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Samsung Steals the Brain Behind the iPod

Posted by Zonk on Mon Feb 27, 2006 06:57 AM
from the mmmm-delicious-brains dept.
Businesses Media Media (Apple) Music Apple Technology
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times reports that Samsung has hired the same programming genius who helped make the iPod so great to design its own music player. They imply that the new Samsung device is just as innovative." From the article: "Samsung's choice of Mr. Mercer also shows how much consumer electronics now rely on the powerful computing capabilities that defined personal computers two decades ago. Samsung is betting that it can win a share of the music market dominated by Apple by using new software that mimics what is found in powerful PC's. The Z5, shaped like a stick of gum, has a 1.8-inch color screen and a 35-hour battery life, and is priced at $199 to $249 to compete with the iPod Nano, which costs $149 to $249. Early reviews have been positive, and Samsung is hoping that the Z5 will work smoothly with the range of subscription music services that support the Microsoft PlaysForSure digital music standard."
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[+] The Latest iPod Assassination Attempt 310 comments
Insani-CTO writes "David Pogue at the New York Times reviews Samsung's new Z5, the latest attempt at an 'iPod killer' He gives it a pretty favorable review, though doesn't quite count the Nano as dead quite yet. From the piece: 'The Z5, then, will not cause any discernible dip in iPod market share. It does, however, deserve to be a hit for Samsung. For someone who wants a Nano that's not a Nano, it's a close enough match in looks, sleekness, capacity and crystal-clear software design. In fact, if iPod didn't loom over every conversation as the screamingly obvious point of comparison, the Z5 could be the next little thing.'"
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  • I wanna know what happened to (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mswope (242988) on Monday February 27 2006, @06:59AM (#14807342) Journal
    Z1 - Z4?

  • standard? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 27 2006, @07:00AM (#14807347)
    Microsoft PlaysForSure digital music standard

    That word does not mean what you think it means.
    • Samsung is [b]hoping[/b] that the Z5 will work smoothly with the range of subscription music services that support the Microsoft PlaysForSure digital music standard. Heh, yeah. Shouldn't they KnowForSure(TM) if it'll work smoothly?
    • Microsoft PlaysForSure digital music standard

      That word does not mean what you think it means

      Sure it does. It means the same thing as "FairPlay" or "Patriot Act." I'm sure they'll stop using 'em when we stop falling for 'em.

      TW

    • Re:standard? (Score:3, Informative)

      by samael (12612)
      It means:
      "An acknowledged measure of comparison for quantitative or qualitative value"

      Which is exactly what PlaysForsure is - a set of criteria that a digital music player has to fulfil in order to get the stamp of approval.

      I do wish people would learn to speak English before they criticised others.

  • So now Steve Jobs Throws a Chair? (Score:5, Funny)

    by putko (753330) on Monday February 27 2006, @07:03AM (#14807355) Homepage Journal
    So does Steve Jobs throw a chair now, and yell, "Anybody but Samsung!!"

    I bet not.

    He probably meditates on it, then eats a miso sandwich.
    • He's probably doing what's he's always been doing: Laughing all the way to the bank.

      Samsung's hiring of the same designer is nothing more than marketing hype. What Samsung hopes the public fails to realize, is that Steve Jobs is the guy who made the iPod what it is. PortalPlayer (the design company) actually delivered many iterations of the iPod that was much different from the final product. Each time, Jobs sent the device back with a laundry list of things wrong with it. Stuff that seemed completely out of place (e.g. extra bass boost because Jobs was slightly deaf) went into the design. PortalPlayer thought it was going to flop horribly after all the demands that Jobs had made. It was quite a shock to them when the iPod grabbed the market overnight.

      So I would take this story with a grain of salt. If Samsung doesn't realize that they've got a cat in the bag, they will soon enough.

      [Reference Article] [wired.com]
      • Stuff that seemed completely out of place (e.g. extra bass boost because Jobs was slightly deaf) went into the design

        I doubt Jobs' specific hearing problems had anything to do with that decision.

        Take a look at any consumer audio product built in the last 20 years; chances are it has some sort of "Super Mega Bass Boost" function available on it (low-end shelftop units in particular embrace this feature).

        People tend to think that audio with overemphasized low frequencies sounds fuller and louder, and therefor

  • neatish kinda (Score:4, Interesting)

    by akhomerun (893103) on Monday February 27 2006, @07:04AM (#14807357)
    this is probably going to a great MP3 player.

    but since it's not Apple, it's not going to really sell well at all. Plays For Sure doesn't really get you anywhere, either. The device will only sell well if it truly is a good device and is marketed.

    If I remember right, Samsung really wanted to make it big in the MP3 market. They had some statement a while ago saying they wanted to eventually be in Apple's position. This kind of stuff makes me think they truly are serious, but what they don't understand is that you can't just follow if you want to control a market, you absolutely have to lead.

    • Re:neatish kinda (Score:4, Informative)

      by ciroknight (601098) on Monday February 27 2006, @08:40AM (#14807687)
      It's also worthwhile to note how this thing stacks up to its "competitor", the iPod nano.

      Dimensions:
      Samsung's Z5: 1.66" x .45" x 3.54, 1.8" LCD, 35 Hr Battery Life
      iPod Nano: 1.6" x 0.27" x 3.5, 1.5" LCD, ~14 Hr Battery Life


      Take two Nanos, stack one on top of another and you get a realization of how thick this thing is. But, with that extra thickness you pick up twice as much battery life (that should be a no brainer, seeing as doubling the size would double the available room to stash a battery). The screen is larger, but only marginally, and from the pictures it's at a strange aspect ratio (like that of a Cellphone) compared to the Nano's more naturally shaped screen (4x3?). Also worthy to note that the interface is going to be strikingly different, and that the Nano has Apple's FairPlay DRM vs. Microsoft's WMP10-DRM and some other DRM system called "Janus" (according to its product spec sheet). The Samsung unit will only ship with DRM compatibility for Windows (Media Player 10, sorry Mac users), and the unit comes in Black and Silver.

      My opinion? It looks like a cellphone and an MP3 player got in a fight and the cellphone lost in a serious way. It's not particularly attractive looking with it's goofy offsized display, and the interface is questionable to say the least (the touchpad's square shape alone leaves one to question). It'll be interesting to see what impact, if any, it will have on the market.

      • Re:Plays for Sure (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Haeleth (414428)
        The iPod/iTunes/iTMS trinity has evolved as a natural "standard," and it's a good one.

        Can something be called a "standard" if the people who make it refuse to license it to anyone else, and indeed do everything they can to stop other people (e.g. Real) from interoperating with it?

        Sounds more like a monopoly than a standard to me.

        Apple's winning the digital music war because of good engineering

        Yeah. Sure. And not at all because their initial marketing advantage enabled them to lock in a huge customer base,
  • "We have this great new device that will kill the iPod! Just take our word for it! iPod=dead, yeah, our device is awesome!"
    They haven't shown that they can do anything the iPod can't do, so why would consumers switch?

  • ogg vorbis (Score:5, Informative)

    by Florian (2471) <cantsin@zedat.fu-berlin.de> on Monday February 27 2006, @07:05AM (#14807361) Homepage
    It should be of more relevance to Slashdot readers that the player supports Ogg Vorbis according to its spec sheet [samsung.com].

    -F

    • Re:ogg vorbis (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      But unfortunately it uses MTP [wikipedia.org] as a comunication protocol, so Linux and Mac users are out of luck.

      Is it really so hard for companies to make their players mass storage compatible for use in other operating systems or as a last resort?

      • Re:ogg vorbis (Score:2, Informative)

        by Iron E (948355)
        The iriver, Cowon iaudio and IOPS players all support OGG Vorbis - all three korean brands, so it seems that some people do care about the format. iriver and iaudio also have a big market share in korea (iPod is third, IIRC), so of course Samsung, a korean company will release a product that has at least the same features as their competitors.
  • It will demonstrate which of the following theories is closer to the truth, without being enough to be conclusive. Either:

    A) Steve Jobs is a creative genius who controls every bit of design and implementation of his great ideas, allowing the people working on his teams to come up with successfull products.

    or...

    B) Steve Jobs comes up/recognizes good initial ideas, then micro-manages his team too much, coming up with great products that might be even better if he let his senior team members have slight
  • but throw in a Korean woman and I will change my music player in a heartbeat!

  • Steal ?!? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mr Europe (657225) on Monday February 27 2006, @07:10AM (#14807376)
    Why to use word "steal" when somebody is fed up with company "A" and moves to company "S" ? He was owned by Apple was he ?
    • He was owned by Apple was he ?

      Silly rabbit. With modern capitalism you don't own someone. You just own their thoughts after they leave!

    • Re:Steal ?!? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ebooher (187230) on Monday February 27 2006, @07:49AM (#14807499) Homepage Journal

      We, as average /. reading Joes, do not know the whole story. You can not say that he was fed up with working for Apple, because his voice isn't in the article. In this instance we are supposed to read "Steal" as Apple paying $100,000 to do a job and Samsung coming along and saying "Hey, we know you're happy over there, but see we have these buckets full of cash that are going to waste and all and ...." then offering $900,000 to do the same job.

      However, *neither* viewpoint is accurate as referenced in the article as it states that Paul Mercer was *not* working for Apple when he developed the software that ran the iPod. He owned and operated his *own* company called Pixo that was contracted to provide the software for the iPod. He did, however, work for Apple back in the System 7 days as a Programmer

      He also is not working for Samsung. His new company, Iventor, Inc., has been contracted by Samsung to provide the software for their new Z5. It's a very small thing, grammatically, but an important one.

    • Right, in the XXI century people doesn't change their jobs because of their salary, because they don't like the company where they're working, they're "stolen".
    • It's not even clear to me that he is working for Samsung. It sounds to me like Mercer works for a small-device firmware company that he left Apple to start/join, and they happen to have contracted to Samsung to make a firmware for the Z5.
      But of course, it's a much better sounding headline if you put words like "steals" in it.
  • No video. Less easy to use transfer software. Lame.
  • WTF! OMG! Samsung has stolen a brain!

    Did they just put it in a jar? Or did they slice it up and fed it to their employees? Eww...

    Cannibalism for market share is really bad, you think that in current time, there are more civilized means to gain market share. Bribery, illegal bundling and abuse of monopolies, unfair competition. You know, those kind of things...

  • It will fail for one reason... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bbzzdd (769894) on Monday February 27 2006, @07:20AM (#14807391)

    ...it's not an iPod. It's like at Christmas getting a cheap Korean knockoff of the year's hot item. To beat the iPod you have to leapfrog it not clone it.

  • Two elements of the iPod's hardware made it great: the scrollwheel and the firewire connection (pre USB 2). The software is good, but nothing extraordinary.
  • Nice battery life .. other than that I see no reason to choose it over an iPod . In fact several disadvantages.
    Now Ogg support is nice (something which apple could easily do ,hopefully this will spur them on) , but it just doesn't have the ipod interface or iTunes.
    It looks fairly clone-ish though a bit rougher in design.
    I can't comment on sound quality , and the battery life claims are known to be exaggerated in the industry.
    All in all it looks like just another iPod Killer , like all those that have gone b

  • Kleenex... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by canning (228134) on Monday February 27 2006, @07:30AM (#14807423) Homepage
    The iPod is the "Kleenex" of the mp3 world. Samsung is going to have to hire more than just the programmer.

    Let be honest, it's mainly not what's in the iPod that makes it sell, it's how it looks.
    • Let be honest, it's mainly not what's in the iPod that makes it sell, it's how it looks.

      I'd argue that it's more the surity of the product.

      With an iPod, you know exactly what your getting, and are, more or less assurred of the end product. With most other mp3 players, somethign has been reduced, fudged, removed, etc, etc, and you're not too sure if you should get it or not.

      I have to say were it not for the lower hard disc space on this Z5 player, I would go for it.

  • Taint? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cortana (588495) <`sam' `at' `robots.org.uk'> on Monday February 27 2006, @07:33AM (#14807434) Homepage
    Will he not be tainted by having had access to (and, in fact, creating) so much of Apple's intellectual 'property'?

  • To beat the iPod... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nexum (516661) on Monday February 27 2006, @07:33AM (#14807435)
    It's not about the device it's about iTunes as much as anything else. The device is just one part of the equation - this is why this product and the countless ones before it (see Sony discontinuing the 'bean', Dell discontinuing hard-drive based players etc.) will fail.

    I don't understand it sometimes... companies like Samsung have incredible resources, and could easily start to build an iTunes software competitor, which also works with PlaysForSure, rather than relying on WMP. It's just symptomatic of a 'me-too' technology industry culture that attempts to eat like a cancer at the few innovators left.

    It's not just about the iPod. iPod has powerful friends in iTunes and iTMS. You might stand a chance if you can get two competent and competitive products out of the three in the music-chain (Device-Software-OnlineStore), but concentrating on the iPod is like shooting blanks... that's not how to attack the problem.

    Dodgy Analogy: It's like in any number of old-time video games where you come up against a boss enemy, and you can expend all your ammo shooting him in the chest (iPod), but you have to go for the weakspot (eyes, exposed brain a la HL etc.) which is the rest of the chain.
  • Expect a torrent of lawsuits if they make anything that even vaguely resembles an apple product.

  • What makes an iPod an iPod is not the programming (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dimer0 (461593) on Monday February 27 2006, @07:35AM (#14807443)
    The programming/programmer isn't what made the iPod an iPod. When I turn on one of my 3 iPods, I don't say "man, that coder sure r00leZ!".

    Something to do with style, quality, user interface, ...

  • Good for Samsung (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ROOK*CA (703602)
    Competition is always a good thing for the consumer, although given Apple's dominate position and the excellent iPod/iTMS combo it's going to be a real challenge to even come close to unseating them from the top dog position (especially given that Apple could always just start licensing Fair Play if anyone looks to be getting close). It does however appear that the Samsung device is missing a few things ... podcasts? video? (yeah I know who watches video on their little iPod screen anyways? well until you
  • Isn't a big part of the iPod's appeal the "connected" iTunes site?

    FWIW, the Samsung thing looks like "iPod with everything round made square" to me.
  • The New York Times reports that Samsung has hired the same programming genius who helped make the iPod so great to design its own music player

    "Genius" indeed. Since when did you need to be genius to implement something as trivial as an mp3 player?
  • That sounds so pathetic.

    [Rants On Unjustified=SoTrue]
    First companies put their own engineers to ass feeding them with shit work. Then they hire "cool consultant" to do the job, claiming that it's own engineers are "incapabable". When own engineer tells management "We need X, Y & Z to make the product rock", management tells them to "Too expensive, you know shit, sod off, file an issue with our issue tracking system, etc." When expensive consultant tells management "You need X, Y & Z to make the prod
  • The story they're trying to give you is "Samsung hired the brains behind the iPod", when really, the story is "Samsung hired a guy who founded the company that provided the OS on the early generation iPod, but who hasn't actually worked for Apple since 1994".

    i.e., they want you to think that this means Samsung is going to kill the iPod, when really it just means they're desperate.

    The iPod's interface is great, sure, but if it takes hiring this particular guy for them to come up with a better one, that's jus

  • Don't We Outsource Programmers? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GaryPatterson (852699) on Monday February 27 2006, @08:34AM (#14807656)
    The iPod is not a software device only - the hardware is a big part of its success.

    It doesn't take a genius to write the software for the iPod. It's well-written, yes, but my Nano has crashed a couple of times, so it's far from perfect.

    The genius of the iPod comes from the hardware - the feel of the device when you first touch it, the click wheel that controls the menus so easily and intuitively (I've seen people learn to use the iPod is ten seconds from a standing start). The software is important, but the hardware is where the genius is.

    Oh, and there's iTunes and the music store. They're good too!

    Samsung employed the wrong person. They wanted Johnathan Ives, not some developer.
    • Actually, their player looks worse than the iPod. Look: here [samsung.com]. While it's an obvious rip-off (the menu looks especially familiar, and, oh look, it's a click-square...), it just looks cluttered and cheap compared to the reference product from Cupertino.
        • The YP-Z5 plays MP3, WMA, WMA-DRM10, JPEG and OGG Vorbis formats.

          Heh, you're right! Not many players out there support OGG Vorbis... I wonder if it'll do FLAC as well. Seems like an iPod killer for open source geeks. It says it supports all the popular music formats, but it doesn't support AAC or AAC-DRM files. I would think DRM'd AAC files are pretty popular with over a billion of them out there from iTunes Music Store.

    • Re:What I like about the Koreans (Score:4, Funny)

      by afaik_ianal (918433) on Monday February 27 2006, @07:25AM (#14807406) Journal
      You give them an idea and they can clone it better than anyone.

      No, no. They just claim to clone it. On closer inspection, you'll see that they faked their results :P. /ducks

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