Some random consumer blogging
A few things:
iPod shuffle is pretty slick. The wife got one for Christmas. Small, light, click button controls that are intuitive, good sound. Can hang on your shirt when hitting the treadmill. It’s a great little device. Once you get it setup. Which . . .
. . . brings us to iTunes, which sucks. Like all Apple products, it’s loaded with proprietary garbage that makes it incompatible with things it should be compatible with. It doesn’t just keep songs and manage media. No, it renames everything, garbles a bunch of crap, and poops out bloat. It even renames all your songs in secret code on your iPod device for some lame reason. If you need to copy songs too and from, it sucks. After all, I may be on one PC when I download a tune and need to transfer it. And what better way than by a gizmo that reportedly stores all my music? And puts multiple copies of your media in its library. Can’t even export a playlist or import one. Lame. I’m surprised it’s still the dominate player in the market, given Apple’s track record with this exact business model. Unless something new from Apple comes out, I’d even expect the iPhone to lose big marketshare soon too.
The movie Avatar summed up: Dances with Wolves in Outer Space. Aside from the cool 3D visuals, it was terribly mediocre.
Yahoo’s new webpage blows. I had a Yahoo email address for years but am going to abandon it so I don’t have to witness that monstrosity. No matter where your mouse falls, some menu expands and covers all the stuff you need to see. Lame.
January 5th, 2010 at 2:04 pm
What in the hell are you talking about?
January 5th, 2010 at 2:05 pm
Couldn’t agree more re:iTunes. The best mini-MP3 player is the Sansa Clip. Smaller than the new Shuffle(slightly bigger than the old one) and it has a display(imagine that). While you can use Windows Media Player to organize, it also works as a usb drive; just drag and drop your songs onto the drive.
January 5th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
I’m talking about looking at the files on the device, that it recreates its own proprietary files, and seems to duplicate all my crap.
January 5th, 2010 at 2:09 pm
And people have been predicting the death of Apple since 87 or so. It’s old, it isn’t going to happen, and it’s foolish. You don’t like the Apple philosophy, fine, we get it. But this is starting to sound like a Glock bashing, only substitute Apple for Glock.
January 5th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
I didn’t say they were gonna die. Just that their business models have cost them market share. And I think the same will happen with the iPhone.
January 5th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
Since I own an HK, I suppose I need to get as much Apple smug as I can buy. Hmm.
January 5th, 2010 at 2:26 pm
The problem with iTunes is that it’s the real monopoly player in the mp3 market. Once you have a significant library in iTunes, moving to another mp3 system is almost prohibitively difficult. You can do it by burning an re-ripping CDs, but even then you’re looking at a significant time investment if not a significant monetary investment.
And that’s the bit problem with most Apple products, they’re trading on monopolies like the app store and iTunes. That isn’t sustainable in the long term and in general it hurts the consumer.
January 5th, 2010 at 2:38 pm
I just went to yahoo’s new page to experience the suck myself. It’s too bad I can’t abadon my yahoo account, since I actually pay them money every year for my domain and stuff.
January 5th, 2010 at 2:38 pm
For Yahoo!, simply go to link marked “page options” on your page, then select “switch to compact view” from the options available so you won’t get that obnoxious mouse-over menu crap.
January 5th, 2010 at 2:43 pm
Apple does that (not making content on the device easily accessible) because the music labels that made deals to sell content on the iTunes store demand it.
Tools are available to let you see the stuff sensibly and copy on and off, if you care. (It never actually matters for me, but I suppose for someone it might.)
As to renaming files on disk and moving them around? It only does that if you tell it to (in initial setup, I believe, you can tell it to move files “to the Library” or not).
Since the scheme is uses is perfectly sensible and I have better things to do than manage filenames and a directory hierarchy by hand, I happily let it to so. Yeah, you can’t do all sorts of “album – year – artist – track number – name” formatting… but on reflection I’ve found that the problem is thinking that you need to. I haven’t found it wanting, and I’ve watched friends spend lots of time making format strings in FooBar2000 or the like to get “just right” filenames… that weren’t actually any more useful.
Computers, after all, are supposed to make my life easier, not make me manage 30,000 files myself.
Also, you can import playlists. This article shows how you could to it 5 years ago; I suspect it hasn’t changed much. (It’s not something I EVER do, so I have no firsthand experience…)
Drag a directory containing the playlist’s files (and I believe this should also work with just a playlist *file*) to the playlist area in iTunes.
Jeff: What are you talking about? You can just copy files you ripped over to anything else, and have been able to since day 1. They’re standard MP3 or AAC (depending on how you told it to rip them).
(And since AAC is part of the MPEG 4 spec, it really is “standard”.)
Even files you buy from the iTunes store haven’t been DRM protected for like, a year now. (As soon as Apple was able to browbeat the labels into letting them sell non-DRM content…)
January 5th, 2010 at 2:53 pm
Re: duplicating files, renaming, etc.
It only does that if you have your preferences set for it to do that. This appears to be a user issue, not software issue. Unless iTunes on PCs is totally different than iTunes on Macs.
January 5th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
What I notice about iTunes is that when I set it to “shuffle” a playlist in order to randomize the songs, it “randomizes” them exactly the same way each time.
But whether I’m using iTunes or MediaPlayer11 I have my music files all in a different place and just drag the main folder onto either program to “load” it with music.
Because I DON’T want to hear Christmas Music at any other time…
January 5th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
“It only does that if you have your preferences set for it to do that. This appears to be a user issue, not software issue. ”
I told it not to. And songs still show up in the library twice. Could be user error but I tend to doubt it.
Robert, thanks for the yahoo tip. Most helpful
January 5th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
I don’t have that problem, so I’m not sure what the issue is. Do the folders you’re importing have an .m3u file in them?
January 5th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Glad I am not the only one who thinks Itunes are garbage. I wish I knew Itune’s limitations before I upgraded to Windows 7, because I had to reorient my main music folder with Itunes again. Nothing is easier than copy and drop, like what my old beat up sansa used to do.
At least itunes is not as bad as Zune’s software, but not by much.
However, I do not see apple as a company going downhill anytime soon, since the iphone is still the hottest phone out there, even on such a crappy network like AT&T.
January 5th, 2010 at 3:37 pm
iTunes ate up a hard drive duplicating crap. I couldn’t figure out why every time I shut down iTunes and reopened it my music was gone. I had AC/DC duplicated 7 times.
January 5th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
Cell handset makers for years had wifi and GPS on their phones which were sold in Europe. However, when they came to America, the US cell carriers forced the handset makers to cripple those features to force people to buy data plans and optional GPS packages.
Apple came along and basically said they weren’t going to play that game and now no carrier can impose those restrictions on anybody. The fact that your Droid has GPS and wifi that is actually allowed to be turned on in America is in part due to Apple.
The Apple app store has gotten its share of criticism from developers, but its still the largest app store. The fact that every iPhone OS device is of the same form factor makes developing for it a lot easier as opposed to Android where the screen sizes are different, resolutions are different and even whether the device has a physical keyboard or virtual keyboard all make a difference in creating an appl
With regards to iTunes..remember that Apple spent a fortune creating the product which it gives away free. It is under no obligation to help you sync it with a device that it makes no money off of…and the fact that many people do desire to sync their non-Apple MP3 players with iTunes suggests that a lot of people find iTunes easy to use.
January 5th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
“Do the folders you’re importing have an .m3u file in them?”
No. Just mp3 and some wpl.
January 5th, 2010 at 3:46 pm
Then I don’t know. I don’t have any of these problems on a Mac.
January 5th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
RE: Yahoo!: Go to the “Options” pull-down menu and select “Switch to Yahoo! Mail Classic…”
January 5th, 2010 at 3:48 pm
“I don’t have any of these problems on a Mac.”
That could be the problem 🙂
I will note I have no issues with the windows media player.
Manish, I’m sure some folks find it easy to use. I find it difficult since I’m a copy/paste sort of guy. But I’m the sort who doesn’t like to let a computer tell me what to do and wishes they had a ‘fuck off’ button.
January 5th, 2010 at 5:08 pm
I haven’t bought music any way except on the CD in years. Once I have the disc, I can rip and move music with anybody’s codecs. There are hardly ever I-tunes sales, but music places put deep discounts on music on CD all the time, and you can use a shopping-bot to find them.
As for GPS, I was using it on my first smartphone by VZW years ago, and never paid a nickel to VZW. A bluetooth GPS and MS Pocket Streets did it for me. With VZW navigator, you’re stuck with their system, sort of a basic Tom-Tom. With Pocket Streets, I could do damn near anything I wanted, real, selectable GPS navigation.
Most of the time, I don’t want anyone tracking me, so my current dumfone GPS is disabled, my choice.
The wonder of these IntarTubes is that if you don’t like something, look up and install a work-around.
January 5th, 2010 at 5:16 pm
Guav is right. If you had a Mac, iTunes would integrate flawlessly. Basically Apple expects everything to just work as long as you are using their system. If you want to do weird stuff like share a library between iTunes and Windows Suck Player, you are going to have issues.
Fake Steve Jobs had a Picture on his site for a long time that said: “I will restore your sense of childlike wonder, whether you like it or not.” Thats how Apple rolls.
January 5th, 2010 at 5:31 pm
“I had AC/DC duplicated 7 times.”
Are you sure those weren’t just the last 7 AC/DC albums? Sometimes it’s hard to tell…
January 5th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
I have two beefs with iTunes:
1) It’s required to make the iPod work, unlike any other mp3 player I’ve owned.
2) The sheer size of the damn thing. 9.0 clocked in at something like 95 megs. Obviously Apple assumes all iPod users are somewhere with access to high-speed net access and not somewhere like, oh, Afghanistan. Luckily I’m in REMF-land and have a hard wired connection available, but it still took 12 hours to download the whole thing. Twelve. Fucking. Hours. Without which, my iPod Touch was an expensive paperweight.
January 5th, 2010 at 6:21 pm
“Even files you buy from the iTunes store haven’t been DRM protected for like, a year now.”
Which would be great if everyone I know hadn’t bought hundreds to thousands of dollars worth of media content years ago. How do you easily strip the DRM off if you want to change players? As with most things Apple the early adopters seem to be screwed.
January 5th, 2010 at 7:43 pm
I use YamiPod (free) with my Shuffle – it makes the Shuffle just act like a storage device. Drag and drop the music files you want.
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/yamipod.html
January 5th, 2010 at 8:12 pm
Jeff..you can “unlock” your DRMed songs for something like 20 cents a pop. I bit the bullet and did it, but then I didn’t have many purchased songs.
January 5th, 2010 at 10:26 pm
There is something wrong with you, Avatar was wonderful.
January 6th, 2010 at 1:54 am
Ho-ly shat!
Man, 3 democrats jump ship in 1 day, and Say Uncle types a 3 paragraph blog entry!
My Heart can’t take all this excitement… AAAAAAHHHHHH! 😯
January 6th, 2010 at 6:00 am
“There is something wrong with you, Avatar was wonderful.”
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/subjective
January 6th, 2010 at 9:55 pm
After Better Half won some iPod variant, and the hardware did not work with the software that it came with (i.e. the iPod and the iTunes CD were in the same box, bundled together, and the iPod refused to interface with the version of iTunes that the CD installed), I swore off iTunes forever.
Apparently that was the right course of action.