Mike_P wrote:
I would, for various reasons, advise one to stay away from all Apple products if for no other reason than their incessant proprietary actions...i.e. you are stuck using their oft times bloated software...I am quite happy with my creative zen player which I only have to connect via a usb cable to my computer and it is automatically recognized as an external drive and I only have to copy files over as I would as if it was another HDD...no muss, no fuss, and it uses AAA batteries that can easily be acquired in a rechargeable format...I've been using my original 4 batteries for about 3 years now and they are still going strong....
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.
Quote:
requirement to use itunes unless one is up on pirate software which enables other options (which Apple repeatedly disables with their updates, and 'pirates' again hack to enable use of more reasonable products)
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.
Quote:
Now this isn't to say that there's nothing negative about the iPod or Apple. One issue where Apple's proprietary nature bugs me is with the iTunes music store simply because it's a limiting format. I don't know if they have changed this, but somehow I doubt it. I'd much rather purchase standard WAV or even MP3 files because if I purchased music, I'd like to use them for many applications other than simply playing on my iPod. That being said, I haven't purchased a single song or album in the past 10 years so the iTunes issue doesn't affect me as I'm sure it doesn't affect the vast majority of people that own MP3 players.
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:
In regards to Apple's general attitude and business practices, I really do hate them but I cannot deny that they've made a fine product in the iPod. Of course I do wish they had actually made some real advances in the design, but they have no need to since they have the market cornered. I think the only real thing about the iPod that initially gave me pause was the sheer cost, but ever since I bought one, I've been very happy with it and obviously many people feel the same way. I personally tend not to like proprietary things either, but at some point or another, you have to separate the things that matter from the things that don't. The proprietary aspects of the iPod are really so minimal that it has no measurable effect on my life. Of course this differs very much from Apple computers that I would find extremely limiting for my purposes and lifestyle... But that's another story altogether...
[/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