“Here is the deal. For over a year now I’ve been trying to look for a device that is > the iPod. In that time Apple has constantly moved the needle forward in a number of areas. We are still far behind, and in all likelihood, when we catch up, Apple will have something like this,” Omar Shahine, Microsoft employee and blogger, wrote last Friday. Shahine’s been on a long quest (17 months and 22 blog posts) to find a better product than Apple’s iPod.
Shahine ticks off reasons why the iPod dominates the market:
• The new generation of iPods and Nano are smaller, prettier and more feature rich
• All iPods have a readable color screen with album art
• The UX and Interaction Design are still better than anything out there
• The iPod [adds] new features as an FM radio remote
• There are about 100,000 new accessories that have appeared since I started looking for a replacement. many of these are just awesome.
• Staying at the W Hotel? forgot your iPod charger or Sync cable? They have some for you to borrow in the same way they have plug converters if you are in a foreign country. Have some cryptically named Philips device with a massive brick? You are out of luck.
• Staying at your friend’s house and forgot your iPod? Yeah, well they have a charger too.
“I’m beginning to change my mind about things. Even though we have a great eco system for music stores etc, the reality is that our OEM partners are never ever going to create a product like the iPod. They are simply no match for the iPod Dock Connector, which as generated an ecosystem of hardware that’s probably more lucrative than the online music business,” Shahine wrote. “Game over.”
“I’m not such a zealot that I’m simply going to go out of my way to make myself miserable when the answer is probably an iPod. I don’t sync my music very often (like once a month) so using iTunes might not be so bad (eeek I can’t believe I said that). All I have to do is have my PC transcode all my music to MP3 or AAC in a few days,” Shahine wrote. “For now I’m going to hold out for the Gigabeat S. But if it’s big and ugly and has crappy battery life or a bad FM radio I’m out. I’m 90% of the way there. I’m also going to hold out for urge.com and Windows Media Player 11. But if any of these things suck, I’m off to the Apple Store to smack down a few hundred on some bling bling.”
Yesterday, Microsoft employee Shahine reported that he bought an Apple iPod nano and installed Apple iTunes. Find out all about it here.
Advertisements:
• Apple’s brand new iPod Hi-Fi speaker system. Home stereo. Reinvented. Available now for $349 with free shipping.
• Apple’s new Mac mini. Intel Core, up to 4 times faster. Starting at just $599. Free shipping.
• MacBook Pro. The first Mac notebook built upon Intel Core Duo with iLife ’06, Front Row and built-in iSight. Starting at $1999. Free shipping.
• iMac. Twice as amazing — Intel Core Duo, iLife ’06, Front Row media experience, Apple Remote, built-in iSight. Starting at $1299. Free shipping.
• iPod Radio Remote. Listen to FM radio on your iPod and control everything with a convenient wired remote. Just $49.
• iPod. 15,000 songs. 25,000 photos. 150 hours of video. The new iPod. 30GB and 60GB models start at just $299. Free shipping.
• Connect iPod to your television set with the iPod AV Cable. Just $19.
Shahine, You’re FIRED.
I just read the complete article. He went from lossless to 128k. I don’t get it…
Hmmm, starting to understand why Vista is sooo late to market, if it takes this guy 17 months to come to the most obvious decision. Guess that pretty much sums up the Microsoft party.
“In the same way that the iPod has an unbeatable ecosystem, Windows will never lose significant market share to OSX!!!”
The difference here is that iPod+iTMS is the best out there.
actually, you DON’T need to use iTunes.
There’s a lot of haters of iTunes. There’s a lot not to like, too.
Note to JadisOne — it may actually have been an “iPod Store”. Apple’s been putting smaller stores in some of the shopping malls that tend to specialize in iPods and accessories, with a very small section devoted to Macs and software/books.
What kills me is when they take a very functional Apple Store and devote 60% of it to iPod stuff, and squeeze the Mac software off into a back corner. They did that at the Palo Alto store…and all that does is feed into the stereotype that “there’s no software for the Mac”. Fortunately I’ve still got the Valley Fair store for my shopping and hanging-out needs…
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />
>All I have to do is have my pc transcode all my music to mp3 or aac in a few days.
And he admits it without shame! Funny.