Interesting discussion going on at Engadget about the ongoing mp3 player battle between Apple and Creative. I posted the following comment that I don't think gets enough air time:
The Creative Zen Micro does have a killer feature: Yahoo Music at $60 a year. Currently no one can touch this. Look, I am an audiophile for the past 30 years. I have thousands of vinyl LPs. Thousands of CDs, some SACDs, etc. I have so much music I couldn't listen to all of it for the rest of my life. Still, I want to hear new things and take it with me. For portability, I am willing to sacrifice a wee bit on sound quality. Yahoo Music offers all their subscription downloads at WMA 192kps. I rip my own CDS at 192 kps. It's a reasonable compromise of sound for portability. For $60 a year I can stuff myself at the Yahoo buffet. If I find something I really like I can buy the real CD. This is much better than buying deaf - the cds I buy I have never actually heard. I buy based on "intelligence guided by experience". Yahoo's unlimited plan at $60 a year is less than half of a satellite radio subscription. With Yahoo Music I'm in the drivers seat.
Things that I have that Apple doesn't have:
1. Cheap ($60/yr) all you can eat music buffet
2. 192 kps downloads (last I checked Apple is still 128k).
3. Voice recording
4. FM radio
5. Replaceable battery (seems a few apple users are bit miffed over this battery thing)
I could go on, but I've listed 5 "killer features". It seems educating the general public about these things is more of an issue than the product itself?
