View Full Version : I feel dirty
Matblack
13-02-2009, 12:08
I bought and iPod and I like it :shocked:
Bloody Apple, they're like crack I'll have an iBook in no time :(
MB
What kind?
Did you join the touch based elites?
Davey_Pitch
13-02-2009, 12:26
I have an iPod Touch and I love it, hardly ever go anywhere without it :)
Matblack
13-02-2009, 12:28
Unbelieveable but thinking about it this is the first MP3 player I've owned, I've always used my phone or CDs in the car or plugged in Aitch's MP3 player for long journies.
I've always been a bit of an apple hater, don't know why, once had a stand up row in Lakeside with a very good friend who dared to say Macs were better than PCs but my PC fanboyism has ebbed with getting a 360 and I've become a realist when it comes to things 'just working'.
Anyway I ended up buying 2 iPods on the same day, a last gen Nano and a Classic 80Gb both of which arrived on Wednesday and which I have been hypnotised by ever since, especially Coverflow which is in my opinion possibly the best thing ever.
I have developed a love hate relationship with iTunes, I've treated it well, not feeding it rubbish single tracks with no tags if I can avoid it and its spurned my affections by spliting some of my albums randomly and poping in the odd wrong album cover just to show me whos the boss. Wednesday I payed it attention till 2am caressing its settings and instigating a threesome with myself Mr Classic and Podling in a library only really designed for 2. In my weakened state iTunes finessed my credit card number from me in the exchange for the offer of free cover art delivered automatically.
But last night was the pinicle of our relationship so far when I cliked on the iTunes store, (up to this point I was content with my own music and still have no plans to buy music online I like having physical CDs) and discovered Podcasts HOW BLOODY COOL ARE THESE? I know I'm behind the times but I can get free podcasts of Stephen Fry, Robert Lewelyen and the friday night BBC comedy and listen to them whenever I like and whats more automatically subscribe so whenever I plug Mr Classic or Podling I get all the latest updates!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There have been some teething problems, sometimes they refuse to eject from the PC and sometimes iTunes goes to sleep for a while just on a whim but afterall its just them suggesting to me that I need to get a Mac and with this experience, you know what? I just might ;)
MB
My iPod is pretty awesome but I loathe and despise iTunes with a passion.
Podcasts are fantastic! Since reinstalling my Macbook I've not got around to resubscribing but I used to grab them and use them to keep me sane when working abroad.
Matblack
13-02-2009, 12:38
What kind?
Did you join the touch based elites?
No and to be honest its more than I need in an MP3 player
but
If HTC don't come out with something amazing and the cost of ownership isn't prohibative I might consider an iPhone when my contract comes up for renewal although I believe the iPhone contracts are a bit meh :/ on O2?
MB
NokkonWud
13-02-2009, 12:40
Another here who hates iTunes, only last week I was telling Leo of my hatred for that horrible program.
Matblack
13-02-2009, 12:44
Awful isn't it
Its a really pain with spliting what I think is an album into different albums. I have a soundtrack for Catch and Release and it comes up 15 times in coverflow for different artists, if an artists name is spelled slightly differently its understandable that it thinks they are different artists but why can't I just drag one on top of the other? No I have to amagamate them buy editing the tags some of which are uniteligable and then find a tick box to tell at they they are a complillation. BUT THEY CAME OFF THE SAME CD!!!!!!!!!!.
MB
I'm getting more and more drawn to macs I have to say.... :o
leowyatt
13-02-2009, 12:48
good boy :D
OS X rocks. The whole 'it just works' thing isn't entirely true because it does break and arse about but on the whole I much prefer it to Windows. Hence why I made sure I bought a Netbook that could run OS X.
Matblack
13-02-2009, 12:58
My netbook broke and is currently awaiting parts, I KNEW I shouldn't have bought an Advent but it was soooooo cheap and great whilst it worked. I'm tempted to get a Sumsung NC10 and then when the Netbook comes back to bung Leopard on it just for fun. I need a netbook to be reliable and can't believe the Advent died after so little time, apparently they've order a keyboard and a new motherboard! No idea what was wrong with it, it just refused to see the HD and wouldn't let me into the BIOS, stupid thing :(
MB
The only Netbook I've used OS X on is the Dell Mini 9 and it works absolutely perfectly.
Matblack
13-02-2009, 13:09
Hmmmmmm NC10 is £280 at Heathrow, could pick one up on the way to Iceland and have a way to check my pics from the camera day by day, very very tempting :huh:
MB
iTunes does need to be treated lovingly, I've found the OS X version to have much sexier curves than the Windows version, and we all know that curves are important so therefore it's a better product.
If you've got albums that don't group correctly, select all the tracks, cmd-i on them (right click, show info or whatever it is) and change the album name and the grouping names to something random, OK it and then change them back. It should sort it.
I never loved iTunes when I ran it under Windows, but there's something about it now. I stare at it adoringly and when it notices me doing it, I look away or pretend I'm looking at something that's just over it's shoulder. I can be doing something else but I'll still give it the occasional glance out of the corner of my eye just to look at it and wonder in it's goodness, let my eyes drift over the contours that are the collection of movies and TV shows. Sometimes iTunes will whisper sweet nothingsxxxxxxxxxxx
I'll stop now. Bottom line, iTunes sucked on Windows, but works well on OS X.
And yes, Podcasts rock. There's a thread here somewhere with some suggestions of ones to have an earwig to.
Oh, and I don't know how well Leopard will work on the NC10 but really if you want to run it on a netbook then the MSI Wind or the Dell Mini 9 are the two best choices. The Dell being the better of the two.
Having said that, I'm getting tempted to swap my Dell Mini 9 for a refurb Macbook Air!
*laughs at the n00bs*
I've been using Macs for over 15 years :p
Davey_Pitch
13-02-2009, 13:21
MB, you should consider ditching iTunes and using Media Monkey instead. It's a much nicer piece of software for transferring your tunes over, and still use it to subscribe to podcasts. I highly highly recommend it :)
NokkonWud
13-02-2009, 13:30
podcats rock.
Like LOLcats?
Hmmmmmm NC10 is £280 at Heathrow, could pick one up on the way to Iceland and have a way to check my pics from the camera day by day, very very tempting :huh:
MB
I love my moms Samsung NC10, it's awesome.
LeperousDust
13-02-2009, 13:34
iPods are amazing peices of hardware, but you are looking at a 6th generation device, the first ones weren't anything special (this is how i currently view iphones :)).
iTunes on the other hand is just totally sodding useless, the only reason i'd want to use iTunes is if for some reason i wanted to start buying music through the apple store (that won't happen anytime soon). iTunes has absolutely nothing on MediaMonkey on the windows platform, and thats not really to say MediaMonkey is more complicated, it doesn't have to be if you don't want it too.
It's less of a walled garden, and you don't have to treat albums tags with so much care etc... It does pretty simple things that iTunes still can't do like... monitor a folder for changed content, still makes me laugh everytime i see my mates trying to fart around and import stuff and name it properly.
Another here who hates iTunes, only last week I was telling Leo of my hatred for that horrible program.
I too hate it with a passion and I've never really understood the whole Apple fanaticism.
When I bought my first mp3 player about a year ago I did quite a bit of research and ended up with an 80GB Zune player which I got for c. £120 which I still love. The Zune software is head and shoulders better than iTunes and handles mine and my wifes podcasts without any hastle.
Still, ... enjoy your new toy!!
Matblack
13-02-2009, 14:01
MB, you should consider ditching iTunes and using Media Monkey instead. It's a much nicer piece of software for transferring your tunes over, and still use it to subscribe to podcasts. I highly highly recommend it :)
I'll have a look but I don't fancy going through and adding all my album covers again!
MB
Matblack
13-02-2009, 14:06
Hmmm sounds like this Monkey Media thing might be worth the effort, I'll have a look over the weekend :)
MB
LeperousDust
13-02-2009, 14:18
I too hate it with a passion and I've never really understood the whole Apple fanaticism.
When I bought my first mp3 player about a year ago I did quite a bit of research and ended up with an 80GB Zune player which I got for c. £120 which I still love. The Zune software is head and shoulders better than iTunes and handles mine and my wifes podcasts without any hastle.
Still, ... enjoy your new toy!!
You're right iTunes is crap, but the iPod hardware itself is pretty much unparalleled for price/size/ease of use etc... I was like MB about a year or two ago, i didn't want to like my new iPod but as soon as i used it i realised i was onto something very good. Once i'd found a suitable iTunes replacement. MediaMonkey will connect to anything (even my phone over bluetooth :)) and auto sync for me if i want it to. So the only thing i need to worry about is hardware now days which is why i have an iPod and i will continue to have an iPod until something similar/better comes out from someone else which generic storage interface :)
The bane of the iPod, is indeed iTunes. Even on a fast PC, it seems clunky and fat, if you know what I mean? It's a far cry from the simplicity and speed of foobar/winamp. I've tried 3rd party programs and plugins to manage it, but it's either too unpredictable or just doesn't work. Maybe I'm setting it up wrong, I don't know. The point is though, it shouldn't be so difficult to put music on a music device. I can understand why Apple make you use iTunes, but a little bit of freedom would be nice sometimes. DRM-free music is a step in the right direction but if I knew of a program that was fully comptatible with the iPod, let me manage my music on it properly, I'd use that instead in a heartbeat.
As for the whole OSX and it "just works" argument, I completely agree. In my experience, OSX was fantastic to get along with. It will do what you want, no mess, no fuss. However this is a double edged sword because the reason it works so well in my opinion is because of how closed it all is. With all the complicated stuff tucked away, and only simple settings ready for editing, it's not going to break very often is it? OSX reminds me of those flashy trainers you used to get. The ones where you walked, and the lights in the heel came on. All great until it's time to change the battery, or swap the LEDs for a new colour. No. All locked down. "Go away user, haven't you got some photos of other people's kids to be flicking through in iPhoto?"
My boss is currently developing ticketing software for mobile platforms. Where wardens take photos of an offending car, and the software does all sorts of clever things. The ANPR gleans the reg plate, and the VBasic software collates all the info and beams it back to base for the company to process and mail out the fine. With Windows, you can unpack your program on the phone, fiddle with the GPRS settings and generally get on and do it. A company asked him if he could do it for iPhone. After all, Apple brag it's fit for enterprise use, so why not? Well, all of the custom app building aside, he's struggling at the first hurdle with GRPS settings etc. There simply isn't any. You've got very basic customisation ability. It's like Apple just don't trust the end-user with anything complicated. All the cogs and wires are all locked away, never to be touched.
Same with OSX on the desktop. I struggled to really get under the bonnet of it like you can in Windows. Rename the Recycle Bin? Pop into Regedit. Change the icon path for certain files? Pop into regedit. If you know what you're doing, and you're careful, you can have a good play. Apple says no to this im my experience, and just waves something shiny in your face to get you away from all the wires and flashy lights. Linux, well, no need to moan there. It arrives with the bonnet already up and the rest of it needing assembly. ;D
However this is a double edged sword because the reason it works so well in my opinion is because of how closed it all is.
I can see your point, but I don't entirely agree. True, if you're just using the GUI then a lot of stuff is locked down but if you delve into the terminal it is far more open than it first seems.
It's the same with Windows too, all the very useful and useful stuff is CLI.
You're right iTunes is crap, but the iPod hardware itself is pretty much unparalleled for price/size/ease of use etc... I was like MB about a year or two ago, i didn't want to like my new iPod but as soon as i used it i realised i was onto something very good. Once i'd found a suitable iTunes replacement. MediaMonkey will connect to anything (even my phone over bluetooth :)) and auto sync for me if i want it to. So the only thing i need to worry about is hardware now days which is why i have an iPod and i will continue to have an iPod until something similar/better comes out from someone else which generic storage interface :)
I think you're probably right as my experience comes from using iTunes for years on my PC and not from any extensive use of an iPlayer or iPod. My best mate swears by all his Apple gear and his iPlayer is very nice :)
LeperousDust
13-02-2009, 15:15
The bane of the iPod, is indeed iTunes. Even on a fast PC, it seems clunky and fat, if you know what I mean? It's a far cry from the simplicity and speed of foobar/winamp. I've tried 3rd party programs and plugins to manage it, but it's either too unpredictable or just doesn't work. Maybe I'm setting it up wrong, I don't know. The point is though, it shouldn't be so difficult to put music on a music device. I can understand why Apple make you use iTunes, but a little bit of freedom would be nice sometimes. DRM-free music is a step in the right direction but if I knew of a program that was fully comptatible with the iPod, let me manage my music on it properly, I'd use that instead in a heartbeat.
I feel like i'm repeating myself here, but i don't think people have ever read my blatant promotion threads before (namely opera, picard, MM and Digsby). MediaMonkey!
Same with OSX on the desktop. I struggled to really get under the bonnet of it like you can in Windows. Rename the Recycle Bin? Pop into Regedit. Change the icon path for certain files? Pop into regedit. If you know what you're doing, and you're careful, you can have a good play. Apple says no to this im my experience, and just waves something shiny in your face to get you away from all the wires and flashy lights. Linux, well, no need to moan there. It arrives with the bonnet already up and the rest of it needing assembly. ;D
[/quote]
You can get away with doing a LOT on OSX its just all hidden completely away from the GUI, which actually is how it should be. It's windows thats making things too easy for you :p
NokkonWud
13-02-2009, 15:28
Euwww, Opera :(.
LeperousDust
13-02-2009, 16:04
Euwww, Opera :(.
Faff off! ;D :p I've quit pimping that here tbh losing that battle but i accept competition from Fx and Chrome are pretty decent now days. But this wasn't so when i was spouting on and on...
Davey_Pitch
13-02-2009, 16:04
I'll have a look but I don't fancy going through and adding all my album covers again!
MB
Are all your files MP3s? If so, get MusicBrainz Picard plus the Album Art plugin, run that through your music collection and it'll pull down and tag all your music with the correct album art. Point MediaMonkey at the folder your music then resides, and let it add it all to its Library. You'll have all the album art and it'll transfer it all over to your iPod easily :)
Davey_Pitch
13-02-2009, 16:05
Alex, me and you should start a Picard and MediaMonkey fan club, see if we can get everyone to convert :D
NokkonWud
13-02-2009, 16:27
Faff off! ;D :p I've quit pimping that here tbh losing that battle but i accept competition from Fx and Chrome are pretty decent now days. But this wasn't so when i was spouting on and on...
Hah, I never liked the look of it, even years back. Firefox I couldn't do without and I currently have some cracking plugins like 'AutoPager', 'Cool Iris', 'All-In-One Sidebar', 'Fire FTP', 'Update Notifier' and 'Sxipper' installed on it which combined make browsing a total pleasure.
NokkonWud
13-02-2009, 16:28
Alex, me and you should start a Picard and MediaMonkey fan club, see if we can get everyone to convert :D
I'm a convert. Never used it, but I hate iTunes, so anything must be better, right?
I tried MediaMonkey and went back to iTunes after MediaMonkey completely failed at being sensible about anything.
I found iTunes far easier, it just worked. Add music, move to iPod. Easy.
I do prefer WinAmp for general use but the latest releases have caused me huge memory leaks (1.5GB+) so i've binned that for now.
NokkonWud
13-02-2009, 17:13
Foobar is my music player of choice. Great audio output, got it running in 5.1 now which is nice, looks pretty with my current theme and I like how is displays album art within it.
Foobar confused the hell out of me, I couldn't even find my way to the library so I gave up before I even started :p
NokkonWud
13-02-2009, 17:23
Yeah, if you use it as default it's awful to be honest. You need to get themes on there.
Albums view:
http://www.nokkonwud.com/images/other/foobar01.jpg
Songs view:
http://www.nokkonwud.com/images/other/foobar02.jpg
If I added the songs lyrics to the ID3 tag I would get those on the Song view too.
For me it just leaves WinAMP standing in both looks and functionality.
That looks sexual. Want.
Links plskthx.
^^ I can beat that ;)
I'd probably match you if I worked it out properly :p
Then I guess it comes down to who's oldest ;D
NokkonWud
13-02-2009, 17:45
Okay, two seconds, I'll round everything up for you.
NokkonWud
13-02-2009, 17:56
Foobar Download: http://www.nokkonwud.com/files/foobar2000_0.9.5.2.exe
Foobar Theme: http://www.nokkonwud.com/files/foo_smooth.rar
Theme Install: Link (http://www.neugablonz.de/index.php?seite=foobar3#install)
I've rar'd my directory up, so you could just paste this directly into your Foobar 2000 directory because I've tweaked a few bits of the code.
http://www.nokkonwud.com/files/foobar2000.rar
There's loads of cool stuff I've not tinkered with such as the chronological flow of Albums which can be seen below:
http://www.neugablonz.de/foobar2000/foobar3.jpg
Alternately, there's another theme I'm hosting if you fancy it: (it's an all in one installer which is handy).
Rialto Foobar (rialtofoobar.exe)
LeperousDust
13-02-2009, 18:07
That looks sexual. Want.
Links plskthx.
Err, surely if you were confused with MediaMonkey you'll never work your way around the maze otherwise know as foobar2000 ;D :p
MM defo works differently to iTunes, and if you want to jump immediately between the two it's not always completely clear, but the same could be said between iTunes/Winamp/WMP/Foobar2000, they all do their own things in their own special ways. What i'm saying is once you've got used to the way things work around MM (which is quicker to learn than foobar i swear, because i tried myself ;)) then you're flying!
MediaMonkey isn't the quickest of players and i admit to using foobar as my default player that launched for mp3's from the shell, but what it lacks in pure speed it makes up for with ease of customisation, plugins and massive community support.
I wasn't confused with MediaMonkey, it just acted stupidly, started naming songs stupidly etc. just wouldn't do anything sensibly. It was perfectly easy to understand.
NokkonWud
13-02-2009, 18:20
Right, I have everything working brilliantly now in Foobar with the Coverflow, a little tinkering with the code.
Love how the lyrics go in perfect time to the song. Genius.
Updated the original post with more help:
http://www.boat-drinks.co.uk/showpost.php?p=274813&postcount=47
Right, I have everything working brilliantly now in Foobar with the Coverflow, a little tinkering with the code.
Love how the lyrics go in perfect time to the song. Genius.
Updated the original post with more help:
http://www.boat-drinks.co.uk/showpost.php?p=274813&postcount=47
Awesome, cheers.
I'm going to be silly about this and do it on Windows 7, just to add a further needless complication :D
However this is a double edged sword because the reason it works so well in my opinion is because of how closed it all is. With all the complicated stuff tucked away, and only simple settings ready for editing, it's not going to break very often is it? OSX reminds me of those flashy trainers you used to get. The ones where you walked, and the lights in the heel came on. All great until it's time to change the battery, or swap the LEDs for a new colour. No. All locked down. "Go away user, haven't you got some photos of other people's kids to be flicking through in iPhoto?"
I have to admit that's my experience of it. Never used one at home, but had to deal with a few through work, and even diving straight under into the terminal to fiddle you worry that the Apple gods will frown upon you and revert, or worse break things when next they push updates out without really telling you what they're doing. They are impossibly pretty though :D
I think it's why I've taken so well to open source tbh. I like to be master of my own destiny, even if that does being it's own headaches.
Matblack
13-02-2009, 18:46
They are impossibly pretty though :D
You have weird taste!
http://kobnet.net/misc/www.cedmagic.com/history/apple-1-2-steves.jpg
MB
Davey_Pitch
13-02-2009, 20:31
I wasn't confused with MediaMonkey, it just acted stupidly, started naming songs stupidly etc. just wouldn't do anything sensibly. It was perfectly easy to understand.
Strange, I've not noticed anything like that in MM. Was it an older version? I'm using whatever the newest version is and haven't had any issues with it renaming files or acting stupid in any way.
You have weird taste!
[IMG]http://kobnet.net/misc/www.cedmagic.com/history/apple-1-2-steves.jpg[IMG]
MB
:fap:
Strange, I've not noticed anything like that in MM. Was it an older version? I'm using whatever the newest version is and haven't had any issues with it renaming files or acting stupid in any way.
I opened it earlier and it threw a load of update screens at me, so I guess so :p
I had a look and still can't figure out what it had done. Some stuff just seems to have randomly cut names in half and bits are missing here there and everywhere.
iTunes does need to be treated lovingly, I've found the OS X version to have much sexier curves than the Windows version, and we all know that curves are important so therefore it's a better product.
Everyone does indeed know that curves are better. It's the entire web2.0 ethos!
leowyatt
13-02-2009, 21:02
You have weird taste!
http://kobnet.net/misc/www.cedmagic.com/history/apple-1-2-steves.jpg
MB
loving the bowtie Steve :D
I was the same as you Mat. A while back I couldn't stand ipods, mainly because of the image and the all mac lovers bleating. When I was in New York i visited the Apple store on 5th Ave and played with an itouch, fell in love and bought one. I have been tempted with a mac book, but not 100% sure. I do have Ubuntu on my laptop though.
Awesome, cheers.
I'm going to be silly about this and do it on Windows 7, just to add a further needless complication :D
Well, it went fairly smoothly but I don't think the foo_chronflow component likes the graphics setup present in a netbook running windows 7, so I don't get any pretty coverflow stuff.
NokkonWud
14-02-2009, 01:07
What was wrong with it?
Got a screenshot?
Comes with an error on startup:
Couldn't get a hardware accelerated PixelFormat
Rest looks lovely though:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v299/richyj/foobarscreen.png
NokkonWud
14-02-2009, 02:41
Ah, fair enough. Could try updating the drivers, but that error is most likely Windows 7 as opposed to being a Netbook. I'll see if my mothers Samsung NC10 can handle it tomorrow.
Stunning looking theme though. You can set it to auto download .lrc files in the options too, so you don't have to do it manually.
Yeah I have it auto downloading, though it can need help sometimes (ie. it picked out lyrics synced to the unplugged version of Layla rather than the studio album recording)
I suspected it was one or the other being as the GMA950 can't do Hardware TnL I thought it might be related to that but the Windows 7 thing is more likely. AFAIK i'm running the latest drivers available though.
Davey_Pitch
14-02-2009, 04:13
Oooh, that's pretty, I like the look of that. Might try and install it myself tomorrow :)
I'd probably match you if I worked it out properly :p
Then I guess it comes down to who's oldest ;D
I think we're about the same Mr Desmo. You're probably thinking you're as young as the woman you're feeling ;D
Another 20-year veteran, for my sins, checking in. I'm hardly a devotee though - like Daz, I like it to be my way or the highway - so much so that one of the first things I did when I got a Mac at work (circa 1990) was nuke the OS and put a Unix clone on it. ;D
http://www.nokkonwud.com/images/other/foobar01.jpg
I got this album on the strength of this cover picture, it's rather good :)
NokkonWud
20-02-2009, 00:35
Yep, surprised me a little too. VERY catchy.
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