> On Jul 15, 2009, at 6:06 PM, Jeff Wright wrote: > > They really are temping the anti-trust hammer of justice, aren't they? > > I hope the DOJ smites them good.
I don't. It's their software, they can cripple it any damn way they want. Take your business elsewhere if you don't like it. Considering the overwhelming success of the iPod and its successors, the consuming public doesn't feel harmed by this arrangement. Those who do or simply desire another player, have many other options. That said, Apple's whining excuse about "not wanting to have to support other hardware" is lame. If it's about propping up the bottom line, just say so. Frankly, I can't stand the way iTunes mangles your music collection. I lost my iPod Classic walking out to the garage at work recently, somebody found a nice surprise on the sidewalk that day, and I don't miss iTunes. It took me days to get my collection back to normal, deleting all the ghost folders and all the pointers to compilations iTunes left littered throughout, along with just plain odd stuff that it did. I bought a used Zune 80 off of eBay for <$100 to replace it (in excellent condition--no scratches or damage at all) and I'm very satisfied. I almost didn't bid, since it was the first auction I came across and had only 12 minutes left, but I took a chance and got a bargain! Since then almost every auction has been $125 and up. Amazon has a good selection of really inexpensive accessories for it. Nothing even remotely approaching the selections available for iPods, but good enough. Now, I have all these iPod accessories to get rid of. The Zune 80 is a very nice, solid player with a screen about twice the size of the iPod Classic. The cover art is big and beautiful when playing music and watching video podcasts isn't a squinting chore any longer for my aging eyes. I find the "squircle" controller (yes, stupid name) on the Zune device to be easier and more accurate to use than the iPod's rotary dial. No turning down the volume when attempting to do something else entirely. Happiness. The Zune software, while not perfect, leaves my music alone and doesn't try to "manage" it for me. It's *much* better at finding missing album art, even the rare stuff; no store account required as with iTunes. Oddly, it doesn't broadly display the cover art during playback as does the Zune itself. There is a lot of white space in the software's interface and it lacks some of the fine controls of iTunes. But, considering that it doesn't think that it knows better than I do about data management, it's a worthwhile trade-off. I installed Songbird on the upstairs computer and it's pretty good. Fairly iTunes-like in appearance, almost a cross between iTunes and Winamp, but I'm still getting used to it. It seems to leave the music collection alone as well, but it doesn't support Zune yet, so it's just for playback in the living area. ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
