Monday, January 17, 2005

iPod Shuffle meets Flash memory trend

Jan 17 2005 6:00PM | Permalink |Comments (0) |

Having earlier written a bit about the Apple Mac Mini computer, I somehow felt obligated to share my thoughts on the new iPod Shuffle music player as well. The Shuffle lowers the bar in terms of price point to $100 (512-Mbyte version) by utilizing Flash memory rather than a tiny disk drive to store music. The Shuffle design is tiny and sleek, and by all accounts produces superb sound. Once again, however, much of the mass media has missed some of the subtleties when comparing the Shuffle with competitive Flash-based products. And in fact, Apple is regularly regaled with credit for digital-music innovations that rightly should be attributed to others.

First let’s consider the Shuffle. It’s truly offered at an attractive price point. Without question, parents will find the price palatable for kids compared to the disk-based iPods.In “Test-Driving the $99 iPod,” Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal gave the Shuffle a glowing review (BTW, those of you who would like to hear Mossberg speak should attend the EDN Innovation Awards Banquet on March 7 in San Francisco). And having used quite a few MP3 players, I can say that 512 Mbytes is quite a lot of memory and the ability to store 120 or more songs will allow most music fans a while between fills.

Now let’s get to the reality of the Shuffle compared to competitive products. The Apple player lacks several key features found in products such as the Rio Forge 512MB Sport (I only choose the Rio for comparison because others have). For example, the Rio product offers superior navigation buttons, an LCD, and an FM tuner. You can even record from the tuner to the Flash memory. The Shuffle has no display, and only forward or back advance buttons. The biggest advantage for the Rio, however, comes in the fact that it sports removable Flash memory in the form of SD Cards. As I recently noted, I just bought a 1-Gbyte SD Card for $60 and Fry’s had them for $50 this past weekend. I’d argue that the extensible Rio is the bargain selling for around $175 at various Internet sites, although it surely lacks the sleek style of the Shuffle. Still that Rio may actually be a 4-Gbyte device a year from now with a small additional investment.

Now I wouldn’t fault someone for buying the iPod Shuffle. And note I don’t own a Rio. I actually use an e.Digital player that I got back in the Fall of 2001. What I do hope is that innovators get their due and frankly Apple has done almost no innovation from a technology perspective in the iPod family.

I don’t know for a fact who built the first Flash based MP3 player or the first hard-disk-based MP3 player. I do know that both happened way before Apple entered the market. In late 2001 in “Goin’ mobile” I discussed my experiences with several audio technologies including XM Satellite Radio and the e.Digital MXP 100. The latter was the star of a week long RV trip with its then capacious 340-Mbyte IBM Microdrive.

The e.Digital engineers came up with a truly innovative and rugged design that caches content in RAM, minimizing the time that the disk spins to avoid damage from shock. In addition to normal navigation features, you can also control the MXP 100 via voice for use while jogging or driving. The iPod followed the e.Digital and other disk-based players and did up the storage ante by moving to a 1.8-in disk drive. But iPod blazed no technology trail. And today I can buy a 2-Gbyte Flash-based card for my MXP 100.

To give credit where it’s due, Apple did overcome mighty obstacles in getting the record companies to sell their music in a downloadable format. In addition, the iTunes store was easier to use at launch than competing services and software, although my in-house teenage expert now rates Musicmatch superior. From a business perspective, Steve Jobs worked magic with the music owners.

Today, the choice of Apple compared with other brands is tough to gauge. Apple has a huge advantage in market share. And only Apple or Apple partners such as HP have access to the iTunes store. But Apple is true to its heritage in following a closed software model. I far prefer the more open Windows Media codec. What I’d really prefer is for everyone to license everyone elses’ codec technology, so that you can play music bought from any store on any player with digital rights intact. That may be wishful thinking. Microsoft, however, may make up ground quickly on Apple with its PlaysForSure initiative. And you can bet there will be far more products – auto stereos, boom boxes, and portable players – designed with Windows Media support than with Apple support.

Perhaps the closed Apple system was the key to Jobs striking the deal that he did with the music industry. The music owners are still far from easy to deal with given the complex relationship o artists, producers, lyricists, musicians, writers, and others. It’s still unacceptable that not every track on some albums is downloadable – perhaps because one lyricist or backup singer won’t agree to make it available.