posable ipod killer is released

[kakster]

12 GB compact flash card

Yours for a mere $9999

 

[Saaby]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't care how amazing that Apple, RCA, iRiver et al think that their "jukebox" software is - every app I've ever seen is irritating and detracts from my using the device to listen to music. There's also the irritating tendency to embed dumb DRM into such apps and deliberately limit the use of the device as a removable harddrive because of the record/movie business's insane paranoia about piracy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Have you used iTunes? My iPod shows up on my desktop as a Firewire drive that I can drag-n-drop files to. The folder the music is hidden is is hidden from direct access by me to keep the RIAA happy, but that's easy enough to change with a variety of programs which I could keep stored on my iPod.

As far as iTunes goes, plug in my iPod and a symbiotic relationship is formed. As the music on my computer changes, the iPod is updated accordingly. All automagically. As I listen to songs on the iPod, or rate them (1 to 5 stars) that data is also transferred back to the computer. The iPod, instead of feeling like an MP3 player, feels like an extension of iTunes. iTunes to go, so to speak.

 

[raggie33]

what i think down to is how ya use ya device .i use my device like 4 hours per day sometimes and use it daily .adn some listen to there device 5 hours per month.

 

[idleprocess]

I've never used iTunes and don't feel like I'm missing anything yet. It doesn't take a slick-looking app to mount an MP3 player as a removable external drive - it's kind of perverse that that's an "extra" feature of the "high-end" apps.

In fact, were I in the market for a MP3 player, I'd seriously consider the expandable TDK player that's advertised as functioning like any other USB drive - plug it in, then move files on and off as required. The expandable version will accomodate MMC cards for more storage/act as a MMC/SD reader/writer (although I'm not fond of MMC/SD).

I can see the need to have some sort of management utility when you have more than a few albums' worth of tunes on a device.

 

[Saaby]

My bad, let me clarify:

To use the iPod as a remobable drive you need...a computer. Period.

To put music on it that the player can actually play you'll either need iTunes (reccomended) or some other app that will reveal the hidden music folder. I'd prefer iTunes for moving my muzak around over Finder (Or in windows, Explorer) any day--I can create playlists, including smart playlists, rip CDs, burn CDs if I want etc. etc.

LIke the rag man said, it's all about how you use it. To carry around 4 songs? Sure a USB stick with a headphone jack would be great. For somebody as OCD as myself with such a short attention span, it's all about being able to pull up any song I have, any time.

Isn't it nice to have choices?

 

[analogguy]

If I remember correctly, Sony's plan for the MD format was to supplant the cassette as a recordable medium. I have used MD for years and am very happy with it. The next logical step for the Ipod is to eliminate the hard drive and store the files on some digital medium, and to eliminate all of the moving parts.

 

[idleprocess]

That's why I'm all about solid-state storage. Regrettably, flash memory is still expensive (lagging at least 10 years behind harddrives at $X/megabyte as opposed to $Y/gigabyte for today's harddrives), and there don't seem to be any technological roadblocks on the horizon that would prohibit the continued improvement of magnetic media density for the time being.

Are all my sentences as long as that one?

There are companies developing some amazing flash-based storage devices that are a drop-in replacement for standard hard drives, but they're still 4-8x the cost of regular harddrives and are targeted at specialty applications (the military, harsh environments, super-critical computing, etc).