Monday, February 05, 2007

What I hate about iPods & iTunes

I have probably had my (5.5G 80Gb) iPod about 6 months now, so its probably a good time to review what I like and don't like about it.

Likes
  • Integration with iTunes. As a complete package its great. Having put most of my collection on there now (several hundred CDs and the same amount of "backups") it has opened up a whole new way of listening to music.
  • Smart Playlists are cool and so is the ability to mark a Cd as a compilation. It keeps the list of Artists a bit cleaner.
  • Video and games are quite fun if you have 20 mins to kill on a train journey. I wouldn't watch a whole film on it though.
  • Podcasts. There are some really good ones on there.
  • Nice long battery life.

Dislikes

  • As Apple is in league with the record companies, why couldn't it get its track names from them as well instead of going to that CDDB thing. Windows Media Player nearly always came back with the right disc and track names. Give iTunes a 2 disc set though and it will come back with two similar but distinctly different disc names.
  • Inability of iTunes to play an album or artist without keeping the music pane open at all times. If you continue browsing through your music then it just plays the current song and finishes.
  • The way the iTunes Music pane always goes to the top of the artists list whenever you switch to it, instead of keeping your last selection. Very annoying.
  • Might just be my MacBook but the Cd is very flakey. Often it will freeze mid rip and the only way to eject it is a reboot.
  • Misc hardware fault which returns error -48 and requires you to have your MacBook set to a West Coast US timezone in order to sync with your iPod.

  • More than £20 for the optional power adaptor. I got one from Amazon for £2.50.

  • The fact that the audiobooks and one single that i have brought can only be played on an iPod or in iTunes.

I had a iRiver H340 and while it was a nice bit of kit they assumed that just the ability to play music was all that was needed.

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