And again you miss the point. Not just slightly, but completely!:disgust:
Originally posted by: Gurck
Ogg & flac are far more widely supported than apple's lossless & lossy formats; most DAPs support them, while only the ipod supports aac or apple lossless. Further, the most popular PC music players offer native support for ogg & flac, but not for aac or apple lossless.
Fantastic. But I'm not talking about how many players support it, I'm talking about how many **people use these formats**. The answer is very, very few. Walk around with any DAP of your choice and ask some people what they think it is. "an MP3 player" the vast majority will respond. Not many will say "why that's a digital audio player than can support all sorts of different open standards of compression technique..."
I personally know of *no-one* who owns anything but aac, mp3 or wma files. The other formats are simply not used by many people at all! Also, as I've already said, if there was demand for these formats apple could just slap in support for them in the next firmware upgrade.
Originally posted by: Gurck
Not sure where you got that idea, perhaps if the shoe fits ... ?
No. It's the way things are. Have you ever worked in computer support or had any experience of the general public when it comes to computing? People just want things to work, they don't want to go online and research the most efficient compression technique or whatever. They want to pay some money, take the device home and use it. I know it seems alien to you, but this is the reality we live in.
Originally posted by: Gurck
I haven't heard much about other manufacturers' customer service, but I certainly have heard about Apple wanting $100 to put in a new battery, which will be necessary within 2 years for most of their players... what was that about great free service?
2 years? How many electronic (in particular, portable) devices do you know that have a warranty longer than 2 years? My video camera and still camera both had 12 month warranties, as most alternavies do. The Rio Karma comes with a *90 day* warranty, so when the thing breaks down (because of the cheaply made, badly designed scroll wheel) you'll be told to go stick your player. Do you expect apple to provide free lifetime support?
Apple has fantastic support and I have never been disappointed in the past. They still are a business and they're obviously going to keep things realistic. Of course they're going to charge to replace a battery once the warranty runs out, name a company that wouldn't. As you said, you're ignorant of the alternatives so you're not in a position to say whether the apple support is good or bad compared with anything else.
Oh and if $100 is a bit too much for you, anyone with an ounce of technical confidence can replace their own battery for $30,
See?.
Originally posted by: Gurck
Personally I don't go around dropping my expensive electronic devices, but then, the young are often clumsy and foolish...
Predictable. Puerile. Pathetic.
Originally posted by: Gurck
Quicktime, like realplayer, resets file associations even if you set it not to, what else would you call it? Why else would they ninja-install it on your system with itunes? Even if it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, don't you think people should have a say in the matter?
It's installed along with itunes because of *simplicity*. I say again and again that the drive of the iPod/itunes combination is to make things easy, simple and highly functional. It does this very well.
For someone who's supposedly a techy you don't seem to have realised that if you go to Control Panel -> add remove software and scroll down to 'quicktime' and the click that little button right next to it which says "REMOVE" you can actually uninstall quicktime. Amazing, eh?:disgust:
Originally posted by: Gurck
Posters in this thread don't seem to think itunes is bug-free at all.
There's about a 50:50 ratio of people who like itunes and have had no problems at all in that thread. Not bad for an itunes bashing thread. Also, most of the people's complaints are them not being used to the interface or crying after they clicked "YES" instead of "NO" when iTunes asked them if they wanted itunes to organise their music collection for them, lol! How do you expect these same people to go and research other apps and find the 'optimal' one for their requirements when they get confused with the option of clicking yes or no?
Also, you'll notice that the OP was using a windows platform which is renowned for being unstable and generally sh!t, which is why he might have had problems with his CD drive! iTunes is rock solid on my installs and on my macs.
And as for the two tiny processes that run in the background even when you're not using itunes, well welcome to 2005: the age when having just 16k of memory is a thing of the past! jeez are you really that concerned about ~5Mb of space being used? what are you running a 486 with 16Mb RAM or something? iTunes ran absolutely fine on my ex's 800 with 128RAM, and it had a good ~30Mb spare when itunes was running so she could run firefox/outlook no problem. Plus these apps will be put into the pagefile, so it really isn't a bit deal. Finally they can be easily disabled with 3 clicks of the mouse. Nitpicking, maybe?
Originally posted by: Gurck
Regardless, it's not important, as foobar2000 is a far superior player, and as an added bonus isn't bloated and affords you much more control over your collection.
LOL!!!! :laugh::laugh:It's not April 1st already is it?!:laugh:
My god where did you come up with this gem/BS?
Have you even looked at iTunes?! Was that foobar2000 made by some college kid over a weekend?
Where are the smart playlists that generate lists on the fly where you can define filters such as least played, most played/genres, etc?
Where is the rating feature where I can choose to play my favourite tunes, etc?
How do I connect to internet radio stations?
How do I share my music effortlessly across my network without having to press a single button?
How do I get it to run on my macs?
How do I share music cross platform effortlessly?
How does it connect to my Airport express device so I can wirelessly play music from my computer on my home hifi?
Where is the style and the ease of use?
Where is the drag and drop functionality when connecting a DAP?
Where's the quick search function?
etc etc etc.
And don't get me started on the actual design. Look at the options there. Do you expect joe average to be able to use that? I think all this blind hatred you have seems to have clouded your vision. Have you *any* clue about design? And check out the website, it's appalling. Way to go selling me the app. Even the name is crap: 'foobar2000'?! what the hell is that about? You realise what FUBAR came from? No wonder no-one uses it.
Originally posted by: Gurck
But again, whether you like itunes or not, why do you feel people should have no choice?
They do have a choice, such as Ephpod. You can even run
Linux on your iPod if you're that way inclined. The thing is, 99.999% of people don't want to choose anything else. Look at the list of the above functionality. What else compares to it? Give me a list of alternatives that can perform all the above tasks, and do it on a mac and a PC, oh and do it better than itunes does since itunes is apparently so shoddy.
Originally posted by: Gurck
I like how you conveniently ignored this link, which I included in a previous reply.
From what I've heard this issue has been fixed. Where is your evidence supporting the supposed fact that every other DAP has superior build quality? Don't worry about finding reports of the karma's crappy scroll wheel, we already know about that one. There's also the dodgy firmware, check out this quote:
Got this player about a year ago and was very happy at first. I have had Rio players in the past but this one had all the features I wanted and it appeared to work very well. Right after the 90 day warranty is when it first locked up. I searched the internet and found that this is a very common problem and wished I had researched this unit before I bought it. Am VERY disappointed that it freezes up all the time but have learned to carry a paper clip with me to reset it. And for anyone interested I am NOT a fan of the Ipod. The Karma would be excellent if only it worked...
What a fantastic alternative to the iPod :disgust:
Originally posted by: Gurck
The iAudio 20gb m3 is smaller, and the ipod looks like a child's toy. Go browse your local Toys R Us and tell me I'm wrong.
It's smaller because they removed the display and put it on the cable where it's exposed and easily prone to damage. Great. Maybe they could remove the battery and put it on a cable then claim their device is even smaller! :disgust:
Well, it's clear to me that you can a brochure-level knowledge of design and style, so I'm just going to disregard your opinions of what is good or bad design
You see, gurck, you're just looking on a very simplistic level at the actual player by themselves and not considering who's going to be using the devices or how the device is actually going to be used in terms of connectivity and associated software. When you buy an iPod you get to use itunes which actually is the most versatile, powerful and feature-packed audio player out there. That's why it takes more space. The apple engineers haven't written pages of useless code just to take up more space on your computer; the code actually has a function (shock, horror!). It's not bloated, it simply DOES more. Think about what it can do:
-Super-fast searches, not just by name and artist but by year/genre/date added/bpm/etc, etc
-A very clear GUI. Most people would say the best, most efficient one.
-Access to a huge amount of ad-free internet radio stations
-Smart Playlists
-Very efficient shuffle method to provide a wide range of music
-Party shuffle as well
-1 click sharing over a network. no need to transfer files, it streams. it also does this in between PC's and Macs.
-Multiple editing of ID3 tags
-Ripping of CDs and the ability to play the CD as it's being ripped.
-Burning of CDs and smart spanning of disks
-Very clear display of track information with the ability to alter it to your needs
-Rating method so you can play your favourite tracks, etc
-Play count so you can play the most or least played tracks if you so please, or create a smart playlist to find all tracks that have been played only 2 or 3 times, for example.
-Access to the ITMS: the best online music store there is.
-The possibility of streaming tunes across your home network to your home hifi
-The ability to *find* duplicate tunes (not just delete them like foobar, that is a fantastically stupid idea) and *Choose* whether to delete them or not.
-Cross platform usage, so the same program works on my PCs and my macs.
-Dead simple connectivity to the iPod
-All of the above done is an amazingly simple and effective manner such that someone with limited or no computer knowledge can perform all the above tasks with no worry or training.
It's in a league of its own. Nothing compares to it. To achieve just some of the same functionality with any other device will require hours of trudging through the net, posting in forums, downloading software, trying it out, deleting it when you find out it's sh!t and was some kid's GCSE project, etc etc.
Not many people want to do this at all. Granted some of the alternative DAPs may have marginally better sound quality and maybe a radio (although check out the
accessories you can get for the iPod), but apart from that there's no real advantage.
Give me an example of a device that is cheaper than the iPod and comes with software that can do all of the above as well having great support and I'll give you a cookie
here it is, just to tempt you---->
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