whats the big deal with the iPod?

[Embio]

whats the big deal with the iPod? c'mon ppl i want reasons

 

[OPP]

It looks cool once you get past that umm...it has..... a short battery life? hmnm Frankly I dont know its deffinately the coolest looking one out there though. I have an iRiver 120 myself and am gonna sell it once I can get my hands on a Gmini 400 most likely.

 

[Rick87]

here's a fairly unbiased viewpoint, basing my comments on FACTS.

apple are marketting geniuses.

it looks nice.

most people know nowt bout technology, therefore if it luks nice, it sells.

its technically inferior to many other players bar its size, check out the zen touch and iriver ihp120/140 as alternatives.

 

[Embio]

i decided on Hi-MD, cos I can record my music DVD collection 2 it, and the memory is pretty much all you practically need. also, battery life is unlimited due to interchangable batteries, wups the iPod methinks

any MZNH900 owners out there?

 

[EdipisReks]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rick87 here's a fairly unbiased viewpoint, basing my comments on FACTS. apple are marketting geniuses. it looks nice. most people know nowt bout technology, therefore if it luks nice, it sells. its technically inferior to many other players bar its size, check out the zen touch and iriver ihp120/140 as alternatives.

BS. the iPod is the smallest, easiest to use, best integrated (with a Mac, anyway), best looking, most neutral sounding full featured system on the market. i just CAN'T figure out why anyone would like it

 

[ayn]

It's not just the iPod, it's iPod + iTunes + iTMS, the full package. It is probably the easiest to use music suite out there. I know there are different software that do different things better than the Apple solution, but most people don't care.

I wasn't interested in iPod until they introduced apple lossless in iTunes 4.5, before then I was using SHN for most of my music.

--Andrew

 

[Embio]

battery life of 8 hours? are you kiddin me? thats nothing

drop the iPod..... wups no music

 

[EdipisReks]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Embio battery life of 8 hours? are you kiddin me? thats nothing drop the iPod..... wups no music

the 4th generation has an honest 12 hours of battery life. considering that the iPod's music library is meant to be ancillary to your main collection, which is on your actual computer, breaking the iPod hardly means "wups no music [sic]".

 

[Reck45]

There is nothing much special about it except for clever marketing. Better players out for less.

 

[Oddball]

Here are my reasons, but if you already dislike the iPod, I doubt I'll sway you.
1) Excellent GUI
2) Clean sound
3) Touchpad volume control allows for making small adjustments
4) Lots of third party accessories
5) It just looks cool
6) Relatively reliable
7) Small
8) The games allow for a bit of mindless entertainment
9) Nice line-out

 

[Rick87]

i admit it has a nice UI, i forgot that in my first post, but thats the only other good thing i have to say about it. the battery life is appalling in this day and age, my old Archos player had more than an iPod. the sound quality may be ok, but its not as good as iRiver imho, and DEFINITELY not as good as the Creative models. "touchpad allows you to make small volume adjustments"? last time i checked, my fingers manage just fine with the volume up/volume down buttons

. reliability i wont get into, as i have never owned an ipod, only played around with one, but i know it may be ok, but definitely isnt the best. if you resort to playing games on your mp3 player, i genuinely pity you. finally, it has a line out!woohoo! call the press! where's the plethora of inputs you find on an iriver player?

now, this is obv just an opinion, but IMHO if you want lots of storage/high sound quality, go with the creative options. if you want to have insane battery life, go with the creative zen touch. and if you want an all round alternative to the ipod, where pretty much the only downside is that its a bit thicker, go with the iriver.

Embio - bottom line is, if you're a fashion victim, get ipod. if you want a player just to look good, get an ipod. if you want sound quality, recording, long battery life, etc etc, look elsewhere.

 

[deltawalkerl]

You seem to undermine the importance of a nice UI and software to a MP3 player. But IMO that is a very important feature and enough to get me to like the iPod, despite its shortcomings. The UI on the iPod is so intuitive, and integration with a PC (PCs include Macs) is so seamless, that it is just a pleasure to operate. For instance, with the iPod, the player keeps track of how many times I've played every song since I last synced with a PC, and upon the next sync, it updates both the play count on the PC and on the iPod itself. That's just one example of the seamlessness of the link. The iPod also carries over star ratings from iTunes. I have all my tunes rated, so if I wanted to play my favorite songs out of a large library, I just select Play all 5 star rated songs or something to that effect. Now I've tried to use my previous iRiver H120 with both iRiver Manager and MoodLogic, as well as another 3rd party backup/synchronization software. But those don't even come close to the capabilities of iTunes. (To the H1x0 user - you know what I'm talking about. 52!) And I had to manually create favorites playlists as M3U files because there's no star rating system. If only iRiver could make their UI and software as nice as the iPod and iTunes package, then there will be no beating them. But as it stands now...

 

[Rick87]

thats fair enough, every1 has different priorities when choosing which player. myself personally, i like the way the iriver just appears as a drive and i can dump over all the folders in my music folder, and then add the occasional folder in the future when i get a new album. play counts etc i'm not fussed about. different viewpoint on the ui: as long as it's usable, mho is it doesn't matter that much. take an iriver hp-120 (since i own one so i know what im talking about) and an ipod. if you have never handled either before, the ipod will definitely be the most intuitive, due to its large, clear menus, and seperate submenus. however, even when you know your way around the player, you still have to go through the menus. however, with the iriver, although it is more daunting to start with, once you have got used to it (only took me a couple of hours normal usage), you can access most functions with just 1/2 button clicks.

different attitudes from different people 'cos we have different priorities. thing is embio, i presume you started the post because you are looking to get an ipod and wanted some opinions? best advice i can give you is list your priorities on a piece of paper, and decide what is most important. i think i can safely say that i am like most people on this board - waiting for the holy grail of mp3 players to appear - tiny, massive capacity, perfect sound, long battery life, intuitive UI, etc etc etc.

P.S. if this does get invented, i WILL buy one

 

[deltawalkerl]

Yep...we are all waiting for that one perfect player.

It already appears that the H3x0 won't be the answer. Could it be the Karma2? I hope so...

 

[Oddball]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rick87 "touchpad allows you to make small volume adjustments"? last time i checked, my fingers manage just fine with the volume up/volume down buttons .

I admit that I may be the only person in the world who thinks that the lowest level on the NJB3 is too loud with Shure e2s, but I enjoyed using my iPod to find the volume level I liked. It's just a nitpick that I have.

Count me in as another person hoping for the holy grail of mp3 to show up.

I'm hoping for the Chroma to be it...but I'm a little disillusioned with mechanical scroll wheels at the moment. I'm looking for a store that'll let me try out the Karma and iHPs, but I can't find one.