It’s a simple theory really and it shows all the time in the world of digital music players …. the best don’t always sell.
The best device for just regular digital music is the only exception to that in my mind: the iPod does it right, has great software built for it, and comparably is not horribly expensive.
But the two devices that this leads up to, is movie players, and flash devices.
My prediction is simple, and it’s already partially true: the PSP will be the movie player of choice at least for the next couple of years. It’s not the best (no hard drive, Memory Sticks cost a shit-ton, and only MPEG-4 support), but it has “cool” appeal. As nice as the nicer true movie players are like a Creative Zen series, they’re just not quite as hip as a PSP is, and the games on a PSP give it that instant audience (not to mention UMD movies, although they are way overpriced!). It’s gonna end up doing to ultra-portable media what the PS2 did for DVD watching.
And let’s be honest, if you really want good movies on the road now, buy a portable DVD player, they’re extremely affordable, and then encode your own DVD’s. It’s not rocket science anymore.
As far as the iPod Shuffle, this is the ultimate story of how you can be railroaded into something not perfect … it has no screen, and while it also has no battery, it’s small but looks just weird. Nonetheless, cause it does have the backbone of iTunes, I want one (although my better judgment will lead me to the far superior iPod Mini methinks).
I know if it wasn’t for one good (and locked in) piece of software, I’d buy a Sandisk player, or a iRiver and love it, but good for Apple, they’ve managed to make good software sell kinda good hardware … their only hardware i’d say that about.
