We’re all familiar with proprietary connections. You know what I’m talking about - the devices that need or have special dongles and doohickies to work rather than a bog standard USB or Mini-USB. It strangely seems to be pretty common place in the humble MP3 player.
It seems that MP3 players have accessories like docks that need proprietary connections – although surely they could just put the proprietary connection on the dock and let the dock use USB? Although, they could be copying Sony and not have any accessories but still use a proprietary connection cause they can.
Don’t get me wrong, I love some of the products that Sony comes up with, but its incessant lust to put a proprietary connection on quite a few of its products constantly annoys me (but won’t annoy me enough to stop buying any of its products).
Of course, it’s not just Sony. The most popular proprietary connection that springs to mind is the ever present and ubiquitous iPod. I guess one positive to come out of the evilness of its proprietary connection that the popularity of the iPod has allowed for its connector cable to be widely available from third-party manufacturers wanting to ride the iPod wave. That way, you’re never stuck looking for a replacement cable that you’ve lost or broken.
Let me tell all of you a story. Not too long ago, one of my friends lost the sync adapter for his Zen Vision: M, this ultimately meant that he was left with a useless MP3 player as he couldn’t hook up his Zen to his PC to transfer his songs.
To further complicate things, his attempts at trying to locate this cable had him re-tracing his steps trying to figure out where he could have possibly left it. Adding to his pain was the fact that the Zen Vision: M has been discontinued and finding a replacement wasn’t going to be an easy task and was doomed to fail miserably.
But you’ll be all pleased to know that this story had a happy ending as he managed to find his adapter in the pocket of his work pants. But if he hadn’t found it, he would have had to try and buy the sync connector second hand or from eBay, or buy a new MP3 player. Sure his MP3 player, was about to die anyway, but I’m sure there have been, and will continue to be, many people out there in similar situations that are left with few options. Unless you own an iPod.
It would be a lot more convenient if companies like Sony, Creative and Sandisk just had a standard 5-pin mini USB port so that all you needed is a single cable that is easily compatible with multiple devices and instead have the adapter included with the accessory, if I do choose to buy it.
But I guess that’s how they intended it to be. Buy a really cool product with a proprietary connection and when it fails you’ll still be so in love with it that you’ll buy an expensive, overpriced accessory to make it work or buy the exactly same MP3 player again. As always, it’s a case of making sure you know what you’re getting yourself into before you’ve reached the point of desperation with a perfectly fine MP3 player that fails to function properly because of a cable or connection.