s design and marketing plus the peer pressure effect will ensure iPod dominance for a while.
With every quarter, iPods are being sold at an increasing rate and iTunes songs are being DLed at a greater rate.
When will this slow down? Maybe not for years. And Apple have the added bonus of aftermarket sales with iTunes. That’s something Sony never had with the Walkman.
Beautiful business model and I bet Apple never expected this to be so big!
we already make a list of 15+ music services that sell non-DRM tracks that will play on any player? Any donkey using google can find those – so why can’t a journalist writing an article on the subject? Admittedly, they are all niche services, but I’d say that they all offer songs or bit rates, in some cases, that hardly any of the major services offer.
“and the proprietary digital-music format that joins you at the hip to Apple’s iTunes online store? “
Linking to your sponsors product in your editorial take? Taken an ethics class lately?
I bought one of the first iPods about 2 months after they came out. I haven’t done anything to test how long the battery lasts, but it lasts long enough that I rarely notice it dying on me.
Sure, it’s anecdotal evidence, but I’m happy with mine.
For being the Captain, you certainly lack the ability to see it:
“…such as our sponsor OWC…”
Obviously, MDN have taken their ethics class and passed with flying colors, Captain O.
I hope I’m not the only one that realizes this whole article is an iPod ad.
Everytime someone calls Lebron James the next Michael Jordan, MJ sells more Jordans, get it?
The iPod is the gold standard… competitors exist, they just don’t respect their customers… (hence all the lying about bitrates, etc)
Bildad, the playtime specs usually are based on you having it at half volume and playing continuously without any changes. If you are changing things a lot or having the back light come on a lot of course your battery time will go down. If you really want to test it, fully charge it, set it for continous play at half volume, and just leave it going and see how long you get.
If you want to see how short of a battery time you can get, put it on full volume, leave the backlight on continuously, and change songs manually every few minutes. Oh and you might reset it and turn it on and off a lot too.
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I know MDN is trying to defend claims,but what AVERAGE person really does something about their iPod battery other than say,”Oh well.Time for a new iPod.”They’re stating these good defenses,but do those claims really matter to someone just wanting a iPod to pick up and go,and not caring that much about when the battery will die?
Charging my 60G iPod Photo was a nightmare until I bought second dock. Now I have one at work and one at home. Now I don´t need to remember to carry the dock with me.
6 family members, 5 iPods. Apple is losing their market share?
What people fail to understand is that you’ll spend more on replaceable batteries than you will on replacing an iPod battery if that ever becomes necessary. I would guestimate that an iPod battery is good for hundreds of charge cycles… 500 would be the low end… Replaceble batteries are just that… “Replaceable”… and they wind up costing more for that “Replaceability”….
And just how many “replaceable” batteries do these “FUD-Packers” plan on going through in the same time period?… They’ll wind up spending way more than the amound that they’re whining about for an iPod battery. Idiots. Serves them right.
Being an Apple user since the Apple II days, I have to admit that the battle against competitors tends to blind us users a bit. Take iPhoto, for example, an upgrade for which you might have to pay a nominal sum. With one click you can get an image slideshow up to your $99 .Mac account. If you’d rather publish it into your free ISP webpage though, it’s no help. In fact, it’s a hindrance if you use iPhoto to extract shots from your digi-camera and you want to make such a webpage manually. Anyone bother to ask why must it be so? Dang but I do miss Quicknailer.
If anyone had a battery problem there are places that fix them for $60 instead of buying a new one for $300.
To Less is More: “If you’d rather publish it into your free ISP webpage though, it’s no help. In fact, it’s a hindrance if you use iPhoto to extract shots from your digi-camera and you want to make such a webpage manually.”
Easy to do in iPhoto. Under the “share” menu, click “export”, then choose the “web page” tab. iPhoto will create a complete independent photo web page, including thumbnails, full size images and an html index page, which you can then upload to any web server or ISP you want.
The export to web page feature gives you some options for layout grid, background color or image, and you can choose the resolution for the thumbnails and the large images.
Less is More said:
“In fact, it’s a hindrance if you use iPhoto to extract shots from your digi-camera and you want to make such a webpage manually.”
How exactly is it a hindrance? iPhoto is the best thing that has happened to me for posting pictures on my web site.
You can use Drooling Cat’s $20 BetterHTMLExport (http://www.droolingcat.com/software/betterhtmlexport/) or the excellent freeware Galerie by Myriad Software (http://www.myriad-online.com/en/products/galerie.htm) to automatically export HTML photo pages using your own custom html templates. If you want to do it manually, just drag and drop the photos you want from iPhoto to the Finder and do it manually or use iPhoto’s export feature to export scaled down versions.
Myself, I found Galerie to be the best. It even does Java slideshows. Posting new photos to my web site now takes me a couple of minutes. Great product and it’s FREE!
I’m still curious why you think iPhoto is a hindrance to you. Please post some examples if you can.
Thanks BigCanon, I forgot to mention the built-in HTML export feature.
feh..Time Magazine. This is a “publication” that had JFK, Jr. on the cover for two weeks running after his plane went down. Sorry folks, that ain’t news, any more than Ricky Martin was (another erstwhile cover boy). Time Magazine is “People” for those who are too conceited to admit they’d rather be reading that instead.
Just my opinion…
Lots do. I wonder if it’s as easy to find replacement batts for THEM as it is for iPod?
“May have to scrap your iPod?” ummm, no. You CAN can a battery–from Apple OR from other places. That is not a truthful “peril” of iPod ownership.
I’ve always hand-tweaked web photos (where the hell were the photos) and javascripted slideshows to eliminate the multiple html pages, and missed the export option. I shall give that and Galerie a try. Thanks, Andy C. and BigCanon.
For being the Captain, you certainly lack the ability to see it:
“…such as our sponsor OWC…”
Obviously, MDN have taken their ethics class and passed with flying colors, Captain O.
Duh:
Is that so? Because I’m pretty sure ethics calls for one to also provide equal exposure to those other than sponsers if one choose to give exposure to their sponsors. That would have included naming the alternative non-sponsors, their product, price points, feature and link to said product, just as they did for OWC.
I guess I must be missing something, because I see nothing of the sort. But assuredly you know more about journalistic ethics than I do, or are capable of seeing some extended text not visible on my browser which gives these additional product plugs.
Sent this response to Time (Click on Author’s Name)
“I don’t see the problems that I hear coming from the whiners about the iPod and iTunes.
1-Apple CLEARLY lists “iTunes + iPod” in print and TV ads. If you don’t want to use an iPod don’t use iTunes.
2-Battery Life. I do not know of anyone who follows Apple’s guidelines for charging having a battery-life problem. Replacement batteries can be purchased for as little as $25-30 and can last for 3 years of NORMAL use.
3-Radio & other features. If I wanted to listen to the radio I wouldn’t spend $300 for an iPod. I’m sure a miniature Microwave could be added in if you did not mind having a suitcase-sized player.
4-AAC is NOT a proprietary format. It amazes me that the press always combines the ‘proprietary’ label with the iTunes AAC format, but fails to do so with WMA (Windows Media Audio). AAC is open and available to all- what is ‘proprietary’ is the FairPlay DRM attached to the files. WMA files bought from other online services use Microsoft’s Janus DRM which is also ‘proprietary’.
5-Apple supports Windows with fully-functioning versions of QuickTime, iTunes and FairPlay DRM software, while Microsoft’s Windows Media Player for Mac OS does not. Why don’t you ask Bill Gates why that is the case?”
Let’s see if the print my ‘Letter to the Editor’.
As usual, the Apple Fanboys acting like the iPod is the best thing since sliced bread. I am about to get an MP3 player and I might not get an iPod just so that I don’t have to be in the same boat as you losers. Get a life. (And Windows is better than Mac).
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