Friday, January 21, 2005

 

Apple and Sony

Apple launched two new products recently: Mac mini and iPod Shuffle. Steve Jobs presentation of them in MacWorld was exciting and captivating. Just as with previous products, Steve gets his products' points across very elegantly yet still very precisely. He always presents what I think are generally two things about a product: the WOW! factor and the want/need factor. The WOW! is just the uniqueness and elegantness of the product unmatched out there in the market. Steve, ever the salesman, blurs the difference between want and need by giving reasons for typical, ordinary usages that anyone would find.

I have been following the PC small form factor(SFF) these last several months and the product offerings from Shuttle, Biostar, MSI and some others are interesting. The Mac mini however is more than interesting, it's amazingly impressive! I firmly believe this computer will help Apple quickly gain new customers switching from a PC to a Mac while still continuing to entice existing customers with an inexpensive Mac as a second, third or whatever computer for low maintenance light to medium computing usage.

I love how the computer isn't about the latest and greatest. It has enough technology to do today's average tasks of web-surfing/emailing, connecting with digital cameras and other devices for data storage leading to categorization and printing, and even some word processing/office accounting work. As a bonus, it can also be used for DVD watching, albeit without 5.1 sound but in my experience it's good enough.

One peave I have is the lack of a microphone and/or line-in audio plug. Maybe it's possible with some USB attachment but that costs too much. I think Apple made a critical error here because I can see that one of the tasks used for this computer is communications. With the popularity of Skype and other voice over IP applications, Apple is just irritating customers by not including the plug forcing them to spend more money on some USB attachment or worst losing sales by detracting potential customers planning to switch. Economically I don't think Apple would have even lost a cent implementing this feature.

I like MP3 players. I like them to have flash-based memory, built-in USB plug, expandable memory(for the time being with either SD or Compact Flash) and use standard sized batteries. The iPod Shuffle meets two of my four criteria but it's a bit odd in not having a display. I can forgo the FM radio found on most players but I definitely want to see a record function through a built-in mic and a line-in plug. But despite my complaints, I think Apple has an attractive product.

Sony has been a love-hate thing. I loved their products when I was
younger. I craved their products then because I saw them as miniaturization experts. Fast forward to now I think they're just too annoying with their premium prices and proprietary Memory Stick and ATRAC formats. I saw an article today on Slashdot about Sony admitting their mistake with MP3 players.

I was rummaging through a Sony catalog recently and poured over the pictures and descriptions of their MP3 players. I thought it was strange that they put the letters MP3 in bold but in the small footprint it said the player actually plays their oh-so-cool proprietary ATRAC format. The consumer would need to install their special PC only software that converts MP3 to ATRAC before uploading to the player. I just thought Sony must be on crack trying to sell this product. Talk about truth in advertising!

So back to when I saw the Slashdot article, I knew what the mistake was about. I just hope Sony also ponies up on their Memory Stick as one Slashdotter commented. Sometimes I get the feeling Memory Sticks are just Smart Media and other flash memory types in disguise. Smart Media has a 128MB limitation and the first generation of Memory Sticks had that same limitation. SD, MMC and Compact Flash these days are in the gigabyte range. Sony should just stop being protectionist developing or what I think is re-inventing the wheel in creating their own formats similar to the industry standard. Squeezing every dollar out of the customer from their supposed innovations is sickening and horrid.

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