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The Ipod (and DAP) Is Dead - Page 3

post #31 of 41
9/12/09 at 1:55am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ssnake51 View Post
Well Apple doesn't force you to use iTunes to manage and organize your music library. It provides an option in iTunes to allow you the freedom to tweak your library as you wish. It is quite easy to drag and drop any files from your music library into an ipod. You don't have to create a second copy of your library to use iTunes any more than you need to create a second copy if you use windows explorer to drag and drop files into your DAP.

I'm more sympathetic to your point about the different types of encoding that are used. To be honest, I was confused for quite some time over the many types of encoded files out there and trying to decide which ones to use.

The good thing is that there are some good conversion programs out there like dBpoweramp that make that task relatively easy, if you decide to go with another file type.
It's not that it would be impossible for me to manage and sync an iPod Touch, it's that it is made unnecessarily inconvenient with unnecessary hoops to jump through because of iTunes. Someone has written an add-in for J. River Media Center to assist in syncing with a Touch or iPhone. I could use that, but it is still unnecessary hoops and requires the use of iTunes to do the actual sync. A real PITA. I'm not going to deal with stuff like that. Make it work properly and open.

I'm not going to manage an iPod by drag and drop. I have over 600 CDs. That's not going to work. I need to be able to use playlists and smartlists and keyword searches and tag searches and fancy database expressions. Drag and drop would be doable with 60 CDs, it doesn't work with 600+ CDs.

Maybe the new round of DAPs based on Google Android will finally give me something reasonably close to what I want. Will they have gapless? Will they sync properly using third-party media players/managers? They'll still end up including too many features that distract from the primary function of a DAP, but as long as it plays and manages audio properly I can deal.
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post #32 of 41
9/12/09 at 2:17am
I too 'hate' iTunes - i have a monster music library in FLAC and on my Fuze i grab a directory and 'dtop' done - new album added. I did once create an apple lossless copy of a large portion of my music - but its just a pita - scrolling through, selecting album 'song by song' to transfer.
Winamp handle my ipod 5.5 and classic, but i use my iTouch as a remote control for my music server rather than as a DAP!
iTunes also fails to install correctly on my Samsung netbook - seems Apple didn't realise people have pc's without CD players.
The only function of iTunes is to connect you to the Music Store to buy music!
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post #33 of 41
9/12/09 at 3:03am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ssnake51 View Post
Afraid I don't get that. You can organize your music library any you like and then just drag and drop what you wish into your ipod with itunes. Really not much different than using windows explorer to do the same thing.
iTunes also runs a starter program in the background and takes up, what, a half gig of space now? This also means you cannot upload music from computers without iTunes as well, which can be a huge pain in some instances.

Admittedly, it's not as big of a deal as I made it to be, but allowing simple drag and drop would cost Apple nothing and in fact save them cash because they wouldn't have to spend so much time encrypting their software. Instead, they want to push the *@##$% iTunes store and DRM through their media player. Also, they need flac support bad. No one uses alac and it's a pain to have to convert everything.
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post #34 of 41
9/12/09 at 3:28am
Quote:
Originally Posted by iriverdude View Post
In Japan the itouch/iphone isn't even a contender.
on the contrary, many people are forgetting their NDS and PSP because of the iPhone which took number one sales in july and in august, allowed softbank to take first spot - after 3 years of being behind docomo... this news is from a japanese newspaper; the most respected on in japan.
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post #35 of 41
9/12/09 at 3:31am
Quote:
Originally Posted by BigTony View Post
I too 'hate' iTunes - i have a monster music library in FLAC and on my Fuze i grab a directory and 'dtop' done - new album added. I did once create an apple lossless copy of a large portion of my music - but its just a pita - scrolling through, selecting album 'song by song' to transfer.
Winamp handle my ipod 5.5 and classic, but i use my iTouch as a remote control for my music server rather than as a DAP!
iTunes also fails to install correctly on my Samsung netbook - seems Apple didn't realise people have pc's without CD players.
The only function of iTunes is to connect you to the Music Store to buy music!
why would you select song by song to transfer? that is a waste of time. just select all you want, be it playlist or not, drag to your open sansa and ... if the machine supports it, you will get everything in albums, in proper order etc. there are flac plugins for itunes as well.

i used to only use foobar, but it is such a waste of time compared to itunes - really. drag and drop is fine for runnning with other files, but for organising music, it is archaic.
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post #36 of 41
9/12/09 at 4:16am
Quote:
Originally Posted by shigzeo View Post
honestly, when i want to listen to music, i'd rather not spend 15 minutes searching folders to do... drag and drop. i do drag and drop in itunes from an organised and reorganisable database: itunes. it takes maybe 30 seconds to find everything.

and of course the author probably knows nothing of the amp3. that player will never be on many people's radar. why complain about a dap which was never ever meant for people like us anyway? it is like me complaining that people think 'shimano' means the bike is good, or bad.

it simply has no bearing on anything.
Same here. I actually like using iTunes. It's a lot easier using an organised library than it is messing with folders in windows explorer. This is part of the reason I don't use my Cowon D2 anymore. I can't be bothered keeping folders organised on both my PC and my mp3 player. Itunes does it all for me.
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post #37 of 41
9/12/09 at 8:14am
Quote:
Originally Posted by ericj View Post
I feel i should point out - again - that there is no legal reason why companies that make specialty DAPs can't just join the rockbox project, port rockbox to their product, and ship with it.

There is the requirement that they actually release the code they write to do this, but the cost/benefit analysis should be very easy for a small, specialty company to understand.

You can write your own feature-poor DAP firmware and maintain it all by yourself, or you can write a bootloader and some drivers for a feature-rich firmware and take advantage of the efforts of dozens of talented programmers.

I get why the toshibas and sandisks of the world don't want rockbox - they need top-down control of the firmware to make DRM support possible and to keep their customer service exposure predictable.

But small companies making specialty devices for advanced consumers have everything to gain and very little to lose.
All valid points, but it's unclear to me why my post in particular prompted you to make them. Was it simply the mention of Rockbox?
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post #38 of 41
9/12/09 at 11:24am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dublo7 View Post
Same here. I actually like using iTunes. It's a lot easier using an organised library than it is messing with folders in windows explorer. This is part of the reason I don't use my Cowon D2 anymore. I can't be bothered keeping folders organised on both my PC and my mp3 player. Itunes does it all for me.
Agreed. But it took me a long time to come around to thinking like that. I hate to think of all the time I wasted playing around with my music folders in explorer trying to get things organized the way I wanted them.

Now I just rip my CD's to ALAC and let iTunes take care of the rest. Gives me a lot more time to actually listen to my music rather than spending it organizing files.
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post #39 of 41
9/12/09 at 11:33am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Antony6555 View Post
iTunes also runs a starter program in the background and takes up, what, a half gig of space now? This also means you cannot upload music from computers without iTunes as well, which can be a huge pain in some instances.

Admittedly, it's not as big of a deal as I made it to be, but allowing simple drag and drop would cost Apple nothing and in fact save them cash because they wouldn't have to spend so much time encrypting their software. Instead, they want to push the *@##$% iTunes store and DRM through their media player. Also, they need flac support bad. No one uses alac and it's a pain to have to convert everything.
Agree with you about buying music through the iTunes store. I don't do it. All my music is from CD's I've ripped.

I use ALAC all the time now. If I need an mp3 or FLAC or Wave file then I siimply convert it with dBpoweramp. Personally I don't find it that bad using their batch converter.
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post #40 of 41
9/12/09 at 11:58am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ham Sandwich View Post
If SanDisk did that they would finally have gapless support. How many years have they been promising gapless RSN?

I'd buy a Sansa player if it had gapless.
It'll never happen - Rhapsody and Audible support are too important to Sandisk, and Rockbox will never support DRM.

You can see how this isn't an issue for the likes of head direct, though.

The rockbox works reasonably well on the original version of the fuze (which shows v1.xx.xx firmware in the setup menu) - there are just continuing issues with the device drivers that may cause odd behavior and the occasional corrupted sd card.
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post #41 of 41
9/12/09 at 12:12pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dublo7 View Post
Same here. I actually like using iTunes. It's a lot easier using an organised library than it is messing with folders in windows explorer. This is part of the reason I don't use my Cowon D2 anymore. I can't be bothered keeping folders organised on both my PC and my mp3 player. Itunes does it all for me.
when i had a d2, i still used itunes with it. simply queud up playlists and dragged them to the d2. but, in early firmwares, the d2 did not support taggin well so all the songs would not split up into albums and songs were arranged from a-z, not in order of the album.

later firmwares were good enough that i did not have to worry, just one drag and drop from itunes to the d2 and it was all fixed.
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