Beware iTunes!

[Muff Wiggler]

munchkin, i'm sorry to have sounded so harsh....i saw your post and replied right after work, which isn't ususally my most 'friendly' and sensitive part of the day

i assumed your initial post was mostly directed at me, as one of very few people to take a stand in favour of ipod in this thread, and I really don't dig being called a corporate whore robot or whatever, in particular in regards to Apple of all companies.

i'm one of the most pro mp3 people you'll find, and one of the most anti-drm as well, though not for any nefarious reasons. I have over 8000 mp3's, and in all and full honesty, I own them all. I could photo all the original CDs if anyone doubts me. All but about 300 of my mp3's, I have the CD for. The remaining were purchased (legitimate and DRM free!) from emusic.com (pm me if you sign up for the free 50 song trial please, so I can send you an invite and get 10 free songs)

anyway, i have spent an enormous amount of work encoding, checking and properly tagging all my music, and keeping it duplicated on both of 2 external USB hard-drives. I have done this work and chosen non-drm, high-bitrate mp3 as my medium for the main fact of mp3s compatibility and ensured future compatability, as well as portability and ease of access to my music (and random to discover long-lost gems!)

my music collection is something that's very important to me. I did a lot of work and waited a long time to determine what i need in a portable player, wait for its arrival, and then ensure it was the right choice for now and the future. if DRM was in any way associated with the iPod (seriously, forget that silly store for a second....) i would not have chosen it. I will probably, years in the future, migrate my collection from iPod elsewhere. I need to be sure that can happen.

my 60gb iPod fits the need perfectly. I have all the music that I have ever known with me, in the car, at work, at home, running, skiing, skateboarding whatthefuck ever. it's tiny and sexy too

now seriously, forget that store. I know loads of iPod users, I don't know any who use that silly store. we've all heard enough Maroon 5 and U2 thank's very much. Bill Gates wants us all to use MSN Search instead of Google, but who the f**k cares? Who bothers? None of all us lucky enlightened technocrat sociocrat liberal wizards of the earth, us. But still a small percentage of all Internet (or music) users is still Millions of people. Millions use MSN search, not Google, Millions use Christina Aguilera, not Boards of Canada, who are these people? You know, the young, the old, the not-quite-there-yet, those not in the know. The fragment. 2% of iPod users use the store maybe? I dunno... anyway so what, they would buy their U2 CDs at the store and the artist still gets as little from the label.

My Palm Pilot software has a sync to Outlook tool in it, that does some wierd things that I don't like, so I don't use it. I use a 3rd party outlook sync.

I don't use the iTunes store. I never will. I wouldn't pay five cents for an mp3 with DRM. I don't use the software that came with my iPod either (although admittedly it's quite nice), I use a freeware program, ephPod, that does everything the iPod software does, and more, I can copy back and forth etc etc. The only thing the official apple software limits me in (I'm on PC by the way, should have mentioned that waaay earlier) is in copying FROM iPod to the PC. But there's loads of freeware out there.

f**k DRM, f**k the record label's business practise, but i LOOOOOVE my iPod

i respect your energy against drm and horrible behaviour my music industry people, I just really think it's pointed at the totally wrong target. cheers then

[grantlmiller]

the fact is that "oh-we-are-so-nice-and-our-products-are-soooo-great" f**king Apple are just as big a (if not bigger) bastards than Microsoft who really don't give a rats ass about their customers.. only $$$$

i see it the same way, being a longtime mac user.

putte

But at least Apple products work the way they're supposed to(mostly). I got pissed at Apple when Jobs came back in the late '90's and put all the clone manufacturers out of business. I built a PC and messed around with it for about a year or so. Then Apple started producing some really cool stuff. You know, the fruity colored imacs and clamshell laptops Anyway, I was hooked again. And I'm willing to pay the price for the elegance of the technology that they produce. No, they don't really care about customer loyalty. Have you ever been offered a discount for being a repeat customer?..... But, they know they make some great stuff, and that people are willing to pay for it. Just my 2 cents.

[praveen]

awww somebody sounds jealous

The trick is to find a single store and stick to it. If there were other manufacturers making devices that matched up to the iPod and there are more alternatives now, this would not be that big a deal as the iPod would not have such a large market share.

sorry but, I have a Zen and it's one fine piece of kit. It sounds louder and better than the iPod and the battery live is better too.. and you're not advertising to the world and the thieves it houses that you're an idiot who spent £100 too much on an mp3 player, flashing your white headphones around


there's nothing special about the iPod apart from the rediculously cheap looking piece of colourded plastic and a wheel control.. WOW!!! A WHEEL!!!! out of this earth it is!! only Apple can make a WHEEL control

WOOOHOOOOO!!!!