Five years later and Apple now holds over 75% of the mp3 player market. Read why the iPod succeeded, why Gizmodo hates it and the generation tree at Engadget. Fatefully, today I happened to post a review of the 1st Gen Nano too.
Five Years of iPod
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Wonderful wonderful thing, i bought mine on november the 11th (yes i remember the date) and it still serves me well to this day
I REFUSE to buy a new one until this one stops working (5gig is still plent for a day out)
5 years already? Sure seems like I’ve been annoyed by the white earphoned drones for a shorter time than that
Interesting set of links though, and it’s fun to look back at the “huge” first gen iPod.
Browser: Links (0.99; Linux 2.6.13 i686; 100×50)
I have an iPod Mini and now a Nano. I use my 4GB Mini for commercially bought music, and I have transformed my 4GB Nano to indie alternative rock player with freely available on the web (legal) mp3s.
I have found that it is very possible to find very high-quality alternative rock music out there, for free. My favorite groups are these 11 mentioned on my blog: http://eugenia.blogsome.com/2006/10/08/good-indie-music/ It will take a bit of time to hunt down online all their promotional (free) mp3s, but it’s worth it.
Edited 2006-10-23 23:08
I have two iPod Shuffles, one for music in the car and the other for hacker/security related podcasts.
You might want to try http://www.cdbaby.com for an alternative to RIAA artists. I found quite a few I like and although you have to pay for the music (samples for most of the tunes are available), I don’t mind paying for it. At least they are getting a bigger chunk than the RIAA would give them.
I know about CDBaby, I just don’t like the fact that they are so stuck on CDs and they don’t provide mp3s. I have blogged about all this too:
http://eugenia.blogsome.com/2006/10/09/more-on-indie-music/
I still haven’t bought one, although I’m looking.
How do you transfer from your hard drive to your ipod? USB? is it that simple?
Via USB (or firewire too for older models), but you need iTunes installed (or another iPod compatible client). Plain drag-n-drop won’t work as it does on other mp3 players. Drag-n-drop can only be used for data storage or other special files (e.g. Notes), not for media.
Edited 2006-10-23 23:06
Theres’s also EphPod: http://www.ephpod.com/ I used it with my 1G before iTunes was available for Windows. Not much reason to use it now though, unless you’re running Linux.
You can also use Winamp if you are on Windows to organize your iPod. If you are not using the 2nd Gen Nano, you can also replace the OS of the iPod with Rockbox for ogg playback and much cooler features.
http://www.rockbox.org/
Edited 2006-10-24 03:06
i completely agree that we need bluetooth. I can’t wait until i no longer need bulky adapters and odd shaped head phones just so i don’t have to carry a 4 or 5 foot cord. It would be nice if some one made wireless ear buds. it would also be nice if they could integrate with phones too, so you can listen to your ipod and when u get a call the music stops and u hear the person talking through your headphones. I don’t get what you could do with wifi. thats probably because i don’t use itunes to buy music. knowing apple if they did add wifi it would probably only be to access the itunes store from the ipod.
I agree. I personally have about 7-8 stereo Bluetooth headphones. I need to use them.
Man, the guy who wrote the Gizmodo article should be banned off the internet forever for writing that garbage:
He pans the battery life of the iPod from 2 1/2 generations ago?!?! Today’s iPod battery life is either at or above most major competitors, and the newest firmware revision gives a huge boost to video performance. The 5G 60gb’s now last close to 10 hours in video playback. The Nanos last 24 hours audio playback. Sure the sky’s the limit, but Apple is certainly not doing so poorly as to warrant hating it. Quit your whining.
He claims iTunes should follow more Windows conventions? It’s a port. iTunes is perfectly integrated into OSX, and it would probably become more difficult to use and certainly uglier if it were turned into a standard Windows app like Foobar. Windows Media Player ain’t a model of fluidity either, even on its native operating system. And let’s not speak of WMP for Mac.
No Bluetooth? What the hell would that be used for? Many people would end up paying extra for it but never use it due to inevitably crappy pack-in Bluetooth earphones and, of course, Apple would charge $90 for replacements. I like my standard 1/8″ headphone jack, thank you very much. And you couldn’t use it for file transfer because it’s too slow. Sorry your iPod gets tangled up, which is unlike other consumer gear which never gets tangled in wires and obviously a sign of poor wire design.
I usually don’t post here so the fact that this article motivated me to figure out my password, login, and write this should already say something. OSNews, please be more careful of what you post in the future!
We are careful. The Gizmodo article was always meant to be the humor of our report.
I guess I just don’t get the humor.. Maybe if it’s meant to be a satire it should be a little more obvious, since some of the complaints about the iPod are often self-satirical already. Don’t mistake me for an iPod fanatic, I don’t own one nor do I plan on it, but I think it’s a well-designed player that gets way more crap than it deserves.
Maybe if it’s meant to be a satire it should be a little more obvious
I thought it was quite obvious.
Edited 2006-10-24 03:50
None of you understand what the article and we here are talking about Bluetooth. We are talking about Stereo Bluetooth Playback, not Bluetooth mp3 file transfer. Instead of using wired headphones, you use Bluetooth stereo headphones to avoid the wires. That’s what we are talking about here, not BT file transfer.
While I accept that this article is a little tounge-in-cheek, I do think he’s right about Bluetooth and the FM radio.
Bluetooth would not only enable users to update their iPod without wires (which in my opinion is essential), but it would also enable users to connect to their (larger) music collection on their PCs as they pottered about the house.
As for the FM radio, Apple really is behind the 8 ball here. A lot of phones have this feature for Gods sake.
Have you ever tried to transfer mp3’s through bluetooth to a mobile phone or PDA? It’s horrendously slow.
This is often a limitation of the device rather than the technology. Good bluetooth implementations are very rare.
Also, BT shouldn’t be viewed as a replacement for wires. I would imagine something like this would be useful for transferring music to/from one iPod to another, or for transferring music to/from another PC when cables aren’t available (at work for example).
Hmm, that’s an interesting point. I’ve never used a device that was fast enough to transfer large amounts of songs but I guess it would be theoretically OK. Personally I still think Bluetooth would be pointless, especially with headphones. As an audiophile it would just be a waste of money, because I would never use the bundled earphones anyways. It’s sort a niche feature I think. If you wanted functionality in terms of sending/receiving songs then WiFi would probably be the better choice, since you could incorporate a lot of new web-based features later you’d have a lot of options, where Bluetooth is substantially more restricted. Maybe you could beam tracks to a car stereo with Bluetooth?
Yeah, I’m just ranting now.
He pans the battery life of the iPod from 2 1/2 generations ago?!?! Today’s iPod battery life is either at or above most major competitors, and the newest firmware revision gives a huge boost to video performance. The 5G 60gb’s now last close to 10 hours in video playback. The Nanos last 24 hours audio playback.
Above the batterylife of it’s competitors? Bollocks.
“Apple reports that the 30 GB model provides 14 hours of music playback, 3 hours of slideshows with music, and 2 hours of video playback, and the 60 GB model 20 hours of music playback, 4 hours of photo slideshows with music, and 3 hours of video playback.”[1]
10 hours of videoplayback? Hardly, that would mean besting the competition by a factor of 5, while they traditionally have been behind in terms of batterylife. Apple has had 2 hours of videoplayback where others had 3, 8 hours of musicplayback while others had 18 (iPod 3G vs Creative Zen Micro for example). Currently, even the Apple iPod 5G 60GB Enhanced, which has a batterylife of 3.5 hours and was released last month, is bested by the Creative Zen Vision:M 60 GB which has 4.[2]
Apple iPod’s batterylife has always sucked, and that’s a valid reason to hate the product, even if a model released last month has a somewhat decent batterylife.[3]
And yeah, if you make a product available for Windows users, Windows users have a right to complain if the support for their system involves a clunky program. And frankly, iTunes for Windows sucks for a variety of reasons (all Apple programs on Windows, just like Windows programs on OS X, seem to be unforgiveably craptacular).
And frankly, the points about DRM and not having FM radio are quite valid.
[1] http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/consumer_electronics/stats/ip…
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Zen#Zen_Vision:M
[3] http://ipodbatteryfaq.com/ipodbatteryandpower.html
Your battery info is outdated. With the new revisions, people have been reporting much higher battery life with both and old 60gb and new 80gb models. My roommate confirms about 8 hours on his 3-month-old 5G 60gb with brightness at 3/4.
http://www.playlistmag.com/weblogs/ipodblog/index.php#53441
Also with regards to battery life, both the Creative Vision M and the Cowon X5 are rated for 14 hours. Why aren’t you complaining about those? The Nano, previously at 14 hours, is not at 24 hours. In comparison, the Zen V is at 15 hours. Of course there’s the X5L, but that’s a special model with a bulkier battery. Point is, why would you complain about the iPod having poor battery life when there’s little to no numbers in the current or previous generation to back it up?
As for iTunes for Windows, why do you call it clunky? It’s always seemed very elegant to me, in contrast to generally clunky Windows apps. Everything is logically laid out, easy to navigate, preferences are simple and do their job. I’d be interested in hearing why it’s “clunky”. And even if you think it’s poor, why not use EphPod or Winamp. iPods have the flexibility to use drag-and-drop through Rockbox as well.
Perhaps you’d like to come over to the other perspective and try to use WMP for Mac 🙂
As for DRM, the fact of the matter is that the record labels hold the power in most cases, not the DAP companies. iTunes gives you a fairly loose model and you can easily strip the DRM off by just burning and then re-ripping the music. Hell, you can even burn to a virtual disc and rip from that if you have the proper software. Or you can obtain music from whichever service your player of choice supports. If there’s any really valid complaint, it’s that Apple has awful 128kbps files.
SCO sounds horrible.
You wouldn’t want that, believe me …
Bluetooth doesn’t offer nearly enough bandwith to provide you with QUALITY stereo sound.
Besides, we all sound like spoiled brats here … a headphone cable too much to deal with ?
come on
– Kevin
Usually these BT headphones come with cell support via HSP/HFP profiles, so yes, they are cooler than plain 3.5mm headphones that might not have handsfree support. Personally, I can’t use earphones/earbuds you see, becaus they fall off my ear, so I need real headphones. These BT headphones provide the functionality I need even if their sound quality is not always top notch.
I hear you on the earbuds issue, they always fall out of my ears as well.
I switched to in-ear plugs and they are wonderful.
I hate in-ear ones too, because they make you hear sounds when you breath etc. I have explained it here:
http://eugenia.blogsome.com/2006/09/15/
and then I bought the following one, and I am happy now:
http://eugenia.blogsome.com/2006/09/23/274/
Sorry for all the links, it just happens that I have already blogged about all these issues we discuss on this news post. 😉
Edited 2006-10-24 09:30
Heh, for me in-ears work better than anything else but mainly because i ride a motorcycle to work and it drowns out much of the wind noise.
the thing i find most annoying about the cord is the fact that they make it 5 or 6 feet long. honestly do you really need that when ipod is only at most 2 feet away from your ears. it becomes even more annoying if you put the ipod it your sweatshirt pocket and put the headphones on under you sweatshirt. i always get the little amount that is sticking out caught on something like a desk or my backpack.
for having the courage to point reality out, rather than just following the crowd.
I bought my iPod in christmas 2003 (when sales were still < 1m), a 3G 40GB model for £400. Yes, £400, an insane price for an MP3 player. It was an easy choice though, the competitors had better features, some had colour screens, many had FM radio and other fancy doo-dads, but none of them were easy to sync.
The single feature that sold the iPod to me (and still does, as I now own a 5G 60GB), is that it requires precisely zero clicks to sync 40GB of music and media to the device. No other manufacturer seems to have cottoned onto the importance of the software as part of the whole product. Windows Media is a joke to use, Sony’s Connect is a steaming turd and I don’t fancy copy pasting stuff every time I want to listen to something different.
I think it’s become cool to belittle people for choosing an iPod, but I still feel that it is the best choice for 95% of users and no competitor has taken the iPod serious enough. Microsoft included.