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Old Japanese saying

"When bean is dead, make miso soup."


hahhahahahaha!!

Just what everyone wanted... a music player shaped like the internal organ of a human child.

What next? The Thalmus? a small nut shaped mp3 player that holds more music than your own noggin'?

MW... higher, as in I'm XXXX than Andy tonight!

(see comments on prev. article)

Holy Shit. M-M-M-MONSTER KILL!

The FM tuner might be worth having if there was anything on FM worth listening to in the first place.

Remembering the beleagured Apple days, I cringe when I hear such smugness.

It's so hard to keep up with all the "iPod Killers". Thanks MDN!

BTW, what ever became of 'Creative'? After the huge win at CES as "Best Product", I haven't heard much.

I never thought the Bean was an iPod Killer, but I did think it would survive! It's Sony's best attempt so far.

One good reason NOT to get any player but an iPod: it's likely to be off the market before very many are sold. And that means good luck getting service in the long run.

For those of us who live in Asia, the design of the Sony MP3 player is actually cool compared to many of the choices out here. Most MP3 players are designed just like standard old school USB drives, slim and boring, but Sony had potential. I guess they really did not get the integrated content thing down...I am sure they will come up with something else in a few months to claim they can hurt apple.

Time will tell

Sony is a has bean

I love my iPod but it would be great if someone could really come out with something to compete with it. Although, every company fails to realize that it is the whole package; not just the player that makes iPod so great. Gotta have a total solution to really compete with Apple. They keep looking at this market like the PC market and can't comprehend that it is a totally different creature. As soon as the realize that then Apple will actually have some "healthy" competition (not the monopolisitic type they are used to with Microsoft). Remember that competition is a good thing. It will keep Apple sharp and innovative. Now if we can just get people to see the quality that OS X is over windows but one can dream.

http://news.com.com//i/ne/p/2005/818bluebean500x500.jpg

HERE A PIC OF THE BEAN: PIECE OF CRAP if you ask me...can't compare to a Ipod nano 1 GB at same price?? No chance.

Yaahahahaaahhh, Apple . . .

BITCH SLAP that motherF-CKER!!!

SLAP it like a BABY!!!

Slap it DOWN!!

If you go to Sony's website and look for it's hard drive based MP3 players, you'll find that they are no longer available. It doesn't look like there were any announcements. It did a "Dell DJ" and simply vanished off the shelf. Are there ANY 30+GB Mp3 players left? if there are, not for much longer it would seem.

Gives new meaning to the phrase "frigging the bean"!

Can the stock price of AAPL now please start to rise?

Please???

Oh yaah, and F-CK GOOGLE, you f-cking sinking piece of sh!t!

Search MDN, I told you long ago tech stocks are going to take a nose dive.

It's because in the US people now have to pay more for everything and incomes have not come up accordingly.

All their money is going for the higer costs of rents and food, gas etc. basics.

Not much money for iPods and Mac's.

Google was overinflated and now with all the bad press, acting like Microsoft, it's time to get a new search engine.

Don't do Yahoo, they are selling out people to the Chinese Government.

Microsoft, Yahoo, Sony/BMG, the RIAA, the MIAA, all these evil corporations.

And now Google has turned to the DaRk sIdE

Eventually Apple will too, just wait until Trusted Computing rears it's ugly head.

Apple couldn't use a cool G5 processor even if IBM gave them one, it's all about DRM schemes Intel created, Hollywood endorsed.

Oh yes read on, U-build PC'ers are fuming!!

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_nvidia_hdcp_support/

pino,

Will you and the other morons whining about AAPL please give us a fucking break! The stock market is not a goddamned lottery, neither is the stock price an indication of the strength of the company's business model. The market is for goddamned investors, not speculators looking for a quick buck.

Do you have faith in Apple's long term viability or not? Is the stock price trending up or not? If the answer is yes to both, then stick with it, and don't let dips unnerve you. Growth is never a smooth progression; there will be retreats, mostly driven by clueless daytraders who jump on the say-so of equally clueless analysts. If you're looking for a quick return on your money, you have no business in the stock market. Here's a clue: forget the stock price and look at the potential of the business. How do you think the Tech Bubble happened in the first place? Clueless speculators looking to make a killing jumped on any piece of shit with a "dot com" at the end of the name.

Sorry for harshing on you, but Jesus, if you have no idea how investing works, stay the hell out of the market and stop whining about the stock price already. You have no idea how grating it is, nor how uninformed it makes you appear.

Haven't seen that much gibberish and nonsense concentrated into one post in a loooong time ('cept the Yahoo stuff--where you're dead on). Sorry to be brutally honest, but someone had to be.
Kate

Did anyone else actually read the whole second article? Two gems I loved:

"Now that PC development has reached the boundaries of most people's expectations, ever-increasing processor sizes are only really useful for those who want 3D gaming - the next wave of machines will be "media centres" for the living room. The basic idea is a "computer in a telly" with only one cable - the power cable. It will have a wireless mouse, keyboard and internet capability - and a wide screen. One such machine is the Sony VA1, released next month."

Or the iMac Core Duo, released last month, or the iMac G5 released ~two years ago

"The problem is that existing DVD technology is not all that it is cracked up to be: it will begin the journey to obsolescence when incompatible high-definition televisions start flying off the shelves."

Since when are hi-def sets incompatible with DVDs? Is there any requirement to being a journalist nowadays? Perhaps I should give it a try...

I forgot one:

"For £1,200, Samsung sell a 42in flat-panel plasma television with a sharp, vibrant picture. The problem is that it will be obsolete after "high-definition" (HD) television arrives, offering twice the picture quality."

??!?!??!?

built in FM has ALWAYS been a lame "feature" for an MP3 music player. Howard Stern, the one non-music reason for FM is no longer there, so there is absolutely NO reason for FM when I've got 4800 songs on hand. That said, what do I want when I'm tired of listening to music? Talk. Most talk radio is on AM. It's not about fidelity, so no moaning. It's about content. So, if an iPod was to have ANY radio at all, it ought to be the band that provides an alternative to what one already has loaded on the player. However, with a plethora of Podcasts now available, there is lots of spoken word programming easily loaded for convenient listening. Looks like Apple had it right the first time... no radio.

mdn word: volume, as in pump it up.

Although he is a little different, I do think that Mr. Bean is funny. Hate to see him go.

wait, am I at the wrong website?

Wow, this is getting to be really sad and ridiculous... It seems the only time we hear about these so-called iPod-killers is when they're launched and when they're discontinued... Maybe someone can erect a gallery of all of them w/ their dates under their names...

For anyone curious as to what the Bean and other Sony MP3 players look like, check out amazon... I think the Bean was suppose to be targeted at women (colorwise), but their NW-E507s sure look more appropriately phallic/tampon/suppository-shaped to me...

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/1195910

And I don't understand the "Network" part of "Network Walkman"... On my PowerBook, I connect to a network via ethernet, AirPort (802.11), or Bluetooth... Do these Walkmans have any of these abilities...? To what network do they connect...?

And speaking of connecting, how's that Sony Connect store doing...? I don't expect they're almost up to a billion in sales like the iTunes Music Store, but how 'bout 500 million...? 100 million...? 500 thousand...? 100 thousand...? Any videos yet...?

And speaking of videos, consumer expectations only get higher w/ every Apple update... Creative can sell players that support video, but if Napster, Virgin, Yahoo, etc., don't sell any videos, what's a Creative customer suppose to do...?

And speaking of Creative, if SanDisk slipped into the #2 MP3 player slot (from Thu 02/09), does that mean that Creative w/ its ZenVision M (from Thu 01/26) isn't even outselling SanDisk's million players last quarter...? And can Samsung really do better (from Mon 01/09)...?

http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/8530/
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/8356/
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/8125/

I think competition is good, be it Creative, SanDisk, Samsung, Sony, etc., the Connect store, Napster, Virgin, Yahoo, etc., but they've just got to do a much better job of getting it together and working together to beat Apple's iPod+iTunes+iTMS seemless solution...

From what I've read recently... and I'm probably wrong... the HDTV thing they're referring to might be ACTUAL HD spec video: 1920 x 1080? or is it 1600 x 1080? Whatever the horizontal, it's the 1080 vertical part that matters.

Current DVDs (and tape for that matter) will be watchable, but not full resolution, since they're 450 to maybe 550 lines vertical. Current HDTV programming supposedly isn't true HD (1080) and they were saying that there is some new "standard", 1080p, that' won't be compatible even with the very few current 1080 HDTV sets on the market. It doesn't make much sense to me.

Hey, the Bean was kind of cute, but pretty bulky when you compare it to iPod shuffle or nano. And why NOT a built-in FM tuner? NPR in the morning or Fresh Air. Too bad Sony was tying it down with their stillborn online music store.

Real competition will keep Apple honest. Look what the LACK of competition did to Microsoft? Gates & Co. cornered the market early on with a truly crappy product, MS-DOS/Windows. And that certainly didn't do much more than get their greed juices flowing. Creativity was the first casualty, if creativity was EVER apart of the Microsoft equation. i think NOT!

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That is nothing new. Already expected since the begining!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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**** What we want to hear is, " Dell can't compete with Apple, and they stop making PC!!!!"

OR

Bill Gates realise that there is no way for him to compete against the Apple in the long run. So he declares early retirement. And Gill Amero takes over and become a new CEO of Microsoft.

Than Gill invites Steve to come over to Microsoft to be the company advisor.


ANd the monkey boy? He resign and goes back to study animalogy (Animal's behaviour). Developer, developer, developer,developer, developer, developer, developer, developer, developer, developer......
Who let's the dog out, hu ha hu hu ha......

Ripley's panties wrote:

"Yaahahahaaahhh, Apple . . .

BITCH SLAP that motherF-CKER!!!

SLAP it like a BABY!!!

Slap it DOWN!!"


I can almost hear the ghetto-fied inflections there.

Good stuff!

The only iPod killer is the one made by Apple.

MW: Neither. At the moment, I don't have a witty way to make that fit, but I'm sure it's there somewhere. ...Damn lack of sleep. :grumble:

FM radio is a good enough feature in the UK and many other areas. In the UK all radio (apart from 5 live and a few talk stations I think) is FM, all the BBC, all the commercial radio etc. If my iPod came with one built in I wouldn't argue since I don't like remotes, I find them a pain clipping them on all the time. That said the Bean is still crap.

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. Let us who else is still on the list huh?

Sony Bean is dead
BenQ is dead
Rio is dead
Virgin is not virgin anymore
Thomas surrendered
Olympus been torned down
Dell killed the DJ
iRiver dried up
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NEXT: CREATIVE!!!! We are after you!!!!

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Something else is going on....I smell Apple licensing it´s iPod/iTunes system to manufacturers in the near future.

These guys are clearing out the old stuff to bring in the new Apple compliant stuff????

$130 for 512mb? Were they actually serious? The ONLY way anyone is going to compete with the iPod is to offer an inferior experience at HALF the cost OR offer a superior experience at the SAME cost. Offering an inferior experience for more money is not the winning formula as is the case with Sony's Bean.

emaN: all you need these days to be a successful tech journalist is a Chicken Little complex and a back-alley lobotomy. for the former, just scream "TEH SKY IS FALLING!!!!!1!" every time you hear any piece of information about a tech company.

if you want to do the latter the hard way, attend a 2-year journalist school.

"Yesterday, the company confirmed that it will be discontinued in April. It insists that repairs are still available long after production ends,"

In another words, they have sufficient stock to replace the ones sold for very long time..

"Remembering the beleagured Apple days, I cringe when I hear such smugness."

Well done R. A little bit of sense. The iPod will fall, mark my words.

But at sony style, it's listed with a $10 discount. The price has dropped, not the product line.

- Steve