Creative Gunning For the iPod 696
yashchopra writes "CTZ is running an article where Creative's main goal in 2005 is to take away market shares from Apple's iPod music player, which they believe is very possible. The publication also have some information on the upcoming flash MP3 player standards that we will see this year. "While many companies are looking forward to their flash MP3 players, Creative has other plans. Creative was one of the most popular exhibitors on the show floor with their Zen Micro and Zen Touch players on display. Creative's sole goal this year is to take away some market shares from Apple's iPod. The company believes it to be a possible task, as iPod is limited to iTunes when it comes to purchasing music online and with Creative's products, you will be able to purchase music from major online vendors. The ability to download and listen music from any major online retailer and the price are what Creative is using as their marketing strategies to compete against Apple's iPod. But other than that, Creative's products look very much like the iPod with a few changes."
Any major retailer? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, all of them except for *the* major online retailer that is.
I wish them luck. Competition is good.
Re:Any major retailer? (Score:2)
If you could do that, you'd get good prices, a huge selection of music, and all supplied with one program that connects perfectly to your music player.
Of course politics and other such crap will make such a thing improbable at best.
Re:Any major retailer? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Any major retailer? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Any major retailer? (Score:3, Insightful)
Until the Russian government wants a favour from one or more of the big media conglomerates and in return leans on the operators of allofmp3 to hand over the payment details of every customer they ever had.
File sharers only get sued if they are still sharing, these guys have your card details and so effectively everything anyone might ever want to know to jump on you froma great height.
a full CD would still be between 1 and 2 dollars American
Stuff which falls off
Re:Any major retailer? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Any major retailer? (Score:3, Interesting)
Pirated mp3s? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Any major retailer? (Score:3, Insightful)
Some of us do have large collections of purchased cds that we have personally ripped to mp3. Probably 90%+ of my mp3s are personal rips and generally if I download mp3s from an artist and really like them, I go out and buy the CD. Not out of some legal obligation but to partonize the artist (though sadly I do end up partonizing a lot of middle-men).
Where did you get your bullshit statistic anyw
I question your percentages (Score:3, Interesting)
I do have other MP3 files, but those were released by the author. At least, I trust that sites like Salon.com actually have the rights to distrubute the music they publish online. There's so much music being distributed free by the musicians as samples that I suspect that that is what the recording industry is
Re:Any major retailer? (Score:3, Interesting)
10 million iPods sold.
230 million tracks sold at iTMS
Averages out to a whopping 23 tracks per iPod.
BTW, I have a 1st gen 5 Gb iPod. My SO has an iPod mini. Both are about 80% full. All tracks are from CDs we own.
Re:Creative wins in sound quality (Score:5, Funny)
I knew a guy who was saying some stuff, so we did comparisons and junk, and found out that everything I own or bought or borrowed from another guy totally are better than other things that I don't have.
(this has been a Slashdot product review)
Re:Creative wins in sound quality (Score:3, Informative)
You'll pardon me if I lend absolutely zero relevance to this claim. Unless you're doing at least volume normalizing with a meter, with identical tracks, preferably not lossy-compressed, preferably blinded comparisons, sound quality comparisons are useless. Louder music a
Re:Creative wins in sound quality (Score:3, Insightful)
i'm not discounting your experience, but don't complain when people think you're spewing bullshit if you don't provide enough information.
I've got a Creative Nomad (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I've got a Creative Nomad (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds to me like a bit of a euphemism for "The player Creative shipped was a pile of turd and didn't work as advertised, but a 50MB download later and I am now trying to figure my way through the awkward setup procedure. Here's hoping it works!"
In London, I don't think I've seen a single person with an MP3 player other than an iPod - no kidding - and they're expensive here. I'm sure they exist, but people hide them...like something they're to be ashamed of. So the suggestion that friends are jealous of you sounds a little weak.
(Disclaimer: I, like all the other non-anal-retentives on here, have an iPod. Oldskool 10Gb.)
iqu
Re:I've got a Creative Nomad (Score:3)
Then again, the main problem with copying is that it's just flattery, when you copy something you can never be better than the original. The original design features 'originality' and the company (apple) are respected for that, and so when a consumer will look for a player, they know the originality is coming from apple, and the knock off to be coming from creative. It's not a good marketing stance to take on an
Re:I've got a Creative Nomad (Score:4, Insightful)
This comment mystifies me. How can you tell that they're doing nothing? If they were doing something, how could you tell? Are people supposed to dance like in the commercials to prove to you that they're enjoying their iPods? Do you carefully watch their faces, and if a wave of orgasm isn't apparent, do you conclude that they're just poseurs?
One might posit that a sub-section of iPod users buy iPods because they're the thing to have right now based on what we know of human nature, but to conclude that on the weak evidence you have gathered makes you a real Dick Fucking Tracy. (Or would that be Sherlock Fucking Holmes?)
Re:I've got a Creative Nomad (Score:5, Insightful)
This compared to a full year of AppleCare with less a week's turnaround time if I have problems? I'll pay extra for the piece of mind, thank you. Nevermind that Apple, while not perfect, is a company I'd far prefer to support than Creative.
If that's left you scratching your head, do some research on Creative's driver support for their hardware, the demise of Aureal (and what happened to Aureal's technology afterward), and the patent blackmailing of iD re: Doom 3 and EAX support. The less money I give Creative, the better I feel.
Re:I've got a Creative Nomad (Score:5, Informative)
And the treatment you get with AppleCare is amazing. I just got through writing a long comment about my AppleCare experience. The key phrase: "Here's your new one."
Re:I've got a Creative Nomad (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I've got a Creative Nomad (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure I understand why you'd want to do that. Seriously, I am curious.
If you are just listening to part and then not listening to anything and then coming back to it, the iPod will remember where you were.
Close isn't going to cut it (Score:5, Insightful)
Usability, physical beauty, and simplicity.
News flash: those little things are the reason people are buying a an iPod, buying a Tivo, etc, and not your product, Creative. My girlfriend didn't want to carry around something that looked like an angry PDA, so I got her an iPod and she's happy, and her friends are buying them now. My parents didn't want a home media center computer in their living room because they can barely handle their current computer, so I got them a Tivo and they're happy, and their friends are buying them now.
Are there cheaper products out that do the same dang thing? Sure. But they're not as usable, not as attractive, and not as simple. And sorry, Creative, but putting a "Mesmerizing Blue LED Back Light" isn't going to cut it. Those were "Mesmerizing" back in 2002. You're not going to get money out of my pocket by looking like a rice-boy's Civic dashboard.
And as long as the Zen Micro has a blatant pair of nipples [creative.com] on the touchpad, my girlfriend's not going to use it either.
Re:Close isn't going to cut it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Close isn't going to cut it (Score:3, Insightful)
They would of course need to come up with a simple look of their own, in stead of badly emulating the over-styled I-Pod.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Close isn't going to cut it (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd just like to remind you folks that there was also a time when Apple had the lock on icon-based, desktop-style operating systems for Personal Computers, and their enviable market share was bolstered by vertical integration. Can you blame Creative for seeing
Re:Close isn't going to cut it (Score:2, Interesting)
OTOH, I like how the Zen Micro offers a variety of colours, including a few I really like (particularly the silver and purple models). I admit I'm not fond of that blue backlight, but I still prefer the Zen Micro over the iPod, visually-speaking.
Oh, and if your girlfriend doesn't like the "nipples", maybe she should avoid using any keyboard. Every
Re:Close isn't going to cut it (Score:2)
Granted, I'm not really interested in either player, as neither of them support Vorbis, but from what I've seen, I'd take the Zen Micro over an iPod any day.
Re:Close isn't going to cut it (Score:2)
That said - yeah, the Zen Micro is downright fugly. iPod is "cute". And I feel sorry for all those people who bought one of those iRiver devices to find few firmware updates and a lame interface, but hey - at least more hard drive space right?
Re:Close isn't going to cut it (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not trashing the iPod, it's great, I just bought a mini for my sister, mostly for the same reason as your girlfriend's.
But that doesn't mean other's aren't very good players as well. Creative's software is as good as iTunes and the players are as easy to use. Two out of three ain't bad. Add to that better battery life (and user replacable for when it does fail completely) and that's the myth of Apple's technical superiority is gone.
The iPod is all about looks compared to these Creative players and I believe Creative can slice into Apple's marketshare a fair bit. Nobody is saying they will "beat apple" as others seem to interpret the statements.
Competition is good!
Re:Close isn't going to cut it (Score:5, Informative)
Does it offer unlimited bitrate ripping of music into AAC, MP3, AIFF, WAV and Apple Lossless?
Does it offer unbridled speed burning of Audio CDs?
Does it offer unbridled speed burning of MP3 CDs?
Does it offer complete integration with the music store?
Does it offer rendezvous library sharing?
Does it offer smart playlists?
Does it offer built in capability to back up your library to DVD or CDR with one click?
Does it offer an interface as easy to use, and as elegant as iTunes?
No.
Re:Close isn't going to cut it (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, Smart Playlists do something complex, but even a non-savvy user can figure them out. The same principle (a "live" file system query) is the basis for Smart Folders in OSX Tiger.
Back to the iPod/iTunes thing.
Want an automatically updated playlist of every James Taylor song from the 70's? Done (wife's playlist). Any song with "love" in the title, that WASN'T sung by George Michael? Done. Rip a new CD, and those lists automatically reflect any songs that match that criteria. How about any song from the "Rock" genre that hasn't been played in the past 15 days? Done. Songs with a rating of **** or higher? Just re-rate them and boom... the higher rated songs are now part of that list. Done.
As for me, it doesn't bother me that it's a proprietary solution at all. I'm much more concerned about whether or not the whole system works. People seem to have accepted the notion of the phone company no longer being in charge of the phone, in large part because the cost benefit of having them manage it wasn't strong enough to justify the cost. For me, the cost benefit of usability and integration between iPod/iTunes/iTMS is high enough to justify the price.
Guess that's why some people buy Apple, and some don't. There's still a certain amount of "geek chic" that is similar to my preference for a manual transmission in my sports cars. "I want to be in control, and ease-of-use & convenience get in my way!"
Whether we want to admit it or not, that drives much of the "advanced user" label. It's why we use C or C++ when VB or Delphi would make more sense and sometimes the reason we build our own PC's instead of buying one off-the-shelf. Same thing with worrying about encoding bit-rate for music that we listen to in a car (where there's less than 70 dB of available dynamic range... if you're lucky) or via earbuds, where ambient noise is even higher. Good luck hearing more than 3-4% of THD in such circumstances.
These are generalizations, I know. However, there's an element of truth to this for most of the advanced users I know in most any discipline.
Tim
P.S. iTunes: rip cd, plug in iPod. No "select library, select album, drag to player." It can auto-sync when it detects the iPod is plugged in. Pretty "creative"... Eh?
Re:Close isn't going to cut it (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.xonio.com/features/feature_12585175.ht
It's in German, but there isn't a whole lot of text anyway, mostly just data. Festplatte translates to hard drive, in case you're wondering. The iPod mini plays for 8:17, the Zen Micro stops at 7:10. The model with the best battery life-time in the iPod mini form factor is the TEAC MP-1000 (17:39), but then it only sports 1.5 GB so it might as well be flash based. The best hard drive based is the iriver iHP-100 at 18:28.
That said, they don't seem to say anything at all about their testing methods. Granted, it's not that difficult: they probably just took a new-ish player, connected it to AC as long as it wants to be, and then played some music - the same music for all players, obviously, to take into account different power usage at different bit rates and such. But who knows if that's what they did, they don't say. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, though, since their previous reviews always seemed to be quite good.
If anybody has got more battery longevity tests that indicate different results be my guest. I'm on the market for another mp3 player (my old mini-CD based Philips one is just about dead now), and I fell in love with the mini-HD form factor when I saw the first models and now it comes to down to either the iPod mini or the Zen Micro. Currently, I leaning heavily towards the iPod mini - especially due to the fact that it seems to be cheaper in these parts.
Newssflash (Score:3, Insightful)
They are flying off the shelves because of the nifty commercials with shadows dancing to Jet. They are flying off the shelves because U2 says to buy one. They are flying off the shelves because th
Re:Newssflash (Score:5, Informative)
The iPod is more popular because it was the first out of the gate, had far more storage than the Flash memory offerings, looked/looks better than any other product available today and is far more simple to use than Creative's or anyone else's device. (iTunes is easy, scroll wheel is a godsend) The last one is particularly important, considering that many/most people are barely computer-literate and are rather frightened of technology.
Marketing and envious, keeping-up-with-the-Jones buying has certainly put the iPod where it is today. But the initial and ongoing popularity is because it is simply the best product available. The Creative product IS good, but the iPod is better.
Not commercials - network effect taking hold (Score:3, Interesting)
The reason why the iPod is really taking off is the network effect - the sheer value of having so many devices around. You have more people around that know how to use them, more people around that reccomend them, and so on - and lastly because there are so many players you have a HUGE accessory mark
Major online vendors? (Score:5, Insightful)
My week is now ready (Score:5, Funny)
iTunes GAINING market share every quarter (Score:4, Insightful)
At best they can hope to slow the dominance!
The biggest most MAJOR retailer of songs is apple with over 70% of the market for sold files.
I hardly see how they can claim that they support "ANY major vendor" without supporting the DRM protected MPEG 2 AAC file format.
besides, apples the AUDIO in apple DRM is the most leightweight, and highest quality (48 frequency "bins' instead of 32, more amplitude, more upper frequ3encies) than mp3 and wma.
Digital Restriction Management sucks, but at least apple's is a little less hostile than microsoft's and Real's. (number of machines, phone-homes, number of allowed lost replacements, etc)
Great new creative gear... (Score:2, Insightful)
"Major online retailer" (Score:3, Insightful)
"Will work with anything except the iTunes store" isn't that great a selling point, IMHO...
Re:"Major online retailer" (Score:2, Interesting)
Amusingly enough, I tried one on a friend's Creative MuVo last week. It played, but the timestamp was utterly confused by the variable bit-rate.
So while it is just possible that Creative can find a definition of 'major retailer' that makes their claim accurate, they don't work that well with any I'd frequent.
Good luck. (Score:2)
Frankly, I don't see either happening. If apple sell more ipods than creative, then creative would lose market share. And I can't see that there are many people who would dump their iPod and buy a creative, especially since all their iTunes purchases wont play on it.
Creatives best shot this year is to produce a flash player that looks and plays
Re:Good luck. (Score:2)
Actually that's not true.
Since Apple has already a huge market share, selling more mp3 players than creative is not enough. If they sell just slighty more ipods than creative, they could very well be losing market share. When you are the market leader, you have to sell MUCH more than your competitors to keep your market share.
Re:Good luck. (Score:2)
No, not necesarily, since the market is expanding. Creative simply needs to capture more of the emerging portion of the market than Apple does to gain market share. I highly doubt that will happen though, since perhaps the biggest reason the market is expanding this way is interest in Apple iPod products, so most of the emerging part of the market will go to Apple.
Re:Good luck. (Score:5, Interesting)
Uh, no. If A sold 990 units last year and B sold 10, then A has 99% market share and B has 1%. If this year A sells 600 units and B sells 400, A still has sold more than B but A's market share has dropped from 99% to 60% while B's has gone from 1% to 40%.
If you're talking about total market penetration of players in the field, then at the end of last year, A had 99% in the field. At the end of this year, A has 990+600/2000=79.5% of the number of widgets in the field.
Either way, A's market share has decreased even though they've still sold more units than B.
Creative seems more portable. (Score:3, Insightful)
The iPod always seems to rely heavily on iTunes, not just the store, but the software itself. For example multiple playlist creation and on fly editing (you can see whay songs are coming up and remove them if you want to) can be done directly on the Zen, I believe the iPod will need synching with iTunes to do the same.
There is far more freedom to copy songs to and from the Zen, to multiple machines, something that is difficult if not impossible to do on the iPod.
Noone can deny iPod's market share but the design seemed to stick in 2002/3, the Zen has overtaken Apple with more features, and they easily beat them in price.
Re:Creative seems more portable. (Score:3, Interesting)
It makes music management simple. It's fast. It's easy.
I've never heard anyone rave about Creative's music jukebox management software, but I have heard people rave about Apple's iTunes. People can actually use it's features; every upgrade/version adds more functionality that people actually like:
Rip with one button
Streaming libraries to multiple computers
Smart playlists
Synch to the iPod with zero interaction
Party playlist
Automatical
Re:Creative seems more portable. (Score:5, Informative)
- The headphone jack is screwed up. Occasionally I'll only hear out of one ear (it's not the headphones, I've tried several pairs). The Zen Xtra is notorious for having headphone jack problems.
- You need to install drivers and a Windows Explorer extension before you can move files to and from the thing. Why can't it just be a plain USB mass storage device? What about plug and play?
- Controls: That stupid scroll wheel/button is a terribly stupid idea. I've gotten used to it, but it's really clumsy to use.
- Interface: the lag between pushing a button and its effect is at least half a second, more if a song is playing. It's really irritating to be scrolling through a huge list of artists and stopping when I see the one I want, only to have it keep scrolling another 20 names because it didn't notice that I stopped holding the control down.
- The battery cover does not attach snugly. There's about a millimeter gap between the cover and the unit that I can push closed, but it just snaps back out. It's been like that since day one.
I've never used an iPod, so this isn't meant to be a comparison between the two. The Zen Xtra is just plain crap.
Re:Creative seems more portable. (Score:3, Informative)
The mandatory installation of QuickTime is because, well, iTunes REQUIRES QuickTime - QuickTime is more then just a media player, it's actually also a large chunk of Apple's Carbon APIs ported to Windows. iTunes us
News Flash!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Of course Creative wants to take market share from Apple. Why is this news??? Are nerds oblivious to simple economics?
Man, this must really be a slow news day.
Creative is so wrong... (Score:5, Informative)
iPod is limited to iTunes when it comes to purchasing music online
That's total BS, and I hope people don't think that this is true. You can purchase music anywhere online that has the Mp3 or AAC formats. Audible.com is a good example of where to get audio books. And allofmp3.com (although maybe not so much on the up-and-up) is another place to get music online. I'll leave the copy and paste of these sites as an exercise to the reader, since I'm not trying to pimp them or anything.
But come on folks, you can put almost ANY mp3 on your iPod, and it certainly doesn't mean you have to use only iTunes for your online music. It's also possible to buy music from iTunes and load it on ANY music player. There are programs out there (Hymn) to remove the security from the iTunes music, and them convert to Mp3. Google has your answers.
This is just a way for Creative to scare people away from the iPod, and it is crap.
Re:Creative is so wrong... (Score:3, Interesting)
But when is Creative finaly gonna play AAC files so I can buy tunes from the frigging' iTunes store!?
Re:Creative is so wrong... (Score:5, Informative)
I can't answer that question, but there are a few players that will play pure AAC files (Philips make some, I'm sure there are others). I almost bought one that used mini-CDs a few years ago. While they won't play m4p songs from iTMS directly, they will play them with with no loss of quality if you run them through Hymn first.
Re:Creative is so wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
It is in the best interest of iPod users that people buy product by other manufacturers!
I agree with the CD thing, though. I am not going to buy an 128K DRMed album when I can get the same one for the same price on CD and do whatever I wish with it.
They still don't get the market (Score:5, Interesting)
Make it look great, make it easy to use, and people will buy it. Simple as that, Creative...
Re:They still don't get the market (Score:2)
i completely agree with this... why would 99 cent download services be a big consideration when purchasing $99 to $599 music devices? the device better be worth the money on its own merit instead of touting the download service because for many, music device is where they spend most of the money.
online vendor compatibility is not a concern because catalogs are nearly the same. about the
I hope they pull it off (Score:2)
Why iPod rules (Score:5, Interesting)
It's about simplicity.
With regards to the iPod shuffle - yes there are other Flash mp3 players. But for consumers like my mother, who has issues navigating the file system, she doesn't have to (a) rip a cd and then (b) find where her ripped mp3's are to (c) copy them across to her flash player.
With an iPod, she simply sticks in her device to charge, and music syncs between the iPod and iTunes automatically. If she wants to burn a CD she sticks one into the computer and presses a single button: import. She doesn't need to know anything about which codec to burn a cd with (mp3/aac/wmv), or where on the filesystem they end up, or dragging an dropping. It happens for her automatically.
Simplicity and doing what it does do well - is where the iPod shines. If companies want to eat at the iPod market share, it's not about bombarding the customer with a shitload of features. Instead, make a music player, make it easy to import music (this includes minimising any DRM), and make the device SIMPLE to use. I want to be able to explain how it works to my mum in 60 seconds, and to have her "get it". If you can do that, then you've got a product which has a chance.
Software developers and marketers, learn from Apple. Simplicity is king. Don't cause the customer headaches, and they will come back for more.
Re:Why iPod rules (Score:3, Insightful)
Look at Sony's awful NetMD software or Creative's poorly thought out, slow and unstable music organizer for their Muvo line. It's not all that difficult a problem to solve, but Apple seems to be the only one that puts any engineering effort into it.
Please (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, couldn't resist
Creative does not "Get it" (Score:2)
I read several opinion articles about how the ipod mini did'nt compare to some other offerings if you looked at how much storage it had, how many different formats it supported and so on.
People buy apple products for two primary reasons.
1. Ease of use
2. Style
You want to know why the Ipod, Ipod Mini are successful and probably the Mac Mini as well? Because they are COOL.
Price concious consumers do NOT factor that in when deciding what to purcha
Creative needs to improve reliability (Score:5, Funny)
I did everything Creative recommended, the built in scan-disk, formatting the disk, upgrading the firmware but in the end it was still locking up nearly every time the thing was turned on! A quick google search turned up posts on the creative forum that showed that I am not alone in this problem. Even reviews of the player mention that it froze up, but most just gloss over it.
It is a shame that the player had these problems because my first impression of the Zen Touch was a quality player. It's made from metal, not plastic, has a good screen, fantastic battery life. Altogether better construction and design than the iPod and cheaper too.
I'm giving them a chance to replace the player when they have stock but I'm not impressed by these problems and my next purchase probably won't be a Creative product.
Re:Creative needs to improve reliability (Score:5, Informative)
In my opinion, that's a sign of a major difference between the way Creative thinks of their products and the way Apple thinks of theirs.
When my old-school 5 GB iPod died last year, I decided, instead of spending $250 to repair it, that I'd spend $50 more and get a new 20 GB model. (Mine was long out of warranty, you see. Always buy AppleCare, y'all!)
Mine came in the mail --I bought it from the online Apple Store -- and it worked great for a few days, but then it started acting funny. I called Apple, and without even really listening to my problem, the guy says, "I see from your mailing address that you're about 20 minutes from the Apple Store So-n-So. Can you take it in there? I can make you an appointment in half an hour, if that's good for you."
I said sure, got in my car and drove to the Apple Store. When I got there I went to the "genius bar" and introduced myself, and one of the guys behind it said, "Oh, hi. Here." And he handed me a brand new 20 GB iPod, still in the box.
I should have just sprinted for the door, of course, but I stood there looking stupid instead. He told me that Apple policy for people with misbehaving iPods that are still covered under warranty is for the customer, if possible, to just take it in to the nearest Apple store and exchange it for a brand new one of comparable size and features, no questions asked. They didn't even have any paperwork. Just "Sorry for the inconvenience. Here's your new one."
How many computer or consumer-electronics companies do you know whose official, written company policy is "Sorry for the inconvenience, here's your new one?"
Re:Creative needs to improve reliability (Score:3, Interesting)
This, I think, is why Apple is going to stay at the top of the portable music market. They seem to be the only ones that realize that the relationship with the customer needs to continue after the device is purchased. (With their business plan being based on iTMS, it's actually crucial that this relationship continues.)
My MP3 player, an Archos Gmini 400, died around New Year's. I'm fairly certain it was a hard drive failure, based on the sounds it was making. I sent a message to Archos' customer servic
Re:Creative needs to improve reliability (Score:3, Informative)
I think the going rate for a DIY battery replacement kit is around $25. Check out OWC [macsales.com]. Make sure you get a kit that includes the tool(s) you need to open the case. The only horror stories I've heard are from people that I wouldn't trust to open a car door. =)
They won't make a dent unless... (Score:2, Troll)
"Advantages" and "features" and all the other stuff won't mean a thing unless they get it on TV where people can see it. People got iPod because it has the apple logo on it. That's it! The whole reason. Half the people I know who got one still haven't figured out how to use the thing! A good portion of the rest have since decided they don't like listening to music through ear-phones... they just got it because it looked nice.
We're geeks here... we like features, flexibility, thin
To Mr. Sim (Score:5, Interesting)
Mr. Sim Wong Hoo, it is a pleasure to write to you.
To familiarize the readers, Creative has a long running bout with the reigning king, the Apple iPod [apple.com]. In fact, just last November, you, Mr. Sim, "declared war [asia1.com.sg]" on the iPod. . And Today, you had even more fighting words [channelnewsasia.com] for the newest addition to the iPod platform, the iPod Shuffle [apple.com]:
I am not here to discuss your comment about the Chinese, nor am I here to bash you personally or your company. I am not even here to talk technical specs, because frankly the lack of a male USB port on your Micro Slim is currently the least of your worries right now.
You are undoubtedly a smart guy, being where you are now. You have sold over 2 million MP3 players last Christmas season, no mean feat at all (vs 4M iPod). There is no doubt that your company Creative is a successful one.
But let me ask you this: You have declared War, but Do you want to WIN this war? Absolutely demolish all that is iPod and steal all the glory? Well then read on because as it stands, this is a War you will live or die for. If you want to live, please consider my Two Cents:
1) Tip #1: Think like the underdog. If you want to be a market maker, you need to grow up and act like one. We all learned about "Perfect Competition" in school, how it meant that there was no excess profit and that the only way to get out of that bind was to differentiate yourself. Right now, iPod is winning because it is differentiable from you (brand name, iTunes integration). How are you winning? What is your battle cry?
For the last two years, Creative has acted just like the "Chinese" me-toos (as you so put down in your latest comment) while Apple has been the market maker through and through. Here are some examples:
When the first generation Apple iPod was released, you still were selling the MP3 jukebox [ign.com] ($480) that could not fast-forward or rewind (true), that looked like a spaceship (definitely), and still took 20 seconds to transfer a song (USB1.0). Quickly, your team raced to build a better looking version, after the success of the big iPod.
The success of the iPod touch interface was also "borrowed" on your Zen-Touch line. And finally, after the Apple iPod Mini was announced, you surprisingly announced the new line of Zen Micro's in 10 colors.
See, I like supporting the "underdog." I like supporting the brightest and most inventive minds. I support Tivoli Audio [tivoliaudio.com], Sirius satellite radio [siriusradio.com], I support many of OS X's small developers' [obdev.at] applications, I support the Treo 600 [treonauts.com], Brian Transeau [bt-network.org]'s music and a million gazillion other small companies out there with insanely great ideas. These are premium but differentiable products that people are willing to spend extra money on.
Make something special, Be somebody special. We want that for your kids right? So incorporate that into your technological children, the Muvo's and the Zen's. Because Nobody honestly lusts to buy a me-too product.
2) Tip #2: Make us shit in o
Re:To Mr. Sim (Score:5, Funny)
This is called diarrhea. I don't think it's the cars that are causing it. Please see your physician.
Re:To Mr. Sim (Score:5, Funny)
I think the battle cry is "Not in the face, not in the face!"
this is crap and not true! (Score:5, Informative)
price?? (Score:4, Insightful)
when i saw steve job's view of the "ipod marketshare" in the MWSF keynote from "before ipod mini" and "after ipod mini" one thing came to mind: everyone in the flash market better get ready to pack up their bags and leave, because apple's taking over in a big way. i don't think anyone else stands a chance anymore because no one can compete with apple's marketing by mindshare or cool-factor.
Who cares which store it's connected to? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Who cares which store it's connected to? (Score:3, Interesting)
Recipy for market take-over: Mobile P2P (Score:2, Interesting)
Equip the players with Bluetooth and or Infrared so that I can easily copy songs from my mate if I want to.
Make it possible for users to P2P & browse from one device to another while on a train without even knowing each other. Great way to socialize too!
"Hey is that you with the new Britney Spears album? Is it any good? Mind if I copy it? Wanna have a drink toge
In other news.... (Score:5, Funny)
Work on making a better player, not beating Apple (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone here talks about the music format (AAC, MP3, Ogg, WMA, etc.), but most people just don't care. Apple does not sell the iPod as an "AAC Player", yet Creative sells an "MP3 Player". These are music players. Quit selling a format. Sell a player.
Creative needs to make a product that gets the stellar reviews of the iPod. When I was considering alternative players to my iPod, including Creative, I was amazed that Creative's players had a significant number of complaints among all the reviewers at places like Amazon. No one wants a player that sounds iffy. If I buy an iPod, I know it'll work.
Two final points: Where's FireWire? USB 2.0 High-speed is supposed to be as fast, but many say it just isn't. Also, will Creative offer incentives on their product? Apple's "Jam and Cram" rebate this past fall meant many people picked up 20 GB iPods for $69 (after $200 rebate, received when buying an iPod with a laptop).
Creative, just focus on what your player does, caring about Apple only as much as you make your product easy to interoperate anywhere an iPod does.
How about.. (Score:5, Funny)
Creative have been at this for long enough, and I don't see why they don't just channel all this hype up into a bloody good product rather than releasing products which try and keep up with what Apple are doing. Nothing of theirs that I have seen so far has been particularly innovative - just one big game of catchup.
Make the killer product ffs and then wow us with it..
Stick with Apple (Score:5, Informative)
I bought a spiffy new flash 128 Mb Creative Muvo that had clearly been rushed to market. When it locked up about three months later, I learned it had not one but TWO crippling bugs.
1. Unplugging the Muvo's USB connection without doing the "Safely Remove Hardware" thing in Windows can make the Muvo permanently lock up (can't be turned on). I didn't do that (but lots of people do).
2. Attempting to fill the Muvo's flash to capacity can make it permanently lock up. I did that, as does everybody.
Creative's warranty is 90 days and I couldn't get my $220 + tax. I keep my worthless Muvo as a reminder - they won't fool me again.
If you must buy a Creative product, do some research and beware of buying something that's only been on the market for a few months.
Creative Strategies (Score:4, Insightful)
There are two groups of music player vendors: Apple, and Everyone Else. Although Creative designs some very good products, they are part of that Everyone Else group. Creative has the very difficult task of differentiating their products from the hundreds of other competitors to John Q. Public.
The iPod Shuffle will certainly clear out weaker competitors by competing directly against all of the products in the "Everyone Else" group. This effect on the Flash marketplace will hold even if Apple doesn't top the flash-based market.
With the resulting shake-up of the overall MP marketplace, Creative will have a great opportunity (and perhaps their only opportunity) to build brand recognition. Creative will have to compete directly against Apple, instead of competeing mostly against the no-names like M-link and SuperMP.
To take on Apple, Creative will need to beat Apple in all areas at once: smaller packages, lower cost, more features, significantly more capacity, top-notch customer support, excellent software, and excellent ease-of-use.
Dropping the ball in any one of these areas dooms Creative to a sublimating marketshare.
Creative can do it - they make very good products - but they'll have to jump in with both feet and take some serious risks before someone else makes it into the pool.
---
Now back to my regular market analysis job.
"Me-too but MORE..." (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, if you ask existing customers who like and use a product X what they ''want,'' those customers, just having faced a difficult struggle choosing from different price points in a product line will say something like "I'd like to get the features of the top model at the price of the entry model." Or if they're more ambitious, "I'd like twice the storage, half the size, and half the price." (About the only thing you won't hear from iPod owners is "And I'd like it to play the music twice as fast!).
What the strategy never takes into account is that in the time it takes to bring the me-too-but-more product to market, the manufacturer of the product they're gunning for will probably improve their product.
As for "choice," most computer users I know never change the home page of their browser from the one that's set by the manufacturer. Consumers will happily buy into the all-Apple iPod ecosystem and won't care unless it becomes obvious that the PC download music stores have dropped prices to, say, $0.25 per song, or have a grotesquely larger selection.
It may be a shame, but all the issues about lock-in, DRM, etc. don't matter to consumers until they personally get bitten, and so far Apple has taken great care not to bite consumers much.
It also helps that Apple's stuff works. The number of articles I've read about "iPod killers" by PC-centric sources that acknowledge up front that whatever they're testing wouldn't install, or froze, or had DRM authorization problems is astonishing.
A friend of mine who is just an average PC-centric engineer bought an iPod for his wife. Because it was reputedly a good product and easy to use. His wife, who is mildly computer-phobic, had no problems with it. It just worked. A few weeks later he bought one for himself. He likes it.
Another friend who bought some fairly pricey high-end gadget from Creative, I think, reminds me of all the personal computer enthusiasts of the late 1970s. It constantly presents him with challenges, which he enjoys surmounting. He is a chorus director who brings his player and powered speakers to rehearsals to play us things. It never works, and there is always some good reason why he can't play that particular thing that particular day.
In 2006 will there be WMA music stores? (Score:5, Interesting)
- Apple stated in the call they have 70% market share in on-line downloads.
- Apple stated in the call they posted a small profit on the sale of now >230,000,000 songs (admittedly, these were not all in Q1'05).
If the $0.99/9.99 model is so razor thin that one company with 70% of the market is eaking by, how can six other companies who share the remaining 30% of the market hope to survive?
Napster seems to be in the lead (don't they have about 10% market share?) but it is primarily due to the subscription model they have, not selling tracks/albums. Sounds like an opportunity for Apple to swoop in and service the sub-market for subscribers to me.
But back on subject, the Creative statement that they have some type of advantage because their player submits to the DRM of half a dozen music stores that are loosing money just says to me that Creative is tightening their seatbelt on a sinking ship.
It's the software, stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
They win on price, I'll give you that. If you run down the features list of a Nomad vs. an iPod, the Nomad looks good, has a slightly bigger disk, and is $100 cheaper. Sure, it might be the size of a paperback instead of the size of a pack of cigarettes, but good design isn't necessarily worth $100 to most people. As long as you can plug the thing into your computer and get down to the business of cataloging and playing back music, then it should be fine.
Here's Creative's first Achilles heel. Where iTunes is simple and intuitive, Creative's software is terrible. I say this to you as a fellow user of open source software, where function often takes precedence over form: Their software SUCKS. It is hands-down the one of the worst applications that I have ever used. Where iTunes gets out of the way, Creative's application stands in front of you like a bouncer, arms crossed, giving you that look that says you're not cool enough to come in here. Moving songs and files to and from your Nomad is an unbelievably tedious chore. Eventually, frustrated and tired, I tried to use Windows Media Player to transfer music to my device. That's how bad. Add to that the constant upsell involved in using a new Nomad. Many Nomads come with a lot of encrypted music already on disk, just waiting for you to enter your credit card number and unlock it. Removing these songs to get your disk space back is frustrating, and being asked to shell out more money after you've just spent hundreds is insulting.
Fortunately, (pimping time) Red Chair Software has come to the rescue in this regard. With their NotMad software, using the Nomad stops sucking. Further, they license per-player, not per-copy, so you can synch multiple PCs against your player on the same license, something Apple can't do.
This is how incredibly bad Creative's Nomad software is: There's a company doing brisk business selling aftermarket replacements for it. You don't see anyone even trying to do the same for iTunes.
Fortunately, NotMad is pretty cheap at $30. So now with your Nomad, you're only saving $70 over the iPod.
Still, that's $70 put to other uses, until the Nomad breaks (and it will). Anecdotal research, while certainly not definitive, seems to show a very high failure rate for Nomads. Certainly my room-mate's broke inside of a year (the headphone jack has become de-soldered from the board). Learn from his mistake, and make sure you buy the extended warranty. That's another $30, bringing your total cost savings down to $40.
So now your total savings for a Nomad are about $40 over a comparable iPod. For $40, you may as well just get the market leader. Until Creative can improve the reliability of their products, and write a good software package to go with their hardware, they're going to keep losing.
Frankly, that's fine by me.
Cost is a large factor for some of us. (Score:5, Interesting)
She's had it for about 3 weeks now and loves it. Since she usually goes for the pricey stuff I thought we'd be going back for the iPod but she likes this one well enough to want to keep it. I think the added cost of the iPod was a factor. When one item costs twice as much as another, and doesn't offer twice as much, why buy the more expensive item? We can get two Creatives, one for her and one for me, for the cost of one iPod. I think iPod's are way overpriced, but even if they were on par, I haven't seen what makes them so special.
The Creative does everything my wife wants it to do... which is basically play music. Nothing more, nothing less. It shows the song info on the screen for each song and the random works fine. What else do you really need from an mp3 player? Sure I guess it might be nice if it could grill me a steak but it was purchased to do only one thing, and to do that one thing well. It does that. What else could/should we be asking of it?
Curious when we'll start to see cooption... (Score:3, Interesting)
One thing that certainly does not hurth the sales of the iPod is the vast (and growing) accessory market that makes things like waterproof cases, jackets, armbands, etc. for the iPod. I'm not sure why companies have not thought to release players with an identical form-factor that could make use of these devices - a really advanced goal would be dock compatibiilty so you could use the current iPod remote and things like the tape adaptor that controls the iPod through the tape deck controls!
Perhaps the risk of lawsuit is too great, but I figured someone would try.
I don't understand "any major retailer" (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand market research seems to indicate that people do not want to own music, they simply want to rent it, by paying a subscription service and using the new windows media drm to allow subsription services to be used on portable players. If this is so, it will give M$ another monopoly and Apple will be screwed. I want to own all my music, the rest is radio. Rental is probably the music industry's dream scheme, they can sell you the same music over and over in perpetuity without having to come up with anything new.
Another take on this issue is that MP3 players have had the slowest and least market penetration (15% of households - Forbes) of any major consumer electronics product. So maybe this is not the wave of the future... maybe we don't know what's coming at all.
The ideal situation would be hundreds of these little sites popping up so that no one site has a huge selection, but you can get what you want somewhere with no drm. Lots of competition, good for everybody. Certainly successful bands could all make there own sites (Metallica, Phish, Primus) and screw the record companies now. Even some smaller bands are making a living with their own sites. This would also be the best situation for the ipod. Buy lossless music and then pick your own format, don't let someone pick it for you.
I don't think Creative will win........ (Score:3, Informative)
Even beyond that, Creative has exactly zero reasons to be critical of Apple's design and marketing, since that's what they excel at. For starters, check out a recent NY Times article on what the iPod Mini offers [nytimes.com], versus other iPod-killer wannabees. Here's what the article says on how Creative's Zen Micro player, Creative's mid-range product, compares to Apple's iPod Mini:
Pros (Mid-Range) Cons (Mid-Range)
The price is the same ($250), but even if the Zen Micro offers more in the way of features, the quality of those features is lacking. At the bottom end of the market, which is more price-sensitive in nature, you have Creative's Nomad MuVo line of products, the most inexpensive of which are:
So now along comes Apple's iPod Shuttle, which lacks some of the more salient features of the MuVo, but offers more space for less money per MB.
Pros (Low-End)
Cons (Low-End)
The only place I can see Creative possibly beating out Apple is at the top-end of the market, with their Zen Touch (20/40GB) and Zen Xtra (30/40/60GB) players. Despite being a bit larger and heavier than Apple's iPod, they offer a superior price-per-GB ratio. Then again, if Creative's problems with their mid-range products appear in their high-end products, that may not stop consumers from seriously considering the iPod, even though it's far more expensive per GB.
Personally, I'd rather buy a player that's well engineered (hardware + software), and built by a company that stands behind its products -- that company being Apple. Apple offers a fairly straightforward set of base models, with a growing lineup of 3rd-party accessories that serve to expand the appeal to their products. Creative, in many of these respects, doesn't meet these high standards.
Oh, and before you call me an Apple weenie: I don't like Macs, I don't own an iPod, and I own an old-ass Creative Nomad II mp3 player (whose flaws have been evident from the very start). In all likeliness, I'll probably snag either an iPod Mini or Shuttle at some point in the near future; I haven't decided whether giving up the LCD display and capacity is worth the cost savings.
My Experience (Score:3, Informative)
Battery Life Advertising (Score:3, Interesting)
Playing music is fun with the Creative Zen Touch's easy navigation. Built to hold 10,000(1) songs with an incredible 24 hour(2) battery life at 128kbps MP3 or 32 hour(2) at 48kbps.
(1) Based on 4 minutes per song at 128kbps MP3 encoding and 64kbps WMA encoding
(2) 24 hours battery life at 128kbps MP3 or 32 hours at 48kbps MP3
From Creative's own site [creative.com].
From this one would expect that it holds 10,000 128 kbps MP3s, right? No. It'll only hold 5,000 of those, nevermind the second half of footnote one or the fact that one might easily assume that the 128 kbps MP3 in the advertisment applies to both the battery life and the capacity, the capacity is entirely based on 64 kbps WMA encoding. Finally, they claim 32 hours of battery life at 48kbps MP3. WTF? Who listens to 48kbps MP3?
I refuse to buy a Creative Player if for no other reason than their misleading advertising. The goal is not to see how small one can make the bitrate to fit more 4 minute songs on the same size drive. Use 128 kbps like everyone else please.
I recently got an iPod (for Christmas) and all I have to say is that I am very pleased. It's battery is supposed to last 12 hours with 128 kbps (AAC) encoded files and when I decided to test it to see how long it would last, it lasted over 15 hours on 192 kbps MP3s, well above its advertised capacity especially when one takes into account that 192 kbps encoding requires more reading from the hard drive than 128 kbps encoding.
Re:Partnerships (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Partnerships (Score:5, Insightful)
And hundreds can watch the thermometer bar crawl across while transferring data at really low speed.
This got modded insightful by people who've heard of Bluetooth but never used it.
Re:Partnerships (Score:3, Funny)
You've said it. Really, what Creative needs to do is to add Myrinet [myri.com] support to its players.
Now, that would be bandwidth, with the side advantage that you could even stop imagining a beowulf cluster of those.
Re:Partnerships (Score:5, Funny)
No, no, no. This is the year of High Definition. Didn't you see the keynote?
Re:Go Creative (Score:5, Insightful)
If I have to decide between listening to you, and listening to the company that owns three quarters of the online music market and three quarters of the portable music player market, I think I'll listen to the company.
Your history is kind of wacky. Apple's heydey in the computer market was the early 80s with the Apple II line. The Apple II was always a very open platform. The Mac, on the other hand, never owned a huge part of the market. The late 80s and early 90s were decent for Apple, but they never had anything like the kind of position that the iPod has. They never started out strong with a closed platform and got stomped, so I don't see how the iPod would mirror anything else they've done.
Maybe you're right and people want "open" hardware. Two things come to mind, though. The first is, how are any of the competitors any more "open" than the iPod? They all let you play raw MP3s that you can get from anywhere. The iPod lets you buy from iTMS and nowhere else that has DRM, the others let you buy from other places but not iTMS. Is being locked in to a handful of minor players less grievous than being locked in to a single major player? They all have DRM, they all restrict what you can do, and none of them will work with an arbitrary music player.
The second thing that comes to mind is this: 400,000 people a week would seem to disagree with your assertion. Maybe you're right and they'll change their minds, but so far I don't see any evidence.
Re:Go Creative (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Go Creative (Score:5, Interesting)
A point-by-point evaluation:
How many times does Apple need to learn that people don't want lock-in solutions. [sic]
Why do people never learn? Why, no matter how many fucking iPod articles Slashdot posts (and, yea, there are a great many), does there remain a group who simply do not get it? How many times must one of these types be told that no-one (or, should I say "so few people that they cumulatively round down to zero") gives a flying fuck about lock-in. They probably don't even know what "lock-in" is. I know I have ranted on about it in the past to non-tech types and they just zone out. Can you blame them?
Where you buy there [sic] player and are locked into their music service.
Your frighteningly schizophrenic spelling aside, you're bandying around that dangerous "lock-in" word again. As various others have noted on here, there do exist paid-for music services which offer MP3s, e.g. allofmp3.com [allofmp3.com]. There are others, but I have not the inclination to look. This aside, the average man on the street doesn't particularly care anyway, but we've already made that point.
This is more subjective, but I can say with certainty that in the UK, the Windows-using masses are restless, tired of spam and spyware and system updates every other day. That Mac mini is looking incredibly tempting. I am sure it is the same way - even more so, perhaps - on the other side of the pond. There is something "out there" when choosing Apple, unless you find the tortious Windows/WMA et al experience pleasurable in some way. (I have already commented on schizophrenic spelling, so I shall leave further interpretation as an exercise to readers...). The iPod's elegance and simplicity appeals to people. Really, it does.
Groan.
I posted at length about this on my blog after OGG and iPod were mentioned in the same thread a while back. It goes back to the "so few people that they cumulatively round down to zero" point again. No-one, save the militant/obstinate few, gives a shit about OGG, and, moreover, the only reason that Creative, etc. include OGG support is to try to capture some of the statistically minute militant/obstinate market. That's how marginalised they are - like a pack of mangy stray dogs fighting over scraps.
At the outset you seemed to be typing yourself as anti-lock-in. I'm confused. Most people choose the lesser of two evils, and here you are, proposing that Apple sleeps with the devil.
I'd apologise for the tirade, but, y'know...
iqu >:|
Re:Go Creative (Score:4, Interesting)
You can stamp your feet all you like. Reiterate your earlier statement if you feel the need. It will not make it come true. In most people's eyes, there is more to a computer than clock cycles. See above and below.
I must say that I am thankful that Slashdot allows one to view others' comment history - it allows a much more educated response, even to the most moronic of posters - sir, you are a fine specimen indeed.
More specifically in this case, I note that you battled others in the comments appended to the Mac mini article. And, with a certain glee, I must confess, I note that I am not the only one so rightly dismissing you as an idiot.
I presume it is some kind of denial. In the Longhorn graphics card article's comments, you trumpeted the use of graphics cards to "speed stuff up," finally. Mac OS X has done this for ages - two years or so, IIRC.
And in the Mac mini article, you dismiss resplendent and wholy valid security and reliability concerns with the suggestion that "a bit of education" is all that's needed. As someone noted at the time, your immediate family is not really particularly representative of the entire Windows using world, although it does mean that they are by implication more intelligent than the average moron - good for you.
In any event, this is irrelevant. For most people, Windows has done enough damage - lengthy phone calls to premium rate numbers, assisted credit card fraud, formatted hard drives, rebooted every 60 seconds, given Internet users the world over more shit in their inboxes than they could possibly imagine, simplified DDOSing no end... - not to me, I might add. I am simply the one who has cleared up this kind of mess.
Anyway, all this malaise, coupled with iPod love, means one thing - switching. Maybe even en masse.
iqu
Re:good thing (Score:4, Insightful)
It's cheap enough to please most joggers.