[AGE]

Guys look it is no secret that alot of us were disappointed with the overhyped ipod..I think most of us got disappointed cause most of us already own some sort of mp3 device and realise that their are cheaper alternatives on the market. MP3 players aren't apples market and I dont care if it has firewire, its still an mp3 player.
OK now lets talk about the strategy.

I say iTUNES (which once was sound jam) is NOT important in anyway to apples digital hub scheme. MAC/PC ppl will not care if we now have a player just for apples underpowered itunes (itunes 2 just got an equalizer).

Audion kicks itunes ass and i will never use itunes because its just so weak. (my opinion)

Apple should have however concentrated more on QUICKTIME technologies rather than a medium that has declined in attention since napster died.

Itunes isn't on pc's, pc ppl don't care, they have better alternatives, QUICKTIME is!

Now if iPOD could somehow playback QUICKTIME movies...
(quicktime does play mp3 too)

Imagine a device on the market with apple's best technology thats AVAILABLE for pc's, if pc ppl don't have QUICKTIME, im sure they'll use it if they know they can buy a device that plays back Video media.

This new QT ipod could be powered by the Quartz engine from osx and when the device starts up it shows the apple symbol and then fades off to say "powered by OS X". Like this all ppl can be a little more aware of OSX and QT and QUARTZ.


Guys look M$ is doing it with XCRAP, I mean X-BOX... X stands for DIRECT X.


But nooooooo we just get.......an MP3 player.

[jguidroz]

It's so much more than just an mp3 player. How many other mp3 players out there will let you load a system folder and boot from it? I mean you can walk around with this and listen to mp3s, and then plug it into a friends computer, boot off the iPod, and get some work done.

[AGE]

But in the end......It plays JUST mp3's Zzzzzzzzz....WHO CARES, STOP READING APPLES MARKETING!
How does that feature make the ipod anymore interesting?

[mobile]

well... if you actually "think" about it -it's fantastic.

No more Zip Disks, No more burning CDs to get PhotoShop files off your Mac, no hassling with iTools because you have no other way (besides e-mail) to transfer your documents... everything is in the palm of your hand, oh yeah AND it plays all of your MP3s. I'd like to think of this as a firewire hard-drive first - that nearly justifies the price.

Before the iPod's introduction I was highly considering the purchase of a small firewire hard-drive for the aforementioned purposes... but also, being able to bring my work environment from one computer (home/school/travel) is to me a very exciting possibility. READ this is mentioned Nowhere in Apple's Marketing, it's just a possibility.

On my iMac I currently have 3 gb. of MP3s out of 8 gb. total used space. Now, AGE, let's say I wasn't going to use the iPod for MP3 playback (or at least not often). I could put EVERYTHING I have in my hard-drive into this little device, including OS 10.1 and 9.2, PhotoShop, Form-Z, Explorer, Word, and whatever else you can imagine. ...and now I can bring my entire desktop computer to school with me per-se.

Are you familiar with Startup Disks? You might want to check into it - here's a taste - let's say I have the contents of my computer's hard-drive on the iPod. I go to a friend's house who also has a Mac (and yes, I have several friends who use Macs and if that's not good enough we've got multiple thousands of them at school). All I have to do to turn my friend's computer into a carbon copy of mine is to choose the iPod as a startup disk (someone correct me if I'm wrong). So that model I was making in Form-Z this morning could be completed on another computer - even if said computer didn't HAVE that program because I could run it all off of something the size of a deck of cards!

Don't write the iPod off as an MP3 player - that doesn't do it justice - you should research or at least brainstorm about what it MIGHT be able to do before you bash it.

[itai195]

Originally posted by AGE:
<STRONG>Itunes isn't on pc's, pc ppl don't care, they have better alternatives, QUICKTIME is!</STRONG>

Err.... and they don't have better alternatives to quicktime? When was the last time you used Quicktime on Windows? IT'S HORRIBLE. Even Windows Media Player gives it a thorough beating.

Anyway, who cares about watching quicktime movies on a portable device?

No one cares about Quicktime. In the same vein, no one cares about Windows Media either.

People do not want to be stuck with platform dependent formats. They want platform independent formats which they will be able to view on Windows, Linux, BeOS, MacOS, or whatever the OS of the day is.

So far, these formats are mp3, ogg vorbis, DivX 4.0, and the like. No one cares about some stupid little proprietary format that Apple cooked up which you can only view with closed source Apple software on a grand total of two OS'es. That is not the way information technology is heading.

Any device that supports open formats will be a clear winner.

[vvedge]

consider the processing power needed to play quicktime movies... my iMac DV 400 stutters sometimes with high quality video...

Imagine trying to get that into a portable device... to support all the different formats... to have software to support new codecs...

How does Quicktime form its own part of the digital hub strategy? What's the problem here? 'I can't watch quicktime movies on the road...' (whoa, that person needs a laptop) And your solution, a portable QT media player...

Technilogically out of most companies leagues... even Apples....

You set yourself up for a dissapointment wanting a portable quicktime player... you lost... deal with it!