Can Open Source Outdo the IPod? 484
CHaN_316 writes "Wired is running an article entitled, "Can Open Source Outdo the IPod?" Asking the open source community to help them compete with the iPod. From the article: 'Consumer electronics manufacturer Neuros Audio is tapping the open-source community to convert its upcoming portable media player from iPod road kill into a contender [...] To get the ball rolling, Neuros recently opened up the firmware code for its Neuros 442 portable media player, which is set to launch in January [...] Neuros' hardware design is complete, comprising a Texas Instruments dual-core digital signal processor, a 3.6-inch, 65,000-color TFT display and a 40-GB hard drive for recording video from a TV or home entertainment system. But the company has left a little something -- mostly user interface tweaks -- for the volunteers.' Is this a good idea or a mere publicity stunt?"
Apple treats users like babies (Score:1, Interesting)
PR (Score:2, Interesting)
From TFA "Most open-source projects do fail because they typically don't have full-time employees, but only a few volunteers who a lot of times are kids," Born [the CEO] said.
My guess is this article is just some paid (and poor quality) PR. Read this [paulgraham.com] to learn more about how these articles end up published.
Damn good idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Open source UIs (Score:5, Interesting)
I can think of a few examples of really brilliant open-source UIs: Firefox and Eclipse come to mind. So it's not impossible. But in those cases the amazingly solid core UI was developed by key players, and other developers contributed functionality.
So I'm gonna guess that the answer in this case is "almost certainly not".
UI design (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Synergy (Score:2, Interesting)
Steve's Big Mistake: Greed. (Score:2, Interesting)
There is nothing incredibly brilliant about the iPod software, its the hardware that make it a top seller. Like most things, it will only be a matter of time before Steve Job's greed and closed circuit mentality has them loose market share. We saw it with the Apple hardware, their OS, and we will see it happen with the iPod.
We have already started to see it with the iTunes store, the iPod's "enabler" or "dealer" has made some pretty big missteps. Steve is pissing off the owners of the music he sells (talking bad about them in the press over and over is a big mistake), and they are ACTIVELY looking to others to replace him. He is giving them money now, but others can do that, all he has done is effectively made enemies of the companies he relies on to make the iPod a success.
There is no doubt, Open Source WILL be a player in unseating the iPod. Not the only player, but a contributor.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
What are they trying to attack? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not intended to kill the iPod (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyway, I'm on the list for a board when they become available; and I am listening to the Eels on my 442 right now. For an MP3 device, the interface is not impressive but the playback is; as a portable video device, it's tre cool.
Re:Column A, Column B (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, as nice a gesture as this is, the iPod is a lot more than just its firmware. That clickwheel interface is pretty amazing--I haven't used such an intuitive device interface in a long time
I suppose I am the only person in the whole world who finds the ipod physical interface totally "the suck" and the software unintuitive. I thought the original jog wheels were cool just because they were retro, smooth and elegant - but the whole rub your finger around a touchpad? weak! Is it a button? is it a touchpad? does a double touch do something different? What the hell? It probably makes sense for those that owned and understood the jog wheel version but as a johnny-come-lately, it is confusing at best. Couple that with the totally unintuitive 3rd party fm broadcasting thingies that require you to play and pause a song to broadcast FM and you have me sitting in the passenger seat on a roadtrip fiddling with the damn thing for hours just trying to get it to play a damn song.
If that is the best interface out there... egads what must the worst one be like?
If by marketing you mean word of mouth... (Score:3, Interesting)
The only way you achive utter market domination is by people liking a product so much they talk other people into buying it. Period. That is how a product becomes a lifestyle trend, like everything else it depends on people liking it. Why they like it is a combination of ease of use and ITMS and iTunes, but marketing comes a distant second.
Do you HONESTLY think the Dell DJ or iRiver would enjoy the same market position right now if they had thought to use dancing shadows? Please. Are you such a sheep that marketing controls everything you buy? Please have a little respect for humanity and realize MOST people can actually resist marketing, even more so as we have become inured to it through over-exposure.
How many times have you every heard people mention how much they like the iPod ads as opposed to the iPod itself?
How many iPod ads do you even see in a week? I see perhaps one a month.
To say the iPod sucess springs from marketing is to ignore a very valuable lession in human behaviour.
Re:Column A, Column B (Score:1, Interesting)
Just out of curiosity....which benefits would those be? The Neuros was open sourced quite a while ago, and it went nowhere. Is there any open-sourced hardware that's really benefitting from the OSS community? I can see how it benefits a software-only product, and in theory, how hardware might benefit, but that doesn't seem to play out in practice.
I'm torn (Score:2, Interesting)
Some people mention the iTunes Music Store and iTunes. Whatever. Maybe this really is the appeal for many iPod users, I just don't know. I buy CDs and have no desire to reward DRM in the marketplace, so iTMS is useless to me. And as for iTunes, I haven't used it so I just don't have a clue as to how it is better than xmms; I just hear people rave about it. And why any of this would make a difference to someone regarding their portable music player (where you don't wanna run the same kind of software that you have on your desktop anyway), again, I just don't have a clue. So I gotta mostly plead ignorance on that. What I can say, is that none of that stuff matters to me so the lack of it doesn't count as a strike against any iPod competitors as far as I am concerned. But I'm only one guy and my pick never wins presidential elections either...
Overall, I think the idea of having a tweakable UI is an extremely good idea. I was shocked by the irony of this:
I would have thought that as hardware gets cheaper and easier to build -- in other words, more accessible -- amateur development only gets more and more capable. Doherty has it backwards.The thing is, I just don't know if I'll buy one. I bought the original Neuros, and it croaked. Then I used a laptop to play music in my car, and that killed the hard disk. I'm starting to think that any hard disk that I use in my car, where it's exposed to the New Mexico summer sun and the bumpy ride from my cheap car on its 40 psi tires, is doomed to a short lifespan. I love having music in my car, but I'm 0-and-2 right now. I think I'm going to have to switch to solid state, and that kind of storage still just isn't big/cheap enough yet (but it's coming).
The inclusion of video in the latest devices is a mystery to me, but again, that's probably because I view these portable devices as being for car drivers, and obviously watching movies doesn't make sense in that place. I guess subway riders would see it differently.
Neuros outweight iPod by far... (Score:3, Interesting)
Neuros (40G):
136.1 x 78 x 26.5
325g
Ipod (60G):
103,5 x 61,8 x 14
157 g
Re:Synergy (Score:3, Interesting)
(A) Attempt to sell their business;
(B) Do something else with their time and money (why have multiple vendors in a market anyway);
(C) Simply die;
or
(D) compete with Apple.
The fact that they are alive means there is currently room for them on the market. The Slashdot submission, as is the norm, has a slant worse than the article it links. There's a big difference between being an iPod contender and an iPod killer (that's not to say Neuros wouldn't want to be an iPod killer, and not to say that they might not be some day).
Neuros Audio's move doesn't have to be of the magnitude to dethrone the iPod in order to be wise.
Hell, I think it's a spectacular idea anyway... we need more hardware manfacturers willing to open up to the community. Think about what state instant messaging would be in if the operators still held a lock on who could program for their networks. Think about what kind of lock is being held on consumer technology because open source can't go there (at least, it's been traditionally limited, but we've seen good movement with wireless routers, tivo, etc).
In fact, if you want to kill the DRM bullshit, one idea is to triple your current rate of innovation. DRM is an attempt for the legacy greedy content industry to catch the back of technology's shirt as it goes running by, and with a little more lunge, we might just see the old model blow away like it damn well should. What better way to triple your rate of innovation than to invite legions of excited open source developers to something 'cool' they've never had before?
Re:Steve's Big Mistake: Greed. (Score:3, Interesting)
Best Buy sells their CDs below cost, by the way, as a loss leader to get people into their stores, so that's not the stellar example you wish it were. Check out Record Contract Basics [music-law.com] for more detail. The band is lucky to see $1 on a full-priced %16.98 sold at retail.
Bottom line, if you want to support the artists, attend their concerts and buy merchandise straight from them -- that's the only way they see any reasonable amount of money.
Re:Column A, Column B (Score:2, Interesting)
I have about a dozen MP3 players, and the clickwheel is not very good: it's too hard to control precisely and it's modal.
It's the boring, mainstream MP3 players that are intuitive. Simple designs have separate buttons for play, pause, skip left/right, scan left/right, and volume up/down. And the directional pad, which has push to play/pause, up/down for volume, push left/right to skip, and hold left/right to scan, is probably the best of the controls: it's simple, it's tiny, and it's intuitive. The clickwheel doesn't even come close.
The clickwheel is great branding, but only tolerable usability.
The Appliance Factor (Score:3, Interesting)
For the past 20 years, the home computer (Mac, PC, or other) has gone from a geeky little gadget to a household necessity. The success of the Win-Tel marketshare owes most of its success to the price point to help ensure its status as ubiquitous. Windows PCs are everywhere on the planet--look at your security logs if you're not completely convinced. They nearly drove the Mac to extinction and succeeded in killing off OS/2, BeOS, Amiga, etc. into obscurity. But there was always the promise of the next version finally being better and bug free.
Lately, though, as gadgets have become more sophisticated and easier to use, the computer has actually become the stop gap between people and their digital bliss. Along comes Apple with its iPod--and applicance that does one thing very easily. It's a success.
I don't think Apple's status as a giant corporation with marketing power is the deal breaker--if that were true, the Mac would be much more prominent. I think the simplicity and product design is what consumers want.
The only people I ever hear bitch about the iPod are geeks who aren't afraid of buttons or Ogg/Vorbis.
There's something to be said about the computer and its peripherals being marketed as appliances. I think that's what most people want--a simple push-a-button Jetson's world that doesn't require tinkering or tweaking.
So, if the Open Source community wants to build a better iPod, they'd better figure out a way to beat the iPod on the simplicity front because 80% of the players purchased out there don't seem to care about the price point or features slashdotters bitch about.
Re:Synergy (Score:2, Interesting)
Honest questions:
Does it play AAC? Does it support on-the-fly updating playlists based on arbitrary logical rules? Does it update metadata like "play count" and "last played time" every time a song is played? Does it automatically synchronize with the music library software (songs, metadata, playlists) every time it's connected? Including aforementioned updated metadata? Does it allow you to make new playlists on the go? Does it play albums with absolutely no gap in between tracks (not even the small gap introduced by some audio formats like MP3)?
The iPod does all the but the last, and if any other product doesn't do these things, I consider it clearly inferior. I'm looking for a replacement due to the gap issue that Apple refuses to address, so I'm genuinely curious about the iRiver. However, I'm not willing to give up any aspect of the excellent experience to get gapless. All other features (FM, video, etc) are a waste of time to me. Just make it play and manage my music in the best way possible.
Reply from someone at Neuros (Score:2, Interesting)