Tuesday, June 11, 2002

Music to my MP3-enabled ears


[Posted by Roberto:]



I've never taken a marketing class, nor do I pretend to know what the customer wants. I usually leave this up to qualified Marketing Executives TM who have years of experience selling goods to customers. But at some point you just have to draw the line.

I recently purchased a medium to low quality computer speaker system for my office from Cyber Acoustics. When it arrived I was surprised to see "MP3 Ready" emblazoned on the side of the box. "Jumpin' Jiminy! That's exactly what I was planning on using them for!" Do these marketing gurus take us for fools? Are people really confused by things like this? I cringe thinking that someone, at some point in time, questioned the folks at CA about the abilities of their speakers.

Actually, I think I'm more concerned with the people who are returning their speakers in fear of audio file format incompatibility. ...Perhaps I should have upgraded to the OGG Ready speakers for the extra 10 bucks.



3 comments:

  1. Before I signed up with my current energy provider I asked if their electricity was emacs-compatible. They didn't think it was, but somehow it works anyway.

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  2. Mark VandeWetteringJune 12, 2002 at 3:41 AM

    Elaine Boosler once remarked that she encountered some advertising that said
    "Our Orange Juice has No Cholesterol!" As if there were brands of orange juice
    on the market that wrecklessly add butter to their vitamin C packed breakfast
    drinks. I seem to recall her claiming that her car also had no cholesterol.

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  3. I suppose it's just preying on stupidity like the various high-sugar junk food that proudly claims "Fat Free!". The implications is that other orange juice comes buttered (mmm, butter), other speakers fail to play MP3s...
    Come to think of it, I suppose if enough legislation passes we can kiss MP3-compatible speakers goodbye -- since MP3s don't do Digital Rights Management and all :-)

    ReplyDelete