Official Luthiers Forum!

guys....if you read closer you will see I was referring to the past with my comment about the battery...specifically the first generation products...I'm sorry, but I am not going to believe that Apple was unaware of this 'glitch'...in fact I think they did it with full awareness...in a nutshell it is this event that causes me to have absolutely no desire to ever possess an ipod...as other posters have mentioned, you have to have a 3rd party replace the current batteries...sheeshus...I prefer to pull out the drained AAA battery in my unit, and replace it with a charged one...when all 4 that I have are used I put them into their charger, plug it in, and when I wake up in the morning I have them ready for use again...

as far as Apple computers...well I have a very bad track record with them...I have killed 3 of them just by simply being near them from best I can tell...lol...I'll stick to windoze and take advantage of the far greater amount of software available...

for you proponents of ipods and such, more power to you...if you are happy with your device, then fine...I'm sure they are great devices to use (except for having to use itunes...as noted I prefer the simplicity of simply plugging a device into a usb port and having my machine recognize it as a storage device)...I guess my opinions can best be described as why you don't want to annoy (potential) customers as they will go out of their way to spread their thoughts....

it appears as if the timer ran out for editing...soooo...

addendum: this subject got me curious, and upon doing so searching have found out that all ipod batteries can be replaced, though it is a pita and in a couple of models the battery is soldered to the main board...bleh...there are vendors of the batteries with instructions on how to do it yourself...IMHO it is still a pricey proposition, and at the very least a big hairy PITA....Apple had to be sued via a class action lawsuit to get them to 'fairly' deal with the situation (which also included the logic of them lying about the life and charge holding time of the battery)...

I was watching Whale Wars last night. The crew of the Sea Shepherd was sure they were being following by a covert Japanese military force traveling in a rusty unmarked vessel. They decided to lead the covert force through ice fields the Shepherd wasn't built to withstand so they could launch a plan to catch the covert Japanese military crew (the Japanese equivalent of DevGru?) with a carefully laid trap. It was quite dramatic until the Shepherd loosed the snare and found a run down ship full of friendly civilians.

Anyway, I like my Apple products and have found them to simply make things easier for me. The emergence of new options is good in that we can all find solutions that make us happy.

No sound system in my workshop. I sing loudly to myself......no problems with dust and it keeps my wife out of the shop

Ok, It's a done deal! I just got off the phone w/Crutchfield rep. & he did assure me(as some of you said) my set of computer speakers that I have will work. Thanks everyone!! I just bought an IPod Nano.
Dave

I must be old fashioned. I have a Technics Receiver, a reel to reel deck, a portable cd player and some Technics speakers. I don't really use the reel to reel very often, but I do have some old tapes from Viet Nam that I listen to from time to time. Interestingly enough, it brings back some fond memories of friends from my past.

_________________
Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I went to the local electronics store and told them I wanted some speakers for my ipod, they took me to the docks section. Man those things cost a lot down here. Walked out with a $40 set of powered computer speakers (sub woofer and two satellites) - that the sales guy insisted wouldn't work with an ipod. I went back a couple days later and bought another set of the same speakers for work. The home stereo is now retired, these things rock, I've even used them at parties. The only complaints I've had was people asking me to turn the music down.

Waddy bro there is nothing like a good old reel-to-reel! I never had one but always wanted one.

Filippo that is the mother-of-all-shop-music systems!!!! Tube amps just sound great and the glow is too cool too. Nice shelf that you made too.

_________________
Ann Arbor Guitars

A few things:
1) You can replace the iPod battery if you're hardcore enough. Plenty of third party vendors sell and install replacements; there's an advantage to being the world's major player. Non-trivial replacement is something I'll accept for the user interface/design.
2) Managing music by dragging and dropping is slower than using iTunes (which, yes, on Windows is bloatware, but there are - again - a variety of third-party software options if you want them)
3) iPods have a disk mode option, and thus can be used as hard drives for data storage without any hassle.
4) Battery life on the recent-ish model and the one before (first one died in an accident, on my second, 2 year old 'pod now) is good, at least 8 hours.




Apple essentially makes iPods to get folks to use the iTunes music store, and the 'pirates' get stuff going pretty quickly. I've used a variety of media players and MP3 library products, starting back in 1999, from microscoft, third parties, etc. but honestly? iTunes has a better user interface than any of them, and since I don't buy DRM music on principle, that whole aspect is irellevant.



Let's be fair to Apple on a few counts: they're currently negotiating to get rid of DRM on ALL of the stuff sold via iTunes, and you don't have to purchase through them. They paved the way for the sales of digital music, and Steve Jobs has consistenly stated that his goal is DRM-free music.. The files in your iTunes library are also freely accessible to any other bit of software on the PC. As for 'limiting format', AIFF is no more limiting than, say, wmv, and the encoding quality is better than MP3 for an equivalent size. And iTunes lets you choose how you want to rip your CDs - what codec, what bitrate, compressed/uncompressed, up to you.

[/quote]

I agree on principle that an 'open' framework or platform is preferable to a closed/proprietary one, but looking at it soberly, unless you're putting together a PC from parts and running some form of Linux, your alternative to a Mac with OSX is a PC with a horribly closed, proprietary, bloated system made by microscoft. OSX is better, more open software. If you want it, built in command line and compiling, stability, the ability to run multiple OS's without reboot with VMware or Parallels (hassle free Parallels install with XP here) and hate them all you want, but Apple is the master of the user interface design, in both hardware and software - iPhone included. That device ain't the most sophisticated smartphone on a technical front, but the user experience is (IMO) second to none.

Apple charges a premium for their hardware, but for my money they make the best laptops on the market today. A laptop is - by definition - a closed system, so might as well get one that looks good AND has a user experience second to none. You ain't lived until you've gotten to know and love multi-touch, large trackpads (each generation's better) I did a price comparison before buying my first mac a year ago, and found the Mac was the same price as a dell or toshiba or fujitsu 13" laptop; the 15" machines are more expensive, but on average also a lot more powerful than their PC bretheren. And yes, you pay a premium for design - both hardware and software - a lot of folks here build custom instruments, at the top of the guitar market, Apple does much the same for the computer world. Their laptops all have user replaceable batteries, user-upgradeable memory and harddrives, same applies to the towers. Not sure about the iMacs on the harddrive front, but with network storage becoming ubiquitous (plus Apple's Time Machine for automatic backups), drive replacement isn't a huge deal.

There endeth my pro-Apple rant. I do think they have a number of weaknesses, and there are things I wish they'd do differently, and they're fairly expensive, but my next laptop will - when this one's outdated - still be a Mac. Jury's still out on whether the desktop will be replaced by a mac or by another PC, though.

Sorry if I put anyone to sleep

yes .. any powered PC speaker system is simply looking for an analog signal (output of the soundcard), thru an 1/8 inch stereo phone plug - same as every MP3 player out there.

I went Creative at the early stages when the iPod was $80 more expensive for 10gb less storage, plus you had to buy extra sw to get to work on a PC .. turns out the batteries were crap, the d/a wasnt as good .. the iPod was smaller and cooler looking .. but at a price. I still remember seeing a Creative travel speaker (we have two) - one was just labelled MP3 travel speaker .. the other, was for iPod .... it was 20 bucks more, and it was the exact same product ... suckers.

Not for headbanging Hesh ... I beg to differ .. the little Altec system I have will easily fill an average room to over 100dB. Its pounding LOUD. I doubt any of those little docks could compete for bottom end.

_________________
Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

When I built my house, I wired in ceiling speakers in the garage (my shop) as well as four other rooms and the deck. I put in separate volume controls for each room. My Ipod is plugged into my Denon receiver in the family room. I can run two zones so other people in the house can listen to CDs or radio and not have to share what I'm listening to. No dust problems and great sound. And, I love the Ipod!!

Guys! I didn't want to start a "hornets nest". Really! My questions were answered to the fullest extent. I'm not a "whiz kid" when it comes to electronics, thus my questions.

Dave

Some online musician stores offer Apple Products with their warranty. You can get a replacement iPod or credit if things go wrong. One case where an after market warranty makes sense.

_________________
Tom Krebs

Because we almost always have one of the big saws & dust collector running our shop is a little too loud for a radio..
I was happy to notice the newest version of the Peltor Worktunes headsets have a digital am/fm tuner AND an Aux jack. You get used to the weight of a headset after a while and you don't have to worry about going deaf quite as early

If you are lucky enough to have a quiet enough shop those jobsite radios are fantastic. I think the one we used when I was drywalling was a Milwakee. One of the guys knocked it off the lower level of our scaffolding and it survived just fine (our cd didn't fare as well).

I listen to an origional style iPod Nano when I'm able to get away with it.. I keep it in my pocket and there is definately some dust in there I can see it behind the screen. It still works fine.

_________________
CVT Inc.
A tour of our shop (Somewhat outdated)
My Personal eBay profile. BCWoodBug

I am envious Fillipo .. I LOVE that tubeman stuff, but pricey .... OK .. tube just about anything. Those gloves are definitely Hesh approved

_________________
Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

I've got one of these in my living room:

http://www.roku.com/products_soundbridge.php

I've got all of my CDs ripped in FLAC format, which is a lossless CD quality sound, on a hard drive. I use my desktop PC as the music server. I'm thinking of buying a second one and some powered speakers to put in my basement workshop. It runs over my wireless network and you can have up to 10 of them running on the same network at the same time. There's a lot of choices in what software you can use to run the server. I use Firefly which is one of two that supports FLAC and it's in CD quality, not crappy mp3 quality. Said as I sit here in my office listening to my mp3s on my Zune through powered speakers!

Matt

There's always a bunch of this twenty year old adcom on ebay for a fraction of the original price. I run an ipod and an xm radio through it, sounds great. Sturdy stuff, it gets dusty I just use air from my compressor to clean it.