iPod's biggest weakness!
Apr 21, 2004 at 2:59 AM Thread Starter Post #1 of 84

austonia

Headphoneus Supremus
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No, it's not the limited codec support, or the battery life, or even the price. It's not the overly sensitive touch-buttons. It's not the unreplaceable hard drive. Or the popularity.

From a guy with more than a few DAP, the problem with iPod, is that it doesn't shut off. What I mean is, it's constantly draining the battery. Sleep mode. Just so the user doesn't have to suffer through a whole 5 second boot sequence. It never shuts down. Never. You can't tell it, hey, please, just shut down and save the power for when I next need it. No, it's always draining power so it can power-on in 2 seconds. You can't put in your drawer for a week because you'll come back to a dead battery. No option, that's just the way it is.

Every time I think about buying the Mini, I just remember this, and it's out of mind. Same deal. Yeah, it's a problem for the average dude to plug in it in all the time. I have enough things on my mind. At least with my cell phone I can slap on an additional battery when I forget to charge it. Anyway, there's a reason to leave a cell phone on all the time. Not so for a DAP. All my other players lie waiting for me, power ready. iPod.... dead.

The iPod is a mixture of brilliance and stupidity. More good things than bad, but there's better choices out there.

The joke is, that Apple could make this thing a badass piece of hardware with little effort, mostly firmware tweaking:
1) take the touch-pad from the Mini and stick on the iPod, kill the buttons
2) an option to turn the damn thing OFF
3) scrolling text for items that don't fit on the screen, while browsing (screen only shows ~17 characters)
4) looping lists, at least, as an option
5) either add OGG support or liscence AAC to other players, or both
6) better on-the-fly playlist support, like Dell DJ or Creative Zen
7) 5-pand user EQ

YEAH.
 
Apr 21, 2004 at 5:11 AM Post #2 of 84
Austonia,

If the Ipod shut off without constantly draining power like the Zen, how much more battery use do you think you'd get out of it if you left it for say 24 hours without touching it. I mean, most people probably charge their IPOD daily, so if it was only left overnight without charging it, would that measure as an extra hour of listening time that the power drain is taking up? Not that I'm disagreeing with you because I back up your claims of leaving the IPOD for a week and coming back to a dead battery.

I'd say for me with my 2nd Gen Ipod, my biggest complaints in order would be battery life, annoying equalizer, and better playlist management. There's room for improvement, but that applies to all the HD players. I hope all the manufacturers are paying attention when they bring out a new generation of players.
 
Apr 21, 2004 at 11:33 AM Post #3 of 84
May I add gapless play? Foobar does it perfectly, Karma does it almost perfectly. Ipod... I listened with a friend of mine's Ipod to The Dark Side Of The Moon... gaps completely destroy the sense of "immersion" in the music...
 
Apr 21, 2004 at 11:56 AM Post #4 of 84
Well, I've had my 2nd gen for about 7 months and I really have nothing to complain about. I mean, when you think about what it does... What is there to complain about? I can carry my entire cd collection on a tiny player that has great sound and looks fantastic? Come on! What's there to complain about with the software. You'd rather flip through 200 cd boxes looking for an album than twiddle your finger a bit?

1) take the touch-pad from the Mini and stick on the iPod, kill the buttons

All in good time, my son. It's called evolution.

2) an option to turn the damn thing OFF

Well, I guess so. But not quite a deal breaker for me as I use mine everyday.

3) scrolling text for items that don't fit on the screen, while browsing (screen only shows ~17 characters)


I know this bugs the hell out of you, but I sorta know all the music on my ipod and I can extrapolate. If I really want more info, I stick it up with the song title. Sort of like: "I Want You" -- The Beatles -- Abbey Road
Plenty of information seems to fit up there. And it scrolls.

4) looping lists, at least, as an option

I don't get this one? Sort of like a repeat for a whole list?

5) either add OGG support or liscence AAC to other players, or both

Wav and MP3 almost seems enough to me. A good 320kbs mp3 is pretty damn good sounding.

6) better on-the-fly playlist support, like Dell DJ or Creative Zen

This, I've never understood. With itunes I can delete, drop, drag, move songs from existing playlist to existing playlist, or add songs to an old playlist. I don't understand what other options I need? I don't get what you mean by on-the-fly. I certainly don't let itunes manage my playlists, I think you have to be a complete twit to want to do that.

7) 5-pand user EQ

I found, with much regret, that I'm very adept at screwing up a recording by my own "customization" of it's eq. Frankly bass boost or cut and high frequency boost or cut are about all I think you need. I think Apple presets are pretty comprehensive in that department. And they're also very subtle, which is what I think a lot of people are complaining about. But I used to work selling audio, and these kids would come in and crank up the bass on a reciever until it was putting out pure distortion and think that was making it better. I dunno, Apple's eq seems to cover the bases for me.

I'm pretty damn happy with the iPod. The only change I want to make is get one of those 1700 milliamp replacement batteries and see if I get an little for juice from it. I'm looking forward to popping the lid on my player!
 
Apr 21, 2004 at 12:48 PM Post #5 of 84
Heh, i love the iHP load time when you off it while inside a playlist... i reckon... 10 seconds? <read playlist> heh...
Though the fact that the ipod comes alive so quickly is pretty cool, though if i had an ipod, it would be constantly out of batteries (because i leave the ihp lying around forlong periods)

*watches all the ipod guys come out to defend ipod*
 
Apr 21, 2004 at 1:15 PM Post #6 of 84
The sensitive buttons are the main reason why i switched back to my 2nd gen ipod after 3 weeks of using hte new one, it made me soooo mad...
 
Apr 21, 2004 at 1:30 PM Post #7 of 84
By far and away for me the most important thing they can do is sort out the battery life. Lately I've been thinking, hmm maybe I'll go back to iPod (mostly cos I'm getting sick of managing my music files for iHP, very time consuming. I miss iTunes' functions quite a bit), but then I remember the hassle of charging it every night, always worrying about not changing what I'm listening to too often (I was a 90s teenager, my attention span is generally less than the length of a single song). If they could just manage 10 hours, INCLUDING non-minimal HD access, I'd sell a kidney to buy one again.
Being able to switch off would be pretty cool, I think its a bit lame for the battery to degrade so severely when its not being used. Booting up from cold once a day, even if it takes up to 10-15 seconds, and THEN have 2 second boot, would be perfectly reasonable.

The only other things
A few heavier/meatier EQ settings
Make the scroll a bit less jumpy
Gapless
A bigger remote...my big hands are useless with the current one
True track queueing
but these aren't essential, just the battery would be sufficient for me
 
Apr 21, 2004 at 3:00 PM Post #8 of 84
Quote:

Originally Posted by chadbang
4) looping lists, at least, as an option

I don't get this one? Sort of like a repeat for a whole list?

6) better on-the-fly playlist support, like Dell DJ or Creative Zen

This, I've never understood. With itunes I can delete, drop, drag, move songs from existing playlist to existing playlist, or add songs to an old playlist. I don't understand what other options I need? I don't get what you mean by on-the-fly. I certainly don't let itunes manage my playlists, I think you have to be a complete twit to want to do that.



4) He means being able to go from the letter "A" back around to the letter "Z." Appearantly, right now you can only go down and if you wanted to listen to U2 or ZZ Top, you have to scroll all the way from top to bottom.

6) You don't know what an on-the-fly playlist is becuase the Gen 2 iPod doesn't support them. It refers to being able to make and save playlists on the player itself without the use of a computer. This is a very handy feature for those who do not have access to a computer. My firend had his Gen 2 iPod hooked up to the car stereo, and he wanted to play a bunch of different songs. He could only queue up one song at a time and each time the song ended, he had to go and manually play another song. Even with many PCDP, you have the optinon to program songs, even though there may only be 15-20 songs on the disc. You have thousands of songs on your Gen 2 iPod and you can't even program them on the unit itself.

eek.gif
 
Apr 21, 2004 at 4:20 PM Post #9 of 84
I don't think the iPod not being able to fully turn off is a big issue. I've read somewhere that the iPod can hold a charge for 30-60 days, so it doesn't lose much power from its "hibernation". If you left it off for a week without charging it, I doubt you would see a difference in battery life.
 
Apr 21, 2004 at 5:01 PM Post #10 of 84
Quote:

Originally Posted by br--
I don't think the iPod not being able to fully turn off is a big issue. I've read somewhere that the iPod can hold a charge for 30-60 days, so it doesn't lose much power from its "hibernation". If you left it off for a week without charging it, I doubt you would see a difference in battery life.



If this was true...it wouldn't be a big deal. From what I've heard, the ipod will go dead much quicker than that. This completely blows the ipod away for me because it makes it much less flexible for extended travel.
 
Apr 21, 2004 at 5:18 PM Post #11 of 84
Quote:

Originally Posted by austonia
From a guy with more than a few DAP, the problem with iPod, is that it doesn't shut off. What I mean is, it's constantly draining the battery. Sleep mode. Just so the user doesn't have to suffer through a whole 5 second boot sequence. It never shuts down. Never. You can't tell it, hey, please, just shut down and save the power for when I next need it. No, it's always draining power so it can power-on in 2 seconds. You can't put in your drawer for a week because you'll come back to a dead battery. No option, that's just the way it is.


Actually this isn't quite true as the iPod (at least my 3rd-generation 20GB iPod...not sure about the iPod Mini's) goes into a "deep sleep" mode that is essentially "off" (from what I understand). It does this after something like 24 hours of inactivity. You'll know if your iPod has gone into deep sleep as the next time you "wake" it up, you'll see the Apple logo on the screen and it takes a bit longer to boot up to the menu.
 
Apr 21, 2004 at 5:24 PM Post #12 of 84
deep sleep still isn't off.

when i woke mine up after 2 days, the battery was at 1/3rd life.

bollocks i say.

basically, the battery life is bad because the programmers were under the gun by the marketers to get the damn thing ready.

you can be sure the next gen ipods have better battery life.
 
Apr 21, 2004 at 5:59 PM Post #13 of 84
I agree with Sleepkyng. It's still using juice when it's off and either there's something wrong with the battery on mine where it becomes dead as a dodo after a week of non use or it's an ipod problem. Although, since I'm using a 2nd Gen, I'm wondering if this issue has been fixed on the 3rd gen. I mean, it isn't a major problem, just an annoyance and like Austonia says could potentially be fixed with a firmware upgrade
confused.gif
?
 
Apr 21, 2004 at 6:04 PM Post #14 of 84
Quote:

Originally Posted by sleepkyng
deep sleep still isn't off.
when i woke mine up after 2 days, the battery was at 1/3rd life.
bollocks i say.
basically, the battery life is bad because the programmers were under the gun by the marketers to get the damn thing ready.
you can be sure the next gen ipods have better battery life.



yeah. exactley. Full charge one day. Play it for an hour or two. Come back in a few days, it's dead. gaaawd. even if you don't use it at all, it's dead in less than a week, more like 5 days.

I just don't like being FORCED to deal with it. Just let me turn it off in the settings. There is absolutely no reason why it couldn't, or shouldn't, be an option. What is going on with the iPod development team? Where is the sense?

as far as why the actual battery sucks, it ain't the programmers fault. pont your finger at the bean counters. The Lithium battery is a large fraction of the production cost, and lower-capacity batteries are simply cheaper. Yes, they can get a higher-capacity battery in the exact same form factor. The thing is, the iPod being the MOST EXPENSIVE PLAYER on the market, they have no excuse for cutting corners here! On a 3rd gen product! And it's not like only a few people complain about it. It's the single biggest issue most people have with the iPod and the often the one thing that turns them away to another brand. Bad, Bad decision. The money they save in the short run only hurts them more in the long run by empowering their competitors with a major, obvious advantage.

Still, I keep the thing because a) it's beat to hell, b) it sounds awesome and I use it as a basis for comparison c) I appreciate the design and controls (2nd gen), d) they could actually "fix" the things I'm complaining about with simple firmware update... but will it happen? Not bloody likely. It's been 2 years and nothing new in a year. I know Apple doesn't give a crap, they allready have my money and the iPods are still flying off the shelf. But If they want me to buy a mini, or anything else, show me some support. Gotta love Creative. That update for the NJB3 last Christmas was seriously kick ass. On an old, discontinued product of thiers. Now that's support.
 
Apr 21, 2004 at 6:29 PM Post #15 of 84
Quote:

Originally Posted by callanish
I agree with Sleepkyng. It's still using juice when it's off and either there's something wrong with the battery on mine where it becomes dead as a dodo after a week of non use or it's an ipod problem. Although, since I'm using a 2nd Gen, I'm wondering if this issue has been fixed on the 3rd gen. I mean, it isn't a major problem, just an annoyance and like Austonia says could potentially be fixed with a firmware upgrade
confused.gif
?



No, uh, that's the way its "supposed" to work. Same on the 3rd gen. Same on the mini. Obviously, Apple hates OFF. They are like, "OFF is suck." So, we need to send the Governator over to Apple HQ to beat the hell outa Jobs for wasting all that energy. Can you imagine all that lost power, from iPods all over the world...? It adds up. Some countries are desperate for power. People die because there's no power. Why, Apple, WHY???
 

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