[Cody Dawg]

mrobe site at Olympus

I keep seeing their advertisement on television and though I'm an iPod lover and not necessarily the type to want to go buy something, the mrobe makes me want to go buy it. It does more than the iPod like playing taking pictures. You can even remix on it. It even has a touch screen.

But the thread is about whether or not you'd buy it because it's Olympus.

Who else likes it?

I think it's cool.

[roberto blanco]

Originally posted by Cody Dawg:
...It does more than the iPod like playing taking pictures.

sing: Display song lyrics on the LCD and join in.

...well, now that you mention it...i think i'm going to cancel my ipod order and... *g*

[TailsToo]

It does look kinda neat....

[Cody Dawg]

Yeah, see what I mean?



I think this is the direction that Apple is going to need to go in with the iPod.

Will they call it the iPod still? Or another name?

[Lancer409]

not a fan of the black/red. touchscreen sounds neat.. is it durable?


i was dissapointed to find that the screen (menu/everything) is a small square like the ipod screens... I thought the entire thing was a screen, where you can have the buttons melt away and show a sweet full sized graphic equalizer or something ... or some cool grpahic that took up the entire screen .. it looks like it's just a small portion though

(m1000 .. not the picture one)

[paully dub]

God that is an obnoxious site. Makes me appreciate Apple's clean appraoch all the more.

I DO like the red on black design, but it's sad they couldn't make it uniform. The back and white earbuds (!) runs it. Why the hell didn't they go all the way with the black and red theme? That would've been cool. The navigation and display isn't that innovative.

And touchscreen is wack. I have a 3g iPod, and I love it, but the click wheel on 4g iPods is far more convenient -as it's far easier to use from the pocket. This thing looks like it's near impossible to operate without looking right at it. At least you could feel the buttons and whell on the 3g iPods. I could be wrong.

Anyway, It's a pc thang (no Mac version). And you still need to install their software. People forget how nice it is to have a device that is really just plug and play.

[Apple Pro Underwear]

i reserve judgement until it is reviewed but...

it's not easy making a good mp3 player. i seriously doubt they understand what makes them good. we'll see. if it's better then so be it.

[Moderator]

I was playing with the mrobe 100 while in line at office max the other day. I really loved the way it looked and felt. The UI does appear to be less convenient, obviously a major factor.

It got me thinking the maybe the iPod needs to freshened up...I like the idea of making the whole face potential screen real estate..though at the same time I'd prefer to somehow keep some tactile aspects such as the scroll wheel...

The larger mrobe was too much though..its very big (relatively of course)

[Mastrap]

Why would I want to 'mix pictures' and then display them to my music? 99% of the time my iPod resides in my pocket.
Although I find the music player/camera hybrid an unusual one I do like the digital camera build in. But that's just because with Olympus you can pretty much guarantee that they'll make a good job of it and I like to have a camera with me wherever I go. What I don't like is the bulky size and the touch screen. I want to be able to use the controls without looking at them.

[typoon]

David Pogue did a review on this about a week or two ago.

[Cody Dawg]

Give us a link please? I'd love to read what he had to say about it.

[typoon]

Originally posted by Cody Dawg:
Give us a link please? I'd love to read what he had to say about it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/17/te...er=MARKETWATCH

For almost half a grand, you also might expect that the m:robe might at least match its less expensive rivals in music-player features, but no. You can't create new playlists on the m:robe, can't drag music or photos onto it from the Windows desktop and can't recharge the battery from a computer's U.S.B. connector.

That's too bad, considering the battery lasts only about an hour and a half if you're working with photos. You get Olympus's advertised eight hours of battery life only if you do nothing but play music with the screen off.

There are a few nice features, like a calendar display for calling up photos by date, a screen that shows your songs' lyrics (if you've pasted them in) and a wired remote control whose tiny screen shows the battery charge and playback settings but not, alas, the song name.

Unfortunately, these grace notes are overwhelmed by greater design problems, like how you're supposed to carry this thing around (it's 4.4 by 3 by 0.8 inches, much bigger than an iPod). There's no belt clip or armband. In fact, all you get with the player is what might possibly be the world's least practical carrying case for a music player: a drawstring bag.

The m:robe has a ways to go on the software-usability front, too. You'll be hard pressed to operate it without having to suffer through the awful prose of the user guide, whose every page seems to sing out, "Nyaah, nyaah, you can't understand me!"

I found that kind of interesting.

[Mastrap]

Finally, there's the m:robe's built-in digital camera, which must have begun life as a practical joke. It's a 1.2-megapixel model, for starters, which is only enough resolution for printouts the size of your thumbnail. There's no zoom at all, not even a fake one done in software. And there's no flash, only a white "photo light" that's utterly ineffectual.

As you move the camera, images jerk and blur on the screen; eventually, you realize that this camera is incapable of taking pictures of anything that's not standing stock-still. Any subject or camera motion results in a grainy blur. Too bad there's no shutter button; you have to take the picture by tapping the screen itself, which of course winds up shaking the camera. (You can see sample photos at nytimes.com/circuits.)

Now, it's bad enough that Olympus, a company known for outstanding camera technology, should foist this piece of cameraphone-quality junk on customers who've just spent $450. But it gets worse: in its Super Bowl commercial, millions of viewers saw an urban, hip teenager snapping away at various break-dancing friends, and then displaying freeze-frame close-ups of the resulting brilliant, crystal-clear pictures on the m:robe's screen.

In truth, not one of those pictures could have been taken with this camera.

An Olympus marketing representative was a bit sheepish about the whole thing. "If you're looking at it purely as a camera because it's Olympus, you'll be a little disappointed," he said. "It's a first-generation product that leaves some potential for the next-generation product." He stressed that the m:robe is really designed for music playback and playback of photos you've taken with other digital cameras (and loaded onto the device with your PC). And he said that four new m:robe models will arrive later this year.

Well, here's to future generations, then. There's no reason that the m:robe couldn't have succeeded if its body were smaller, its processor were faster, its price were lower, its cables and software weren't proprietary and its creators weren't so blinded by their pursuit of hip-hop hype.

And here I thought they would get the camera right. Isn't that Super Bowl commercial false advertising then?

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

The 2 reviews I have read about it have both been very negative.

[malvolio]

Originally posted by Mastrap:
And here I thought they would get the camera right. Isn't that Super Bowl commercial false advertising then?

In a word, yes.

[Superchicken]

I think the iPod photo should really have a camera integrated into it.

[paully dub]

Originally posted by Superchicken:
I think the iPod photo should really have a camera integrated into it.

[Superchicken]

Originally posted by paully dub:

Well aren't you a contributing member of the community there sparky?

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally posted by Superchicken:
I think the iPod photo should really have a camera integrated into it.

Worst idea this week.

[TheBadgerHunter]

The one big problem with convergence: you get one device that does a lot of things poorly.

There are many exceptions but this isn't one of them...

[paul w]

Originally posted by Superchicken:
Well aren't you a contributing member of the community there sparky?

You're right, I should have offered a point by point argument why I thought your idea was retarded.

You want the iPod photo to have a camera as well? Do you honestly think that's feasible? Would it be a piece of **** camera found on cell phones (Oooh, just what we all need)? Would it be a nice 2mp sensor with a 3x zoom lens? Would it be some stupid clunky add on. How big, complicated, expensive and useless do you want the iPod photo to be, exactly? And Apple is supposed to spend how much in R & D for this silly hairbrained scheme?

There may be some kind of Apple device in the future that has a camera, but I don't see it happening anytime soon, and certainly not in a hard drive based player.

[RAILhead]

Holy freakin' crap.

I wouldn't buy it simply because of that freaking retarded, idiotic, completely stupid flash intro. I wanted to reach into my screen and smack that little wuss that was "dancing" and staring at me.

Holy cripes, at least give me a dadgum SKIP INTRO button.




I'll never look at my C-765 the same again...




Maury

[rozwado1]

i saw one at compusa and it's a POS. cool concept though, just needs a bit more panache.

[rozwado1]

I think the Canon 20D should have an iPod Photo built-in.

[Kenneth]

I tried it few weeks ago at Fry's or BestBuy. It's hard to use. period.

[Superchicken]

Originally posted by paul w:
You're right, I should have offered a point by point argument why I thought your idea was retarded.

You want the iPod photo to have a camera as well? Do you honestly think that's feasible? Would it be a piece of **** camera found on cell phones (Oooh, just what we all need)? Would it be a nice 2mp sensor with a 3x zoom lens? Would it be some stupid clunky add on. How big, complicated, expensive and useless do you want the iPod photo to be, exactly? And Apple is supposed to spend how much in R & D for this silly hairbrained scheme?

There may be some kind of Apple device in the future that has a camera, but I don't see it happening anytime soon, and certainly not in a hard drive based player.

Well bright eyes, I didn't say I liked the current offerings in the iPod photo, to be honest right about now they should really just be calling it the iPod color. To behonest I don't know why they felt a need to allow you to store your whole photo library on an iPod. I would have sooner gone for an iPod's size with a 2-3mp camera combined with a mini's 6GB micro drive. Considering the fact that most digital cameras are not all that big these days, and the high priced nature of the iPod, they honestly should be able to fit a decent camera in with iPod mini like specs into something close to the size of either your average camera or iPod. Besides Olympus has I believe already put a camera in with their new mrobe, I should hope Apple could do it better.

[TailsToo]

Toshiba used to have touchpads in their laptops that could display graphics below the surface. Maybe Apple could use something like that in a future iPod.

[paul w]

Originally posted by Superchicken:
Well bright eyes, I didn't say I liked the current offerings in the iPod photo, to be honest right about now they should really just be calling it the iPod color. To behonest I don't know why they felt a need to allow you to store your whole photo library on an iPod. I would have sooner gone for an iPod's size with a 2-3mp camera combined with a mini's 6GB micro drive. Considering the fact that most digital cameras are not all that big these days, and the high priced nature of the iPod, they honestly should be able to fit a decent camera in with iPod mini like specs into something close to the size of either your average camera or iPod. Besides Olympus has I believe already put a camera in with their new mrobe, I should hope Apple could do it better.

First of all the camera they include is sh*tty - not something you could make decent printable pix with. So what's the point? Why do I need that when practically every cell phone already does that AND I already have a decent little digicam (as most people seem to). Second if the hard is smaller (6gb) then it can't very well store all your pictures and have a ton of music. Um, ten time less storage so I can take pixxors?

My canon ixus 30 is the same size as my iPod photo. Combining the two into a small, elegant package isn't exactly a given. You speak as though you know this stuff is possible. Explain it to us then, explain it to Apple while your at it.

Hey, if Apple ends up making one, fine. But I just don't see it coming at the moment. Now step off, homes.

[roberto blanco]

Originally posted by Superchicken:
I think the iPod photo should really have a camera integrated into it.

i think the ipod should really have a heating rod attached to it, so i can warm up my doublemoccalattuccino when it gets too cold.