Valhalla Island

John Gruber wrote an article on a similar subject earlier this year but after looking around for a new mp3 player of my own I noticed a whole lot of things. Simplicity and Consistency is what makes the iPod the world’s most popular mp3 player.

The simplicity of the iPod range is the huge difference between them and any other mp3 player maker. The main company I’ll be comparing is Creative but what’s true for Creative is true for nearly all the others.

Factoring out colour and storage variations there are 3 types of iPods, the Shuffle, the Nano and the normal iPod. Factoring out colour and storage variations for Creatives range there are 23 different types. When you factor in colour and storage variations the iPod range provides 9 possibilities, the Creative range offers an amazing 109 variations. Someone wise once said ‘every decision you force a customer to make is another chance for them to decide to just walk away’. Trying to decide on a Creative mp3 player is very difficult. Some of the smaller players come in 128, 256, 512mb and 1gb sizes. What is the possible advantage of having so many sizes? How many people would look at the 512mb shuffle and think I wish I could spend $20 less and get half the storage space?

At the moment I own a Creative MuVo, not by choice though, we got it for free with a computer. It’s very small, has a screen and holds 1gb which is great for transferring files places. Creative advertises it’s mp3 players as ‘feature packed’. Mine has an FM radio and a voice recorder, both of which I have never used. This is another way Creative are over complicating their product. Throwing on unnecessary features that are never going to be used does more harm than good. The iPod does what it was made to do very well and nothing more. Creative does what it was made to do and packs on a load of other shit.

If you took the word ‘Creative’ off the front of their entire range you’d never know that they are made by the same company. Each model is either kind of similar or just completely different. Where is the consistency or the concept of branding? Could anyone even name Creative’s Nano sized rival? iPods don’t have Apple written all over them but you can tell within a second of seeing it that it’s an iPod, made by Apple.

Besides Creative’s range being unrecognisable and way too large, the UI is crap. iPod’s use anti-aliased myriad for their typeface on a cream background which is very pleasing to your eyes. Creative’s larger screen versions mainly use neon blue on a black background with an even brighter blue for highlighting. Their type choice looks like something I’d see using command prompt in Windows 95 on a 286.

The only thing I like about non-Apple mp3 players is the ability to just drop music onto them. iPod’s do some wierd thing to hide it’s music when you try to navigate directly to it. I don’t like iTunes and I don’t like that you have to install it just to be able to transfer music.