Registered: Jun 2000
Location: OH
Posts: 4

Has anyone compared and contrasted the MiniJam now to Good Technologies SoundsGood product?
I took a look at SoundsGood specs and was surprised to see it did not support the Mac. It design is alot nicer and hopefully it will be to market on time unline VaporGear's product that was supposed to be in Summer (first week of September is not summer)

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Metro Station, Hollywood and Highland
Posts: 1018

James hopes to post a review of the SoundsGood next week.

Registered: Feb 2000
Location: London, UK
Posts: 92

Mac support

I'm disappointed... it was only reading through this forum that I realised Innogear has quietly dropped voice recording from MiniJam; as a journalist, that was one of the main reasons for wanting it.

Given the long delay, I'd be very tempted to forget it and look for the SoundsGood module, but I see that doesn't support the Macintosh.

A great shame. Looks like a lost sale for them. At this rate, I shall end up carrying around my dictaphone, Visor and and a separate MP3 player.

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Metro Station, Hollywood and Highland
Posts: 1018

You might be interested in the Voice Access which has a 16-minute recording time for $39.95, and (allegedly) ships Oct. 1.

Registered: Aug 2000
Location: St. Louis
Posts: 308

the thing about the soundsgood, is that it does Sound good but apon closer inspection, its not good, the main good that I can think of is that it will drive down the price of the miniJam module

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Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Metro Station, Hollywood and Highland
Posts: 1018

I think it sounds better, considering that the only real attraction of an MP3 Springboard is to have a player that adds no volume to your pocket. The SoundsGood fits flush in the Visor, like a well-designed module should.

The MiniJam is expandible, but 64MB MMCs cost nearly as much as the module itself. You might as well just buy another module.

Registered: Oct 1999
Location:
Posts: 231

At least you are able to upgrade the MiniJam memory. You're stuck with 64 in the SoundsGood. And memory prices do come down...sometimes. I don't see them coming down anytime soon, though. The SoundsGood doesn't support voice recording, does it? If it doesn't what is the real advantage of it over the MJ except the flush form factor?

Registered: Feb 2000
Location:
Posts: 1571

quote:

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Originally posted by swendor
The SoundsGood doesn't support voice recording, does it? If it doesn't what is the real advantage of it over the MJ except the flush form factor?

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Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Metro Station, Hollywood and Highland
Posts: 1018

quote:

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Originally posted by swendor
The SoundsGood doesn't support voice recording, does it? If it doesn't what is the real advantage of it over the MJ except the flush form factor?

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Registered: Jan 2000
Location:
Posts: 391

If I was looking for an MP3 player I'd still go for a separate one. Why? SoundsGood only supports 98/2k/ME, because it uses its own USB-only sync mechanism.

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Registered: Aug 2000
Location:
Posts: 8

i canceled my order for the mini jam and spent my money on somthing else. i thought it was cool how soundsgood tryed to come in and act like our savior but in the end innogear still has the upper hand because it is expandable and mac compatable. i do not understand a company putting out a product these days and leaving out mac users.

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james

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Metro Station, Hollywood and Highland
Posts: 1018

quote:

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Originally posted by kingjames i canceled my order for the mini jam and spent my money on somthing else. i thought it was cool how soundsgood tryed to come in and act like our savior but in the end innogear still has the upper hand because it is expandable and mac compatable. i do not understand a company putting out a product these days and leaving out mac users.

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Registered: Mar 2000
Location: NJ
Posts: 517

Extra mile? How hard is it to include Mac support? All you have to do is include a Mac MP3 player (which MusicMatch has a version of that I use every day), and port your conduit. Considering that the Palm OS was developed on a Mac and CodeWarrior for the Palm OS runs on the Mac, I really don't think that it is very hard to find someone to do this. Two million iMacs weren't bought for post/video production either!

When you are making a springboard, it is being made for the Visor obviously, and do you really think that only 5% of us Visor owners are Mac users???? The Visor supports the Mac out of the box. Maybe if you were making something for a Palm device you might be able to get away with holding out on the Mac version, but not with the Visor. I still think that the soundsgood is the better module (based on form factor), but the fact that it doesn't support the Mac OS is just not right. I have to agree with nwhitfield, if I get a MP3 player it will be a stand alone.

[Edited by lennonhead on 09-09-2000 at 10:50 PM]

Registered: Jan 2000
Location:
Posts: 391

Alternatively, they could document the protocol and release the source to their support software so third parties can port them to other platforms. For free. And maybe even come up with new clients that let you do more interesting things with the hardware.

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Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Metro Station, Hollywood and Highland
Posts: 1018

quote:

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Originally posted by lennonhead Extra mile? How hard is it to include Mac support? All you have to do is include a Mac MP3 player (which MusicMatch has a version of that I use every day), and port your conduit.

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If it's that easy, why not send an email to Good and inform them of the obvious? And while you're at it, you might want to share your insights with other MP3 player manufacturers that have snubbed the Mac. After all, why would they cut themselves off of an additional source of revenue when the solution is so easy?

quote:

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Considering that the Palm OS was developed on a Mac and CodeWarrior for the Palm OS runs on the Mac, I really don't think that it is very hard to find someone to do this. Two million iMacs weren't bought for post/video production either!

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I used to work at a technical bookstore and met hundreds of programmers a week. It's no exaggeration to say that weeks could go by between encounters with Mac programmers. Here's an unscientific test: go to Amazon and see how many books on Mac programming are still in print beside the "Inside Macintosh" series. Let me know if you find more than one. Now look up books on Windows programming.

My point wasn't that iMacs are being used exclusively for postproduction; it was that the ratio of programmers to end users is much, much lower than in the Windows (or even *nix or BeOS) environment.

quote:

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When you are making a springboard, it is being made for the Visor obviously, and do you really think that only 5% of us Visor owners are Mac users????

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In a word, yes.

quote:

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The Visor supports the Mac out of the box. Maybe if you were making something for a Palm device you might be able to get away with holding out on the Mac version, but not with the Visor.

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The Visor supports Mac out of the box largely because the Palm Desktop now supports the Mac out of the box. The original Pilot was Windows-only, and Palm added Mac support later. But Handspring might have added USB support. I can't remember whether Palm's USB software for the Mac came out before or after the Visor.

quote:

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I still think that the soundsgood is the better module (based on form factor), but the fact that it doesn't support the Mac OS is just not right.

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As a Linux user, I think Good should also provide software for Linux as well. And BeOS. Actually, the best strategy would be to open source the driver and desktop software so all of the interested parties could port everything to the platform of their choice with a minimum of time and effort. But that's probably considered as radical as offering Mac support

quote:

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I have to agree with nwhitfield, if I get a MP3 player it will be a stand alone.

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I agree as well.

Registered: Jul 2000
Location: Vancouver, WA USA
Posts: 17

Hey, Gameboy70 -- Better clarify what you mean by

Mac users don't pay the bills, except in publishing and postproduction.

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Metro Station, Hollywood and Highland
Posts: 1018

The apostate explains

quote:

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Originally posted by dinosoar Hey, Gameboy70 -- Better clarify what you mean by

Mac users don't pay the bills, except in publishing and postproduction.

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location:
Posts: 45

Good too much $$

I like the premise of the soundsgood module. I think Innogear tried to tackle too much with its MiniJam, resluting in an expensive and delayed product. IMHO, springboards _should_ be simple and not have too much function crammed into them. Unfortunately, the soundsgood seems to be overpriced by $75-$100 relative to its function.

Registered: Mar 2000
Location: NJ
Posts: 517

1) MAC Programming for Dummies with Cdrom

2) Introduction to Computer Science Using C++ (with IBM or MAC Template Disk)

3) Learn Java on the MacIntosh

4)MacIntosh C Programming Primer: Mastering the Toolbox Using THINK C, Vol. 2

All in print from bn.com

I do see your point though, there is a higher ratio of programmers to users on the windows side than there is on the Mac side. I don't think that means that including Mac support won't make you a profit, even when weighing in the cost of porting the software. Since the iMac was introduced, the Mac community has grown quite a bit. I myself have helped to convert three people in the past two years(don't take that the wrong way, I didn't hold a gun to anyones head, I simply told them they should look into a Mac, they did, and they bought it).

We are not talking about an extremely hard thing to do. An MP3 player is trivial compared to 3DFX's Mac retail voodoo 5, IBM's port of ViaVoice or Westlake interactive's port of Unreal Tournament. Granted SoundsGood isn't a very large company, but they could still do it and make money. It is the decision of the company, and there isn't much I can do about that, but that doesn't mean I'm not upset about their decision.

On the bright side they saved me $270, for now.

In terms of Visor users, I think that the Visor appeal to Mac users more than Palm's do. The same way that people buy candy flavored iMac's (or the new mouthwash looking flavors; new bold Gatorade anyone?) over beige PC's, people buy Visors over Palms. I don't have numbers in front of be, but if 40% of PC PDA users buy Visors, and 75% of Mac PDA users buy Visors, then I would say at least 10% of Visor owners use Macs(using your 5% of people use Macs compared to 95% PCs). An automatic 10% loss in profit to innogear or stand alone players can't be good for SoundsGood.

[Edited by lennonhead on 09-10-2000 at 06:24 PM]

Registered: Oct 1999
Location: Metro Station, Hollywood and Highland
Posts: 1018

lennonhead:

The latter two books you listed are actually out of print, despite BN.com's listing (I've actually tried ordering them for customers and looked them up in Book-in-Print). At the time I worked at the bookstore, Mac Programming for Dummies was a vaporware book that was delayed enough times to make Innogear look like a model of punctuality. It may have actually made to publication by now.

Trivia aside, I'm not suggesting that concentrating on Windows at the expense of other platforms is a good thing. It's just the conventional wisdom in an industry loathe to "think different." As argent and I have said, the best approach is to open source the software. After all, it's not like the companies are making money off the drivers.

But I think all memory-based MP3 players are rip-offs. I think it's much better to get a CD-RW drive and a $106 MPTrip player. There's nothing like being able to store 650 megs of MP3 on a CD. I was going to get a Nomad Jukebox, but since I got my MPTrip in the mail yesterday, I've achieved "Nerdvana." The construction's a little cheap, but as far as storage and playback go, this thing rocks!