I’d like to complain for a moment, if you don’t mind. Here’s the deal: I have an iPod. I really like my iPod. But now I have a phone that plays music. My phone is a PDA. It’s called an i-mate Jam (doesn’t sound as cool as “iPod”, I know, but that’s beside the point).JAM vs iPOD
JAM: My Jam does way more then my iPod. Like mentioned, I can listen to music, but also, I can watch movies, I can schedule my appointments, I can make phone calls, I can text message my friends, I can email, I can browse the web, I can play games (color games vs iPod’s monochrome games), I can look up words in a dictionary, I can take pictures and later look at them. In short, my Jam is friggin’ awesome and my iPod is just “cool”.
iPOD: A few things I gotta give the iPod is: 1) the name, 2) the cool design, 3) the 15GB hard drive. But, seriously: the name doesn’t really matter that much, the design on the Jam isn’t ugly, and well, the 15GB hard drive is sweet, but in reality, I don’t listen to that many songs. (I typically listen to about 20-60 songs throughout a given week. More on storage later.)
COST: I paid about $250 for my iPod and about $650 for my Jam. But, I had to buy a cell phone for back in my iPod-only days (so, that’s about $100). Also, I used a palm pilot for my calendar (that was about $200). Added together my iPod-life cost about $550. I should also say that I needed a camera which cost approximately $300; taking that into consideration my full iPod-life cost was $850 ($250+100+200+300). Obviously the Jam is the better deal. But, truth be told, my Jam camera is pretty pathetic (click here for an example)– so, it’s not really fair to add the cost of my stand alone camera to my iPod cost. In this case, my iPod-days were more accurately valued at around $550 and my current Jam days around $650. So, yeah, the iPod is cheaper, but back then, I had to carry three big items…
WINNER: iPod (when considering cost only)
[As a side note: about a winner/loser between the iPod and Jam. The real loser in the deal is me because of all the money I spent. But, it was for science… or, research… right?]
STORAGE: The iPod obviously wins, but like alluded to above, who actually listens to 15GB worth of music in-between computer sync’s? I suppose a few people do. But I typically sync with my computer at least once in a week and within that week I probably only listen to about 300MB worth of music (that’s over 75 songs, which is over 240 hours of music, which is over ten 24-hour days of solid listening time). Like previously stated, I only have a 256MB memory card in my Jam, but I plain on buying a 2GB SD card – so my musical needs will be completely met. Plus, with that extra space I’ll be able to copy a few movies over as well. (Of course, a 2GB SD card costs about $150, so, okay, the iPod ends up being a lot cheaper).
WINNER: iPod (only when calculating the actual physical storage space)
PLAYBACK: The only place the iPod wins hands down on the Jam is the headphone jack. The Jam uses a 2.5m jack which isn’t as standard as the iPod’s 3m(?). What that means is that if I go to a friends house and I want to play a song off my Jam I have to play it through the built-in speaker (which the iPod doesn’t have) - but that kind of stinks for listening to music when you want to blast the volume. I could, however, carry around a headphone jack converter (which isn’t expense) – but seriously, why would I carry that around?
WINNER: iPod (yeah, this is a solid win)
Okay, okay, so the iPod is winning all my comparisons, but the fact is that my Jam can do so much more. Even if it couldn’t do half of what it can do, the Jam is just better because who wants to carry around a phone, a music player, a camera, a pda, et cetera?
THE GRAND WINNER: JAM
My reason for starting this article is actually because I wanted to complain about music. I just happened to run off on a tangent with my iPod/Jam face-off.
DIGITAL PROTECTION
Okay, so here’s my complaint. I bought a lot of songs through the iTunes music store. (I want to be all legal and stuff with my music.) But, the problem is that the songs are protected and can only be played on my iPod. So here I have this sweet machine named Jam and none of my iTunes songs can be played on it. I’ve since begun to buy all my music through the Windows Media Player (the MSN music store) – but the problem with that is that if I ever wanted to listen to them on my iPod (or on a PowerBook, which I want to buy later this year) I couldn’t.
To the younger generation this is becoming common knowledge: Songs purchased through iTunes can only be played on Apple players, songs purchased through Sony can only be played on Sony gear, whereas songs purchased through MSN/Napster/Wal-Mart/etc can be played on any Microsoft approved player (notice how the later gives you more options). The fact is that Apple has the best music store and the best music players, but that may not last much longer – especially if Apple doesn’t make a phone/iPod soon. But, let’s assume that Apple does make a good iPod-Phone, that’s great – I’d probably buy one – but in the long run I think it’d be a bad thing.
[As a side note, Motorola and Apple are supposedly working on a phone/music-player]
Everyone complains that Microsoft is a giant and that they have a monopoly on the computer industry – they do, I can’t argue against that – but, what if Apple had the market share that Microsoft does. That would be even scarier then what we have now. Why you ask? Because at least Microsoft lets other people make hardware, sell music, etc. Apple builds the OS, they build the hardware, and they sell the songs. Apple would control everything – goodbye competition.
[Lest you think I’m an Apple basher, let me state that I’ve talked people into buying Apple products – I plan to buy more myself. I love Apple and I hope they continue to grow like they have.]
What I’m getting at here is that Apple needs to start playing nicer. They need to make it so that their songs can be played on other equipment. And, I suppose Microsoft music should be playable on Apple equipment. Somebody’s gotta give – hopefully both.
Anyway, bottom line: I’m ticked off with music protection. I don’t get how it’s totally legal and okay to buy CD’s and then burn those CD’s onto the computer as MP3 files – which can then be played on ALL music players. But, it’s not okay to buy a song in a digital format in the first place and have that song be playable only on specific players. I’m fine with protection as a way to keep little punk kids from trading songs on a P2P server (i.e. music stealing), but when I buy a song I ought to be able to play it on all my music players, right? Get in gear Apple! (I’d tell Microsoft to get in gear too but they’re already doing better then Apple.)
I suppose the real problem here is that I like Apple stuff, but they take a long time to make the gadgets I like. Why is that? Because they try to do everything themselves. If Apple and Sony ran the world we’d all be in trouble! [The fact is, though, that that business structure hasn’t worked in the past, and it probably won’t work in the future – but some CEO’s are greedy, so they keep on trying.]
I'm pro capitalism, but I want my music my way!!!
