{"id":2566,"date":"2014-03-11T10:16:46","date_gmt":"2014-03-11T00:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/?p=2566"},"modified":"2014-03-11T21:55:52","modified_gmt":"2014-03-11T11:55:52","slug":"neil-young-launching-ponoplayer-for-399","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/news\/neil-young-launching-ponoplayer-for-399\/","title":{"rendered":"Neil Young Launching Triangular PonoPlayer for $399"},"content":{"rendered":"

Evan Minsker at Pitchfork:<\/p>\n

\n On Tuesday,\u00a0Neil Young\u00a0is set to unveil his\u00a0long-gestating high-quality digital music player Pono\u00a0at SXSW. But before he introduces it to the public, details have been\u00a0announced. The device, called PonoPlayer, will reportedly cost $399 and come with 128GB of memory.\u00a0They’ll start taking discounted pre-orders on March 15 via Kickstarter.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Pono<\/p>\n

I saw this rendered image of the PonoPlayer accompany launch articles everywhere across the web. Apart from the unconventional shape of the player (looks like a mini Toblerone to me), there was something weird I noticed that I had to highlight. Check it out:<\/p>\n

\"pono-ui\"<\/p>\n

Oh no. No, no, no.<\/p>\n

Visible file names with underscores? The ‘unknown artist’ field? No album artwork? At best, this is sloppy work on their rendered product shots. At worst, this is a clear indicator that the PonoPlayer UI will be a poor experience, and it’s making the same exact mistakes that all the iPod competitors (Creative, Samsung, iRiver, Archos & a thousand more) made back in 2002-2007.<\/p>\n

I thought it might be an old shot, but alas, they’re using it on the official Facebook page<\/a>, too.<\/p>\n

Here’s a quote from the PonoMusic press release<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n The PonoPlayer is a purpose-built, portable, high-resolution digital-music player designed and engineered in a “no-compromise” fashion to allow consumers to experience studio master-quality digital music at the highest audio fidelity possible, bringing to life the true emotion and detail of the music, the way the artist recorded it.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I know Neil Young’s been waxing lyrical about the sound quality, and I’d be interested to know if the difference is as dramatic as he says. In the end though, I think there will always be a higher priority with devices: ease of use. If a portable music player is annoying to navigate through, it is dead in the water. This looks like it’d be a real slog.<\/p>\n

Also: tech-related companies need to stop using the term “no-compromises”. Like the phrase “double-down<\/a>” before it, those words are an absolute poison chalice.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Evan Minsker at Pitchfork: On Tuesday,\u00a0Neil Young\u00a0is set to unveil his\u00a0long-gestating high-quality digital music player Pono\u00a0at SXSW. But…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[10],"tags":[350,724,725],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"reckoner_social_message":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2566"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reckoner.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}