Nothing prevents them.

And it's a bad thing for consumers.

consdering iPods are pretty much THE de facto MP3 Player out there....

Then again Playstation and PS2 were the de facto game consoles, until Xbox and 36o (and wii) rained on their little parade, so hopefully the same happens here.

Oh goodie, whispy little controls on headphone cables. I'm sure those won't wear out in a couple months.

no one said jobs was smart... look at the last mac book they did, the alumium one has no firewire, all the others do and thats the biggest complaint i get

This isn't a Steve Jobs thing. He is retired.

no he isnt, hes out on medical o.o

If they start doing that and requiring manufacturers to license chips and things for using on their products they'd end up with an anti-competitive or similar lawsuit.

Not really, becuase there ARE other players out there that work with regular headphones fine,

Heck, even Sony, with thier MD, had the remote just have a 3.5mm jack at the end so that a standard set of headphones fit.

You do have a point. I'll just not use Apple then. :P

....apple at its best, trying to rip you of your good money on crap(mac), honestly whos going to fork over extra money for a stupid little piece to use other headphones when for the same price you can get a non-apple product 20x the quality of that.....

Quality assurance, truth be told. They get countless, endless complaints about the ipod 'sounding like shit', all of which are remedied with using non-shit headphones.

I agree, it is not a welcome 'feature'.

Considering most who get Ipods ditch the standard headphones that come with them (the ubiquitous white buds) because they...well... sound like crap. I hardly ever see anyone with an iPod of any nature with the original earbuds.

And the ironic part is that the medium-quality buds that come with the ipods, are still higher quality than some of the ones people put in them. People keep saying the apple ones suck so much, it's causing the wrong message to be sent and they're buying even worse ones without even comparing.

Proof of self-inflicted user abuse.

I still have my original buds and use them whenever I don't feel like lugging my huge SKPro headphones around. The only complaint I have with apple earbuds is that they are fragile. Mine are coming apart at the seams.

And I've done sound comparisons between apple earbuds and other brands like sony, and even skull candy. They're definitly the best earbuds I've ever used.

Yeah, but Apple's pro-environment policy is actually a huge customer service setback. A lot of their fragility comes to using reduced BVC and BHF and all those other three-letter chemicals I can never remember, or give a damn about.

If only they designed the area where the wire goes into the earbud better. The casing separated from the earbud, so there is a bunch of exposed wire on mine.

Ironically, that's a problem with several other devices too.

Apple fails!

Jaiko has a point about sound quality, although you can do better if you're willing to pay for it. There's also the matter of image; Apple paid quite a bit for those ads of silhouettes dancing with white iPod earbuds. The white cords are as good as a trademark and Apple wants people to be seen with them, it's advertising. (Unfortunately, it's also advertising to gangs who want to beat you up and steal your iPod.)

BTW, those earbuds are warrantied. Call their tech support line and complain that the cord's busted. They'll send a replacement by FedEx. You have to send the busted one back though and if they decide it was damaged by neglect, they'll charge your credit card. (I used to do tech support for Apple.)

Personally, what I don't like about iPod is iTunes. I don't even want to think about what a b**** it was supporting iTunes! And there's no version of iTunes for any Linux distro so I'm SOL with it anyway!

"They could have just make a short cable with control on it, but with a standard jack at the end so that. Nope."

See, Sony did that same thing with the PSP, and I thought it was ingenious... until that controller broke, but still, I don't have to have it.

This is why I buy nothing "Apple" and my music device is PSP all the way :P

except Sony is often just as bad as apple. the UMD and mini disc are prime examples.

They tried to control minidisc so badly, it failed, though in EVERY way it was superior to CD and would have supplanted it (and did for a while in europe).

and lets not forget sony Rootkit. And the removal of PS2 compatibility in the PS3

Shuffle 4GB = 79$

Nano (possibly the UGLIEST iteration, looks like a KIRF of an iPod) = 149 -199 (8 and 16 GB respectively)

Classic 120GB (my god in heaven, its now officially a portable harddrive with a screen and iPod controls) = $249

iPod Touch (persona fav, wish i could get one) - 229, 299, 399 (8gb, 16GB, 32GB, all SSD)


No it IS the cheapest. So research first.

And the shuffle is supposed to be the lightweight, sport based player. Was designed for working out. And as I have tried to work out with our 80GB Video at times, it can be clunky for working out.

I jsut hate proprietary connections like that. For something that had no business BEING proprietary. its a goddamned HEADPHONE jack

KIRF = Keeping It Real Fake (IE a clone). the newest nano to me look like cheap china Knockoff of an second gen Nano. THAT is why I hate it. I acutally liked the Third Gen (stubby) nanos. I think the newest is a huge step backwards in design.

Firewire is on every major computer, and is designed from the ground up to be what it is. It wasnt originally say... a Serial Port and then they added a proprietary 4th pin that was required to control your computer.

A headphone jack has been always a headphone jack. To try to proprietize (sp) it so you have to but just THEIR stuff is bull. Even sony made it with everythng they had that you could use standard headphones in thier MiniDisc and PSP's. you could get an in line remote to control it, but it wasn't REQUIRED. This makes it required. Craptacular design.


And, BTW when the Shuffle first came out, the Nano didn't exist. The.. what was it, the iPod Mini? It was about the same size, but thicker and HDD based. So the Shuffle was better for athletic stuff.

I still would say it edges out the nano a little. Its TINY. It holds about enough songs (originally, before the newest 4GB upgrade) to keep enough songs for variety when working out without making it too annoying to pick songs. It was always designed as a cheap/secondary mp3 player

No, I am middle ground. I am not anti-apple, per se.

I own a single iPod, and will not buy a new macbook (and Mac Book air) becuase they are going to the non-user replaceable batteries, ala thier MP3 Players, which is SHIT.

Then they pull this.

They are great at design, and the OS is decently slick (I have an old G4 downstairs running 10.3 (or 10.4, dont remember which). Can't go any higher. though 10.4 and 10.5 are not really technically much different, Apple has coded it in you cannot install them on a G4


They are more style than substance to me though.

As i told you in a private cat, Ego and Arrogance are the things that really get me irritated. Appleheads REEK of it. (there is a difference between users of an Apple product and an Apple head).