[ARSCLIST] Music listening today

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/05/technology/05basics.html

Interesting. They cite market shares for flash-memory music players, in other words those competing 
with the iPod Nano and Shuffle. There are also several competing with the regular hard drive iPod, 
but I betcha Apple has 80+% of that market since they probably get a contractural discount on the 
IBM/Hitachi drives and thus can price with a better profit margin than others.

Reading this article, I can't see why one wouldn't buy an iPod Nano vs. these competitors but 
different strokes for different folks. I didn't take the time to research the competitors' websites, 
but I'd like to know which if any of these will play WAV files or a lossless compressed format. The 
Nano will play both WAV and ALF.

Apple is really pushing the new Nano these days, which makes me guess that it is their best seller. 
I think the latest (gen. 5) iPod stretches the definition of "portable" with its somewhat fragile 
hard drive and display screen. Why anyone would want to watch a movie on that tiny screen is a 
mystery to me but apparently that's a must-have feature with the "digerati" crowd.

Anyway, soon some of us will be archiving iPod playlists!

-- Tom Fine