As I alluded to in a recent post, last week I purchased my first official iPod — a brand new iPod Touch (iTouch?). Shortly after forking over the four hundred dollars (with tax) for the device it dawned on me — this is officially the first Apple product I’ve ever purchased.
Back in the early 80s when Apple was just breaking into the home computer market, we owned a Franklin Ace 1000 (an Apple IIe compatible machine). Later, briefly, we owned a Laser 128, and Apple IIc clone. In college I wrote, edited and laid out newspapers and yearbooks on Macintosh Pluses. I even have an old Macintosh LC III sitting out in my garage that someone gave me … but I never gave the company a dime. I’ve had several mp3 players, but never an actual iPod brand.
For years I avoided iPods because I don’t like iTunes, and I’m not alone in that opinion. iTunes may be a wonderful experience on the Mac, but on Windows it’s a bumbling, bloated resource hog. I hate being tied to a specific machine for updating my mp3 player, and I hate being tied to a specific program on that specific machine for that same thing. Every other mp3 player I’ve ever owned simply appears as a drive letter in Windows, which makes transferring media files a breeze. To give you an idea of how popular iTunes is on Windows, Google returns 3+ million hits for “iTunes alternative”.
I already tracked down and installed CopyTrans Manager, an extremely light iTunes alternative. For some reason it’s not transferring over album cover art along with my music, but the fact that I can launch the program and move an album over in about 10 seconds versus two minutes with iTunes … yeah, I’m sticking with it.
Oh, and yeah; I already jailbroke my iPod, using Quick Freedom. Took about an hour or two to figure everything out and replace the firmware. I’m guessing I could do another one in about 10 minutes now, now that I understand the process. I’m not even sure why I jailbroke mine, other than it seemed like something I would do.
I have to say, the iPod Touch (which is basically an iPhone without the phone) is pretty slick. It works, and I like it. I love the interface and I can see why people would call it an “iPhone on training wheels.” It’s super easy to use and I can see transitioning to an iPhone when my current phone’s contract expires.
That’s funny – the IIc was the LAST Apple product I bought! (For $10 some a few years after it came out after the whole world went PC, I might add, so maybe that doesn’t count.)
As for the (almost) modern music player scene, I guess the spirit of the Franklin ACE 1000 is still with me – I’ve felt no particular urge to upgrade beyond my HiMD minidisc player. (Then again, I don’t quite go in for the long distance driving that you do.) I was about to question why the lack of album covers was necessarily a big deal, but I guess if you’ve got a big honkin’ screen, you need it to show something.
two minutes to copy an album to an ipod using itunes? huh? i’ve had many ipods over the years, it didn’t even take that long on an old pc with usb 1.0.
ah, i see you meant opening the program AND copying an album. yeah, itunes is a hog. i’ve solved that by yeah, never closing it. i actually quite like itunes, once you get into the smart playlists it’s a whole new experience. say you want punk rock from 1977 with the word “fart” in the title, you’re set. and it updates automatically. a must when you have too much music and you listen all day.
Nice. Our first Apple product was a Mac Mini I got by filling out one of those “get a free Mac Mini” offers – Kassi needed a new computer, so it’s hers now. She also got an iPod for Christmas but we don’t use it much… I need to get one of those FM hookups for the car and then it will probably start being used regularly.
I also picked up a Mac LC from Freecycle a while back, but it won’t turn on and I haven’t been able to figure out what is wrong with it. I wish it did because it would be a lot of fun to put System 6 on the thing and screw around with it, but I have way too many other things that need my time instead. Besides I’m really an Atari guy at heart so when I go retrocomputing I dig out the 130XE.
Heh. I own two classic Macs, a couple Apple II gs’s and an iMac G3. All bought used. Which means, I guess, I’m still an Apple virgin.
I came close to getting an iPhone but I got a Google phone instead. I use it as my music player too. I just copy the mp3 files into my phone via USB cable (or just take the mini SD card out and copy it to the card). No DRM on my mp3’s and I usually get my MP3s from Amazon, ripping CD’s or free download from the web. I hates the iTune program. I tried updating it on my iMac and froze and wrecked the system. I had to reinstall the operating system. Thanks a lot, Apple!
If you embed the album art right into the MP3 file rather than simply associating it, I believe it’ll show up in Cover Flow regardless of how you got the file onto the iPod. And doing also makes the album art show up when any number of players (on your PC) are used rather than being stuck with only using iTunes.
When I first encountered Cover Flow, I was just sure that it was going to bring about an album art renaissance, but I’m not sure that I’ve seen that happen yet. What do you think – is Cover Flow revitalizing album cover design within the music industry?
I am typing this on a touch in Amsterdam right now. The interface is the best out there. We have 100% DRM free music on ours. It is a common misconception that you can’t do that.