Music Banter - View Single Post - One Very Important Thought: Dayvan Cowboy's Confessions As A BOC Nut

Dayvan Cowboy · 09-18-2010, 05:59 AM

A Quick Rant On MP3 Players

I normally don't watch TV, but the other day I decided to. I surfed through the channels, looking for something to watch and on one channel there was an overview of the new iPods. It caught my interest so I decided to see where Apple was taking us now. Well, the iPod touch now has "Facetime", the iPod shuffle is going back to second-gen design and there's going to be a touch-screen clip on nano. As I watched this, I thought to myself, what happened to MP3 players? Why do I need internet, gaming, useless apps, and a touchscreen? I remember back in the early 2000s my dad had an MP3 player. It was your average MP3 player. It was chunky, it was red, and it didn't do much. The only thing it did was play your MP3s and show what song it was playing on a pathetic little screen. It didn't even have that much memory! But now, your MP3 player has to have a touch screen, a camera, and that thing that says the song title before the song begins (it can't pronounce Sigur Ros songs so it's pretty much useless). Why can't apple just put out an MP3 player that only does one thing, like the MP3 players of 2001?

Something that comes to mind right now is a part of the Unix Philosophy: "write programs that do one thing and do it well.". Why can't that be carried over to mainstream MP3 players? I would love to see an MP3 player that just plays MP3s. I don't want any feature creeping in my music playing device, I just want something bare bones that plays music, not a portable electronic swiss army knife.

09-18-2010, 05:59 AM	#7 (permalink)
Dayvan Cowboy Basscadet Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Antarctica Posts: 1,258	A Quick Rant On MP3 Players I normally don't watch TV, but the other day I decided to. I surfed through the channels, looking for something to watch and on one channel there was an overview of the new iPods. It caught my interest so I decided to see where Apple was taking us now. Well, the iPod touch now has "Facetime", the iPod shuffle is going back to second-gen design and there's going to be a touch-screen clip on nano. As I watched this, I thought to myself, what happened to MP3 players? Why do I need internet, gaming, useless apps, and a touchscreen? I remember back in the early 2000s my dad had an MP3 player. It was your average MP3 player. It was chunky, it was red, and it didn't do much. The only thing it did was play your MP3s and show what song it was playing on a pathetic little screen. It didn't even have that much memory! But now, your MP3 player has to have a touch screen, a camera, and that thing that says the song title before the song begins (it can't pronounce Sigur Ros songs so it's pretty much useless). Why can't apple just put out an MP3 player that only does one thing, like the MP3 players of 2001? Something that comes to mind right now is a part of the Unix Philosophy: "write programs that do one thing and do it well.". Why can't that be carried over to mainstream MP3 players? I would love to see an MP3 player that just plays MP3s. I don't want any feature creeping in my music playing device, I just want something bare bones that plays music, not a portable electronic swiss army knife.