Are you ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN you planted apple trees???
Posted on 02/26/2005 6:29:14 AM PST by finnman69
"Actually, I'm not in favor of any company cornering any market. Competition is good. You'd think that Jobs and company would welcome RealNetworks and others into the digital music selling business for the iPod. But, no, Apple wants to be the sole DRM-provided music source."
The latest compatiblity charts show the creative, i-river and rio players are compatible with most any service. Too bad the pod firmware is so restricted and incompatible or I would be tempted to buy one myself.
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6490_7-5140299.html?tag=dir.comp
Yup... for two years... anything goes wrong... they fix or replace it.
Seems to me that "all the complaints you've read on FR" are of the nature of "I heard of a guy who had a problem with his iPod battery. That kind of complaint is akin to an urban legend.
Counter that with quite a few iPodding Freepers who claim their iPods are still going string 2 and 3 years later.
Perhaps you could post a Tag Heuer rant when you are through with your iPod rant.
No, I don't need to post any Tag Heuer rant. I've had batteries in watches replaced. It takes all of 10 minutes at a jeweler's and costs the price of the battery, and maybe $10 for the labor.
I don't have to buy some $99 replacement plan, I don't have to send my watch off somewhere just to get the battery changed, etc. Your comparison is really not valid. An iPod is NOT a "truly fine watch", it's a glorified Walkman. If you want to drop $1,000 or more on a watch, then presumably you don't mind having to pay "a tidy sum" to have the battery replaced, as you have purchased a high-end item (since you could easily get a watch that does exactly what your "high-end" model does for $20 or less).
So, are you trying to tell me that an iPod is a high-end item, owned primarily by those wealthy enough not to be bothered by the cost or inconvenience of the battery replacement, and who choose to spend 50 times more for something than they really need to? If the other MP3 players on the market were all around $200-$400, and the iPod was the Tag Heuer of MP3 players and cost something like $2,000, then I could see your point.
The bottom line is that it is a stupid design. Are any of you Mac cultists capable of admitting it?
LOL!
I'm no cultist. Check my profile. They all look alike to me.
Sorry if you can't grasp the concept of people spending their money how ever they feel like it without advice from the likes of you.
This looks like the complex hairpiece arrangement joe biden had going on 'meet the press' this morning.
Heh heh heh.
Apple, Real, and others are all vying to become the standard format to which the music industry targets its content. Generally speaking, the music industry will not use a format that fails to implement DRM (digital rights management) to protect the music content from redistribution. So MP3 -- the almost universal interchange format between the players -- isn't really an option for online music sellers. Apple will not license its DRM format to companies such as Real, etc, because it wants to be the sole online provider for the music industry. And you can see from the compatibility chart that Apple isn't as compatible with the available formats as many other planers. In some ways, I don't blame Apple for this strategic move. It makes good business sense. But if Apple prevails, it means that consumers will pay more for music than they would if there were a diverse competitive environment. Apple's response to Real's encroachment has been to issue firmware updates to defeat Real's reverse-engineering. This is sleazy. If MSFT had done this, Mac partisans would be screaming like stuck pigs -- but, somehow, when Jobs does it, they merely genuflect and cross themselves.
"if Apple prevails, it means that consumers will pay more for music than they would if there were a diverse competitive environment. "
Exactly. That's the reason I post on this thread despite the hysteria. I'm more interested in the idea of how music is distributed in the future than with which player is the niftiest. Apple is trying to force out other music services. Apple is using a similiar M.O. to force out Real as Microsoft did with respect to Real's streaming media software. I would rather use a non-pod device than contribute to Apple's predatory music distribution agenda.
Easy there, big guy. I'm not telling anyone how to spend their money, and I am not advising anyone on what is the correct product to buy. A bit defensive, aren't we? That isn't what this thread is about. Let me try again: it is about Apple producing a product that is poorly designed, in this case, with respect to the replacement of a battery which, at some point, WILL need to be replaced.
Somehow, you've taken this whole thing as some sort of personal attack on you, as if everyone who is critical of the iPod is saying, "Hey, you're an idiot for buying that thing, you should have bought xyz."
So, is the iPod a "high-end" MP3 player, and should those buying them expect to have to cough up $60 or $99 for a battery replacement plan, or to have to find a $30 battery and open the case (that isn't designed to be opened) themselves? If so, fine. But I still think it's a stupid design. Would it have been so difficult to place the battery in such a way that it could be easily removed and replaced?
See post #349 for more on this topic, as Bush2000 makes the point as well as I could hope to.
I have an iPod that will be 2 years old in a few months. The battery is still going strong. I wish my (Windows/PC) laptop batteries at work lasted so long! At home I use an Apple iBook laptop and the battery is quite tough.
Incidentally, I have seen the iPod batteries changed and it's about as complicated as changing the battery on a cell phone!
The same goes for iPaqs, cell phones, desktops, laptops, servers (in the work environment), cars and any other thing that strikes my fancy as interesting or bigger better. You know the old saying: He who dies with the most toys wins. Does that offend you? I hope so.
"Apple's market share is bigger than BMW's---------------------------------------------------------------------
or Mercedes's or Porsche's
in the automotive market. What's wrong
with being BMW or Mercedes?"
Steve Jobs
Well, if I purchase
a Mercedes, I don't want
dumb, Ford-type problems . . .
Heh heh... you're way behind in the game, dude. You have no concept of how far behind ...
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