40GB RCA Lyra: Apple Fans Needn't Fret

PaulEshoreLives writes "The Globe and Mail isn't taking too kindly to RCA's Lyra 40GB iPod 'competitor.' Amongst its gripes are a crazy-slow FFW. How slow? Like 6 minutes to get to the end of a 60 minute file. Gotta wonder how these things get missed at the beta stage."

Why should Apple fans fret?

[3terrabyte]

I don't understand the tone of the post. Why would a better product coming out years later be a bad thing for Apple fans?

Will it make your iPod quit working? Or make you love your iPod less?

iPod Competitor

[Ionizer7]

Why does every new hard disk mp3 player have to be labeled an iPod competitor? Some of these devices aren't even close to the iPod.

So?

[iainl]

So the forward-scan button gives you a 10x speed ffw. And? Why is this bad?

But then, I'm not getting my head round having single mp3 files that are 60 minutes long either, so that might explain it. I mean, there's Eno's Neroli, but I can't think of any others off the top of my head.

Slower than a cassette player?

[suso]

Most cassette players and VCRs can go from start to end of a tape in about 1-2 minutes. That's sad.

Re:Why should Apple fans fret?

[pertinax18]

I had this same question. Do Apple fans really have so much of their self-worth, emotional well-being and identity tied up in the Apple products they use that a competitor would make them concerned? Perhaps the Apple Corporation would fret, but unless I am really missing something this is hardly a concern for iPod users as it will only force Apple to innovate more and create a better product.

Erm?

[grasshoppa]

Gotta wonder how these things get missed at the beta stage."

PHB: Beta stage? What beta stage?

I love that headline

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Apple Fans Needn't Fret

What is that saying about a group of people, that a competitor's product to Apple might cause you to "fret"? I guess its implying that Apple users don't like competition? But beyond that, why should competition cause anyone outside of Apple cause any stress for anyone that doesn't make a living selling Apple realted products? Its just wierd thats all. I understand that we can all get caught up in fandom every now and then, but geez louise give it a break.

Re:Consumericanism.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, you'd think someone with views as meticulously thought out as yours would realize that the Globe & Mail is a Toronto paper. Perhaps you have a similar screed about consumenadians, eh?

Re:iPodian

[stoborrobots]

... yield better sales results than the iPod.

Maybe that's *GASP* not the aim? as long as I make positive profit, I don't really care if I make more sales than the iPod.

Insanity is not taking advantage of a clean, healthy profit which requires minimal marketing because that's all been done by your competitors...

Re:Hey, not all codecs ..

[doofusclam]

Sure, on an uncompressed mpeg4, you can just fseek() where you need to go and pick right up

What are you on about? What is an 'uncompressed' mpeg4 file? The real issue is the bitrate, is it variable or fixed per frame? Most decent codecs are the latter and you need to build an offset list to handle ffw correctly. Rewind is even harder that ffw, especially with b-frames.

Re:iPod Competitor

[parvenu74]

All the new hard drive mp3 player are called iPod competitors because Apple's iPod owns about 92% of that particular market. Ergo, they are the de facto incumbent against which all new entries will be compared and against which all new players must compete in order to make any sales.

(For my part, I am still trying to decide between the iRiver H140 or the 40GB iPod for my Christmas gift to me...)

Speaking of portable music players...

[gumpish]

It seems the Rio Karma [digitalnetworksna.com] hasn't had a feature bump since it's introduction last year. Sure, it's pricing is on par with the 20 GB iPod (and the Karma comes with a dock, featuring an ethernet port, not to mention native support for Ogg Vorbis and FLAC), but I think Rio can do even better. =)

Re:Consumericanism.

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck... you put most of a country's name in a word like that and then get vaginal when someone thinks you're talking about that country?

There's nothing about it or your comment that indicated it was meant to be a generic term encompassing people all over the world.

So take your sneer and cram it sideways.

Re:iPodian

[jxyama]

i'd say it's pretty darn hard to have a "healthy" profit when your device has a smaller profit margin (components are just about the same for all HD mp3 players... but iPods are priced higher) and the bulk of the consumers is dying to get your competitors product that's already dominating the market.

IMHO, there are roughly two kinds of people buying off-iPod HD mp3 players: 1) "geeks" who value raw specs above all else and getting "money's worth" in that regard and 2) "parents" who's been asked to get an "iPod" but thought it wasn't so important to actually get an "iPod"

Re:Lyra: the * MPY * player. (not MP3)

[bonqers]

RCA/Thompson has a firmware update that gets rid of the necessity to encrypt mp3s thru MusicMatch. It works great. My Lyra looks and acts just like a portable usb drive to windows now, and I don't have to use MusicMatch either. Check out Yahoo Groups RCA-Lyra-MP3, or go to www.rca.com/digitalaudiosupport

Re:Why should Apple fans fret?

[jellomizer]

It is an issue of feeling validated with your purchase. iPods are not cheap and for a person to shell out a week salary on a Portible MP3 Player takes some though for most people. So after they chose the iPod and they find the next week that XYZ company produced a better product or an equilvlant product at the same or less cost. Then the consumer feels like they have made a bad decision and have wasted their money. But as in the case of the iPod it has been popular for a couple of years now and so far there hasn't been a product that compleatly competes with it. So the customer feels good about their purchase and that they made a wize decision. This hold true in differnt areas that is why there are people who take joy when Crysler has a recall because they are a proud owner of a GM Car. If a product can over time make the customer feel good about buying it then there is a chance they will buy it again. But if there is something out there that was better and more afordable then they feel anonomsity towards that product, but mostly to themselfs for putting the money into it.

This emotion is straight from childhood. Having to defend your toy with your friends. So if your friend has the latest plastic car with all the features. The child may often defend their Hot Wheels by the fact that the body is mostly metal and can't be broken as easily. Or the Kid with the Game Cube vs. the Kid with the PS2 They will argue back and forth saying whos is better.

So now as an adult we see somones elses toys to be infearor to yours so it makes you happy like you just won an argument.

Re:Consumericanism.

[RobotRunAmok]

From your journal:

damned cold here in germany.

can't say much else. wish someone would send me some good moviez sites or something, that'd make the cold and grey go away for an hour or two.

I'm thinking you kinda invalidate any right you may have thought you had to grouse about American "consumer marketplace economics" when you lazily request Hollywood warez sites be e-mailed to you in your perch in Germany.

Maybe we're just supposed to send you warez sites for those great German movies. Yeah, that's it, that's what you meant...

As far as America's "innate desire for fascism" goes, uhhhh, don't you think might be just projecting a teensy bit? Fascism is on the rise, all right. But we Americans are dorky amateurs at it. You guys remain the world-class professionals [csmonitor.com] at it.

Re:Consumericanism.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, what, hello.. there are still some ME and African countries that practice slavery. We certainly don't have the lock on genocide. And our history, while bloody, pales compared to Europe and the Soviet Union.

Re:Consumericanism.

[ratamacue]

Who's this "we"? I'm a US citizen, but I committed none of those crimes. I am a peaceful individual, not an aggressor. I will NOT be held responsible for the actions of other individuals, let alone the actions of government.

I am exactly responsible for my own actions. No more, no less. I take offense that you imply that I somehow had something to do with those crimes.

Competition

[SJ]

What are you talking about?

Apple fans WANT something to fret about because thats what makes thing better. The worst thing that could happen to the industry is for no one to bother challenging Apple.

See what happened when no one challenged Microsoft?

Apple fans WANT some one to beat the pants off Apple, 'cause it means that after Apple has gotten up off the floor and brushed itself off, it is going to come up with something freakin amazing to get back into the game.

Thats what makes healthy competition great.

Why is this so difficult?!

[Anita Coney]

First, give us non-proprietary batteries. Not only to keep it from becoming a paper weight after a couple years, but also to be able to toss in some other batteries if you forget to recharge it.

Second, give us an easily to use intuitive interface. In other words, TEST IT WITH REAL PEOPLE BEFORE YOU EVEN ATTEMPT TO SELL IT!!!

Third, allow us to sort and organize our music without any proprietary software crap. Simply let me transfer my MP3s by artist/cd name folders. If you want proprietary crap for newbies, let that be an option, not a mandate.

Re:Consumericanism.

[Anonymous Coward]

"You know, that White-Picket Fence "keeping up with the Joneses" agitated nervousness that comes as a result of being breast-fed consumerican ethics from the day you were born .."

Nothing of the sort.

The fact is, most other companies have proven that once they get to the point of being in a monopoly state, start building crap and giving the consumer shit they don't need, ignoring all their failings.

Apple, on the other hand, acts as if their market share nor do their users wishes and needs expectations exist. This is actually a good thing under the right influences. If you listened to all the fanboys, you'd have a 120G iPod that could play full motion pictures in Xvid and play Ogg and maybe hook up Mame and a few controllers and heck, we need a projection unit on this and otherwise. I have one of those things from Apple...its called an Powerbook. It doesn't need to fit in my pocket. I want something that makes music and nothing more.

Apple is one of the few companies that once its in a position of power, it isn't trying to shore up the power with artificial bullshit that no one needs for its product class. Instead, they focus on making the shit better. Personally, I don't care for the photo bit of the new iPod...but it was almost the least they could do considering color screens are nearly as cheap as the screens they current use (they'd had to mode to the 2 color screen on the cheaper model it displays Black and Blue as it was what the company that made the old screen moved on to). Its a nifty hack, but I really don't want more than that, even if it had power to do more.

Apple puts out good products. If others put out an inferior product that caught the attention span of the public, we'd all suffer. Its happened in the past. The iPod won't be at its 70% mark forever, and it will eventually happen again. The fact that Apple is at 70% and the next highest is at like 5% even though its selling for half of Apples price and 2x the features (what ever the fuck that means) probably means that its past the point of consumerism -- it means folks are buying it almost solely because they realize its the best of class and its worth just a little more to have.

And just to make certain this doesn't get modded up:

Fuck All Ya'll

Re:Consumericanism.

[ForemastJack]

This got moderated +5 insightful? The hell? Was someone blinded by the low UID and edgy sounding pseudo-postmodern claptrap? The first paragraph/sentence doesn't even end -- it's a goddamned fragment.

The whole comment reads like some frothy liner note from a Rage Against the Machine album. "Consumerican"?! Holy shit.

Glad to see that freshman Social Psychology class is going so well for you...

Re:Consumericanism.

[Anonymous Coward]

First, we do not live in a democracy. It is a democratic republic. If it were a democracy, your statement would be correct. There is a level of responsibility that the electorate has in the actions of the elected, but not to the extent you are suggesting. In a pure democracy, the actions of the government are dependant on the opinions of the people. In a representative democracy, people are elected to represent the people in the decision making process, to make the right choice for the people, not necessarily the popular choice.

This is more than an esoteric distinction, it is a fundamental difference. BTW, this is why character is essential, and not a secondary consideration. We are electing people to stand in for us, to make decisions for us, not just to merely parrot our own opinions. If I'm going to have someone assigned to make all my decisions for me, I want to trust that they have some sort of moral framework on which to base their decisions.

Thank goodness usability matters somewhere.

[dpbsmith]

The big revolution from, say, 1973 to 1980 was making computers affordable, an activity which the IBMs of the world had no interest in whatsoever. They saw microprocessors as a direct thread to mainframes and sought use them in limited ways and protect products like the DataMaster from cannibalization by cheap general-purpose PCs. The result was that the personal computer revolution was fueled by technies and hobbyists.

From 1980 to 1990 it was all about making computers usable and seducing ordinary people who had no interest in learning how to program in BASIC or learn a traditional CLI. The result was a revolution in usability. The overall computer usability experience (not just the GUI shell, but quality, installability, and usability of applications, ease of adding peripherals, etc.) probably peaked in the Mac world circa Apple System 7.

Ever since then, it's all been slowly downhill, as user familiarity and "computer literacy" have increased the tolerance of the general public for complexity, crashes, and other things that are now accepted as "what computers are like." Usability has been in a slow but perceptible decline.

You can see it in all sorts of little things. The latest Dell computer we got has six USB ports on the back, two of which are totally unlabelled and four of which are in close proximity to the letters "A," "B," "C," "D" in circles which are spaced closely together and are not aligned with the USB connectors they are probably labelling. There are color-coded, iconically labelled jacks for speakers and headphones, and but no obvious clue as to where mouse and keyboard are supposed to plug in.

Meanwhile, every new gadget I buy has a microprocessor in it... and usability problems. The $10 thermometer I bought in a drugstore has several different measurement modes, all incomprehensible, controlled by two unlabelled buttons and an LCD screen which displays not only the temperature but smiley faces and pictures of a running stick figure while emitting incomprehensible beeps. I can guess that if it tells me my temperature is 98-something degrees it is probably in Fahrenheit mode and if it tells me it's 37-something degrees it is probably in Celsius mode, but I'm darned if I know how to set it, or what it is that I'm doing that causes the mode to change.

My cell phone comes with a 100-page manual but frequently emits strange beeps and displays messages that the manual does not explain. (In this case, the explanation is that the cell phone user interface as experienced by the user is a combination of what the phone itself does and what the specific set of services offered by Verizon does. But the user experience is one of a low-quality UI.

Thank goodness there is at least one arena in which the market is apparently still rewarding usable design.

Re:Consumericanism.

[Tanktalus]

Canadian (n): An American in all but name, who is proud that s/he doesn't have the name.

(Yes, I'm Canadian.)

Re:Consumericanism.

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be confusing voluntary support with forced participation in socialism.

You seem to be under the impression that you can withdraw your support from your government. Go ahead, try it. Stop paying taxes. Right now. Start today with sales taxes. Refuse to pay them. The fact is that you are NOT a free man, and there are precious few places on this earth, if there are any at all, where you could claim to be free.

Re:Consumericanism.

[Anonymous Coward]

People like you are exactly the reason why I claim to be Canadian when I travel outside the country. Not because I'm unpatriotic, but because people like you have made it dangerous to be an American.