iLounge

1

What is missing….

Let’s see what about customer support. Or even customer base appreciation.  I used to be a proud touchwheel iPod owner. No I am just an owner. I will be getting a Nomad Zen next. Probably will fax the receipt to Apple, just to show “appreciation”.

Bye Apple, hello features.

Posted by pbox on July 15, 2003 at 2:02 PM (PDT)

2

I’ve had bad experiences with Creative products.  Good luck.

Posted by Scott on July 15, 2003 at 2:06 PM (PDT)

3

To “pbox”

If you want support on NJBZen, go read the horror stories about the zen and all the complications that users have had. The thing is, Creative uesd to be kewl, now they’re much worse than Apple. Their warranty is just 90 days compared to Apple’s 1 year, and getting through their support, so I’ve heard, is like going through a brick wall.

Face it, companies cannot provide backwards support to every single product that they have ever created. There’s profit to be had, and new products to be created. If you’re bellyaching about how Apple won’t release a firmware for the Gen2 iPods, then that’s life. If you’re a Windows user, you’re being screwed even more by Microsoft. If you use Win 98 or ME, Microsoft won’t simply upgrade that for free, despite the fact that your computer may have adequate capability to use it. You have to pay to upgrade your Windows based OS. Such is life.

Posted by Sraphim on July 15, 2003 at 5:12 PM (PDT)

4

Recording and divx video

Posted by mGee on July 15, 2003 at 7:00 PM (PDT)

5

pbox, you should have posted on my post back in June….check it out here:

http://www.ipodlounge.com/ipodnews_comments.php?id=A682_0_7_0_C

Sraphim, such is not life when a feature of the product you buy is an upgradeable firmware, a feature Apple claimed on it’s own.

Posted by zync on July 15, 2003 at 7:21 PM (PDT)

6

Such is life? What a wonderful display of apathy.

Posted by Adam Carrington on July 16, 2003 at 11:01 AM (PDT)

7

Sraphim,
although i agree with about 90% of your post, your analogy about microsoft OS’s is just plain wrong.

There’s about 10000 times more work that goes into developing a new OS than it does a new firmware. the OS has to be compatible with hundreds of thousands of hardware configurations while the firmware is just for one. anyway, microsoft releases updates that fix problems, add features etc, just about every week.

i’m not a microsoft fan boy, but they do have a right to charge money for their OS’s upgrade as they takes them years to develop unlike firmware which shouldn’t take more than a month or so.

Posted by torchedlh on July 16, 2003 at 1:28 PM (PDT)

8

You guys all seem to be assuming that it would be easy for Apple to retrofit 2.0 features onto older iPods; I don’t think anyone knows that’s true.

AIUI, although they wrote the 2.0 firmware themselves, 1.x versions were written by a separate software company, so it may be legally impossible for Apple to do this.  Even if not, it sounds like it would involve completely rewriting those features for the older firmware, rather than just cutting and pasting them, which would be quite an investment of time and people.

Yes, of course it would be nice for Apple to do the retrofit, but I suspect that if it was easy, they’d have done it already.  Please don’t assume bad faith from them, when the real story may be very different.

Posted by Gidds in UK on July 16, 2003 at 1:45 PM (PDT)

9

Fireware… accesories… software… updates…

i can go on..

apple has added support for AAC, might as well let the iPod support APE.. pfff..

give us a format we can use like OGG, which is 10 times better than any mpeg-4 garbage. Create better accesories that can be integrated within the iPod… not iTrip ( devloped by 3rd party)..

oh well, im sure apple just wants to make more money, and disregard all the comments made by owners of their products..

Posted by Foo_Foo on July 16, 2003 at 8:31 PM (PDT)

10

1) Support for additonal codecs, possibly allow users to upload codecs rather than supporting them in dedicated chips.

2) Audio Recording (preferably with a choice of compression options MP3, AAC, WAV)

3) Get rid of that annoying break in long continuous tracks (when the buffer is reloaded)

4) Allow deletion of tracks on the pod rather than having to do it on your Mac/PC

5) Allow editing of all playlists (rather than just the On the go playlist)

6) Colour screen & video playback. Obviously a variety of video & audio codecs need to be supported (DivX, XVid, AVI)

7) Integrate with iSee to provide video recording, possibly with an external powerpack as this is likely to be a hard-disk intensive activity and thus will drain battery power very quickly.

8) Larger capacity! If video is to be supported then 60Gb should be sufficient

Posted by superphunk on July 17, 2003 at 4:26 AM (PDT)