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iRiver: shuffle is surprising, but doesn't compete

updated 05:50 pm EST, Sun January 16, 2005

iRiver scoffs iPod shuffle

Following , but also that it doesn't compete with iRiver's more premium, feature-focused product offerings: "'The first [surprise] is that iPod (Shuffle) is targeting the low-end area,' he said. The low price is no surprise, as Chinese products are already available at that price: the surprise is that Apple is producing a low-end product, he said. 'The second is that they introduced the 1G (byte) player that can contain about 200 songs. It will be very difficult for users to look for and find their favorite songs.'"

by MacNN Staff

(32)

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spacefreak
Addicted to MacNN

Joined: Feb 2002

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01/16, 06:16pm | report spam | close Reply |
Good point

I could see how finding a certain song out of 200 could get annoying.

njfuzzy
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Apr 2001

0

01/16, 06:30pm | report spam | close Reply |
In other news....

Bill Gates says that while Mac OS X is compelling, it can't compete with Windows, because Windows is better.

Michael Eisner says DreamWorks animated movies don't have a future, because Disney cartoons are better.

George Bush says the Democratic platform isn't as good as the Replican.

Pepsi CEO says Coke doesn't taste as good as Pepsi.

Why is it news when someone says their product is better than their competitor's? This is stupid.

aristotles
Grizzled Veteran

Joined: Jul 2004

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01/16, 06:42pm | report spam | close Reply |
RE: Good point

"I could see how finding a certain song out of 200 could get annoying."
That's what a playlist is for. Make a shorter playlist and use the extra space as a USB flash drive.

How many of you guys honestly spend any real amount of time looking at the display of your larger iPods anyway? I usually use the shuffle feature when I'm walking. I don't want to take the iPod out of my pocket to navigate the UI.

Those one line displays on the smaller displays are useless. Imagine walking along and trying to read the scrolling song title and tripping over the curb because you are not paying attention to what is in front of you.

I don't know about you guys, but I recognize songs by ear, not by song title.

hardcat1970
Grizzled Veteran

Joined: May 2000

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01/16, 06:49pm | report spam | close Reply |
Good point

Especially a lot of people still carry those CD players, mp3 CD players and mini disc players. And those players don't have a screen that display song titles too.

A lot of households have their own printers, why not just print out a playlist and read it from there.

sometwo
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jul 2004

0

01/16, 06:51pm | report spam | close Reply |
screens are pointless

I think screens on < 1 GB players just suck battery power and drive up the cost of the player. Also there are no free iriver sites but there are free ipod shuttles so it's eassy to get one http://tinyurl.com/63wtj

jscotta
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jun 2002

0

01/16, 06:56pm | report spam | close Reply |
True. But not the point..

...of the player. I think it is designed to be a sort of commercial-free music station where you get to set the music available rather than some DJ. If you want the find-anything-fast ability in your player, then you get a Mini iPod.

flask
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: May 2004

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01/16, 06:58pm | report spam | close Reply |
ok, look

The reason I bought an iPod Shuffle is NOT so I could keep my entire 15 GB collection of music files on it. I got it so I could load it up randomly (and automatically) before I leave the house and have more than ample music for the car ride I'm about to make. And really, I don't need 16 hours of portable music either, but I thought it would be nice to have the extra space as a flash drive. Considering 1gb flash keychain drives still go for $100+, paying an extra $50 for a music player and Apple's ease of use makes it well worth the price and "limited" functionality (though it's not "limited" at all in the capacity I want to use it).

flask
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Joined: May 2004

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01/16, 07:02pm | report spam | close Reply |
also...

It's also somewhat ironic (or just stupid) that people decry the iPod Shuffle for being built to do what it's named for: shuffling. If it were meant to hold all your songs and let you find them quickly, it would be 10 gb+ and be called the iPod Search. Or, just iPod, like it is now. But then of course it wouldn't start at $99 or be in my price range. :)

Roehlstation
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Joined: Aug 2001

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01/16, 07:26pm | report spam | close Reply |
Grasping for straws

these guys are grasping for straws now. Not a very impressive marketing department. Most of the time I'm using my iPod with it in my pocket on shuffle mode and the remote to pretty much do exactly what I am going to to with an iPod Shuffle.

I so hoped Apple would release the iPod Shuffle because it does all I want it to do and it plays my AAC files.

Nitride
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Sep 2001

0

01/16, 07:38pm | report spam | close Reply |
No Contest

The bottom line is that I won't be buying a competing product to the iPod Shuffle. I will be buying an iPod Shuffle, period, using my George W. Bush Super-sized tax refund in a few weeks.

The iPod shuffle is *exactly* what I want. No more, no less. I don't have thousands of songs. I listen to music randomly. I like the lanyard feature (I wear a lanyard with ID badges already).

I like the price.

I don't like the other products due to their overall size or lack of Mac-friendliness.

They are right, there is no competition - I am getting an iPod shuffle and not even considering anything else.

slider
Mac Elite

Joined: Oct 1999

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01/16, 08:17pm | report spam | close Reply |
Gosh, and I was especting

This really surprises me, I totally expect other MP3 player manufacturers to reply with, "Well, I guess that's it then; time to close the doors".

These articles are lame.

chadpengar
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Joined: Oct 2001

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01/16, 08:18pm | report spam | close Reply |
they should read the NYT

The iRiver and Creative people should read the NYT article referenced earlier in the day on MacNN...

Some people just don't get it.

I don't have any iPod at all because I already have 300 or more CDs ripped in Ogg Vorbis format and don't have the time to rerip them as AAC or mp3, but the iPod does seem to be the music player that best gets it...

cmoney
Mac Enthusiast

Joined: Sep 2000

0

01/16, 08:27pm | report spam | close Reply |
I still want a screen

I've got an iPod shuffle and while I've come to like shuffle mode, I still want the screen. 200 songs is a lot to go through just to find that one song. And yeah sometimes I do want to find that one song.

But the biggest advantage of the shuffle compared to its competitors is price and convenience. Competitors are generally stuck in the $149 for 256MB pricing model and require a AAA battery for power (which means having to replace batteries every other day or so, what an annoyance) and require a cable to plug into a USB port. The shuffle trumps them on these points and gets it right for the most part.

Plus bringing the price down to $99 means it's now in a price range for gifts to more than just close family and friends (for myself at least). I won't give a friend a $249 iPod or even a $149 flash MP3 player, but $99, sure I can swing that. And it's down to impulse purchase price too! Add that to the fact that you'll see these in more retail locations than iRiver or Creative players owing to the name recognition.

Paul Huang
Dedicated MacNNer

Joined: Sep 1999

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01/16, 09:02pm | report spam | close Reply |
bullets and bricks

Those companies are forging ahead with verbal assaults because their products are too weak to stand on their own. They are s-ing bricks and sweating bullets now.

Apple broke the mold (conventional thinking) by dropping the AAA battery and the LCD screen. The result is a unusually "no duh" revolutionary product.

Common sense doesn't cut it these days; you need to have UNCOMMON SENSE.

Are we surprised?

nuckin futs
Forum Regular

Joined: Dec 2000

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01/16, 09:13pm | report spam | close Reply |
same old story

didn't they all say the ipod will be a failure because of the price/features?
i guess if i was getting paid by a company, i would bash the company's competition too.

jvputten
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2001

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01/16, 09:28pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re; screens are pointless

Thanks to sometwo for posting an iShuffle pyramid scheme URL:

> I think screens on < 1 GB players just suck battery
> power and drive up the cost of the player. Also there
> are no free iriver sites but there are free ipod
> shuttles so it's eassy to get one
> http://tinyurl.com/63wtj

Do me a favor, before I list you as a referrer, visit and calculate my position on the list. BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!

typoon
Addicted to MacNN

Joined: Oct 1999

0

01/16, 10:08pm | report spam | close Reply |
Screen schmeen

Who needs a screen with the iPod shuffle? When I'm out Mt Biking or skiing you don't have time to look at a screen. You might hit something. While I have an iPod photo I'm still going to get a shuffle. It's great for those times I want to take some music with me and not bring my iPod photo. I'd rather break the iPod shuffle biking or skiing or something than breaking my 499 iPod.

LouZer
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Joined: Nov 2000

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01/16, 10:16pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: good point

How many of you guys honestly spend any real amount of time looking at the display of your larger iPods anyway? I usually use the shuffle feature when I'm walking. I don't want to take the iPod out of my pocket to navigate the UI.

Well, what's your definition of "real amount of time". I use the screen on my 3G iPod a lot, relatively. I use it to pick between playlists (oh, so many to choose from, do i want to listen to some random album, do I want to shuffle through songs, and what songs do I want to play, something recently I've loaded? Something I haven't listened to in the last 30/60/90 days? I don't have many (any?) 'favorite' playlists, songs I like a lot. I listen to everything.

And then there's the times when I'm listening to a song and actually want to know what it is, who sings it, etc (sorry, I don't know my collection to the point that there's no question as to what song is what - if I did, it'd get really boring "Oh, listen, its that damned Green Day song again").

Now I know the shuffle isn't built for this. You just stated an opinion about regular iPods, I'm Just replying (well, and I'm in a cranky mood because I've spent two hours trying to see my internal hard drive on my old Beige G3 again. It was there a minute ago, and then boom, where'd it go!)

vortexlift
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Mar 2004

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01/16, 10:36pm | report spam | close Reply |
R and D Pays Off

It's funny how all the companies that can't compete with Apple's iPods are now panning the iPod Shuffle. It's even funnier that reporters actually think they know what they are saying. : D
You know, at first thought, having an LCD on the iPod Shuffle would be nice. But when you think about it, how many times do you look at the iPods LCD screen while you're listening to it anyway? Well, turns out, not much. Apple has done alot of R&D into this and has found out that most people just uploads a playlist and plays them in random order (or shuffle play). In fact many iPod users just let iTunes generate the playlists for them. Also, adding an LCD screen would make the device much bigger since it has to accomodate the LCD, electronics to run it & larger battery (LCDs burns alot of electricity). It will also add to the cost. So under the form follows function, minimalist design philosophy followed by Ives & Jobs, the iPod Shuffle fits the bill perfectly well. And lets face it, most people look at their MP3 players' LCD screen just to tell what time it is anyway. ; )

medmuse
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Nov 2002

0

01/16, 11:41pm | report spam | close Reply |
Shuffle

I can agree with most all of the opinions I read here. After all, everyone has an individual behavior when it comes to their own music collection; that is the genius of the iPod to begin with. What is being overlooked, in my opinion, is that a week after this Thursday there will be some sort of hack on versiontracker for the shuffle. In two months, there will be a dozen and it will do virtually anything you want except grow an LCD. Meanwhile, I'm stuck with a Rio Cali rev a that won't even double as flash storage and cost me $124 for 128M of RAM. Had the shuffle come out 6 months ago when I really needed it for audio note playback, I would have bought two--just because.

chrisutley
Grizzled Veteran

Joined: Mar 2003

0

01/17, 12:11am | report spam | close Reply |
Zealots

I'm a huge Apple fan, but you Apple zealots give us Apple customers a bad name. Seriously, you need to open your eyes, be willing to see the flaws and the beauty in Apple's offerings.

webraider
Forum Regular

Joined: Nov 2004

0

01/17, 12:27am | report spam | close Reply |
The Display

The display on the full size I-pods serves also for contact information, calendar information and now the color one for pictures. I do hope Apple will come up with an easy way to input contacts and appointments on the newer ipods though. That would be the all way for me to abandon my PDA however... I do like my PDA and now I can afford to get an ipod that will do exactly what i need it to... listen to song some of the songs on my computer at work and on the Subway!

nitram_again
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Joined: Nov 2001

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01/17, 01:19am | report spam | close Reply |
Horses for courses

There's going to be a lot of people who own the Shuffle AND an iPod: use the iPod day to day, grab the Shuffle as you run out the door to do some skating/riding/gymming whatever. When involved in these activities, you don't care what song it is, you just want your music.

ApeInTheShell
Senior User

Joined: Nov 2002

0

01/17, 02:28am | report spam | close Reply |
Flash and kangaroos

I am considering buying the iPod shuffle for my cousins birthday which is a couple months from now. I gave him my old Rio which equivalent to owning a cd that can play 8-12 songs.
I remember having to load the songs on paying attention to their size. The battery would often run down easily since it was one AA. I can't say it was a terrible design but after saving and purchasing an iPod 1G; the hard drive, screen, navigation, and software blew the Rio away. I look at the iPod screen more than my Nokia because I have a lot of music to find. I could put songs on shuffle but maybe they won't fit the mood I am in at the time. iPod Shuffle might also double for me as an exercise music player but that would be all.

tabarnak
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jan 2003

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01/17, 08:09am | report spam | close Reply |
:)

you guys are the funniest! now screen on mp3 players is useless.. lol

hardcat1970
Grizzled Veteran

Joined: May 2000

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01/17, 08:26am | report spam | close Reply |
funniest

you guys are the funniest! now screen on mp3 players is useless.. lol

what's so funny? I spent $200 on a sony mini disc player that i have to manually enter the track names on its tiny screen too. And it doesn't play mp3. Why there wasn't negative comments flowing the net back then?

TwinFeats
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Feb 1999

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01/17, 10:55am | report spam | close Reply |
Same old story

The "industry" perception of the Shuffle is nothing surprising. When Apple was on the brink of collapse and brought Jobs back in, Apple banked on the iMac. The industry laughed and predicted that Apple was finished. They were proven wrong. When Apple came out with the iBook as a lower cost alternative to the PowerBook, the industry laughed. They were wrong again. There are many such examples, these 2 probably being the most significant.

I remember when I read about the Shuffle I didn't get it at first. But the more I thought about it the more I understood the design decisions. I think it will succeed quite well, even if only as an iPod for those unable or unwilling to spend $250+. And once again the mindless drones of the "industry" that all want to be clones of each other will be proven wrong.

Deal
Mac Enthusiast

Joined: Apr 2001

0

01/17, 10:56am | report spam | close Reply |
I agree

I put the songs I like on my iPod and hit shuffle. I only look at the screen to see if my battery is low.

An iPod shuffle would be more than adequate for my usage as I don't keep a whole lot of songs on it, just the ones I want to listen to at the time.

Anybody body want to buy a G3 10GB iPod?

VadersCape
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Mar 2004

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01/17, 11:12am | report spam | close Reply |
Cry Me an iRiver

I thought the point of the iPod Shuffle was to put *only* your favorite songs on it (or at least only your favorites du jour) and not load it with a bunch of tunes you don't plan on listening to or would skip over if they start playing. If you absolutely need to know what order they're in, flip the handy switch to sequential play and go from there.

I don't know about you folks, but I have an assortment of USB flash/pen drives that I use for making quick backups of the files I'm working on right now. Having an iPod and flash drive in a pen drive form factor is awesome!

Bobby
Mac Enthusiast

Joined: Apr 2001

0

01/17, 01:03pm | report spam | close Reply |
ROFL!

Like the company is going to say "Oh my god, people aren't going to buy our product any more! Doomed, we're all doomed!!!"...

I love when companys do this, it's stupidly amuzing...

kw99
Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Nov 2001

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01/17, 07:02pm | report spam | close Reply |
Apple's competition is

Apple. That's why the iPod shuffle no-screen design makes sense. The iPod is so popular that most people are not comparing and choosing between iPod shuffle and some device from iRiver or Creative. The choice is between iPod shuffle and iPod mini. So there is a clear distinction between the two products. Apple would rather have the customer buy the iPod mini if having a screen is important. Companies like iRiver and Creative just put dozens of similar products "out there" and think that's good. Just go to Creative's web site and try to decide which of their 25 distinctly different players is best for you. Apple, with it's huge market share has

iPod (the white one) in two storage sizes
iPod U2 (just a colored version of above)
iPod photo in two storage sizes
iPod mini in five colors
iPod shuffle in two storage sizes

Relatively simple choice for the consumer. Efficient sales and opertations for Apple. That's smart. A more expensive and larger iPod "flash" with a screen would have been dumb.

Forbodium
Forum Regular

Joined: Mar 2000

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01/18, 02:48am | report spam | close Reply |
flash iPod w/screen

Well I want a flash-based iPod with a screen. During my workouts, I occasionally do pause what I�m doing in order to change tracks. Call the idea dumb if you want, but it�s what is most appropriate for me. I will be getting a Shuffle, but only because it�s the only game town as far as flash iPods go.

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iRiver: shuffle is surprising, but doesn't compete

updated 05:50 pm EST, Sun January 16, 2005

iRiver scoffs iPod shuffle

Related Articles

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Good point

In other news....

RE: Good point

Good point

screens are pointless

True. But not the point..

ok, look

also...

Grasping for straws

No Contest

Gosh, and I was especting

they should read the NYT

I still want a screen

bullets and bricks

same old story

Re; screens are pointless

Screen schmeen

Re: good point

R and D Pays Off

Shuffle

Zealots

The Display

Horses for courses

Flash and kangaroos

:)

funniest

Same old story

I agree

Cry Me an iRiver

ROFL!

Apple's competition is

flash iPod w/screen

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