My empire of dirt!
So we are in the midst of the great American consumer euphoria once again. Apple has unveiled what they are calling a "revolutionary" new product in the form of their 30 and 60 GB Video IPod. And the media is "all hail" again for the Apple product predicting heavy festival season buying for it. Just goes to show how the consumer is so easily misled by some great advertising and gaudy jingoism.Dont get me wrong. I love the fundamentals of Apple as a company. They know how to catch the pulse of the market with some great products which though they never get right at the first attempt. Look at their erstwhile Newton handheld or how they have managed to prevent the Mac from being the superstar which it could have been. They have a great design division which regularly has pushed the boundarys of product design. They had caught the fancy of the market with a really super cool new idea in the form of the Ipod. But their steadfast refusal to listen to their consumers might just help other also-rans in the current race to turn the tables on them.
The V Ipod definitely marks a move into the right direction for this company. Infact what i cannot understand is why it took so long for them to get a video version out when in fact such PVPs( Personal Video Players) as this genre of products is called have already been in existence for over 4 years now( I bet you didn't know that now did you!! Yup blame it on the myopic vision of the so called tech gurus who have never dared to look beyond the Ipod). The V Ipod does not still address the major grouse that all the Ipod owners have had since the beginning viz.
the fact that you cannot change the battery on the Ipod without effectively destroying the product. And feature-wise the Video IPod is not even in the same class as this beauty, the Archos AV700 DVR, which is a true portable video player. I have owned an older version of this genre the Archos JukeBox Multimedia for about 2 years now and am quite a satisfied user. Yup and you can throw the Itunes software out of the window cuz after you have this baby with you you dont need to pay and download any music vids from anywhere cuz this player allows you to hook up to any TV/VCR/VCD Player/Comp/DVD player and directly record content of it onto its harddrive.Plus whats more is that it actually acts like the TIVO that we hear so much about in the sense that you can actually set a timer and connect it to your TV and this will automatically record content at the defined time slot. Plus no need of having specific software to connect to a comp for unlike the Ipod, the Archos will hook upto your machine as easily as a simple USB hard disk. Plus this device also comes in a monstrous 100 GB version. What century is the Video Ipod coming from!!
Infact, come to think of it, Apple might actually help companies like Archos and Samsung Yepp (which uses the MS Portable Media Centre platform) by turning the customer attention towards this hitherto neglected market. But lets see whether the American consumer, for once, can go beyond the coolness factor and get the really revolutionary product!
Current Music: Strapping Yound Lad - Shitstorm
posted by Nitish @ 4:26 AM
Comments: 5
