Ipod Nano (and itunes)

[keith_henson]

i know this may spark the "Ipod lover vs. Ipod hater" argument, but after buying the missus a 4gig nano i still maintain my stance of loving my creative zen sleek.

Reasons you ask? The Nay side of an ipod in my eyes:
1. my sleek can play many formats - including some real obscure ones without having to convert them to MP3/ACC format
2. itunes? its like getting assimilated into the borg, no thanks
3. itunes again - how many system threads and processes?!?!?! and how much system memory to run!
4. ability to transfer large files of just data? nope, on my zen i can, upto 20gigs if necessary (photos dont count )
5. do i really want to be another person assimilated into the collective owning an ipod/apple product? nahh, ill stick with my pc and current mp3 player
6. itunes only working with an ipod? this true?

most possibly there are many more reasons - bet google has a few that will come up

Reasons for having an ipod:
1. The creative products do have excellent bespoke devices, but this is well eclipsed by the ipod market (docking stations, car devices etc etc)
2. itunes has one hell of an online music store
3. your social level suddenly increases when you see your mates instead of them asking "look at my ipod, whats that you got?"

Possibly more to this - anyone else got anything else to add on the for or against sides of this?

Im getting nagged to get ready to go out (makes a change )

At least now i can get some rest from the missus whinging - 18months she has wanted a nano, but at least now i can go diving friday, (working on saturday) and now easter (forgot to tell her i was diving 4 days over the holiday!)

Keith

[Jezza]

Originally Posted by keith_henson

4. ability to transfer large files of just data? nope, on my zen i can, upto 20gigs if necessary (photos dont count )

Enable disk usage in iTunes.

You pay your money and take your choice, I love my iPod esp. the camera adaptor it allows you to upload photos directly from your camera to your iPod via USB, great for holidays

[Craig]

I bought my girl friend a nano a year ago and since then Ipods and Itunes have been steadily reeling me in.

However, I love my PSP and there is software out there to allow you to use itunes with other mp3 players. I've never bothered and just use explorer to raid the itunes file when I want to transfer tunes to my psp.

[StuartC]

added to the reasons For.

Originally Posted by keith_henson

Reasons you ask? The Nay side of an ipod in my eyes:
1. my sleek can play many formats - including some real obscure ones without having to convert them to MP3/ACC format
2. itunes? its like getting assimilated into the borg, no thanks
3. itunes again - how many system threads and processes?!?!?! and how much system memory to run!
4. ability to transfer large files of just data? nope, on my zen i can, upto 20gigs if necessary (photos dont count )
5. do i really want to be another person assimilated into the collective owning an ipod/apple product? nahh, ill stick with my pc and current mp3 player
6. itunes only working with an ipod? this true?

most possibly there are many more reasons - bet google has a few that will come up

Reasons for having an ipod:
1. The creative products do have excellent bespoke devices, but this is well eclipsed by the ipod market (docking stations, car devices etc etc) e.g. camera connector to backup your photos on holiday
2. itunes has one hell of an online music store
3. your social level suddenly increases when you see your mates instead of them asking "look at my ipod, whats that you got?"
4. iTunes with album artwork loaded up has a very nice browse feature where you flick through the albums all neatly sorted alphabetically - never get mixed out of order, and never have the wrong CD in the case!

[Bantam]

Originally Posted by keith_henson

1. my sleek can play many formats - including some real obscure ones without having to convert them to MP3/ACC format

Unless you're illegally obtaining music I can't honestly see a massive benefit here. If you legally own all the CD's then you can rip in to iTunes, if you buy from 99% of online legal download services they sell as AAC or MP3. THe only possible argument you may have is audiobooks.

Originally Posted by keith_henson

4. ability to transfer large files of just data? nope, on my zen i can, upto 20gigs if necessary (photos dont count )

?? On my iPod I can too, and up to 60Gb if necessary, although I only have 10Gb free on mine ATM. It's called 'Disk Mode'.

Originally Posted by keith_henson

5. do i really want to be another person assimilated into the collective owning an ipod/apple product? nahh, ill stick with my pc and current mp3 player

Everyone seems to conveniently forget that the Apple II was out in 1977 and it contained a colour screen, and the Apple Mac was out in 1984 with a GUI / Mouse / All in one appliance.
Whereas the IBM XT which came out in 1983 (the forerunner to your PC) was DOS only, greenscreen and it took the release of GEM and then Windows 1 in 1985 for a GUI to appear with a mouse, and Word didn't even translate over to Windows until version 6 (It ran on Windows 3.1 IIRC). MS Office was originally a Macintosh product. So the assimilation happening here is a Microsoft one, not an Apple one

Originally Posted by keith_henson

6. itunes only working with an ipod? this true?

Nope. If you're on a mac you can use 'Ipod my walkman' which allows you to sync itunes to any device it can see via the USB that appears as a writable device (so my Sony Ericsson W850i, my PSP, even my Digital Camera!) and I'm sure there's PC equivalents too, because iTunes has a rather groovy scripting language behind it aswell.

Originally Posted by Keith_Henson

Reasons for having an ipod:
1. The creative products do have excellent bespoke devices, but this is well eclipsed by the ipod market (docking stations, car devices etc etc)
2. itunes has one hell of an online music store
3. your social level suddenly increases when you see your mates instead of them asking "look at my ipod, whats that you got?"

The selling point to me is that it's easy to use. As long as you have your music loaded in iTunes then you just plug in your iPod and that's it. No more worrying where the files are stored etc..

The acid test for me is that if my 65 year old computer-phobic Dad can manage an iPod and iTunes without ringing me every 10 minutes for support, then I'm sure anyone can.

[Gavin Yates]

Originally Posted by Bantam

If you're on a mac you can use 'Ipod my walkman'

What's that then?

I use ipod and a mac and have never heard of it. Pray tell?

[Bantam]

Dur. My mistake. It's a bit of a sod to find on t'interweb.

It's 'itune my walkman' and you can get it here

The windows equivalent is also free and you can get it here

"iTunes is a great, useful and free music player and organizer. Unfortunately iTunes is made to only synchronize with iPods.

Not everyone own an iPod, though Apple certainly would have loved that. How great would it not be if I could synchronize my non-iPod MP3 player, my Playstation Portable and my Walkman phone with my iTunes playlist? Enter: iTunes Agent!

iTunes Agent is a small application resting in your system tray constantly looking for new MP3 players and other music capable devices connecting to your system. When a device it recognizes is connected to the system, it will create a playlist for the device in iTunes and it will synchronize that list with tracks on your device.

You may then modify this list, add and remove tracks, before you tell the iTunes Agent to synchronize the list with your player."

(Note - I've never used the Windows one - only the mac one, so YMMV. You will also need to download and install .NET Framework 2.0)

[Gavin Yates]

Thanks Mr B

I have Missing Sync on my PDA phone so I can sync itunes playlists but interesting anyway.

Ta

Gav

[CatB]

5. iPods work with a mac! I love my mac, would never change back and as far as I can tell, the creative ones just won't work with it.

maybe 6. I am about to order the Nike+ transmitter to work with my nano and I'll then tell you whether that is worth another plus on the list! Oh, and before anyone mentions it, you don't need the Nike shoes, there are various means of attaching it to your existing running shoes.

I'll admit, I'm a bit of an Apple fan so I may be biased