That old trope again..

All the people asserting that this or that mp3 player has obviously superior audio quality to an iPod annoy me- they're about as empirical as CNet "journalists", and have as much clue about what they're listening for.

Personally I hate Apple, they piss me off, but I do, much to my irritation, use an iPod. Despite the fact that it needs to be jailborken to use with my linux boxes, despite the fact that I wouldn't pee on St. Steve were he on fire. The problem is, they sound good. The DACs and headphone amps are decent.

The person smugly banging on about the iriver i140 is particularly amusing. Having read a load of writeups by enthusiastic amatuers and part-time crApple haters, I bought one of these players looking forward to the superlative sound quality promised. What I got was a decidedly coloured and partial frequency response, and an SNR bad enough that you could hear the hiss walking along a busy road.

Being lucky enough to be an engineer in a facility with world-class audio test gear, I put the damn thing on the bench, loaded it with uncompressed test tones and put it through its paces. Noise levels closer to a mediocre FM radio were certainly impressive stuff. When I returned it to the shop, I had this sheath of paper to share with the shop assistant, should he quibble with whether it was "of merchantable quality". He didn't. He apologised profusely. I asked if he could grab a couple more units from the back, so we could see if we'd just been sold a turkey, as I actually liked the features and build quality of the iRiver. Sadly, we tried a few, and they all sucked. I got my money back with an apology from the helpful and long-suffering chap behind the counter.

Down the years, I've tried out various players that enthusiastic amateurs or self-professed but distinctly unscientific "audiophiles" have lauded- and most of them sound like cheap computer equipment rather than audio gear. A lot of them actually have such terrible EMI supression that you could hear big changes on the display. Not really great.

Anyway, much to my irritation, I've been returning to the iPod time and again. Some have been better than others- like the models that came out after the first gen shuffle (that had a great push-pull output stage) and before the cohort that included the first touch. However, they've been more satisfactory than all but the odd alternative. Sadly, the only way to find out how good they sound is to try them, or ask someone who actually understands audio from an engineering POV (rather than the sort of person who buys 200 pound cables)- you certainly can't trust most journos.

So I'm a reluctant prisoner of Steve, but I don't like my prejudice deafen me, unlike some.

Sorry for the wall of text. Peace!

@Ted Treen

I can beat that. My OS Is free, works very well and does everything I need.

@Ivan Headache

No, they really don't. A rant based on anecdote and a lack of logic smells like zealotry to me. Grown-ups realise that everything sucks, you pick the option whose flaws bother you the least.

For some people, the mediocre performance, the paid point upgrades, and the relatively restricted commercial software support in some areas is a deal-breaker, for others it isn't. To assert that one size fits all merely betrays kneejerk fanboi behaviour, and thus automatically invalidates anything you might say, as you fail at articulating a measured or balanced view.

Use what suits you folks. When you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. I have a Mac, it's a nice little machine for my half-assed digital DJing. It goes in a a sturdy bag with an external drive, an outboard M-Audio box and a Vestax VCI-100 controller. It's fine, I can turn up, get everything rigged and running in five minutes without rushing, it's all good. However, I also have a windows box for playing games on, Linux commodity servers, a nice FreeBSD firewall and other bits. They all have their flaws, but I'm taking advantage of what they do well, and I have a (mostly) stress-free time). Your mileage may, indeed almost certainly will probably vary. That's the *point*.

Fanbois are a disease. The good news is that you tend to grow out of it. Some do at puberty, some don't shake it until their 60s, but most people shrug it off at some point.

@AC

"Grown-ups realise that everything sucks"

Do they? Maybe bitter, cynical, pessimistic "grown-ups" do, I hope I never become one of those.

"you pick the option whose flaws bother you the least"

Funny, I pick the option whose features I like the best and don't think of my computer as "flawed" because it doesn't have a 100TB hard drive and built in coffee maker.

@Optymystic and @Matt Bryant

“Is there not an argument that one of its key roles was bringing the benefits of XPARC research to market through its operating systems some aeons in advance of its competitor to the north.”

It’s debatable just how much Apple was influenced by Xerox PARC, but greatly is the real answer – however…

Many state that Apple just took the work of others – and from your post, I inferred that you feel it didn’t bring anything to the table itself – but it was more of a case that the research was in the direction Apple was already moving and this has been well documented.

A very readable account is in Michael Malone’s excellent ‘Infinite Loop’ – Malone cites evidence such as patents, filed by Apple before the infamous first visit, which relate very much to the kind of the GUI work that Apple ‘took’ from the PARC. Ex-members of the PARC research group, who joined Apple to work on the Macintosh, explained that a major reason for their move was that they were fed up with working on research that didn’t see the light of day – whereas, they felt Apple was already going in the direction of their research and that the company would actually do something with the technology.

Also, Apple refined and extended the PARC research considerably – it wasn’t just the case of slapping its logo on a finished product.

One thing that’s often overlooked that it was Jef Rasin, who really wanted Apple to visit PARC – Jobs was reluctant and had already tried canceling the Macintosh project three times before the visit.

Matt,

“Ever tried to upgrade the graphics card in the over-engineered, over-priced Apple G4 Cube? Think carefully, mactard, there is a very good reason why PCs have won the war against the Mac, they just offer a better and more flexible solution.”

The Cube was, as you say, quite rightly, overpriced. But I’m afraid, you’re missing the point in how it was (badly) marketed.

The Cube wasn’t intended to be flexible, it was targeting the ‘prosumer’ (as more than one Apple exec described it to me)… people who thought nothing of burning money for a flash, classy bit of kit, whether or not they needed it. Why, even Michael Caine bought one – didn’t need a computer, he just thought it was dead cool.

As for Scully, it’s worth remembering that he didn’t get how important it is to look at market share in terms of OS – he just looked at in terms of hardware. Also, for a company headed by a marketing expert, the Newton’s pre-release hype (which led to massive disappointment when the product was actually unveiled) and advertising was amazingly shoddy.

@Ivan Headache

Yep, smug, mendacious know-nothing kneejerk crApple fanboi. People like you make it hard to tell when the Jobs Mob release anything good or anyone else anything bad, as your witless, smug polarised and simplistic view of the world simply precludes informed debate. Now go iron your cardigan, I think Top Gear's on soon.

Apple properly sliced & diced!

I have used Macs professionally since, well, 1984, and I have survived years of both Apple/Mac zealotry and repeated premature announcements of Apple's imminent demise. Very few biz-tech writers have correctly dissected Apple Computer's inner chronology (and reasons for its recent market success) as well as does this author. The article even has lovely Excel charts! :-)