iPods are more stylish and easier to use, and I own one, but my Creative Zen player does sound better and the charge last much, much longer. My iTunes issues revolve around the store. They download at 128kbps (and that can't be changed that I know of) which sounds like crap, AND they come in the m4a format, which can only be played on Apple products. Bottom line...if you buy the song from Apple, be prepared to always have an Apple product on hand if you want to listen to it. If you use the iTunes program for storing your music, that's all good, but make sure you change your kbps setting to at LEAST 192 (the default is 128) and change it to rip into MP3, so you can the hear stuff on any player you might choose to buy in the future.
I don't think there's anything wrong with what he was saying there. The fact is, the iPod and iTunes are nowhere near the last word on portable music players. Also, 'user friendly' does not necessarily equal 'consumer friendly'. The iPod, and Apple in general, has a history of attempting to get people to only use their products for life and will attempt to do so via formatting issues, whether hidden or straightforward.
Now THERE is one goddam helpful hint. You, sir, are duly repped. And I think Apple owes Chad about a zillion dollars for developing their next genius ad campaign: "Oh, F.F.S., Get an IPod." I expect to see that plastered all over San Francisco any day now.
Indeed. I think an inevitable issue has to be whether they will license their DRM out considering what the iTunes brand has become. I only own a 1g Shuffle as far as Apple goes. What I like a lot is the iTunes interface. I download a lot of podcasts and the way it's laid out to download and drag to the player is very easy and user-friendly. You are limited to one computer/one device with the Shuffle, which is a drag (there are ways to get around this though). I also own a Sony Network Walkman. Putting aside Sony's DRM issues, it's a nice little player at 512mb of storage. I use it when out running as it's round design fits into a lot of those generic arm bands-it's about 2" in diameter. It also runs on just 1 AAA and gets a pretty good run on that. You can rip songs as MP3 and drag them so the DRM is not fixed to one format. But when you rip using their software, they are ATRAC3 format. Since I don't really need more than 1 gig, these players work fine for me.
Or you could burn it to a cd and reimport it as another type of file. Or you could buy all your cds at stores and import them as mp3s. I love the rants against apple here. I used an Airport Express (let's you stream from itunes to your stereo over wireless) with my xp machines. I used my first two ipods with my xp machines. Apple didn't send any black helicopters to my house.
Which is why I said that using itunes is fine for organizing your library. My complaints are about buying things from the store. No one here is going off the rails against Apple...only saying that it's best to check other options first before deciding. And also making sure that if you do use the iPod/iTunes that you know all these little tips about the formatting and kbps, because Apple sure is hell is not advertising it or making it obvious.
That's fair, wrt you. But stevienicksfan#1 shows up in nearly every ipod discussion to spew his ignorant sh!t. And it is tiresome.
Why is it that you place such value on a thin player? The average cell phone is .8 inches thick and fits into a pocket with no difficulty. That and I don't think I've seen more than a dozen people with iPods in their pants pocket, they're always in a purse or coat pocket or backpack. I've known a bunch.
It's generally agreed upon if you don't have a hearing problem. You don't even need to be an audiophile to hear the difference. Of course about half of the lack of sound quality is the ear buds. Oddly enough, 90% of the people I see with iPods have the original headphones. Not sure why...actually, that's not true, I know why, but the iPod fan club isn't going to want to hear it.
What's ignorant about it? That he has issues with a product you like? Heaven forbid he stands his ground and...wait, what's this...provides evidence to back up his ascertions.
Absolutely, you pretty much have to factor in the cost of new headphones when buying an iPod. The stock pair are terrible.
--- however, there are black helicopters circling a certain home on the shores of Lake Washington every second of every day.
I'm almost sold on the Creative Zen Nano Plus 1GB, but I have questions about the kbps setting you mention. I'm very worried that I cannot change the kbps setting. If you click on the link and scroll down to the bottom of the page, you'll see that the 500-song capacity estimate is based on 64kbps for WMA (I'm hoping this means Windows Music Audio or something). You're saying if I can't change this setting to 192 the tunes will sound like crap, but if I change it, it appears that I won't have anywhere near as much storage space for songs. 1) Do I change this setting on the player itself, or do I select an MP3 provider that downloads at a rate which allows for decent sound? 2) What do I do to recover all the lost space if I use a setting that allows the music to sound like it should? It almost seems like I can get either good sound or a lot of songs, but not both.