A few days ago we were invited by comic-loving friends and there I heard that the Music lock-in of the iPod was not a property of the iPod but a property of iTunes. With the right software, getting music from the iPod back on to you hard disc is no problem. Ah hah!! Senuti to the rescue. iTunes ⇔ Senuti… Get it? Hah! “Everything in reverse.”
Having spent money on new headphones, and realizing how clunky the interface of my old *iAUDIO G3* was compared to Claudia’s *iPod Nano* she uses for her dancing classes and to prepare for shows… I decided that maybe a good interface does have a price. So I decided to spend some money on a black *iPod Classic* with 80GB. This is enough for our entire music collection (currently nearly 50G). I’m expecting that the music collection will not continue to grow at the same rate, and that I’ll switch to a new gadget within a few years when it does. I’ll probably buy a new *Mac Mini* as well, when the time comes, because we don’t have much more space on the primary harddisc – and the external harddisc is so much louder than everything else about the Mac Mini…
Anway. An iPod! No Ogg format. 🙁 Music lock-in that requires an extra piece of music. 🙁 Cannot easily replace batteries. 🙁 Paying for proprietary software. 🙁
But: Nice user interface. 😄 Holds the entire collection. 😄 Senuit turns it into a mobile backup platform. 😄 Superior iTunes interface that syncs ratings and how often tracks were played. 😄 Payed by a store gift certificate from my employer. 😄
⇒ 5:4 in favor of the iPod!
#Music #Gadgets #iPod
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iPods seriously rock. They work, because they work. It’s as simply as that. Good choice 😄
On the other hand, iTunes is a pile of expletive that isn’t worth the multi-megabyte hole it chews into your hard drive - and that’s before you even import any music. It’s basically a license to sign all your music collection over to Apple, who then lease it back to you with so many strings attached Houdini couldn’t get out. iTunes = bad, as I know you know.
I’ll stick to Rhythmbox under Ubuntu for my iPod handling. It copies the tunes over 1,000 times faster than iTunes, and lets me listen to the music on the iPod through the computer without any messy syncing or whatnot. All plug and play, no additional software required. Lovely stuff.
– greywulf 2008-03-26 19:16 UTC
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Haha, I must be missing a lot. When I first saw iTunes, I liked it because what I am used to is far worse in terms of usability: Winamp, Microsoft’s player whatsitcalled, XMMS, and EMMS.
Using the EMMS would certainly get me some geek cred in my circles... hehehe... but to be honest, none of these really impressed me. Using the filesystem to store music is like sorting the files by a single attribute and sticking with it. It sucks. iTunes was the first player that actually put tags to good use.
That’s why I installed iTunes at work, too. Argh! 😄
But I must confess that I must have missed a few years of recent audio player developments...
– Alex Schroeder 2008-03-26 21:30 UTC
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It turns out that there is a tiny problem: I want to keep my iPod and my iTunes Library in sync, but in addition to that I want some audio files on the iPod that I’m not keeping in my iTunes Library. Apple won’t have any of that: Either it manages everything and you have all your stuff in your iTunes Library, or you manage it yourself, meaning no more automatic updates.
The great part about the iPod right now is how integrated Podcasts are. It automatically transfers them to the iPod when I connect it, and it automatically marks them as read in iTunes when I listen to them on the iPod. That’s a big winner.
– Alex Schroeder 2008-04-15 21:21 UTC
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Yeh, it’s the whole sync thing that loses it for me. I don’t WANT my content duplicated on my ipod and computer; that’s just a waste of space. That’s why I prefer tools like Rhythmbox which let me use MY music how I want.
– GreyWulf 2008-04-16 11:54 UTC