mp3 players

Apple is taking more heat over its anti-competitive practices regarding its iPod copy protection technology. The French online music store Virgin Mega has now filed a legal complaint against Apple, saying that Apple is engaged in anti-competitive practices by refusing to license the copy protection technology used in its iPod consumer electronics devices. This is yet more news about Apple's anti-competitive stance on music.

Real Networks recently called on Apple to open up its Fairplay digital rights technology so that other competing music services could transfer music content onto Apple's iPod players. But Apple apparently isn't really interested in open music standards. In fact, today Apple is beginning to act a lot like the MPAA or the RIAA, both of which strongly promote closed, proprietary digital rights management schemes for limiting the copying and the transfer of music from one device to another. Apple is apparently playing the same game now by blocking competing music services from being able to easily transfer music content to iPod devices.

It is a monopolistic practice by Apple, no doubt, and it runs counter to the philosophy of the Apple community, which has traditionally been far more open and fair-minded. Perhaps this is an indication of a fundamental shift in the philosophy of Apple computer. From here forward, the company seems intent on monopolizing its relationship with consumers and limiting their options rather than expanding them.

For my part, I think the iPod has always been an overpriced, underperforming consumer electronics device and I neither own one nor recommend it. If you want to play music files, go get yourself an iRiver flash MP3 player, which holds far more music than other flash players on the market, and has outstanding battery life to boot. It will be interesting to keep an eye on this situation and watch what Apple does down the road to inconvenience customers in its attempt to monopolize its intellectual property sales channels.

(NaturalNews) SanDisk, a leading manufacturer of flash memory products, has released its latest foray into the MP3 player market with the Sansa e280, an 8GB, flash-memory-based player which hopes to compete with Apple Computer's similar iPod Nano.

The SanDisk player already has a significant advantage over its Apple contemporary, as it comes standard with 8GB of memory that can be expanded to 10GB through the use of SanDisk's 2GB MicroSD cards, and the company says cards with greater capacities are in the works. This level of storage capacity is a leap beyond the flash-memory driven Nano's 4GB capacity for the same $249 price tag.

The e280 also comes standard with a digital FM tuner, which consumers can record to their flash memory; a microphone that lets the MP3 player double as a voice recorder; and the ability to play any MP3 or WMA file, along with Microsoft PlaysForSure and Rhapsody To Go formats, through its nonproprietary digital rights management system.

SanDisk's Sansa line doesn't merely try to outperform Apple's product features, however, as the company has announced it will be dropping the prices of its 2GB, 4GB and 6GB models significantly below their Apple counterparts.

Still, it is unlikely Apple's position at the top of the totem pole is in imminent danger. Apple has broken away from most of its immediate competitors within the digital music player market, but Ted Schadler, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, said SanDisk was in the best position to challenge Apple. He noted that the e280 was not a break in the MP3 market, but it was an indication of SanDisk's "relentlessness" as a company.

"(SanDisk) gets memory cheaper than anybody, and they have tremendous distribution reach because they have their SD cards everywhere," he said. "Because they have a tremendous retail presence already with their memory cards, they can bring these products to those same retailers and get shelf space, and that's a huge advantage.

"Three things make a difference: price, quality of the product -- which is steadily getting better -- and their reach. SanDisk has all those coming together now."