The iPod and the geek: Plugging in
Right... as per the quickstart manual... "install iTunes, plug iPod into PC, follow instructions on screen".
iTunes... I'm wary. I like my PC to run in very specific ways, and almost always prefer small programs that do one thing without trying to become Your Gateway To Your Music/Data/Whatever. For this reason, iTunes worries me, in the same way that I'm not a fan of Adobe Acrobat, QuickTime1, RealPlayer or Windows Media Player - they do too much to my system without telling me.
I played around with it for awhile, looking at ways to sync my iPod without having to install iTunes. Several alternatives all failed, and in the end, I gave up and installed iTunes. Grumble grumble. The install went smoothly, but it asked almost no questions (I want programs to ask me before installing stuff on my system - I don't need the service to listen to wireless Apple AirPort speakers, so don't install it, damn it!).
At least, after iTunes implanted itself into my PC, it immediately recognised my iPod... and asked me to register it. The explanation given was vague. I'm sorry, Apple, I don't trust you - so no registration for you until you explain to me2 why I should hand over my personal details to you.
iTunes is, no surprise, also very slick - I now see where Songbird (my new, favourite media player) gets its interface from. However, I find that it's often very short on explanations - how, exactly, does it build its "Library"? Why is some of my music displayed in the library and some of it not? Which folders did it check (it claimed to only check ~\My Documents\My Music, but it obviously checked more than that)? How does it distinguish between "podcasts" and "music", and how are they handled differently? Some digging around and experimenting answered some of these questions, but left me with the distinct impression that iTunes was doing an awful lot without telling me... which I'm not too fond of. At least it didn't do what it did to a friend of mine, which was grab her entire music collection, moved it to the iTunes directory, and reorganise it without saying anything.
After plugging in the iPod, iTunes immediately wanted to "synchronise". Fair enough - I started with some music. Ah, you can't sync tracks, you can only synchronise playlists? Okay then, create a playlist with some songs... sync... Wow, the connection is fast! My W850 phone only supports USB 1 (I think - in any case it's ridiculously slow) so that transferring a handful of albums takes half an hour. Not here, in under a minute, everything was synchronised; full marks on that count. iTunes' "smart playlist" function also gets a thumbs-up from me, even if, to use it to its full potential (such as filtering by "number of times played" and "star rating") requires me to switch to iTunes as my primary media player, which I'm not willing to do just yet.
Next up, podcasts. I listen to a lot of podcasts, and the W850 is grossly under-equipped to handle them. Not only does it truncate track titles so it's often impossible to tell which episode is which (the screen reads "Amazing Podcast Numbe..." - helpful!), but its sorting algorithm is a mystery, so I can't even rely on it to listen to my podcasts in some sort of order.
But back to the iPod. I have over a GB of podcasts stored on my hard disk. Surely it's just a matter of importing them into iTunes so that I can sync them to the iPod.......... no sir, no can do. iTunes can only play and sync podcasts which are subscribed in iTunes and downloaded from the iTunes website. Plus, the iPod in its normal configuration is not recognised as a USB mass storage device, so the only way to access it is through iTunes.
This kind of thing drives me batty - Apple is as bad as Microsoft in this regard. It's all well and good that you provide a great centralised service for people to enjoy their music. But don't lock them into only using it and nothing else! Don't presume your users will use your devices only in the way you intended, and block them from doing anything else! *grumble*
So, for the second time in as many hours, I bit into the sour apple and subscribed to my podcasts in iTunes and started siphoning them off the internet - thank heavens for my fast and uncapped internet connection. At least, iTunes seems to do a reasonable job as a podcast aggregator (after I figured out what some of its more cryptic settings meant), although (understandably) it can't retrieve episodes older than the ones listed in each podcast's RSS feed. This is irritating for (in particular, but not solely) the BBC podcasts, which only ever list the latest episode in their RSS feed, forcing you to sync frequently or miss episodes. Of course, I have all the episodes saved on my hard disk, but with no way to import them into iTunes...3
Anyway, enough ranting. The podcast sync was just as fast as the music sync, and, after I ticked the right box, iTunes grabbed all my Outlook contacts4 and synced them as well. It looks like my iPod could become my new address book, too!
Just before the upload, iTunes wanted me to create an account on the iTunes store to... wait for it... "download album covers". Let's just pretend I repeated the rant from eight paragraphs ago and move on. iTunes also gave me the option of synchronising TV shows, but at this point I only had time for a cursory attempt to import some AVI files on my PC into iTunes, which (surprise surprise) failed miserably, before having to leave.
1 I use QuickTime Alternative and RealAlternative to play these formats when I come across them - compatibility without all the bloat, hurrah!
2 Or I look it up on the internet...
3 Some Googling found a hack which would perhaps solve this problem, involving setting some metadata fields for each podcast episodes, but I haven't tried it yet. It's a hassle at the least.
4 Using Outlook as my contacts manager is an unfortunate hold-over from my foray into Windows Mobile-powered PDAs. Even if I have to admit that Outlook is a darn good contacts manager - if only it didn't hog my system so much.
iTunes... I'm wary. I like my PC to run in very specific ways, and almost always prefer small programs that do one thing without trying to become Your Gateway To Your Music/Data/Whatever. For this reason, iTunes worries me, in the same way that I'm not a fan of Adobe Acrobat, QuickTime1, RealPlayer or Windows Media Player - they do too much to my system without telling me.
I played around with it for awhile, looking at ways to sync my iPod without having to install iTunes. Several alternatives all failed, and in the end, I gave up and installed iTunes. Grumble grumble. The install went smoothly, but it asked almost no questions (I want programs to ask me before installing stuff on my system - I don't need the service to listen to wireless Apple AirPort speakers, so don't install it, damn it!).
At least, after iTunes implanted itself into my PC, it immediately recognised my iPod... and asked me to register it. The explanation given was vague. I'm sorry, Apple, I don't trust you - so no registration for you until you explain to me2 why I should hand over my personal details to you.
iTunes is, no surprise, also very slick - I now see where Songbird (my new, favourite media player) gets its interface from. However, I find that it's often very short on explanations - how, exactly, does it build its "Library"? Why is some of my music displayed in the library and some of it not? Which folders did it check (it claimed to only check ~\My Documents\My Music, but it obviously checked more than that)? How does it distinguish between "podcasts" and "music", and how are they handled differently? Some digging around and experimenting answered some of these questions, but left me with the distinct impression that iTunes was doing an awful lot without telling me... which I'm not too fond of. At least it didn't do what it did to a friend of mine, which was grab her entire music collection, moved it to the iTunes directory, and reorganise it without saying anything.
After plugging in the iPod, iTunes immediately wanted to "synchronise". Fair enough - I started with some music. Ah, you can't sync tracks, you can only synchronise playlists? Okay then, create a playlist with some songs... sync... Wow, the connection is fast! My W850 phone only supports USB 1 (I think - in any case it's ridiculously slow) so that transferring a handful of albums takes half an hour. Not here, in under a minute, everything was synchronised; full marks on that count. iTunes' "smart playlist" function also gets a thumbs-up from me, even if, to use it to its full potential (such as filtering by "number of times played" and "star rating") requires me to switch to iTunes as my primary media player, which I'm not willing to do just yet.
Next up, podcasts. I listen to a lot of podcasts, and the W850 is grossly under-equipped to handle them. Not only does it truncate track titles so it's often impossible to tell which episode is which (the screen reads "Amazing Podcast Numbe..." - helpful!), but its sorting algorithm is a mystery, so I can't even rely on it to listen to my podcasts in some sort of order.
But back to the iPod. I have over a GB of podcasts stored on my hard disk. Surely it's just a matter of importing them into iTunes so that I can sync them to the iPod.......... no sir, no can do. iTunes can only play and sync podcasts which are subscribed in iTunes and downloaded from the iTunes website. Plus, the iPod in its normal configuration is not recognised as a USB mass storage device, so the only way to access it is through iTunes.
This kind of thing drives me batty - Apple is as bad as Microsoft in this regard. It's all well and good that you provide a great centralised service for people to enjoy their music. But don't lock them into only using it and nothing else! Don't presume your users will use your devices only in the way you intended, and block them from doing anything else! *grumble*
So, for the second time in as many hours, I bit into the sour apple and subscribed to my podcasts in iTunes and started siphoning them off the internet - thank heavens for my fast and uncapped internet connection. At least, iTunes seems to do a reasonable job as a podcast aggregator (after I figured out what some of its more cryptic settings meant), although (understandably) it can't retrieve episodes older than the ones listed in each podcast's RSS feed. This is irritating for (in particular, but not solely) the BBC podcasts, which only ever list the latest episode in their RSS feed, forcing you to sync frequently or miss episodes. Of course, I have all the episodes saved on my hard disk, but with no way to import them into iTunes...3
Anyway, enough ranting. The podcast sync was just as fast as the music sync, and, after I ticked the right box, iTunes grabbed all my Outlook contacts4 and synced them as well. It looks like my iPod could become my new address book, too!
Just before the upload, iTunes wanted me to create an account on the iTunes store to... wait for it... "download album covers". Let's just pretend I repeated the rant from eight paragraphs ago and move on. iTunes also gave me the option of synchronising TV shows, but at this point I only had time for a cursory attempt to import some AVI files on my PC into iTunes, which (surprise surprise) failed miserably, before having to leave.
1 I use QuickTime Alternative and RealAlternative to play these formats when I come across them - compatibility without all the bloat, hurrah!
2 Or I look it up on the internet...
3 Some Googling found a hack which would perhaps solve this problem, involving setting some metadata fields for each podcast episodes, but I haven't tried it yet. It's a hassle at the least.
4 Using Outlook as my contacts manager is an unfortunate hold-over from my foray into Windows Mobile-powered PDAs. Even if I have to admit that Outlook is a darn good contacts manager - if only it didn't hog my system so much.