Tuesday, November 2, 2004

iPod: No Thanks, Maybe iRiver

iPod users read this:

"If you buy into a proprietary platform where the music industry gets a veto, you're screwed.

Every time you buy an iPod, you are financing legal and technical countermeasures aimed at taking away legitimate features that enable you to do more with your lawfully acquired music and hardware."

Though pretty hard to digest for the loyal and idealistic Mac crowd this the truth of what Apple is doing with its highly popular portable music player.

"If you're an iPod user, you would have done well to have availed yourself of iPod Download, an OS X app that made it easy to move your music from your iPod to your Mac.

Of course, Apple hated that poor little app, so it was sometimes hard to find, as Apple devoted expensive laywer-hours to shutting down all the sites that were hosting copies of it."

Worst:

"Apple just devoted some expensive engineering hours to updating iTunes to version 4.7, with the "improvement" of breaking iPod Download.

That's right -- Apple's spending money seeing to it that features are removed from your iPod."

If that is not enough to get you thinking twice about Apple and all you have believed so far about his market and consumer attitudes, read more details inside the original article at Boing Boing: "Apple to iPod owners: "Eat shit and die".

On the other hand, you should be aware of the iRiver, an excellent alternative to the iPod craze.

Sure, you can't buy the luscious Apple design, but if you care about features, price and freedom to own your music, the iRiver looks much more consumer friendly that Apple.

Think twice.

Robin Good -
Reference: [via Boing Boing] [ Read more ]

Readers' Comments

2004-11-29 06:29:27

Tom Parish

I kept thinking I should get an IPod (cuz it just looked cool) then I did some research and found out a lot folks are reaching for the iRiver and I found out why and I got excited. I've been looking for a device I could carry around like this that not only played audios but recorded high quality audio for interviews.

So, I purchased an iRiver H320 about four weeks ago and I've just loved it since the day it arrived.

It does so much more then the iPod for the same price. In addition to listening to audios (in practically any format),you have FM and you can record FM shows directly to disk and the iRiver includes a fairly decent internal MIC for recording Interviews to CREATE PODCASTs or bring along an even better external mic for really stellar quality. You can adjust the MP3 encoding on the external microphone up to 320kps. That just blew me away.

You just plug the iRiver into your USB hub and it instantly appears as a hard drive (on XP). No software to install. Isn't that the way a device is supposed to work.

Probably the most notable difference is the large bright color screen. It's attractive and just feels good to look at. Yes, you can put tons of pictures on it but I been so busy download podcasts (geeesh I wish that name hadn't been coined) that all I've done is take the iRiver everywhere I go to listen to audios. Battery life is stated to be 16 hours but I haven't tried testing it that long yet.

The iRiver also provides a way to update the internal ROM via the Internet so you're not locked into buying a new device later when new upgrades come. Wouldn't it be cool if they provided an interface for Open Source programmers to get inside the iRiver? That's more likely to happen with companies like iRiver than with Apple.

So Robin for all the reasons you mention above in your blog, I agree and if you actually had one in your hand I think you'd enjoy using it.

Tom Parish
http://4webresults.com/blog

posted by Robin Good on Tuesday, November 2 2004, updated on Tuesday, May 5 2015

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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