Re: OT ipods

Antony Gelberg <antony@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

SteveH wrote:
Antony Gelberg <antony@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Tim S Kemp wrote:

Antony Gelberg <antony@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



Apple AAC is proprietary. Vanilla AAC and MP3 are patented and
subject to licence fees. Sorry if I used the wrong term. MP3 sounds
like my arse at less than 192K. Headphones are nothing to do with it.


All mine are ripped at 320k - I can't stand low rate MP3.

So you have to compensate for MP3's crapness by whacking up the bitrate,
thus using more disk space that you would with Ogg Vorbis, assuming that
you agree that Vorbis sounds better at any given bitrate.


So you use AAC, then. Apple Lossless is good, but eats the disc space.

You mean Apple's proprietary version of AAC, presumably. Do you think
they make as much as possible proprietary for the good of their
customers? Why would anyone want to use a proprietary codec when there
are open alternatives?

The open alternative being standard MP3, which isn't great, or Ogg,
which is almost totally unsupported.

The UI is spot on. It's only shortcomings are lack of recording
facilities and lack of radio - others also fail in same areas.

Why make excuses for its lack of features? My iRiver has both, and a
built-in mic.


heh - I'm not, but the vast majority of users don't need recording

What about radio? Anyway, one could argue that the vast majority of
users don't need lots of things. Such as a bloated interface like iTunes.


Personal radios are almost inevitably ***, though.

This is typical of an Apple fan. Any lacking feature is excused as
being *** as Big Brother what's good for you.

Hold on a minute. In the old days, most personal cassette players didn't
have a radio. It wasn't a problem then, so why is it suddenly a problem
now?

If you want a personal radio, buy a personal radio.

Itunes is
stable and reliable - I use it a lot even though I have neither a
Mac nor an iPoo.

Lots of things are stable and reliable. It's also bloated, having a
massive system footprint, and unnecessary except if you have hardware
that doesn't give you much choice i.e. an iPod. The standard thing
people say is "it makes it so easy to organise and listen to my
music" - what do these people think this basic, mundane computing
task is? Rocket science? They have also generally not explored, let
alone used, other ways of achieving the same result.


If a basic mundane computing task is required that excludes a lot of the
General Pubic from accessing it.

All I can say is balls unless you have a citation to back that up. They
seem to manage email, web browsing, word processing, and for the
adventurous, copying images from their digital camera.


Thing is, with iTunes, you stick a CD in the drive, let iTunes do it's
stuff, then the next time you plug in the iPod it's transferred over.

So what? Are you implying that we have entered the realms of advanced
computing technology? Since I ditched iTunes, I have noticed that it
actually used to *get in the way* despite trying to look fluffy and
friendly.

How the ***** can it 'get in the way'. It's the most intuitive and
simple process I can think of. Life is too short to piss about with MP3
or similar files. iTunes makes it something I don't have to think about.

With most other solutions, you have to fire up an MP3 encoder, choose
the location to save the files and then manually drop them onto the
player.

So what? I'm not sure why you see this trivial step that increases
flexibility as a bad thing.

It's hardly trivial. Why create extra task when sticking in a CD and
plugging in an iPod is all you need do?

Seriously, iTunes is by far *the* best way to deal with MP3s.

You can keep repeating it, but I have yet to hear any justification.
All I hear is something like "I love Apple, everything they do is good,
iTunes is the best, it locks me in just great, I have to like it now as
it's a pain to get away from it, bye bye choice, who needs choice when I
can trust Apple to look after me."

See above. Stick in CD, press one button, plug in iPod and your CD is
now on the iPod. It's easy, it's idiot proof, it works and it's quick.
It needs no thought process at all, it's intuitive, and people who
aren't computer literate can do it.

<looks at headers>

Ahhhh, you appear to be using Linux / Unix. That explains everything.
--
Steve H 'You're not a real petrolhead unless you've owned an Alfa Romeo'
http://www.italiancar.co.uk - Honda VFR800 - MZ ETZ300 - Alfa 75 TSpark
Alfa 156 2.0 TSpark Lusso - Fiat Marea 20v HLX - COSOC KOTL
BoTAFOT #87 - BoTAFOF #18 - MRO # - UKRMSBC #7 - Apostle #2 - YTC #
.