dlashof wrote:
Fair point. I'm vaguely aware of some of the high end systems costing
$1000, but my sense is that the market for that is quite limited.
Apple has demonstrated that there is a huge market for digital music
systems if you make them user friendly and hit the right price point. I
think the Slim user interface is great. Picking the right ripping format
is still a big mystery for most newbies, but that could be solved by
integrating ripping software into slimserver. If it supported FLAC and
mp3 they could make everyone happy. Then slim technology integrated
into a consumer grade receiver, say at a $350-$450 price point could
take off the way ipods have imho.
-DL
What makes a product take off, the product quality or the marketing
quality or both? Both seems to be the obvious answer. My iRiver iHP-120
is far easier to put music onto and listen to music from than any
iPod/iTunes combo, and has several useful features like FM tuning and
voice recording. Before you say those are useless features, note that
they have proven to be profitable as hardware add-ons to the iPod. And
yet the iRiver market share is about 2 points past diddly-squat. The
iPod is a gorgeously designed piece of hardware, and the attention Apple
didn't put into features went into anti-aliased fonts and cool state
transitions.
Lesson here? Feature set, ease-of-use, market awareness, and UI polish
are all components of the product's success. So far Slim Devices has
done very well on all fronts, so let's assume they'll keep doing so :)
--
Jack at Monkeynoodle dot Org: It's a Scientific Venture...
Riding the Emergency Third Rail Power Trip Since 1996
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