Gates: We will challenge iPod

news.com ^ | February 11, 2006 | Reuters

[stainlessbanner]

REDMOND, Wash.--Microsoft and its hardware partners will continue to develop new digital media devices aimed at challenging the dominance of Apple Computer's ubiquitous iPod music player, Chairman Bill Gates said on Friday.

"I don't think what's out on the market today is the final answer," Gates said, speaking to a group of minority students. "Between us and our partners, you can expect some pretty hot products coming out over the next few years."

The Microsoft founder praised Apple's iTunes music store and said the software giant was talking with hardware partners to create media devices that can be less expensive and easier to connect and can handle pictures and video better.

Gates said the market share for digital music players compatible with Microsoft software is around 20 percent, a figure that is lower than he would like.

Microsoft's strategy has been to allow various device manufacturers to create players that would be compatible with its software, arguing that it offered consumers more options.

However, BusinessWeek reported last week that Microsoft is mulling its own media device in an effort to cut into Apple's nearly 70 percent U.S. market share. The company declined to comment on the article at the time.

Gates did not disclose any plans for a Microsoft-branded device on Friday and alluded often to working together with partners for future media devices.

[Centurion2000]

bump

[rzeznikj at stout]

There's also a method to install the popular Slax distro on an iPod Nano:

Click Here

Whoops! Gotta head to class...

[stainlessbanner]

I recently did the IPL installation. It leaves you with a dual boot iPod. The IPL has packages for games like Doom and Halo; also plays video clips (uncompressed).

I will have to check out SLAX. Even after the conversion, I was still tied to iTunes to move files on/off the iPod.

[lawgirl]

Better make it cheap and better make it cute.

[finnman69]

People dont wear Walkmans nearly as much as you see Ipods being worn. I see it in NYC and ama mazed at people using Ipods to screen out street noise or subways.

[finnman69]

The lawsuit would have to happen with Sony first, since they are the inventors of the portable music device... the sone walkman... I think any lawsuit against Apple is a non-starter...


http://informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=178601009

Apple Hit With iPod Hearing Loss Lawsuit

The suit asks for unspecified damages, and demands that Apple Computer update the iPod software so its portable music players can't blast tunes at more than 100 decibels.

A Louisiana man filed a lawsuit this week claiming that Apple's iPod can cause hearing loss.

The suit, submitted to a San Jose, Calif. federal court on behalf of John Kiel Patterson of Louisiana, seeks class-action status, asks for unspecified damages, and demands that Apple Computer update the iPod software so the portable music players can't blast tunes at more than 100 decibels.

Hard on the heels of experts saying that the use of earbud-style headphone like those bundled with iPods can lead to hearing loss, Patterson's suit charges Apple with not advising users of a safe listening volume, nor including a meter on the devices to monitor decibel levels.

"The ear buds are small and are placed in the listener's ear canal, close to the cochlea,'' the lawsuit read. "The close proximity to the ear canal directly impacts the amount of hearing loss caused by the MPs [music players], simply because there is less chance of dilution of the sound.''

Apple's practice is to not comment on pending legal action, but it has made some adjustments to iPod volume in the past. In 2002, for instance, it had to restrict the devices' output to 100 decibels to sell them in France.

The last time Apple was hit with a class action was in October 2005, when disgruntled buyers of the iPod nano complained that the gizmo's screen scratched too easily.

The company's iPod line has a stranglehold on the portable digital player market, and holds an estimated 70 percent of the business globally. In January, Apple said that it sold 14 million iPods in the last three months of 2005.

[Wolfie]

Oh for the days when the world wasn't watching, and you could just rip off the product and call it your own, eh Bill?

[cinives]

I think the xbox runs on a stripped-down w2k kernel ;)

[tx_eggman]

Microsoft's business strategy corresponds to a corollary of the cliche you ere going for. They strive to be the "bird" in:

"The early worm gets eaten by the bird"

[TChris]

Cynical predictions about Microsoft's digital music player:

(Feel free to add your own)

• It will be more complicated to use than the iPod, but the word "intuitive" will repeatedly come out of every Microsoft employee's mouth when describing the product.
• It will have "digital rights management" "features" to make sure you only play "legal" music downloaded from Microsoft-approved sites, using Microsoft-approved software (read: Windows Media Player on Windows XP)
• The first demonstration of the unit before a live audience will be by Bill Gates and it will crash.
• The player will not play MP3 files initially. Gates will publicly declare that MP3 isn't important and that the WMA format is far more popular and gives users all the features they really want anyway. When sales clunk, Microsoft will quickly become the self-proclaimed MP3 masters of the universe and make every product they sell play MP3 files, including their keyboards and mice.
• It will never, ever play OGG Vorbis files. ...until someone hacks it to run on Linux.
• You will get absolutely sick of hearing how "innovative" it is. Even though Microsoft is sure to be just about the last one to the party. Again.

[stainlessbanner]

Innovative: Most overused in Corporate America today.

[KarlInOhio]

Cynical predictions about Microsoft's digital music player:

(Feel free to add your own)

Users will learn what a Blue Screech of Death sounds like.

[harpu]

GREAT Profile's page...

[D-Chivas]

Ipod and Apple will be subject to one of the biggest class action suits in history as tens of thousands suffer permanent hearing loss.

Microsoft should market their version as a safe Ipod.

.

.

Guess you weren't around during the 1980s when everybody had a Sony Walkman on their head...

[When_Penguins_Attack]

"Between us and our partners, you can expect some pretty hot products coming out over the next few years."

Translated: We have found some small companies doing good work in compression. We think we can steal their products and then bully them into settling, slap our logos on it, and market it as innovative.

[HamiltonJay]

Won't be able to do it with a model that is basically build a device that runs a stripped down CE with Media Player... Which I am sure is what MS wants.

[Godzilla]

Ipod and Apple will be subject to one of the biggest class action suits in history as tens of thousands suffer permanent hearing loss.

Ipod has a built in hearing loss protection device - its called the volume control.

[antiRepublicrat]

"Between us and our partners, you can expect some pretty hot products coming out over the next few years."

Microsoft's problem is that it doesn't realize that we can expect some "pretty hot products" from Apple too. Microsoft: always shooting at where Apple is standing now, not where Apple will be when they shoot.

Methinks we need to send Bill duck hunting so he can learn about leading the target.

[SengirV]

I helped my father-in-law get his new mp3 player working with his wintel machine this weekend. The user interface with Windows Media *(whatever the last word is) used to burn CDs, create playlists, sync the MP3 players was soo cumbersome and nonintuitive that it literally made me angry. The in-laws stoped by on Sunday and I showed him iTunes on my Mac and how amazingly simply things were.

This might the final nail in the coffin of his wintel experience. I kid you not, he spent two days straight trying to get music onto his MP3 player.

[x5452]

All you're music will cease to function if you haven't phoned home in the last 24 hours.