There is nothing hard about an iPod (at least if my 65 year old luddite father is anything to go by). I also think the sales figures back that up.
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Question of the Day: How was your voting experience?
****sakes I hate iPods
- Thread starter BCO
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michaelreef
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GTKPOD - a linux app- is very light and has all the functionality of itunes.
You can get 3rd party apps, most notably the Xplay application. I bought my copy back in 2003 as it was the only way I enjoyed updating my iPod, I could COPY ON and OFF the iPod and create/update playlists too.
A few months back I bought 3 iPods for relatives, a 30GB Black Video and 2 second gen Nano's. Well since I couldn't just give them Xplay I had to teach them how to use iTunes and boy it was a bitch to learn to use it. I use a Creative Mp3/Video player myself but my 3rd Gen still sits here on the shelf somewhere. In total I've purchased 6 iPods, 1x myself, 4 for relatives and one for girlfriend and all in all I'm not too chuffed with iTunes. (I also bought a Creative Zen Vision 30GB for a relative too, which is MY player of choice
even though my overall opinion of Creative is pretty low). Compared to the iPod the PlayForSure (tm) Creative Zen Vision doesn't need an extra app
to update itself. You can use Media Player and the included Zen Media Exlorer works even better, just drag and drop plus it converts video on the
fly if you find something incompatible although over 90% of the video files
I've come across play on the player without conversion.
My player of choice is not an iPod but they make excellent gifts for less tech savvy, more image conscious people.
Still iPods aren't all that great either. I've worn down 2 sets of Apple remotes and earbuds, the connectors frayed and Apple refused to
provide me with replacements even within 6 months of purchasing the
player. I've used my CZV for almost two years across 3 continents and had
no issues with the earbuds or the cables. It seems that Creative use a slighly better quality component manufacturer to Apple (the buds sound better too, almost as good as my $350 set of Shure in-ear pieces which
I occasionally use).
All this from someone who loves using a Mac Pro (or any Mac computer).
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hj2k_x
Honorary Master
Harder than it need be then. In my circle of friends there are quite a few iPod owners. There are endless issues with the bloated and resource-intensive iTunes as well as the need for CopyPod.
Software issues aside, there are often issues just getting a PC to detect an iPod. This has remained the same through many iPods, various Pc's and OS's , in my limited experience at least.
My mate's Creative Zen, whilst being less flashy, and not have a fancy colour screen has never been a problem in any regard.
I know iTunes is big, but who cares! On todays hard drives, what dif does 40megs make? Sure it takes a while to install, but you do that once, and it's not like you have to install every day. It may not be the most resource light app either, but on most of todays computers this is hardly an issue - it uses about 14mb of RAM and a little bit of processing power. You can use it to automatically update your iPod, or manually update. It allows you to easily keep all of your playlists, and your movies easily synced with your iPod. It seems most people just feel it is their geeky duty to dislike whatever everyone else is loving. Get over it. The iPod is a good product and a good audio and video player. As is the mac a good computer. (I don't use a mac but I have, and really enjoyed it)
when it comes to the smaller ipods, i totally agree.
but i have just bought the 160gig ipod, and it is the sexiest beast i have ever seen, it holds my whole music library, all my new movies, and their larger brothers for direct play onto a tv.
i love music and i love my ipod.
im not saying every1 else is wrong as they might have had bad experiences, but mines a dream!
Its a nice player but the screen sucks at 320by240 res. My CZV has a native 640 by 480 screen, the image is unbelieveably sharp. Sadly it only has 30GB of storage but has other benefits (replaceable battery, double strength additional batteries, drag and drop, plays most video formats), unless Apple bring out a player
with resolution above or at least equal to 640by480 which natively
supports xvid I won't be buying one even if they come with a 1 TB flash disk.
Cowon from Korea has released a worthy player I think. It's their Q5, it looks so good I want to order it right now:
koffiejunkie
Executive Member
iTunes? Geez, drag and drop, just like the generic ones. Just not on the filesystem. Same action - different background colour.
Hard to use?
Or just not your taste?
hj2k_x
Honorary Master
See my post above for other issues as well. iTunes is just one of many.
R3799 @ Musica
Its a supposed to be a music player
I'm going to have to disagree with you here, its nice to have a good screen, but the ipod was made to be a mp3 player. And its damn good at that, it has a easy to use click wheel interface and nice menu's. Its nice that it has the ability to play video's, but how often do you find yourself watching one? Even if you get all the new block busters as they come out, you aren't gonna wanna watch them on a screen that small. You'll wanna watch them on a tv or pc.
Itunes isn't that bad as you only have to use it every now and then, its not like you get new songs every day of the year, maybe once a week, or 2. No big deal, it only take 7 minutes of your time, which is like 2 songs, big whoop.
Thats my thought on the matter.
Others may disagree, thats fine.
I'm going to have to disagree with you here, its nice to have a good screen, but the ipod was made to be a mp3 player. And its damn good at that, it has a easy to use click wheel interface and nice menu's. Its nice that it has the ability to play video's, but how often do you find yourself watching one? Even if you get all the new block busters as they come out, you aren't gonna wanna watch them on a screen that small. You'll wanna watch them on a tv or pc.
Itunes isn't that bad as you only have to use it every now and then, its not like you get new songs every day of the year, maybe once a week, or 2. No big deal, it only take 7 minutes of your time, which is like 2 songs, big whoop.
Thats my thought on the matter.
Others may disagree, thats fine.
hj2k_x
Honorary Master
I'm not overly bothered by the res, or lack thereof. iTunes chewed resources like mad whenever I used it and was a constant irritation.
The fact that you cannot access you ipods music files from say a friend's PC if they don't have iTunes or Copypod installed was a hassle.
As was the fact that my PC simply didn't pick up my one mate's iPod at all. This was a common occurance, not just on my machine and not just with that iPod.
These all meant that I had no real use for the iPod. Even using it as a portable harddrive to transport movies and the like to and from friends' PC's was useless if their PC's did not pick it up.
Sorry 4 picking on u 2day, haha
the new 6th gen ipods have a 40-hour (for 160gig... 30-hour for 80) battery life, which is more than sufficient seeming that many people cant stay awake longer than 24.
You might be thinking that i'm splitting hairs here, bcos i probably am, but who cares.
If you want a USB, buy one.
The damn thing is a shiny assed music playing device.
Use it for what it is meant to be used for for once, please
My 20GB, 4th generation iPod, whilst being flashier than your mate's Creative Zen has never had any problems whatsoever.
snap
sand_man
Honorary Master
Ipod rocks!! best invention ever and what makes the apple ipod better than other brands is the capacity of their hardrives (up to 160GB), gapless playback and fantastic sound quality. The only thing misisng for me is a tempo or pitch control to speed up playback for when I use the pod in the gym.
I have my entire cd collection on desktop and itunes, 60GB worth, 12000 songs roughly, my entire collection is backed up to DVD and my realtively vast CD collection is packed away for preservation purposes.
Itunes is resource intensive but I find I can run 3-4 applications with Itunes included and that's with an AMD 3600+ dual core processor. Nothing too untowards about that.
On any given day of the week I can connect my pod to the hifi system and entertain and 5 times a week I take to the gym with me for an hour and a half, it's reformed the way I train and I simply cannot train without it.
All in all I had have to agree that it's the invention of the decade but what scares me is the lengths one will have to go to, to get a faulty pod repaired. After sales back up seems a little thin and cracked or inked screens are not covered under warranty although I was fortunate enough to have a inked pod replaced by Apple service center in Morningside recently...
I have my entire cd collection on desktop and itunes, 60GB worth, 12000 songs roughly, my entire collection is backed up to DVD and my realtively vast CD collection is packed away for preservation purposes.
Itunes is resource intensive but I find I can run 3-4 applications with Itunes included and that's with an AMD 3600+ dual core processor. Nothing too untowards about that.
On any given day of the week I can connect my pod to the hifi system and entertain and 5 times a week I take to the gym with me for an hour and a half, it's reformed the way I train and I simply cannot train without it.
All in all I had have to agree that it's the invention of the decade but what scares me is the lengths one will have to go to, to get a faulty pod repaired. After sales back up seems a little thin and cracked or inked screens are not covered under warranty although I was fortunate enough to have a inked pod replaced by Apple service center in Morningside recently...
I use my 30gig ipod as my external hard drive, for transporting anything bigger than my memory stick can handle. I've plugged into thousands of PCs and macs and every single one has picked it up no prob... I keep a little app called floola on my iPod in case I need to copy some songs onto someone elses PC. And, if you enable viewing of hidden folders, the music is there. Then, it's simply a matter of getting a search prog a little more advanced than Window's built in one, and you can search for meta data on the songs. And please stop complaining about system resources! Look at my PC in my sig! I don't think most of you have a lower spec'd PC than me, and I run iTunes fine, with GOM playing a paused movie in the background, photoshop running and all sorts of other stuff happening. People don't complain about photoshop's system requirements, though it'll happily use all of the RAM available!
Love my Ipod.....
bought the 30GB for R1200 5 months back brand spanking new
I encode all my music to 128kbps so I can get the max from my battery life....
People should stop complaining bout iTunes, it was also annoying for me at first but once you use it its not that bad
bought the 30GB for R1200 5 months back brand spanking new
I encode all my music to 128kbps so I can get the max from my battery life....
People should stop complaining bout iTunes, it was also annoying for me at first but once you use it its not that bad