nicolas75;645272 Wrote:
>
> So if this is easier for you let's find another word for this "thing",
> and keep your definition, and provide them another word so they can
> express their feelings in a way which may be understood ...
> For a customer
> - SBS = software I manually download and install on my computer in
> order to feed squeezebox
> - TinySBS = what allows me to use Touch standalone with my USB disk
> without downloading manually nor installing anything at all on a
> computer (I don't care and don't want to know if it is composed of a
> server part and a client part, or whatever else, nor want to understand
> what those distinctions means or even exists)
>
I 100% agree with this definition and what I was trying to say earlier
in the thread is that "SBS" with this definition is not needed at all
if you like to reach the mass market. Sure, there are people using
Foobar, MediaMonkey, JRiver but honestly neither of those are the real
mass market users. The real massmarket users are using WMP or iTunes,
it's as simple as that.
So what I'm saying is that a mass market user want to:
1. Sit in the living room and select to play something without being
forced to have a computer powered on
2. Ideally be able to sit in the living room and purchase music using a
iOS/Android tablet and play it in the living room, also without powering
on any computer.
3. Sit beside a computer and download music or rip a CD and add it to
their music library. Later they want to play it as described in point
1. They could possibly be interested in playing it from the computer in
this after ripping/downloading it and when they do that they want to use
their favorite music library software which is very likely going to be
either WMP or iTunes.
"SBS" as you defined it is not needed in any of these cases, so it's
pointless to invest any money on it if your goal is to reach the mass
market. The listening part of point 3 is accomplished by letting WMP or
iTunes communicate with "TinySBS" on the player. To do this a very small
plugin for WMP or iTunes is needed, a full blown SBS is NOT needed, it's
completely unnecessary for this use case. Since the plugin only needs to
support WMP and iTunes this only needs to support Windows. Supporting
OSX is pointless because Apple will provide something better for
massmarket users on that platform. Supporting Linux is even more
pointless because it's extremely few mass market users who have a Linux
computer which they use when ripping/downloading music.
On the other hand "TinySBS" as you define it is needed because it's the
core of the system. But it only have to be supported to run on the
player hardware, which is based on ONE and only ONE operating system
and it's very likely going to be based on Linux. I'm not talking about
supporting any Linux distribution, I'm talking about supporting the
specific Linux based OS which the hardware player is running on.
So just to say this once again, to reach this goal they need to:
- Drop "SBS" as you define it, on both Windows, OSX and Linux
- Sell a hardware player which is able to provide all the functionality
without the need to use a computer and to do this have a built-in
"TinySBS".
Community resources are likely going to make "TinySBS" run on any Linux
platform as long as the source code continues to be open source based,
but it's not something Logitech have to spend any resources on.
If they want to reach this goal, it makes most sense to implement by:
1. Dropping "SBS" (as you define it) on all platforms for anything
later than 7.6.1 and only fix critical errors in 7.6.1.
2. Instead invest resources into building a hardware player with
built-in "TinySBS" which only officially is supported to run on the
player and is able to provide sufficient functionality AND performance
for all mass market users. The hardware could possibly be the Revue but
it could also be something completely new, it could possibly be the
Touch but it would be quite an investment to re-write "TinySBS" (as you
define it) to run fast enough on the Touch so I don't think this is the
best path.
One thing that's important to note with this plan is that we are NOT
talking about TinySBS that currently runs in the Touch, because that's
too unreliable and too slow and has an architecture/design to support
full SBS which is not needed for the "TinySBS" use case.
This way Logitech can spend the time implementing "TinySBS" on one
platform and optimize it to work fast and reliable on that platform and
they don't have to spend any time thinking about how it will work on a
computer.
It doesn't matter if we talk about audio, video or pictures, the use
cases look exactly the same, few mass market users is going to want the
computer to be powered on when consuming these medias.
The challenge for Logitech is that:
- None of the Logitech developers probably want to drop "SBS" (as you
define it)
- None of the community developers/beta testers (or at least very few
of them) want to drop "SBS" as you define it
- Both Logitech developers and community developers/beta testers want
more functionality and more customization possibilities than the mass
market users want. The result is going to be that features not needed
for mass market is going to creap into the system and likely destroy
the performance.
- Almost none of the current Squeezebox owners trust Logitech enough to
believe that they will be able to make "TinySBS" (as you define it) fast
enough and reliable enough to make it work.
- Logitech management sometimes doesn't seem to have understood the
Squeezebox products at all, just the fact that they seem to be focused
at running LMS on a Windows computer shows this.
Based on this, I think it's very unlikely that Logitech is going to
choose this path, if the current trend which is indicated for LMS
continues they are probably going to end up with a 7.7(LMS) system
which can't be used as "TinySBS" at all and with a "SBS" which only
supports Windows and OSX which no one really wants.
It's really important to understand that a few years in the future few
people are going to sitting beside a computer when they listen to music
and few of them is going to want to have a computer powered on when they
listen to music. They are going to have a phone or a tablet and they
want to listen to the music either on the phone/tablet or through their
amplifier in the living room. Apple has IMHO chosen the correct path to
realize a good user experience in this scenario, because with the
correct amplifier or with an AppleTV you can do exactly this:
- Buy and download the music from your tablet
- Play the music directly on your tablet
- Send the music to your amplifier (either direct or via AppleTV
depending on amplifier model)
And NO computer needs to be powered on in any of these steps, with
iTunes Match they have taken it one step further, rip/download your
music while sitting beside the computer and play it later on your iPad,
iPhone or amplifier. Google is likely eventually going to accomplish
something similar for people that don't like Apple.
Finally, just to avoid some worries about all I've said above, this
doesn't mean that the above is what I want, it does not mean that it's
something Logitech will likely do, it just means that I believe it's
what the mass market users want. Not the community, only the mass
market users. However, I do think most community members would like to
remove the computer from the equation, it's just that with the current
software it isn't possible to get a reliable fully featured system
without a computer.
--
erland
Erland Isaksson ('My homepage' (http://erland.isaksson.info))
(Developer of 'many plugins/applets'
(http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/User:Erland). If my answer
helped you and you like to encourage future presence on this forum
and/or third party plugin/applet development, 'donations are always
appreciated' (http://erland.isaksson.info/donate))
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