Hi David, Are you using a filing cabinet software to organize your
word processer documents? That would be really handy for searching
and sorting wouldn't it? You could comment and rate them, catagorise
them by custom headings and cross-reference them. You could embed
links from document to document for even faster referencing of
information, but we could put them in a code that only the filing
software understands. Then we could custom format a flash drive so
you could cary your whole office around and use it on any computer
that has the software. That would be a lot more robust than
organizing them in finder or windows explorer wouldn't it? We could
lock you in, bombard you with features you may or may not like, and
fix it so in order to get to your documents you have to use our
software. You'd like it because it's pretty, and evry one in the
office uses it, so there's no compadibility issue... most of the time.
I'm not sure why giving all the software on a computer equal access to
files and filing, and using pristeenly designed individual tools
taylored to specific tasks should be intimidating to any one, but the
ITunes system obviously works for you, where-as it doesn't for me. In
fact, I have never actually witnessed it to work beyond the see the
file, play the file point, always assuming you see the file right away
of course. I have three sighted siblings and they all profess
evrything from general approval to out and out love of ITunes, and
yet, they have never been able to demonstrate to me how easy it is.
I did get ITunes to grab some podcasts for me at one point, and it
syncs my music folder to my IPod when I plug in right enough, but that
is about the extent of it. Some hard core fans really did try to help
me out with this, and they always said very encouraging things like,
"This is really easy", and "All you have to do is", and then they
would hand me a 15 to 25 step guide with 2 or 3 levels of procedure
taking me to where I wanted to go.
Apple's definitely doing something right. They hold, what, over 50%
of the mp3 player market share. Owning an IPod is a status symbol.
Then there is the ITunes store, which it seems will get a bit of a
face lift this quarter, and since you are locked in to ITunes if you
want to use either of those, it's not surprizing tha ITunes gets more
than it's share of use. There are a lot of manufacturers besides
apple, though. I couldn't tell you who the leaders are, but with 50%
going to apple, any one you pull out of the pack is going to be pretty
far behind the 8-ball, but that doesn't mean the rest of the other 50%
doesn't exist. I chose IPod personally because I like the hardware,
and I know I can make it do what I need. It wasn't my only choice
though, and may not even have been my best one in some ways.
Fortunately in our system, we do have choice.
erik burggraaf
Certified Technician
Assistive Computing LTD Support and training
Sales department: 888-828-2445
Support and Training: 888-255-5194
Email: [email protected]
Website coming soon
On 16-Jan-09, at 7:07 AM, David Poehlman wrote:
Eric, you are looking at this the rong way round. ITunes is the
ipitomy of ease of use for the average and even highly technical
user in many ways and your approach is something I cannot fathom. I
did nt get into serious audio till I got ITunes for that reason. I
can burn a cd in ITunes simply by selecting the audio I want on it
and click burn or click burn select the audio and click burn again
or something like that. I can rip a cd in much the same way but if
I want the whole cd, I can just say import and it will import it and
stack it nicely into my library. I can make an ITunes play list if
there is too much on my hd to fit on my nano. I can use a creative
zen if I want to but then I don't want to because the nano 4g is so
accessible. I use a card for my victor reader stream. I copy the
stuff I want on the card which by the way is strangely set up
according to the stream requirements. I have to say though that the
ITunes/IPod interface is the one I use most often because it does so
much for me and is so easy to use.
Capitalism only works if you have customers and they must be doing
something right because they have customers who *choose* apple over
everything else even though players have been around for a long time
before ITunes ever came out. Microsoft keeps failing in this
department and creative is loosing ground and is pretty far behind
apple so we must assume unless the consumer is really stupid tha
with all the choices out there, they are choosing what they want.
