Toshiba's iPod Competitor

a lonely moose writes: "It looks like Toshiba basically copied Apple's iPod. They got cheap on screen size and unit weight, and without iTunes, it'll be darn hard to handle as elegantly as the iPod. Anyway, check out MacCentral's article and the smoking forum at the bottom."

Advantage?

[swordboy]

I'd say that Toshiba definitely has the advantage here because:

1) They can buy the drives from themselves at cost
2) They support Windows users (officially)

I think that we can declare them the winner.

Still no Ogg...

[Joseph Vigneau]

I not spending my hard earned dollars on any digital audio hardware until it supports Ogg Vorbis [vorbis.com]...

Removeable 5GB HDD

[jpaulson]

Removeable 5GB HDD, that fits in a card slot...
That has potential... I see many options... Most of them along the lines of a decent replacement for the floppy disk finally.

The player itself seems no different from a host of others.

Competition is good

[jellomizer]

Now hopefully this will create better faster cheaper iPods and also have them a bit more open so many platoforms can use it. For me the fact the iPod only works on a mac isnt an insentive to buy a Mac or and iPod. It would actually be a turn off for both. Apple should put more concetration on open standards then making hardware that is incompatible for the reason "just because"

Re:Advantage?

[fishboy]

toshiba can't afford *not* to sell drives at competitive prices to all other manufacturers (i'm sure apple has leverage here with their other drive purchasing), so i imagine that their price advantages are not significant to us the consumer.

plus, the work-arounds to using an ipod on a pc are well known. anyone who drops $400-500 on one of these is going to be at least a somewhat serious user.

and, in the end, the itunes interface with the ipod is simply superior to anything else out there.

i'm not so sure anyone is the winner-- except us as apple must have to lower the high prices on ipods now that they have direct competition on size and price.

just my two cents.

Re:Competition is good

[chris_martin]

Whatever, the iPod hardware is not incompatible in any way. The software just isn't provided from Apple. do you think Toshiba will ship Mac software? I doubt it. Does that mean that it won't work? doubtfull. Several companies have produced software that makes the iPod work with Windows, and I'm sure you could do the same for Linux, et. al.

Re:good news for Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

get over it. toshiba didn't make this with the explicit intent that it would work with linux. it's a windows/intel compatible device that happens to also work with linux because most linux runs on intel hardware.

Removable... why?

[mblase]

You've got 5GB of songs. An average 128-kbps MP3 file takes up, say, 5MB of space. That means you've got room for about a thousand songs on one drive. That's a thousand songs. Approximately the size of my entire music collection, including the ones I hate.

So, aside from swapping your entire music collection with a buddy -- why in the world would you care if you can take the drive out and replace it?

Re:Using standards is always better

[2nd Post!]

I dunno, I suppose being able to encode metadata, boot off the drive, retain permissions (another form of metadata), and a few other things, makes the argument for HFS+

Oh, and perhaps compatibility with over, what, 10 years of legacy might have helped too.

HFS+ is interoperable, it's just that Microsoft doesn't implement HFS+, so yeah it's a pain to pay someone $40 to implement HFS+ support for you, but then what do you think Apple users have to deal with when buying PC oriented products?

Re:Not as bad as all that, Apple nuts

[spectecjr]

First, Toshiba isn't the first to sell an "iPod competitor". We've already seen the Treo 10 [com.com] ("...which is similar in appearance and function to the iPod...") and Nomad [nomadworld.com] hit the market, with similar press responses.

The amusing thing is, even though the press might compare the Nomad 3.0 with the iPod, the Nomad 3.0 was leaked on the Creative Nomad newsgroups about a year before the iPod was announced.

And all the specs were the same as when it was released.

The details of their Audigy stuff were released at the same time.

Simon

Re:Competition is good

[mblase]

Apple should put more concetration on open standards then making hardware that is incompatible for the reason "just because"

Apple's iPod hardware is entirely compatible. It's just a hard drive, with MP3 data stored in a particular sort of file tree. It's the software that Windows and Linux need to access it, and Apple hasn't bothered making that for the simple reason that they're not in the business of making PC products.

XPlay [mediafour.com] and EphPod [slashdot.org] both work, separately or together, to bridge the iPod/PC gap just as iTunes already does for Macs. And they do so with Apple's blessing, because Apple already knows that being able to sell iPods to PC users would be a good business decision -- but using iPods to help sell iBooks and iMacs is, from their end, an even better one.

Re:Advantage?

[Latent IT]

You mean like 1, 3, and 5, genius?

Oh, wait. We just read a product bragging page, and they didn't spend even a single line talking about their great battery life. What do you think that means, champ?

*yawn*

I've never understood the market for these players

[southpolesammy]

If the average CD-RW can hold approximately 650 MB of data, that comes out to needing just under 8 CD-RW's to hold what the single 5GB disk holds. A decent portable CD/MP3 player can be had for around $150, and let's round up to a 10-pack of CD-RW's for $20, plus a carrying case for the CD-RW's for $10.

So here's what I don't get...is the smaller profile of the device worth the extra $220?

Re:Still no Ogg...

[guttentag]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Ogg seems to take significantly more processing power to decode. The media player manufacturers probably don't want to spend extra money to handle Ogg when 99% of the market just wants to play MP3s.

Re:It can't be any worse than the i-plod

[MaxVlast]

Please tell how, oh, how Linux was ripped off for OS X? Most of the ideas that are in OS X were released in 1988 with NEXTSTEP.

The next step

[FigWig]

Add a more powerful CPU/ASIC, video out, firewire. Then you can load divx ;) movie rips or DV straight from your camcorder. Ignore copyright bits and you could swap movies just by plugging one device into another. Allow an optional color LCD screen of decent size so you can watch movies on the go.

Then you have a portable media library.

Re:I will buy it

[clmensch]

"If you use better programs (i.e. Trillian instead of ICQ) you can avoid the AOL plugs and program bloat."

Could you define "better" with something more than Trillian. Everything I download has extra shit piled on. That's how they help recover their costs. In any case, there's no escaping bloat if you add or remove software from a windows machine every so often. You've never experienced "Windows Rot"?

As for the plethora of windows software...not that I want to get into the same old argument, but quality over quantity, dude. And there's this thing called the internet that lets you download all sorts of software without having to walk into a local computer store and pay tax/markup anyway.

I don't know the last time I bought shrink-wrapped software anyway...other than Quake3 for my Athlon.

Re:Advantage?

[Eccles]

I'd say that Toshiba definitely has the advantage here because[...]

I'd say many people are missing something that in retrospect may seem obvious.

The iPod contains a Toshiba drive (the same drive, or one twice the capacity.) Apple made a large purchase from Toshiba. There's probably more to that relationship than just one cash order. Apple may have given Toshiba cash to hold off selling the drives for other companies to put in other players, with a clause allowing Toshiba to sell their own version starting at some specified time, but holding off on the larger drive. I'm sure there's a relationship between the two companies we're not privy to.

Absolutely worth it.

[spreer]

With a CD/MP3 player I still have to:

a) Carry around a big CD/MP3 player
b) Carry around those 8 CDs
c) Swap between those 8 CDs
d) Find the CD with the album I want listen to
e) Whenever I get a new album, burn a new CD that includes it.

With my iPod, I drop it in my pants pocket and I'm done. No fishing for CDs, no carrying cases, no saying "oh shit" when my CDs get scratched.

Absolutely worth it.

spreer

Re:I've never understood the market for these play

[rarose]

Yes.

I'm a BIOS developer and spend lots of long hours in a very noisy machine room hunched over prototype machines will all sorts of fan and other noise around... My iPod is small enough to drop in my shirt pocket which is a good thing because the amount of hanging cable to my ears is much shorter than a larger device on my belt (think about hazard getting caught in fans, etc).

Also the battery life (10 hours) is long enough that I can go all day on a major debug bender and not worry about my tunes dying right about the time I get to an interesting problem.

Also having multiple CD-RWs means I've got multiple CDs floating around the lab that I need to protect from scratches or from other people clipping, etc.

I may develop PC hardware, but I love my iPod (and yes... the iPod was enough for me to go out and buy a G4 PowerMac)

Advantage nullified

[sterno]

There's one VERY important thing that nullifies the advantage the ipod gets. Apple doesn't have windows software for it. So, let's see here, Windows controls roughly 90% of the market. Apple controls maybe 3%. Now, let's say that all the apple customers buy an Ipod. Toshiba would only have to sell a player to 1 in every 30 PC owners to be matching apple's market share.

Apple's plan to release Ipod with only apple software initially may have made sense but it's going to kill them in the long run if they don't get off their high horse.

Also, add to this that the Toshiba has some features that make it, in my mind, superior to the ipod. The fact that it's hard drive is removable is a definite bonus. Not only can I speed up transfers by hooking it up to my laptop's pcmcia slot, I can also upgrade the thing later if I need more space.

We'll see when these devices finally come out, but it seems to me that overall these are similar enough to cut into apple's sales in the long term. If apple decides to stick to selling to a base of apple customers, then they will never sell as many Ipods as Toshibas take on it.

Re:mmm.... iTunes

[Anonymous Coward]

--apple progs made by apple are slick because they work, and because they are designed around hardware that is no compromise the best (or dang close to it).

That's the package quality apple buyers expect, and why you see the deal that is a cult following almost. Instead of BSOD, your machine just works. the progs work, etc. the paltry few bucks difference is neglible if you value your time.

It's been stated before, you can buy a general motors so-so car, or a mercedes that lasts decades and is a smooth ride. What's cheaper in the long run? What's your time worth? what's your "computing experience" worth? "Apple people" try to explain this to windows and unix people, and it necver comes across except as elitism, when in reality it's just enthusiasm, apple folks just want to share a "good experience" they have with others, but the others always seem to think they are being put down. Ity's too bad, too. Apple just plain doesn't want to make junk, either hard or soft. That's their "niche" market, slightly more expensive but MUCH better quality computers and software (on average, more or less). You pay for that, such is reality.

Re:I've never understood the market for these play

[rsborg]

So here's what I don't get...is the smaller profile of the device worth the extra $220?

Perhaps. Here are the reasons I can think of to justify the cost:

• Form factor, as you mentioned. No MP3CD players will fit in my shirt pocket (iPod), or even my pant pocket (this new Toshiba thingy)
• Hard drive == skip resistant. Okay, given that most of the MP3CD players these days are resistant enough, I still managed to buy one last year that wasn't (impossible to play on airplane).
• Convenience. iPod does it right, by charging the device as you download, and transfer time is miniscule. Also, the single unit, single connection is much less clutter than 10+CD's, a CD-burner, The MP3CD player, a case, the charger, etc. Besides, once you burn the CD's you must reburn to get what you want. And as Apple knows well, interface *does* matter
• Batteries. I hate em. Even rechargable NiMH AA's are a pain in the ass. AFAIK, no MP3CD player has a built-in battery pack.

So in short, I think it's just a bit more than profile.

Re:Apple Doesn't Understand The Price of Closed Te

[Anonymous Coward]

Apples growing list of "works only with Apple" peripherals, from their iPods to their proprietary LCD monitors

Hey, while you're at it, why don't you expand that growing list of yours. After all, both of your examples are factually incorrect.

The parent to your post already gave two links to two products for bridging the iPod gap.

Apple's own website shows the bridge between ADC (their proprietary LCD solution) and DVI, the respected standard. Try http://www.apple.com/displays/adapter.html And that's not the only one, it just has Apple's blessing.

Now, why don't I tell you what *isn't* totally incompatible. A G4 tower. The kind that has a side that opens, many industry standard PCI cards, an industry standard AGP slot, industry standard SDRAM, industry standard ATA drives..

Or maybe you care to avoid their industry standard USB peripherals, like their stock keyboard/hub and mouse that works with Wintel hardware.

Or maybe you care about their documented hardware? The same hardware that you can boot Linux from.

Jeez guy, maybe you should get up off your high horse and realize that Apple is just selling very expensive hardware. Use any damn OS you want on it, but remember that you're also purchasing license to the Mac OS which includes a lot of good stuff, like iTunes, iMovie.. An OS that runs X11 and compiles like BSD. And if you don't like the cost, then complain about the cost and don't make crap up :P