Apple says Sony lied about Ipod

When Sony released its rival to the i-Pod it claimed that it could hold 13,000 songs compared to the iPod's flacid 10,000, even though the total capacity was half the size.

Greg Joswiak, vice president of Hardware Product Marketing at Apple appeared to be besides himself with rage when he talked to MacCentral.

He said that Sony was misleading folks with an advertising gimmick. He said Apple would never ever do that in a million years but he didn't mention the fact that Apple was nabbed by the UK Advertising Standards Authority for overegging the speed of its processors recently. OK.

He said that Sony could only stuff 13,000 songs on the hard drive because its ATRAC3 (Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding for MiniDisc 3) compression system could be set at the low rate of 48Kbps which was nowhere near CD quality.

He said if Apple played the same trick you could say that the iPod could hold 10,000 songs or if you wanted you could take it down to 16kbps and say it can hold 40,000 songs.

He does have a point. Too much compression makes the music sound like it is being played on a transistor radio which has been wrapped in sponge and submerged in a goldfish bowl.

However, Sony's vice president of portable audio products Todd Schrader, Sony Electronics' told the Wall Street Journal that at least with a Walkman your choice of compression was not decided by Apple.

He admitted that you would be listening to lower quality if you stored 10,000 songs on the Walkman. But if music quality was important you could have a bit rate compression that is slightly better than the iPod and store 5,000 songs. If you want double the quality of the iPod, the Sony device can hold 2,500. µ

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