STUPID IS AS STUPID SAYS, PT. 2
please do as I say, not as they
do.
They're at it
again.
A couple of weeks ago, I noted that it's getting awfully hard to tell my business communication students that they can't write or say stupid things if they want to be successful in business when successful CEOs keep writing and saying stupid things. In the interim, these guys -- and they're almost always guys, not only because there are precious few female CEOs, but also because female CEOs seem to be the favorite targets of itchy-fingered boards of directors -- managed, much to my relief (if not my amusement), to keep themselves zipped and buttoned. But then yesterday came the news that Creative CEO Sim Wong Hoo, his judgment obviously impaired by his company's inability to touch, much less to dent, Apple's Brobdingnagian market share, spouted thusly:
With the introduction of the Zen Micro 4GB MP3 player at the incredibly low price of only $179, we offer superior features and more than twice the song capacity of the 4GB iPod mini
at a
substantially better price.
Okay. Here we go...
The "incredibly low price" of $179 is actually $199 -- the same price as the iPod Mini. The $179 figure kicks in if you buy a Zen Micro before May 30th, submit the rebate form (and supporting materials), and wait several weeks for a $20 check to arrive at your door. If you do, and it does, then you do, in fact -- finally -- end up paying only $179 for the Zen Micro. Whether that figure constitutes either an "incredibly low" or "substantially better" price, I'll leave to your judgment.
Now, about those superior features.
The Zen Micro has a built-in FM tuner; the iPod Mini does not. This is an additional feature, to be sure, but hardly superior. Or even marginally valuable. I have yet to hear a compelling argument for why a digital music player -- which is not, as it's name makes clear, a freaking radio -- should include an FM tuner, nor have I heard anything on FM radio in the past five years that would make me want to listen to it instead of my own music. But we'll score one for the Zen Micro anyway, just to be charitable.
Battery life: the Zen Micro battery lasts for 12 hours; the iPod Mini battery runs for 18.
Software: the Zen Micro comes with the Zen Micro Media Explorer and Creative Media Source; the iPod Mini comes with iTunes, the universally acknowledged gold standard of digital music software.
Navigation: the Zen Micro, like just about every other MP3 player on the planet, uses a touch pad; the iPod Mini uses Apple's click wheel, which even the iPod's (semi-rational) detractors concede makes navigation easier than any other method.
Display: the Zen Micro uses a blue LED back light; the iPod Mini uses a blue-tinted grayscale LED back light. Though Creative does claims that its blue back light is "mesmerizing," so perhaps that qualifies as some sort of superiority.
Extras: the Zen Micro includes an address book, calendar, to-do list, sleep timer, and alarm clock functionality; the iPod Mini includes an address book, calendar, to-do-list, text notes, text reader, four games, sleep timer, and alarm clock functionality.
So "superior features" apparently means an FM tuner, less powerful software, more cumbersome navigation, one overblown adjective, three fewer extras, and 33% less battery life. But that diction-challenged collection of Creative-ity pales in comparison to my favorite bit, the astoundingly stupid -- it's not technically a lie, but it's as fundamentally dishonest as one -- claim for "twice the song capacity."
That's right, kids, the creative geniuses at Creative have figured out how to defy the laws of physics and bend the rules of mathematics! They've discovered a way to engineer 8 gigabytes worth of storage into only 4 gigabytes of hard drive! And for their next trick, they'll invent a 33-cubic-foot refrigerator that actually holds 66-cubic-feet of food!
4 gigabytes is 4 gigabytes. Period. And no amount of press release bullshit spin is going to change that. Unless, of course, you include some fine print that suggests the 2,000+ song capacity is actually based on an encoding rate of 64kbps. Let's ignore the almost-impossible-to-ignore fact that a 64kbps MP3 encoding rate produces, at worst, almost unlistenable, and, at best, severely compressed and compromised audio quality. Let's concentrate instead on the sheer, deceptive audacity -- or is that audacious desperation? -- it takes to claim that your 4GB player can hold twice as many songs as another 4GB player without noting that your claim assumes an encoding rate that produces songs with half the quality.
Who worked up these numbers for Creative? Bush's budget team? The NHL Players Union? Or maybe it was Ethan, who -- in a way that only 4-year-olds (and, apparently, tech company CEOs) can truly appreciate -- recently rejoiced over the five $1 bills he got in a Valentine's Day card from his grandparents, which were much better than Adam's one $5 bill.
But, hey, let's play Creative's game for a moment. Apple's flexible iTunes encoder lets you encode music at bit rates as high as 320kbps, so why not go all the way and claim that the Zen Micro offers more than five times the capacity of the iPod Mini? I mean, if you're gonna bullshit, why not truly bullshit? Why not let it rip and fill up the press release toilets as much as you can?
But then, what's good for the fabricating goose is good for the lying gander. So you could turn around and play the game against the grain, using Apple's optional -- albeit foolish; it would be like listening to one of Edison's old phonograph records, transmitted over one of Marconi's old radios -- 16kbps encoding rate and claim that the iPod Mini actually offers more than four times the capacity of the Zen Micro. (It's like having a 6-disc CD changer that really holds 24 CDs!) And you could get even more creative, fine-print-bumping Creative's encoding rate to 128 -- which they actually admit as a standard elsewhere on their site -- and claiming that the iPod Mini offers more than eight times the capacity of the Zen Micro.
Of course, you wouldn't do that. You wouldn't even think of doing that. Because, unlike some tech company CEOs and marketing flacks, you believe in making clear and fair and honest claims.
A couple of weeks ago, I noted that it's getting awfully hard to tell my business communication students that they can't write or say stupid things if they want to be successful in business when successful CEOs keep writing and saying stupid things. In the interim, these guys -- and they're almost always guys, not only because there are precious few female CEOs, but also because female CEOs seem to be the favorite targets of itchy-fingered boards of directors -- managed, much to my relief (if not my amusement), to keep themselves zipped and buttoned. But then yesterday came the news that Creative CEO Sim Wong Hoo, his judgment obviously impaired by his company's inability to touch, much less to dent, Apple's Brobdingnagian market share, spouted thusly:
With the introduction of the Zen Micro 4GB MP3 player at the incredibly low price of only $179, we offer superior features and more than twice the song capacity of the 4GB iPod mini
at a
substantially better price.Okay. Here we go...
The "incredibly low price" of $179 is actually $199 -- the same price as the iPod Mini. The $179 figure kicks in if you buy a Zen Micro before May 30th, submit the rebate form (and supporting materials), and wait several weeks for a $20 check to arrive at your door. If you do, and it does, then you do, in fact -- finally -- end up paying only $179 for the Zen Micro. Whether that figure constitutes either an "incredibly low" or "substantially better" price, I'll leave to your judgment.
Now, about those superior features.
The Zen Micro has a built-in FM tuner; the iPod Mini does not. This is an additional feature, to be sure, but hardly superior. Or even marginally valuable. I have yet to hear a compelling argument for why a digital music player -- which is not, as it's name makes clear, a freaking radio -- should include an FM tuner, nor have I heard anything on FM radio in the past five years that would make me want to listen to it instead of my own music. But we'll score one for the Zen Micro anyway, just to be charitable.
Battery life: the Zen Micro battery lasts for 12 hours; the iPod Mini battery runs for 18.
Software: the Zen Micro comes with the Zen Micro Media Explorer and Creative Media Source; the iPod Mini comes with iTunes, the universally acknowledged gold standard of digital music software.
Navigation: the Zen Micro, like just about every other MP3 player on the planet, uses a touch pad; the iPod Mini uses Apple's click wheel, which even the iPod's (semi-rational) detractors concede makes navigation easier than any other method.
Display: the Zen Micro uses a blue LED back light; the iPod Mini uses a blue-tinted grayscale LED back light. Though Creative does claims that its blue back light is "mesmerizing," so perhaps that qualifies as some sort of superiority.
Extras: the Zen Micro includes an address book, calendar, to-do list, sleep timer, and alarm clock functionality; the iPod Mini includes an address book, calendar, to-do-list, text notes, text reader, four games, sleep timer, and alarm clock functionality.
So "superior features" apparently means an FM tuner, less powerful software, more cumbersome navigation, one overblown adjective, three fewer extras, and 33% less battery life. But that diction-challenged collection of Creative-ity pales in comparison to my favorite bit, the astoundingly stupid -- it's not technically a lie, but it's as fundamentally dishonest as one -- claim for "twice the song capacity."
That's right, kids, the creative geniuses at Creative have figured out how to defy the laws of physics and bend the rules of mathematics! They've discovered a way to engineer 8 gigabytes worth of storage into only 4 gigabytes of hard drive! And for their next trick, they'll invent a 33-cubic-foot refrigerator that actually holds 66-cubic-feet of food!
4 gigabytes is 4 gigabytes. Period. And no amount of press release bullshit spin is going to change that. Unless, of course, you include some fine print that suggests the 2,000+ song capacity is actually based on an encoding rate of 64kbps. Let's ignore the almost-impossible-to-ignore fact that a 64kbps MP3 encoding rate produces, at worst, almost unlistenable, and, at best, severely compressed and compromised audio quality. Let's concentrate instead on the sheer, deceptive audacity -- or is that audacious desperation? -- it takes to claim that your 4GB player can hold twice as many songs as another 4GB player without noting that your claim assumes an encoding rate that produces songs with half the quality.
Who worked up these numbers for Creative? Bush's budget team? The NHL Players Union? Or maybe it was Ethan, who -- in a way that only 4-year-olds (and, apparently, tech company CEOs) can truly appreciate -- recently rejoiced over the five $1 bills he got in a Valentine's Day card from his grandparents, which were much better than Adam's one $5 bill.
But, hey, let's play Creative's game for a moment. Apple's flexible iTunes encoder lets you encode music at bit rates as high as 320kbps, so why not go all the way and claim that the Zen Micro offers more than five times the capacity of the iPod Mini? I mean, if you're gonna bullshit, why not truly bullshit? Why not let it rip and fill up the press release toilets as much as you can?
But then, what's good for the fabricating goose is good for the lying gander. So you could turn around and play the game against the grain, using Apple's optional -- albeit foolish; it would be like listening to one of Edison's old phonograph records, transmitted over one of Marconi's old radios -- 16kbps encoding rate and claim that the iPod Mini actually offers more than four times the capacity of the Zen Micro. (It's like having a 6-disc CD changer that really holds 24 CDs!) And you could get even more creative, fine-print-bumping Creative's encoding rate to 128 -- which they actually admit as a standard elsewhere on their site -- and claiming that the iPod Mini offers more than eight times the capacity of the Zen Micro.
Of course, you wouldn't do that. You wouldn't even think of doing that. Because, unlike some tech company CEOs and marketing flacks, you believe in making clear and fair and honest claims.
Posted: Thu - March 3, 2005 at 10:21 AM
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Published On: Aug 28, 2008 10:23 PM
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Published On: Aug 28, 2008 10:23 PM