Sony NW-HD5: Going to kill off the ipod?
 

Sony Article
Some decent pics

Features:
First and formost:

FULL MP3 compatibility

Here goes:

-40 hours battery life compared to apples measly 16
-REMOVABLE BATTERY (better than apples internal that dies after 18 months)
-SMALLER, and lighter (Size comparison photo)
-FULL MP3 compatibility
-Horizontal and Vertical use of the unit
-6 Band equalizer, fully customizable (No Apple presets)
-20gb capacity

There is also a 30GB limited edition version available in black :cool:

Sounds like a winner to me although it does have to get some serious advertising space to knock ipod off the top spot.

It doesnt stand a chance to "kill" the iPod

Why? On paper it should...

My thought is that Apple marketing, and marketing alone will not allow this to gain the market share it deserves. I hate seeing inferior products win over :(

I don't think it will succeed either...

It does surprise me though that now Apple is slowly moving to color displays Sony decided to stick to B/W (battery life was probably the reason). Also it doesn't do "photos" which seems important nowadays. It lacks many of the features Apple has managed to introduce lately. People will not buy a player for batterylife alone.

Twenty years ago people used the same reasoning (features, functionality, user benefit) to suggest that the Mac would kill off DOS.

The shoe's on the other foot now, as regards where Apple is in this picture.

Didn't happen then - or since, in that space.

Won't happen now in this one, either.

I wish it would (or at least shut up their owners), but Sony has given this thing an Achilles' heel: Sonic Stage. Until it can sync with iTunes/Music Match/Windows Media 10 or support generic drag/drop, people will HATE it.

Sony does not stand a chance in killing off the Ipod. Granted the hardware is better but the software is what is killing them Itunes and ITMS simply kicks Sonicstages ... from a user friendly standpoint. Nost people simply don't want to figure out how to use non-intuitive software. Sony may hope to take some of Ipods market share but no way in heck will they kill off the giant.

They need to also think about getting rid of those numbers and letters when marketing the player. Apple keeps it simple it is either Ipod, Ipod Photo, ipod mini or ipod shuffle. the divde them into subcategories by using the term "generation". Sony is NW- 1234, NW- 5678, NW- 94750847499. Sort of difficult to tell the differences between each by the numbers alone.

Also u can't beat that Apple marketing machine and word of mouth advertising.

Can you say "Betamax"?

Very good point.

Sony is doomed. They haven't managed any kind of innovation in years.

People don't buy the iPod because it's the best. How ironic!

Sony is screwed because they are both a device company and a media company. They are a house divided against themselves because of the way that media/content companies are convinced that anything more advanced than the wax cylinder is going to bring doom, death and destruction to their business.

They will not unseat the iPod or anything else until they as a whole get the clue that the content must serve the devices and not the other way around.

I haven't bought anything from Sony in years because I'm tired of dealing with expensive crippled shiny crap that won't even work with different versions of Windows, let alone OS X or Linux.

The most important feature of the iPod is that it just works. It doesn't need to be rebooted 3 or 4 times a day, it doesn't complain about driver mismatches and it doesn't treat you like a thief. It just works.

Don't really agree with this either. Many instances of ipods being very very flakey, the success of the ipod lies in a few things IMHO:

1) Design design design. No matter how many features you put in a device, unless it appeals to people it will not sell

2) Marketing; Needless to say that Apple is king of this

3) Right time, right place, right brand. They were the first with a decent HDD player, their timing was absolutely perfect

4) The player is not bad, it ain't "amazing", but for 95% of the population it does exactly what they need

5) Accessories; Apple has been VERY fortunate that the accessory makers for their desktop/laptop line have been so active, even before the ipod was such a hit these manufacturers were lining up to make innovative add-ons. The ipod was and remains the only device with such a loyal following of respected manufacturers.

As you see, Sony fails in 4 out of 5. Their marketing STINKS, their player is not a marvel of design (in fact it looks extremely bland to me), it is not as feature full as some of the upper ipods and Sony has a poor reputation when it comes to accessories. They are usually expensive and hard to find.

As I said, Sony is doomed.

OT: would the Nokia N91 be the iPod killer instead?

The real strength of the IPOD is its software and ease of use. There are some PC configurations where this isnt true. But in the case of anyone with a Mac and many if not most PCs, the software is really easy to use. Someone my wife knows (a programmer) got an IPOD recently. They had lots of issues with the software on their PC. My wife showed them how it worked on a Mac and they went out and bought an iBook. Now they love it. I have a DellPod with the software installed on a Dell. And an IPOD with the software on a Mac. The difference is enormous and the IPOD is a clear winner.

So to a great extent I agree with the "it just works" comment. There are some PCs that due to one or another conflict wont work with an IPOD it seems. But on the ones that work it is seamless and easy. That is why they are so successful in my opinion. Ive had mp3 players since the first Rio. IPOD was the first where the software was easy to use and you really didnt have to think about it.

I agree with that. My wife and I have had real hassles getting itunes to do what we want, it is not very intuitive, has some real flaws, all on a PC of course. Some other applications like the one for my Rio Karma were far easier to use.