Apple aiming for TV breakthrough

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Expensive whats?

DAPs? iPods were no easier to use than a Rio Karma. They were (and still are) prettier. They both players have good UI, but until last fall, on an iPod, the only way you could play an opera or any number of albums where songs segue into each other was to make the entire album (or LP side if it was originally on vinyl)a track. OTOH, the Karma could do that out of the box roughly 5 years ago.

The main reason the iPod was successful and the Karma was not is that Apple made a DAP that looked fashionable and they advertised the crap out of it (and they were good memorable ads). You couldn't watch TV and not see an iPod ad. OTOH, you could watch TV 24x7 and you probably wouldn't see an ad for any other DAP player (at that time).

Apple understood marketing. Rio's marketing plan was sell to audiophiles (if you can call any DAP listener an Audiophile) and let word of mouth do the job for them. The only reason I didnt buy an iPod was it didn't meet the minimum requirements for a playback device (that is it had to play a live concert made up of separate tracks without any gap of any kind between tracks). When i read on usenet that it failed that test I was disapointed....a month or so later, I found out about the karma and the rest is history.

Given that the iPod finally does gapless and apparently has improved their formerly lackluster preamp/amp section, I think it's going to be very hard for anyone to catch up anytime soon.


That said, I don't get Apple TV. It's about the same price as buying a DVD (or renting if they offer that) and you get lower quality video and less features. What's more, the world is going to move to HD in the very near future. I would like to store my DVDs and HD-DVDs (when iget them) on my computer, but I can't imagine buying relatively low quality videos from iTunes or Amazon.

And to be honest, the results from iTunes don't convince me it will happen. Yes they've sold few billion songs...that's a fraction of the broader music market. If that's all that's left is iTunes like stores, I'll just steal my music. Friends don't let friends buy lossy audio files.

Posted by: notsofast   Posted on: 03/13/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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