DescentBB

Dear mac,
My friend just bought an ipod and i've been spending
about 4 hours a week making it work.
To make life better for people who accidently didn't
buy from creativelabs, think of the fallowing.
Imagine a world where if you were to plug in a
'portable usb drive,' the media you PUT on it
worked! This would mean that you wouldn't need
itunes (that program you made that uses more memory
than premiere pro) wich only moves mp3s and mp4s. And it also
transports and secures all pictures solving the problem of friends sharing!
Windows dosn't get jealous if the ipod has MORE songs
than it. itunes does!
Yes! It would work perfect on a OSX!!! But I'd rather
push a pc than drive a mac. -isaac
Does the third reich have suggestion box?


edit:
why would you buy anything else?? Zen Vision

[insert \"thanks for the info\" forum macro here]

Yeah, I don't like players like the iPod and Zune that can't act as an external hard drive and/or have the ability to update the song database on the mp3 player itself. There's something to be said for being able to plug your mp3 player into any machine made within the last ten years, copy mp3s onto it, and then listen to them without being chained to the use of some particular software. Then, of course, you still have the freedom to use some software to sync your library with your player.

I like my iPod. My only regret is getting a 4 GB Mini a couple years ago now that my library has greatly expanded. If I had the money, I would buy another one.

Jeff250 wrote:Yeah, I don't like players like the iPod and Zune.

bah, Zune full of DRM super aids, mention it not!

my buddy got ipod for the looks... i wish i could swap the software in the ipod so it ran the right way.

For the LOOKS?! Hahahaha!

I've always kept in mind that when i am ready to buy an mp3 player, It would be from Creative.
Thank you for reassuring me.

Isaac wrote:Dear mac,
My friend just bought an ipod and i've been spending
about 4 hours a week making it work.
To make life better for people who accidently didn't
buy from creativelabs, think of the fallowing.
Imagine a world where if you were to plug in a
'portable usb drive,' the media you PUT on it
worked! This would mean that you wouldn't need
itunes (that program you made that uses more memory
than premiere pro) wich only moves mp3s and mp4s. And it also
transports and secures all pictures solving the problem of friends sharing!
Windows dosn't get jealous if the ipod has MORE songs
than it. itunes does!
Yes! It would work perfect on a OSX!!! But I'd rather
push a pc than drive a mac.

Could you rewrite this more clearly? I'm not sure I'm interpreting it right; for example:


"My friend just bought an ipod and i've been spending about 4 hours a week making it work."

Most Ipod owners are up and running in under an hour; what exactly is going wrong for your friend that's taken you a day to get working?


"Imagine a world where if you were to plug in a 'portable usb drive,' the media you PUT on it worked!"

Are you saying the Ipod won't play songs? What format are they in? How did you put them on it?


"This would mean that you wouldn't need itunes (that program you made that uses more memory than premiere pro) wich only moves mp3s and mp4s."

Do the creative players not require third party software to transfer songs? Or is it Itunes you hate? I hate Itunes, so I use MediaMonkey. And Itues does a lot more than more mp*s, it's just stuff I don't care about.


"And it also transports and secures all pictures solving the problem of friends sharing!"

Yes, that's unfortunate. But you can use the Ipod as an external hard drive, allowing you to share pictures with friends.


"Windows dosn't get jealous if the ipod has MORE songs than it. itunes does!"

What does this mean?


"Yes! It would work perfect on a OSX!!! But I'd rather push a pc than drive a mac."

It works pretty flawlessly on most PCs. Again, what went wrong for you?


"i wish i could swap the software in the ipod so it ran the right way."

You can change the Ipod's firmware.

I got an iPod for Xmas last year and it works great. I did spend about 3-4 days burning all of my cds into mp3 (11 gigs worth along with all of the album art), but that wasn't an issue with the player as much the condition of the media's original format. I haven't checked out any other player, but I do know that the iPod has got me interested in music again now that I can take my entire library to the desert for the Total War Against Terror (TWAT). It seems simple enough to me......

My creative plugs in usb and is a jump drive, I use Explorer to copy files to it. (And not just music, I can copy anything.)

Testiculese wrote:My creative plugs in usb and is a jump drive, I use Explorer to copy files to it. (And not just music, I can copy anything.)

If it can then play the music that you copied onto it using that method, I'd be interested in buying one for my next upgrade. Which player is it? I too can use my Ipod as a jump drive for any kind of file, but it won't play muic copied onto the device using that method.

CDN_Merlin wrote:http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/0611 ... oken_ipods

Congratulations, you have now been introduced to the ubiquitous concept of planned obsolescence. Unfortunately, all consumer electronics are subject to this, not just Ipods.

The article does represent a bit of an irony for Apple, however. Apple's OSX has been benefiting for years from the illusion of security in due large part to its relatively small market share compared to Windows. Now Apple's Ipod is under the microscope more than competing players, this time due to its dominant market share.

Just to be clear, I'm no Apple or Ipod fan. I hate trendiness and I hate DRM. I resisted like crazy getting an Ipod but ended up buying one because it had the largest capacity at the time. However, I did a lot of research and became equally disillusioned with all players. Every player makes compromises and I want the ultimate product, which I now realize does not exist.

My sandisk sansa and old creative nomad players both show up in windows explorer as an extra drive letter, you can copy music, video and pictures (in supported formats) to it directly from windows explorer. You can also use it as a mass storage or backup drive for anything. After loading media on to it all you have to do at the end with the sansa is when you first turn the player on you have to wait while it does a database refresh.

Being able to copy media over (as with a portable jump drive) and play it without involving software like iTunes would be pretty important to me.

My wife wants an iPod for Christmas (family may have to chip in for this), but if it can't play anything unless it's loaded via iTunes, I think I'll look into other options.

Foil, AFAIK, you need Itunes to copy songs over.

My zen touch doesn't show up, you need to install the software.

fliptw wrote:My zen touch doesn't show up, you need to install the software.

Really? My Zen Vision:M shows up as soon as I plug in the USB. I <3 USB.

Some people might just format their iPod with something other than iTunes and be able to do all those things this moron couldn't.
I'm able to use the iPod as a external drive as well as an excellent mp3 player and use any windows software I want.

If you want iTunes great, because it's good at what it does including allowing grandmothers to manage their bingo night tunes with a simple elegant interface. However, it's not for everyone and being idiot proof does come with restrictions. If you want your iPod to be free of the burdens that the moron who authored the rant up above can't find a way around.... then don't use it, simple.

what's the life of the battery (approximately) on the iPod? (not how long it holds a charge)

No prob Genghis.
An ipod with out itunes dose not work unless firmware is changed. I say this because if you try loading files onto the ipod using windows, ipod will ignore them. My problem is that mac will still fix this ipod if it breaks (under my friend's coverage he got) UNLESS you modify it (you can play half-life on your ipod if you install linux).


itunes uses too much processing power. Now itunes wouldn't be such a big problem if the computer my fiend owns was better than a Pent4 2.4Ghz system with 2gigs of ram. I reformatted this system to do nothing else other than hold media for the ipod. And I only have a few select codecs for playing media I hand picked. So there is no spyware or any unwanted processing activity that would cause this system to be slow. The system is using windows xp professional sp2 but turn the GUI level to low along with a few other things. There still isn't enough processing speed for itunes!

For the rest… I don't know what to say other than, yes it's all true. Ipod would be worth buying if it could play AVI, DivX™ 4 & 53, XviD4, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG4-SP, WMV9 and Motion-JPEG by just dragging the files into the portable device (this is what Zen Vision plays). Not only dose ipot not play these important file types but it requires you to use itunes to load them. Ipod only plays .m4v, .mp4, and .mov according to the mac site, but I heard .mpeg might work as well. If you use torrents, weather legally or not, then the ipod will make force you to convert gigs of data.

Creative labs dosnt need software to load files. In fact you can connect your camera DIRECTLY INTO the CL Zen Vision and they will download!! ?!!?? That's so cool! Creative labs put bigger screens on their portable video players with slightly lower battery life. But those with a regular screen now have more battery life.

Check out this review of the Zen Vision W on video google.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... sion&hl=en

I hope this is clearer. Sorry, but I was never much of a writer. If im wrong about something please tell me.

The fact that Justin Timberlake is on the front page of iTunes instantly marginalizes that web site.

Just for laughs, what's the highest vbr bitrate of songs you can buy?

Ghengis, mine is a little old, it's only 1G. I think there are bigger capacities out now, but I don't care, I only need 1G of stuff for any of my activities (It also has FM Radio). I just drop in the songs that match my mood, and go. I keep a low-fi mirror of my collection ripped at 192cbr so they don't take up much space. Besides, there isn't much bass on little earbuds.

Isaac wrote:itunes uses too much processing power. Now itunes wouldn't be such a big problem if the computer my fiend owns was better than a Pent4 2.4Ghz system with 2gigs of ram. I reformatted this system to do nothing else other than hold media for the ipod. And I only have a few select codecs for playing media I hand picked. So there is no spyware or any unwanted processing activity that would cause this system to be slow. The system is using windows xp professional sp2 but turn the GUI level to low along with a few other things. There still isn't enough processing speed for itunes!

Hmm, must be a problem with the Windows version... it runs just fine on my old 500 MHz, 384 MB RAM iMac.

I've run iTunes 5 on a 1 GHz P3. iTunes 7 I can understand being a bit of a problem, if you have the cover browser enabled. Don't forget that you're running a Carbon app in a NeXT environment on Windows. That's three layers of indirection iTunes is running through so that they don't have to maintain separate codebases.

Testiculese wrote:The fact that Justin Timberlake is on the front page of iTunes instantly marginalizes that web site.

Just for laughs, what's the highest vbr bitrate of songs you can buy?

iTunes purchases aren't VBR, they're CBR. But they're encoded in AAC, not MP3, so any comparison you're attempting to draw is meaningless on its face.

Not a fan of HD-based media players. I have a Samsung MP3 player that just has 1 GB of memory, plays MP3s and OGGs, acts like a normal media drive on Windows, and takes one AA battery.

Kyouryuu wrote:Not a fan of HD-based media players. I have a Samsung MP3 player that just has 1 GB of memory, plays MP3s and OGGs, acts like a normal media drive on Windows, and takes one AA battery.

How much?

The one I have pictured above is $70 @ Amazon

This is what i use. See the little black end? That's a jump drive you can stick into any computer and just load mp3s on and off it. It dose many other things but i like this for when i go running or to the gym.

Skimbust

Testiculese wrote:mine