MP3 Players

[Charles]

Just got a 60 GB video iPod. A reward for getting back into the gym. Simply awesome.

Aw darn it, if you'd waited a little while, you could have bought Microsoft's new iPod Killer, the iBob.

[Captain Japan]

I went in to the Shibuya Apple store on Saturday. I explained to a guy at the Genius Bar that the battery I installed myself wasn't working at all. When he saw that I had done it myself he said I must have broken the "flat wire," or something. I'm pretty sure he was just looking for an easy answer to get rid of me. Since it is a free service, I doubt he could waste his time with every yahoo who's monkeyed with a product. I can sort of understand that - there was a huge waiting list of people wanting their iPods checked! When I got there I put my name down and came back an hour and a half later.

The iPod is the biggest tech scam of this century.

I really appreciate all the input you folks gave me. I think I'm going to use this piece of junk as a paper weight or drop it off the Rainbow Bridge.

[canman]

I'm starting to hate Apple just a little bit. I'm not sure what happened, but when I installed the newest version of Itunes, my 30gb Video Ipod has just gone nuts. I've checked on the net and at Apples' site, I hate the 5 r's or whatever they are. IT doens't work. Is there anyway to go back to the original settings. I've tried the reset and I've formated the disk and still its screwey. Any advice from any of you Mac people.
As of right now the stupid thing is sitting beside me, connected and telling me not to disconnect, but I'm not even running Itunes and the battery is charged.

[Charles]

I'm starting to hate Apple just a little bit. I'm not sure what happened, but when I installed the newest version of Itunes, my 30gb Video Ipod has just gone nuts. I've checked on the net and at Apples' site, I hate the 5 r's or whatever they are. IT doens't work. Is there anyway to go back to the original settings. I've tried the reset and I've formated the disk and still its screwey. Any advice from any of you Mac people.

Insufficient data. You didn't say what CPU you're running iTunes on (PC or Mac) and more detail on the problem would be helpful. If you're running on a PC, that version of iTunes has been more trouble, no doubt due to the massive variations in hardware and OS people run. It would be a good idea to make sure you're running iTunes 7.01, there was a minor update to squash a few bugs.

BTW, I just got a new 8Gb nano and a Nike+ kit. Absolutely the best damn thing ever. And I got the nano for only $224US through the Apple Developer Program. That's the lowest price anyone has ever paid for that unit.

[kamome]

Insufficient data. You didn't say what CPU you're running iTunes on (PC or Mac) and more detail on the problem would be helpful. If you're running on a PC, that version of iTunes has been more trouble, no doubt due to the massive variations in hardware and OS people run. It would be a good idea to make sure you're running iTunes 7.01, there was a minor update to squash a few bugs.

BTW, I just got a new 8Gb nano and a Nike+ kit. Absolutely the best damn thing ever. And I got the nano for only $224US through the Apple Developer Program. That's the lowest price anyone has ever paid for that unit.

What's this Apple Developer program? Any chance of riding that bandwagon?

[Charles]

What's this Apple Developer program? Any chance of riding that bandwagon?

Sure, just sign up for a 1-year ADC Select Membership and write Apple a check for $500. This will entitle you to a generous Developer's discount on one Mac system and one iPod.

[kamome]

Sure, just sign up for a 1-year ADC Select Membership and write Apple a check for $500. This will entitle you to a generous Developer's discount on one Mac system and one iPod.

Doesn't seem cost effective to me. Charles, the nice thing to do would have been to offer to buy an iPod for me through your membership and have me reimburse the cost to you.

[Greji]

Doesn't seem cost effective to me. Charles, the nice thing to do would have been to offer to buy an iPod for me through your membership and have me reimburse the cost to you.

I love it. Spoken like a true Kamiyacho vet!

[Charles]

Doesn't seem cost effective to me. Charles, the nice thing to do would have been to offer to buy an iPod for me through your membership and have me reimburse the cost to you.

No problemo. But since I already used up my one annual purchase allotment, you'll have to wait until next March, when my ADC membership comes up for renewal. Then you can send me $724 and I'll get you the discounted nano.

[canman]

Sorry I forgot about my OS. Anyway I'm using WinXP, and I have Itunes 7.0.1.8 running. And I read that it was suppossed to help get rid of the problmes caused by the first Itunes update, but it hasn't helped mine.
Briefly these are some of the problems. It will not update podcasts from Itunes. When I click on certain Podcasts or songs it goes to the black Apple screen and then starts over. When its connected to my computer it tells me to not disconnect, although nothing is happening.
I always eject my Ipod to make sure there were no problems so I don't think that is an issue.

[cstaylor]

Have you totally reset your ipod back to factory defaults? You can do that with the iPod updater.

[Taro Toporific]

Have you totally reset your ipod back to factory defaults? You can do that with the iPod updater.

Yep, resetting the iPod is the magic cure to all problems especially canman's "will not update podcasts from Itunes. When I click on certain Podcasts or songs it goes to the black Apple screen and then starts over."

Reset is easy and iTunes will restore all your songs on the iPod.

The second cure-all is to religiously use the "Back up to Disc" found in the iTunes "File" menu to burn backup DVD(s) of your iTunes data and music. With iTunes' as your back-up to your iPod and backup DVD(s) for iTunes (as well as the data in the iPod), its nearly impossible to loose you music except to theft.

[rebuto]

[Charles]

had a 20gb ipod for 3 years, still working perfectly. only problem I have is that ipods seem to only use mp3 tag data to navigate through all the music, as opposed to folders.

which means that whenever I wanna upload an album to the ipod I have to tag all the songs, which can be time consuming.

Yes, the iPod navigates songs by album and artist tags, but it's really easy to tag albums in iTunes. You just select all the songs from an album (drop them in a separate new playlist if they're totally untagged and would sort all over the main library). Then command-I to get info, and the tag editor comes up. You can assign the same tag to all selected tunes. You can assign the artist and album name to all the tunes in one command, it takes about 5 seconds.

[kamome]

I just went to the Apple store in New York on 5th Avenue (the one with a big glass box on street level and the store itself underground). The 8Gig Nano and the 30Gig video i-Pod are priced the same at $250. Does this mean that the 30Gig pod is a better value? The store clerk explained it to me as an attempt by Apple to encourage multiple iPod ownership in the same home. Buy a Nano for the gym and commuting, buy an iPod for home use and long distance travel.

If you were going to buy only one at that price, which would it be?


Apple 5th Avenue Store

[Charles]

I just went to the Apple store in New York on 5th Avenue (the one with a big glass box on street level and the store itself underground). The 8Gig Nano and the 30Gig video i-Pod are priced the same at $250. Does this mean that the 30Gig pod is a better value? The store clerk explained it to me as an attempt by Apple to encourage multiple iPod ownership in the same home. Buy a Nano for the gym and commuting, buy an iPod for home use and long distance travel.

If you were going to buy only one at that price, which would it be?


Apple 5th Avenue Store

I had to make that decision. I already had a 4Gb mini, but the 4Gb wasn't quite enough storage to keep my favorite music available, unless I constantly maintained playlists and kept adding and removing music. I really wanted the Nike+ kit, which made the decision simple, that only works on the nano. I figure I don't go on that many long-distance trips, and even if I do, 8Gb of music would be enough, plus the Flash RAM in the nano is more durable and shock resistant than the hard drive in the 30Gb, the nano is more durable for use when jogging.
But I would never give up my mini. It's the last FireWire iPod, so I can use it for storing a bootable MacOS X image plus some troubleshooting programs. I'm going to use it for an emergency boot disk for when I go on tech support calls.

[emperor]

My trusty 20gb iPod has gone AWOL:
so I think im gonna have to use that apple education offer before it finishes tommorrow - buy an eg. Macbook, get €160 of an iPod.
Unfortunately its only for the older models - so Im thinking of either going for a 1gen 4gb nano or a 5gen 30gig'er.
The updates on the iPods are minor - im not bothered about that.
However, Im apprehensive of the changes they might make to the Macbook in the immediate future:
bump it to Merom,
and perhaps also bigger HDD? more RAM? superdrive as standard? an actual videocard?

[GuyJean]

If you were going to buy only one at that price, which would it be?

For me, the nano is everything I need]you[/i] want to use it.. When would you listen/watch it?

GJ

[Taro Toporific]

For me, the nano is everything I need]you[/i] want to use it.. When would you listen/watch it?

Mrs Taro uses an iPod mini and I use a 1st-generation iPod---both only have 4 GB of storage. That's plenty for any sane person who creates playlists in the iTunes software.

For me, each playlist is 2GB or less, and chronological using the "Smart Playlist" feature. I load the iPods with the current month's playlist and one playlist of the past. My entire iTunes collection only has 30 GB of songs and I think of myself as crazed MP3 packrat.

If you need to watch video, the bigger the video iPod the better I would guess. However, I don't see many people in Japan watching video on the iPods or on the keitai/cellphones with digital TV. Is that happening overseas???

[6810]

I have a portable video player (Creative ZEN vision). I use it sometimes on long haul trips, say on bus or shinkansen, but rarely on the regular commuter trains.

Mostly though, I use it as a bridge between me, P2P downloads, composite i/o and the TV...

[Ol Dirty Gaijin]

had a 20gb ipod for 3 years, still working perfectly. only problem I have is that ipods seem to only use mp3 tag data to navigate through all the music, as opposed to folders.

which means that whenever I wanna upload an album to the ipod I have to tag all the songs, which can be time consuming.

anybody know if the new ipods allow you to browse the music based on folders as opposed to tags?

thanks

Two things....

1 . Tagging - http://musicbrainz.org/
total no brainer, if you are using iTunes as your library you just need to update the library tags in itunes after retagging in music brainz.

2. ipod folders - http://www.rockbox.org/
you'll need a 4G or up model. Great quality sound which highlights how tarded Apple are in crippling hardware to dumb things down. The joy of just a bass and treble setting instead of presets. Also has a 5 band graphic if you prefer. Ton of games.
A little tricky to set up but it's all documented. With rockbox you can then use any other program to sync with your itunes, not just iTunes bloatware. If iTunes did NOT have to have Quicktime I would be much happier. Rockbox will let you browse by folder view so you can also just drag and drop your music onto the ipod. Rockbox does not do video, so if you have a 5G and watch vids you just reboot to the Apple firmware, easy done.
Senab (http://www.senab.co.uk/rockbox/index.htm) does a nice patch for ipod video, 5G and nano.

To be honest, you may not need to go that far, just retag everything. With rockbox I am now in no hurry to get a new player from my greyscale 4G as I have little interest in watching vids on a 2" screen.

[Kuang_Grade]

If you were going to buy only one at that price, which would it be?

It is a toss up to some degree, but if you are not unlucky with tech items, I'd go for the Nano...Small, light, big enough memory for most uses...The only caution I add is that its so light and so slender, it seems it would be easy to damage or drop...I have a new 8GB nano, and I think it is great...so much so that I'm planning on dumping all my other ipods on ebay and make it my primary portable music device. Then I'll probably channel those funds towards something much more 'video ipod-y' than the current ipod, such as an Archos 604 or 504, which have come out recently to pretty good reviews.

I hear you emperor...I had similar thoughts a few weeks back with Apple's similar promotion in the US but held back because I've got a feeling there may be some Macbook updates just around the corner...Given that one can easily find PC notebooks in the US with not dissimilar chip specs but with bigger hard drives and DVD-R drives for around $600 after rebates, a Macbook with only a combo drive and 60GB hard drive for $1100 would look like a hard sell in for many market segements. But then again, they might tough it out until January...but then again, I've noticed some US resellers (ie, not just Amazon) have recently added $50-100 rebates to Macbooks, which is fairly unusual for a current Apple product and could be a sign that they are trying to move current Macbook inventory prior to a product line upgrade.

[canman]

Yes CS and Taro, I have done that countless times, but still with little or no luck. The strange thing now is that my Itunes has lots of podcasts, but my Ipod only has a quarter of them. Is there anyway to load manually. Is that what you meant Taro about backing up, or is that something different. It is really annoying, I never know what podcasts I will get, and they are my lifeline to civility these days.

[IkemenTommy]

Is there an alternative to Itunes? I hate how invasive that software Quicktime is and I refused to install it on my main computer, but I can't find a Quicktime-free Itunes.

[Ol Dirty Gaijin]

Is there an alternative to Itunes? I hate how invasive that software Quicktime is and I refused to install it on my main computer, but I can't find a Quicktime-free Itunes.

As long as you haven't been stupid enough to use AAC there's is plenty of options...

Monkeymedia. http://www.mediamonkey.com/index.htm
I haven't tried it though. Apparently you don't need to mod your iPod.

With rockbox I was syncing with WMP11 Beta with no problems.

[IkemenTommy]

As long as you haven't been stupid enough to use AAC there's is plenty of options...

Monkeymedia. http://www.mediamonkey.com/index.htm
I haven't tried it though. Apparently you don't need to mod your iPod.

With rockbox I was syncing with WMP11 Beta with no problems.

I've been using Monkeymedia for a while but I am fed up with it. It hijacks without any warning the .mp3 file association whenever the program starts up so that it automatically plays the files when they're double clicked. The program also locks up frequently, crashes, and you end up losing the songs in your iPod if you were transfering files.

The latest build isn't much of an improvement.

I will give Rockbox a try. If that fails, then back to iToons

[Oradea]

I use mediamonkey, and have been for over a year, I haven`t experienced any technical problems at all.
I guess it`s possible mine is an earlier build, i`m also using it on pc. my mp3 player isn`t ipod. maybe these are the reasons....

[American Oyaji]

Get the ipod. Use iTunes. Become one with the collective.

[Oradea]

I cant bring myself to do it. Came close on several occasions tho...

[IkemenTommy]

Get the ipod. Use iTunes. Become one with the collective.