Never, never, never....never, let iTunes manage your music if you already know what you are doing.
On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 7:19 PM, Jeff Wright <[email protected]> wrote: > > 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/ ** > ************************************************************************* > ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
