Thursday, September 22, 2005

Landfill Bound Wallet Drainer

Posted by Phil Aaronson at 1:22 AM

So I had to ask my friend, Gerson Goldberg over at the design firm Whipsaw what he thought of the Ditty. This was after reading John Gruber's very funny "Rhymes With Ditty" article. He mentioned that they designed a similarly featured player for the now defunct Rio two years ago. Innovation? Overall his thoughts summed in this one quote of his:
Ditty looks like another landfill bound wallet drainer!
[Update 9/26/2005] Just to set the record straight, Dan Harden and Sam Benavidez were the lead designers on the Rio Carbon. Gerson's role is in Engineering at Whipsaw. If you're clicking in via Computerworld, they incorrectly credit Gerson as designer.

Links
  1. Dell's DJ Ditty
  2. Rhymes With Ditty, John Gruber, Daring Fireball
  3. Related discussion, More On Whipsaw
  4. Whipsaw website.
  5. Computer World article.

2 Comments:

Blogger Steve R said...

I enjoyed Gerson's comments, but I'm not too impressed with "Rhymes with Ditty". The bottom line impression is "it's not pretty so it's worthless".

Yes, there are a couple of other points (using high compression to inflate storage claims, poor placement on Dell's site), but the design snobbery hits me the wrong way. Sure, great design and great functionality make a winning combination, but not all good things are pretty.

Besides, that Bic lighter made a lot of money for Baron Bich :).

9/22/2005 6:22 PM  
Blogger Phil Aaronson said...

I haven't played with a Ditty yet, so I don't feel ready to weigh in on how well it's designed.

But there's a funny story to that, along the lines of Gruber's website observation. Yesterday was vendor day at Yahoo!, and both Dell and Apple had booths. So I ran over to the Dell booth, and immediately asked if I could play with a Ditty. The response, "Ditty?". While the Apple booth had a Nano out front.

9/23/2005 11:06 AM  

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