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There has been a lot of raving of the iRiver Clix of late. That’s nice, that after a few yeas an OEM was finally able to create a device that didn’t suck in some big way. However, I don’t think the world is better. Why? Cause I don’t trust any of them to continue on this path and no one will notice anyway.

Sean Alexander has a series of posts where he writes about his involvement with the Clix.

One of the first of these projects has just launched. The "iriver clix" - a new portable media player from iRiver.  Designed to work great with Windows Media Player 11 and the new Urge music service launching today from MTV, the clix may look similar to the award-winning iRiver U10, but it's so much more.  Our team worked closely with iRiver, providing feedback, usability resources, and assistance on interaction design starting with a complete "teardown" of the existing iRiver U10 product.

and then some comments based on a Seattle Times Review.

I also want to call out the amazing work done by the iRiver America team.  The packaging is largely to their credit- we provided critical feedback and encouraged a new, more refined design based on existing packaging in Korea.  The iRiver team did all the heavy lifting and it shows.

At the end of the day, my job was two-fold: As UX (User Experience) PM, to play the part of the consumer end to end- to apply what I've learned working in this space for 7+ years and document our recommendations.  From there, we (the v-team as we called ourselves) agreed on relative priorities w/ iRiver up-front.  We acknowledged where we disagreed without ego or hubris, and worked together on a solution in the interest of the customer.  We were invited to provide input in every meeting on the UX, system flow and regular milestones on naming, branding, messaging, out of box experience and more.  

And then some comments on a big party Microsoft and iRiver had together.

In the end, it was a great party and a good time had by all end-capping over six months of hard work. Ironically, this is the same day that PC World named the Clix one of their Top 100 Products of the Year (Why in June?  Their year is a 12 month span; they used to announce these awards at PC Expo which no longer exists).  The criteria is highly subjective but hey, it ranked #90, with the Xbox 360 being #89 - not bad company.  Reportedly sales of the Clix have been brisk - a best-seller on their site at www.iriveramerica.com  and at least one online retailer sold out of their initial allotment very quickly.  All good to hear.  At least two more major retailers are in the process of receiving inventory so that you'll be able to go out and try one in person soon. ;)

Here are my thoughts. This doesn’t Scale. Microsoft doesn’t have any army of folks who can spend 6 months teaching every possible device maker how to create a device that comes close to matching the customer experience, out of box experience and device UX of an iPod. I’ve used iRiver products in the past, and was not happy at all with my experiences with the product or with the company.

So what next? We already have spent a few man years working on a great user experience… in the form of the Portable Media Center. But the adoption of that OS has been sad. v2, which is far superior to v1 has even fewer folks signed up to make devices than v1! And Toshiba, the single flagship partner to announce support for the PMC in the form of the Toshiba Gigabeat S took many months to get their product out there, way to long and way to late in my opinion.

Furthermore there are still problems with the device ecosystem that Michael Gartenberg is always good to point out.

So overall, how does WMP 11/URGE combo stack up against the iPod/iTunes? Well, if you're looking at it from the music store perspective, it's hard to see how this combination bests Apple in any way. While Microsoft talks about the value of the platform, most consumers are too busy listening to their iPods to listen to the message. In terms of a music subscription services, URGE shines. The onboard catalog of music, combined with great editorial content and new innovations like music feeds make this service really stand out from the pack. Add in a good portable device and you start to see how the market can potentially shift over time to a new model. Right now, a lot will come down to marketing. Microsoft still lacks a spokesperson who can deliver the message across and while URGE and WMP 11 are tightly integrated, there's still not a great story being told about device integration and branding. It may not be enough to remove Apple from king of the digital music world but it very well has the chance to expose the market to the benefits of subscription services and that in and of itself is a pretty big thing.

At the end of the day, I now have a ton of iPod accessories and a Car Integration kit that is simply unavailable for any other device. I can use my built in Steering Wheel and Radio controls in my Audi to control my iPod. Furthermore, my iPod comes on when I turn on the radio and turns off when the radio is shut off or the engine turned off. Now that’s a very subtle but very important feature to me and you can’t get that on any other device. The iPod dock connector is critical to the iPod, and until there is a big enough player on the PC with something like the dock connector, you’ll never have this with anything else.

In the end, I don’t think iRiver, Creative, Philips, Toshiba, Samsung or anyone else can create a lifestyle platform, complete with sneakers, than anyone else. I don’t think spending months of resources on feedback and design help is going to make any difference cause people are to busy listening to their 50 million iPods to notice that anything has changed.

I do think if there is any chance at all of competing with Apple’s Lifestyle platform it’s this. Michael is probably alluding to his top secret briefing about this.