Yeah. The glitz and trendiness must give you a really hard time with those freakish rave-type commercials. Part of me wonders if I have to reverse my no-drug-use policy just to understand them. =)
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OK, first Spuzzum finally tells me about the Lego Developer program, then I hear about these great features of iTunes/iPods. Of all the selling points I have heard thrown at me, I have never heard those. That is the first one that I haven't seen another player do better(The Zens have the iPods beat in almost every way). So, great job with that, actually showing a selling point.
I'll admit, the iPods have normally been first to get most of the features that we take for granted in our mobile media players. But they rarely last on top(When it comes to features). One thing that iPods have been missing for a very long time is an FM receiver. Sure, with podcasting and whatnot, radio is slowing getting phased out, especially on computers and mobile media devices, but it would still be great to be able to tune into local news and live information. | |
Smart Playlists do sound interesting... but I'll probably stick with my Zen. :P Though if SD cards continue to increase in size and decrease in price, the day may come when all I need is my Treo...
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As for me, I'm not touching any digital music players until they support, aside from isolated rarities, the various MOD formats. In terms of number of songs (as opposed to hard disc space) my MOD files account for at least 95% of all of the music I have on my computer.
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Well, my usage of "popular" was meant to have the same meaning as "trendy". And isn't every year the year of Trend-Bashing? Let me check my Chinese calendar...
I haven't researched it in the last year or so, but last time I was looking for a real iPod replacement, I found plenty that had no automated sync at all, let alone sync of the data I considered important.
Yep, it can do that. Just a simple checkbox.
Just to be clear (not to attempt to convert, mind you), the feature is a generalized method of building playlists that update themselves on the fly, based on arbitrary criteria. Apple calls them Smart Playlists. They're so much more than "you haven't listened to this in a donkey's age" - you can create an arbitrarily complex combination of criteria based on 37 different parameters. The donkey thing is just one of my favorite uses. And once you use it, you can't go back. ;)
Oh, and I forgot to mention one of the coolest new pieces of data they added recently: iTunes and iPod now keep track of how many times you've skipped a particular song. Over a long period of time, I've learned some interesting things about my listening habits based on play counts that weren't as obvious as I'd have thought; I expect to start learning the same types of new things based on the skip count.
Yeah, I'll buy that. I never said I was the typical user. ;) I'm very particular about how I manage my listening experience -- which is why for years I managed it all with a collection of scripts that I wrote and endlessly tweaked. And now I'm continually amazed at how iTunes+iPod gives me much more flexibility than I ever had before. I use them not to be trendy, but because they really are the best solution for my needs (which is why I suppose I must write these long posts defending my usage of something trendy -- a practice I normally avoid like the plague!). I've looked for alternatives, and nothing else has fulfilled all the requirements.
Yep. I'm sure Apple continues market dominance primarily due to their existing status as the dominant leader. It's a nice position to be in. But they got there, unlike Microsoft in the operating system market, by making a fundamentally sound product with good features. All the glitz and trendiness is just extra stuff we functional users have to put up with and constantly explain away when we're teased about it. ;)