Of iPods and rivals

 I got four stories to share today. The first three are about the iPod line of MP3 players and the last is about the other MP3 players out there that will try to wrest away from Apple the title King of MP3 Players.

Looks good. Sounds even better
Bill Machrone of PC Magazine has written an article that quantifies the audio performance of several MP3 players. These are

iPod Shuffle
Zen Micro
Dell DJ 20GB
15GB iPod (3rd Generation)
iPod Mini

The article has terms that only an audiophile can understand. Terms like "pink noise" and "unloaded square wave" are way over my head though it would be fun to learn about these things.

From what I've gathered from what Bill Machrone says in this article is that he is pretty much impressed with how the iPod shuffle peforms. He seems to say that it comparable if not better than some MP3 players he tested.

The title of the article is Quantifying Digital Audio Player Performance and is a companion to his story, "Shuffle's Got a Secret" in PC Magazine. I'm trying to lok for the link to that article and will post it if I can find it.

Not for the faint-hearted
I posted a blog about somebody taking apart his iPod shuffle to see what's inside. It was a pretty gruesome way of opening the shuffle. It involved pliers and prying off the navigation wheel which turned out to be unnecessary.

A new guide for dissecting the iPod shuffle just came out. This time it's more clean and surgeon-like. The instruments used were: a knife and a ballpen. The X-acto knife was used to remove the USB plug from the main body and in prying off the on-off switch. No navigation wheel was avulsed in any of the pictures. The ballpoint pen was used to poke into the headphone jack to slide out the innards of the shuffle.

What's so important about learning how to dissect the iPod shuffle? It's for the eventuality that one day your shuffle's battery might die on you and your warranty has ran out. You can replace the battery yourself by following the guide in dissecting the iPod shuffle.

The juice on juice
Apple makes wonderful products, in my opinion. My first Apple purchase was a second hand 12 inch 800MHz iBook. At that time it was the most affordable 12 inch laptop or portable that I could find. It had fun using that iBook but sold it to upgrade. I now own four Apple products now: a 12 inch 1GHz Powerbook; a first-generation iPod mini; an iPod shuffle and; an Airport Express. The products are well made and well designed. The only real problem I encountered in using these products was the battery of the second hand Powerbook that I bought. It was dismal. It wouldn't last more than 2 hours in watching DVD or surfing. Since the Powerbook had Applecare Protection Plan i had the battery replaced. I sent an email to PowerMac in San juan, Metro Manila and a certain Ms. Mymy Tan graciously helped me. She was very helpful and I sent the battery to San Juan so they can forward it to Singapore. Within a week of sending the battery I recieved a new one. I can now use my Powerbook for up to 5 hours on battery power alone and all it cost me was 240 pesos (less than $5).

This is the one of the common if not the most common complaint of some people with regards to Apple products: the battery. An article by Lance Ulanoff talks about the batteries and how it affected users and Apple in general.

The Truth About iPod Batteries talked about the frustration of some iPod users regarding their batteries especially the first and second generation of iPods. It also talked about how Apple pushed for their warranty package so that if they encoutered any problems with the battery Apple can have it replaced. Actually, replacing the unit is closer to the truth. Apple doesn't really give the owner a new battery in his iPod but instead sends back a refurbished or repaired iPod. This didn't sit in too well with some users. They expected Apple to just replace their battery and send their old unit back. Some say it was deceitful for Apple to send its consumers refurbished iPods. But Apple said it is standard practice in the industry to send people refurbished or repaired products when it comes to units having problems that are returned to them. Apple isn't the only one doing this.

One of the most memorable moments in the iPod's or even Apple's history was when an angry iPod consumer was denied a battery replacement. He complained that his iPod wouldn't hold a charge for more than an hour and brought it to an Apple store but was told Apple doesn't have a battery replacement program. The consumer took matter into his own hands. This consumer was a half of the duo Neistat Brothers. The brothers are artists, film makers to be more precise. They did a short movie entitled "iPod's Dirty Secret", in which one of the brother's spray painted a sign that said, "Apple's unreplaceable iPod battery lasts only 18 months."

This was bad publicity and after a couple of weeks the movie was all around the internet. It was even featured in Fox News and CBS News. The brother's were also interviewed about their little project. After another couple of weeks Apple introduced the iPod Replacement Program. They denied that the program's timely release was due to the Neistat brother's video.

Aside from paying Apple to have your battery replaced, you can have the option of changing your iPod's battery yourself. Several disassembly guide for the iPod are available on the internet as some tech heads just wanted to find out what the iPods' innards are. Relating to this, some enteprising companies have begun selling a do-it-yourself battery replacement kit with the tools and instructions on how to change the battery of your iPod.

Ulanoff explains that batteries, no matter how 'advanced' or 'better' they are, will tend to lose its ability to retain a charge over time. All rechargable batteries have cycles of which amounts to the life span of a battery, He expressed skepticism on some people's claim on the 18 month lifespan of batteries since there was little evidence to support it.

In the end, Larry Ulanoff defends Apple saying it is not the only one in the rechargable battery business and conspiracy theories should just be hanged. The only mistake Apple made, he said, was to make the battery not easy to replace by their consumers. As parting words he said iPod's a good player, Apple is not pulling a fast one and people should learn to how to take care of their rechargable batteries.

And on the red corner...
With Apple's iPod line getting more popular, other companies cannot very well sit it out and watch from the sidelines. They had to do something to get a bigger chunk of the market which Apple took bite at. A very big bite at that.

Different comanies are trying to gain lost ground. Creative lowered its prices and released hard disk drive based MP3 players. Sony released new MP3 players and started supporting the MP3 format instead of the ATRAC format only. A Taiwanese company, Luxpro, even shamelessly copied the iPod shuffle calling it Super shuffle. Apple has sued Luxpro and it is not clear whether Super shuffle will ever be released.

PC Magazine's Martyn Williams names, in his article, a few competitors of the iPod line for the hearts and ears of the multitude. Noted is Sony's frenzied attempt to wrest away from Apple the MP3 player market by releasing a lot of products. iRiver, Panasonic, and even Samsung, are mentioned.

That's it for now. I'll dig up more news bits and pieces about Apple and others next time.#