Interesting thread - The rationale behind alot of the posts is understandable, but the questions are far simpler (to me).
First, I love my squeezeboxes - they have been a wonderful part of my life for many years now. But as a "Joe Sixpack", I want to know how my Boom, SB3, and classic are going to work with the greater integration of entertainment sources. I bought a Mac mini to run my SC, because it was inexpensive, small footprint, and offered integration capabilities with my DVD collection and internet entertainment sources. It works well and easily, and thats all I want. After using a windows PC, and then a Linux appliance, both of which had unique and overly challenging issues, I am very happy with my choice of a mini with an external drive. But unless Logitech wants to make a portable player to take the place of my wifes and kids iPods, or a cell phone that integrates with my music library, I am getting more and more frustrated with the arrangement. iTunes has a stranglehold grip on my friends and families music enjoyment, and it looks like thats only going to grow. I am trying to maintain separate libraries for my flac files, and the families MP3s. I'm almost ready to give up on flac and put everything into MP3 just for ease. iTunes rips and tags, organizes and finds, and makes the process pretty painless, and they all understand it - many parts I don't. SC does a great job of organizing and serving, and I love the sound quality of flac, but I still have to find separate apps to rip, tag, and manage my files. If I find a tag problem when I am using a SB, there is no easy way to ID the file and fix it, so I generally live with it. I understand how alot of people enjoy the openness, and the ability to customize and modify the system, but when the basic system gets too complicated for the most basic user to very simply enjoy it, while the technically proficient agonize over issues with specialized customizations that appeal to a limited few, I'm just afraid that its lost its appropriate focus on the ability of us "Joe Sixpacks" to solidly recommend it to our friends. Maybe there needs to be a 2 track SC development - an open source release that can be available to those who choose to pursue it, modify it, customize it, and deal with the problems that come with it - and a more closed source option that runs on Windows and OSX, with few or no options but with additional functionality, like integrated ripping and tagging, and iTunes integration that is simple and painless enough that families can use it easly. Sorry to harp on it, but everyone in my family, and most of my friends use iPods or iPhones, and I'm the only one using a squeezebox. I think its well over 20 to 1. Anyway - thats my 2c - -- bolfings ------------------------------------------------------------------------ bolfings's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=4440 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=66745 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
