g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets
  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.


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Wednesday, August 27, 2003
03:08 - Who dares challenge the Sultan of Sound, the Maestro of Music, the Titan of Tinnitis?

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One thing I noticed, by the way, in my peregrinations across the continent from the land of Queen Califa to the Northwest Passage, was that Apple gear is everywhere in the airports. I'd get off a plane and instantly spot two, three, four TiBooks, iBooks, and telltale round white earbuds with their cords trailing off to discreet little belt-clipped boxes. Sure, there were all the usual road warriors tinkering with PowerPoint presentations on their Dells and Compaqs; but to count the stylin' Mac gear jauntily hanging off the hip young urbanites in every terminal, you'd never guess that Apple has that measly 2% of the market or whatever it claims these days. You'd think half the world owned Macs.

Nothing was more ubiquitous in these settings than the iPod, though. Everywhere I turned I saw those white headphone cords, or someone twirling the wheel with his thumb. Visiting a friend's apartment in Toronto, a Windows iPod box peeked out from behind a PlayStation 2 and a GameCube; even PC users aren't immune to that most peculiar disease of Mac geekdom: saving the boxes that the gear comes in, because they're so damnably cool.

But iPods are certainly not to the point of total penetration. Far from it. Their numbers are dwarfed, especially when you get out onto the streets of Toronto, by those of the people who have the CD-shaped disc-based MP3 players, the ones that have evolved by this point to have barely any more mass or dimension than the discs themselves, albeit covered with little squirmy buttons that look like the blisters on Baron Harkonnen's neck. At subway stations, in malls, in restaurants, people were always carrying these players in one hand as they nodded silently to the beat. And they always held the players horizontally in one hand; these things don't clip to your belt, apparently, and evidently nobody seems to have a problem with the player being so big you can't fit it into a pocket; they're willing to sacrifice the use of a hand for the sake of however much music they can fit on a CD. Call me crazy, but this strikes me as a step backward from the days of minute cassette-based belt-mounted Walkmans. But hey-- who am I to argue, right?

Because there are always things like this: Toshiba's newest iPod killer.

The player, the Gigabeat G20 MEG200J is just 1.27cm thick, a smidge thinner than the 1.55cm iPod. It measures 8.95 x 7.65cm and weighs 138g - the iPod is 10.25 x 6cm and weighs 158.76g.

Inside its limited edition dark "sapphire" blue or standard aluminium shell, the Gigabeat packs in a 20GB 1.8in hard drive. More square than the iPod, the Gigabeat resembles a miniDisc player rather than an MP3 player. The device will play MP3s, but Toshiba is touting its support for Microsoft's Windows Media Player 9 format, which presumably means its DRM'd to the hilt.

As the mysterious Male Pattern Baldness Man from Teen Girl Squad might put it: DRM'd!

It's kinda funny, really. Just as the other players in the industry have realized that the iPod is the man to beat, they find themselves reaching in slow motion for the tantalizing doorway of free music mobility just as it closes off its beam of golden light; the market has reached self-awareness, and the music industry will insist not just upon DRM support, but preference for DRM. And for the Windows-based players out there, that means WMA. And WMA is evidently festooned with technical hurdles for the third parties to clear.

The built-in Lithium-ion battery provides enough charge for up to 11 hours of playback - more than the iPod's eight-hour battery life - though that's likely to be much reduced when the machine has to decode WMA9 files.

That doesn't sound encouraging. How come? Why doesn't AAC cause a similar battery drain? Are these rhetorical questions?

Maybe so. Because on the final, Chicago-to-San-Jose leg of my flight home, I found myself overhearing two guys in the row behind me chattering excitedly across the aisle.

"Hey, is that that, um... iPod thing? From.. from--"

"Apple? Yup. It's the new 30-gig model."

"Those things are so damn cool... they're just for Mac, though, right?"

"No, they make 'em for Windows now too."

"Oh, sweet! Oh, and then there's that ... iTunes Music Store, or whatever, right?"

"Yeah, it's really great. I use it all the time."

"That's Mac-only, though, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"That's a shame. Damn."

"I've got all my other stuff on here, though. Look-- it has all my contacts, my calendar events, some games; it syncs like a PDA. It's a hard drive. I can store anything I want on here."

"No kidding? Wow! Damn... how much was it again?"

It was at this point that I could no longer resist; I went from glinting-eyeballs-peering-over-the-seat-back mode to full-bore buttinski as soon as a lull opened up.

"I've got my laptop booted up on mine," I said, holding up my iBook with the iPod connected via its unnecessarily long FireWire cable, draped over my arms like a long silvery Mirkwood spiderweb.

Blank stare. "Booted... what? What do you mean?" (The other guy was grinning ear to ear.) I explained about OS X's boot selection process and how the iPod acts as an external disk, and how I had a full copy of the system on it, on my measly original 5-gig model. By the time we'd taxied to the runway and were spooling up the engines for takeoff, I could swear I'd heard the guy muttering about how he might be able to sneak such a purchase past his wife once he got home.

Mindshare is the game; it's always been the game. It's all about the right place and the right time, and whoever was in charge of getting the iPod to market when it did ought to be relaxing under a palm tree in Puerto Vallarta right now, perched on top of a heap of stock certificates and those burlap bags with "$" printed on them.

He probably isn't, though. He's probably deep in a lab somewhere in Cupertino, working on the next thing scheduled for release, bewilderment, ridicule, torrential sale to early adopters, appearance in strategic pieces of pop culture, grudging acceptance, and eventual ubiquity. And that's just fine with me.


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© Brian Tiemann