iPod Overrated?

http://poptech.blogspot..../04/ipod-overrated.html

Of course it is failing here, where people have a clue about MP3 players!

irivers beat ipods on more fronts than just SQ and FM tuners, what about OGG support, excellent battery life, useful f/w upgrades, decent support where you actually get a reply to emails. Having said all that, i was surprised that Creative didnt get more attention from the koreans, i've got both a creative muvo tx and an iriver 890, i switch between them, and theyre both very good. i keep the creative mainly because it has a great battery life when using NiMH batteries, upwards of 14 hours!

...for all of those reasons. You forgot to mention that a lot of iRivers come with Sennheiser earphones too. ;)

Hard for me to imagine why people spend on iPod... the H10 is the same price as an iPod Mini - but it has a colour screen, OGG support, etc etc. Sound quality's been on a steady decline for iPod ever since 2nd gen - comparing side by side with the H series iRivers leaves little doubt about which one's better. MPIO (also popular in Korea) sounds considerably better too.

Apple ARE more of a marketing company than they are a serious hardware manufacturer these days. iPod Socks? Sure does...

go iriver!! :D the koreans are smart :)

Looks like the Koreans are the smart ones. They opted for more real value in terms of feature set for money spent instead of trendy, overpriced dreck from a company that has traditionally counted on elitism to maintain its market share.

I'm glad to see that *someone* has smarts in ConsumerLand.

"iRiver leads the pack with 35 percent, followed by Samsung with 14 percent, and Cowon with 13 percent share."

I've never heard of Cowon. I wonder what they're like.

I also notice Creative didn't make the cut =/

Have you ever heard about JetAudio? Created by Cowon and downloadable from BetaNews.

I owned a Cowon C300 256mb mp3 player, had the best sound quality of an mp3 player i have ever heard, and the player lasted 24 hours on a single AA battery (no lie)

The technology was amazing, unfortunately, last time i checked (4 months ago), Cowon only offer 1 HD based mp3 player, and it doesn't have a built in screen, the screen is on the remote, and since i hate remotes, i was forced to go with my 2nd alternative, which was the Creative Zen Micro 5GB.

Which might i add, is one of the best HD based mp3 players out there.

Ipod can suck my noob, it's a giant over-rated peice of s***.

oh. Yeah I had heard about JetAudio. Didn't know Cowon made it.

Wow why wouldnt they love iPods?
I mean drm files you can't use on anything else, no fm tuner, ordinary sound quality...
hmm I wonder.
I'll keep my Zen thank you.

Bahahaha - you criticise Apple for ordinary sound quality then admit to owning a Zen? They ain't much better, I'm afraid.

Looks like the South Koreans have more nous than the rest of us... iRivers are the best quality players around, IMO, particularly for SQ.

"you criticise Apple for ordinary sound quality then admit to owning a Zen? They ain't much better, I'm afraid"

Compare the specs. The sound quality is a LOT better in Creative's players.

Ok, ignore us then, but what about every review I saw that said the same thing?
I've never seen a review that said an ipod had better sound quality than a zen micro.

Edit, just checked Cnet and today's #2 top story was Zen micro vs iPod mini, and the Zen won.
http://reviews.cnet.com/...-6280547-7.html?tag=txt

Agreed, although I'd definitely toss their best(?) headphones for a set of either Koss SportaPros or Sennheiser MX400s.

We won't even discuss Apple's garbage.

yeah... the stock headphones are always crappy. I haven't seen a portable audio player that HASN'T had horrible headphones bundled.

my iriver's stock earphones were actually very nice, till my mom sucked them up in the vacuum cleaner >0

OW! :(

iPods suck!

They are trendy and stupid.

Get a grip.

As they say, don't believe the hype ...

Sounds to me like the koreans are smarter than I thought they were... apple just plain suckz. Why would you want a piece like this that you can't just hook it up and view it like an external hard drive (without the need for 3rd party software to buy)

what are you talking about? the ipod doubles as an external hard drive just fine. it just needs a frontend to load music. i use ephPOD and it works great copying mp3s to and from my ipod. i carry a copy of it in case i want to share my music or take someone else's. i didnt like the way the ipod organized music at first with its id3 system, but i got used to it.

Koreans are just smart enough to notice they can buy better players with more features at half the price. They want music players not status symbols.

Sounds more like bash the simplistic American! :P Stupid, simple iPod lovers.

It must be "Bash Apple iPod News Day". M$ wants to take them down, and so does the rest of the world.

When a company tries to controll everything(hardware software) what do you expect. MSFT does not control everything. They are only a software company, that is where choice comes from MSFT.

When a company tries to control everything...that's a nice comment, especially considering that Micro$oft's Play for Sure platform utilizes WMA files, something that the iPod CAN'T play (and regardless of what the Micro$oft PR machine wants us to think, I am sure they are very reluctant to open up their files to be played on an iPod without some sort of monetary compensation). Apple doesn't like to play with others, that much we've known for years, get over it. If Micro$oft was in the hardware business, you can bet your a$$ that they'd lock out others from competing with them for their proprietary-made dollars. You don't see cheaper, generic Xbox systems, do you? There is no excuse for all this hate. If you don't like its look, fine, buy something else. If you don't like the battery life...good, there are choices out that that exceed in this department. Don't like being stuck with only one music store to purchase from (how can 5 sites all offering the same selection be any better than just 1?), then grab a Play for Sure device...but for Pete's sake, please knock off the iPod hate if its not backed up by something substantial. I've had my 4th Gen iPod since the day it came out and its never failed. Its thinner than most of the competition, it looks sleeker, the quality of the sound is awesome, and the click wheel is the most-innovative control system out there (the scroll up and down functions of the iRiver just doesn't impress me enough as the wheel...don't know why, its just not as fun/cool to play with).

"Micro$oft", how interesting. I didn't know that exists.

The ipods dont play wma because Apple doesnt want to, it's not a conspiracy.
Apple's business practices are often worse than MS. Besides, if it was to support WMA the Mac freaks would start a Crusade. They prefer to waste 1$ per track on low quality drm files and feel good about sending their money to Apple.

looki-o, a wheel that does click-click!!!
According to most iPod owners that's supposed to be the only reason for buying one, I'll never figure out why. Except maybe "because everyone has one"
(yes I tried iPods and other players)

And Pdj, wtf are you talking about, Microsoft IS in the hardware biz.

You don't see cheaper, generic Xbox systems, do you?

Of course not Microsoft sells them at a loss they only make their money back from game sales so why would some one make a generic Xbox when they would have to sell it for more than Microsoft.

From what I hear MSFT will be licensing the XBOX 360 software so other manufac. can make the hardware