“Back when I had a media player that worked like a regular fs I wrote a small app that fitted my routine.”
You illustrate my point exactly. The idea is one of layman useability. In order for you to use your player the way you wanted, you felt the need to write your own script to load it. A non-technogeek wouldn’t dream of such a thing. The software that comes with the box is all they’ll ever use, or maybe a popular, pre-developed alternative. They’ll certainly not create scripts or even search for and tweak an obscure file manager to meet their individual needs.
It’s true that a filesystem-style player can have many varied apps written for it with lots of choices and configurations and no take-it-or-leave-it standard. That’s precisely what kills it for many users.
I think iPod and iTunes are great tools for music listeners. There may be better ones and iPod and iTunes could be improved, but I am quite content with those. Though I miss some good songs that I can name that are not for sale in iTunes. It is always a dissappointment, when you browse like hundreds of average songs in iTunes and then you find somewhere else some info about a great song, but then the song is not in iTunes for sale.
There actually are lots of average music, but somehow I only like some of good hits. Music does not have to be super brilliant, but just good enough and sort of that I like.
And this is of course a difficult one: How do I find the music I want in iTunes? If there were a list which had like 50 songs that I like, I would buy them all. But no, there are like one song here and another there, and I have to really seek for them - many times with help of information picked up from somewhere else. The beta version of “Just for you” and hot lists are not helping much at all, maybe little.
I wonder how many of the Apple fanboys in here realize that they’re the ones that Jeff was talking about in point #1. Maybe some of them do and that’s why they’ve got their knickers in a not.
I tend to be agnostic toward the evangelism and not deliberately try to disassociate myself with a particular demographic, UNLESS it tries to do “forced conversions”. The farcical overreactions of some people to any criticism of the iPod basically ends up being free advertising for the Other Guys.
As for subscription services and compatibility, don’t hold your breath. Apple’s revenue from the iTunes store dwarfs what the iPods themselves bring in, and they understandably don’t want to kill their own golden goose. It’s a major negative for the iPod, but it’s a perfectly good business strategy for Apple.
Well I am not actually a iPod fan, but iPod is good enough for me. I think music is more important than having not exotic non-main-stream walkman.
Though I spent this evening searhing for music in iTunes. It has many different kinds of rating, searching, and sample features, but still I managed to buy just one song this evening. And that song was good only in the very beginning and in the very end, but mostly I did not like it. Maybe some 2% of all the songs are such that I do not like after purchase when I hear the whole song. Of course, there just does not exist too many brilliant songs in the first place…
Now here is another one. Fairly ok, but less than perfect: DJ Luka “I Found Peace (Radio Edit)”. I bought this too. Dragged to my list, and its going to iPod with sync. Easy.
I recently got a new Toshiba Gigabeat to replace the Nomad 3 that made a break for it when I was at the gym sometime. It’s a sexy little piece of machinery - 60 GB of storage, plays videos off of my Tivo, has MTP support, yadda yadda yadda.
My girlfriend’s got an iPod and she likes it OK enough, but no radio tuner (which mine’s got), the very real possibility of using iTunes and the awkward iPod interface were dealbreakers - I know people love the interface, but I’ve got 50-odd gigs of albums on my player and sorting by genre just doesn’t do it - the joystick-ish interface with the overlaid letters works better for me.
Unfortunately, I got mine in shiny black instead of kawaii pink. My loss.
If all your friends have it, it must be good. IPod has penetrated the market so, that lots of people has iPod. And thanks to Apple, iPod is a good player, that is, the player does work. And it is at least fairly easy to use. And there is a distribution channel of music, namely iTunes. So this is a sure bet, if you do not want to take your chances with other players. Now Microsoft is coming with Zune, and we shall see, what happens. Its certain that some people will buy Zune, and so Microsoft may take some market share. Apple needs to keep going in order to be able to compete.
actually, if you just download sharepod, which is saved on the ipod itself, you can make music go from computer to ipod OR ipod to computer(any computer) completely itunes-free. and if you want your wma music, well, you still cant have it like it is but if you get a file conversion software like switch then you can just change it to mp3 or m4a or really whatever you want. my biggest complaint about the ipod is the fact that its so much more expensive than other players with more storage and more features that you dont have to pay extra for. its just stupid.
Look, I appreciate all the points you’ve raised, and yes, the lack of drag and drop capability can be rather irritating, also, I have a lot of music in flac and adding that can be a real pain, but then, I’ve been using a 160 GB iPod Classic for several years now, and it just blows anything else right out of the water for sheer capacity. iTunes has it’s quirks, but it just takes a bit of getting used to. I haven’t found any other portable music player, that can hold 160GB or more, and is widely available in India, which is where I live. The iPod (160 Gb Classic, specifically) may have it’s problems, but it’s the best that I have found.