Why is every piece of technology turning gay/ feminine.

I agree I might be a tad biased towards Apple, but all I am saying is why pay 200 dollars for an ordinary music player? For example, why not but a zune or an android, or some no name player. I find the best comparison to how "special" the ipod is would be French cultural exceptionalism. They may say it is the second coming, but they don't produce

 

Though, I do agree that Ipods aren't worth the ridiculous price.

 

I must state though that the Touch IS worth it's price.

 

iPods generally don't support .flac and so are rubbish. Simple.

 

They're all right. If I can connect some wireless somewhere at least I have a mobile wank-station. And if that fails, just put a video on it. Simples.

 

The biggest issue with anyother MP3 player besides the iPod is that in western Canada, you have very limited options in store of what to buy. For alright MP3 players you have: Archos, iPod, Sony uhhh that's about it actually. For the rest of the shit MP3 players, it's, Coby, Sandisk, Sylvania and other crap cheap ass MP3 players. They're mostly pure crap right down to the fake shuffle functions. A lot of these cheap ass mp3 players are terrible in not only sound quality and design (which for the most part have either shitty touch pads/screens and are copies of iPods) they have a shuffle function that plays through the same order of songs every time and there's no way to continue where you left off after you turned the thing off.

Which leaves Archos, iPod and Sony players. I'm not too familiar with Archos so I can't chime in with that. iPod is decent, it's never as bad as anyone makes out to be, while iTunes is a headache for the most part, it's alright, and there's some other alternatives as well. For Sony players, they're decent mp3 players but the software is like a programmer wanted users to have nightmares about using the software. It's interface is ugly, clunky, unfriendly to use and god damn slow.

Unfortunately Zunes aren't sold in stores for the most part in Canada and Androids are limited by the amount of space they can hold via microSD. I'd like a Zune HD though, they're pretty sexy. I have an iPhone 4 for mostly the iPod functionality since I needed a phone and a replacement for my mp3 player after it fought against a vehicle impact and lost.

 

Fair points, I'd concede that the iPod isn't the worst mp3 player out there, however you pay through the nose for something that is only mediocre. Sony players are amazing except, as you point out, for the software, though I think I heard they'd updated it and made it more user-friendly. Archos, for my money, is the best choice, though Zunes are also awesome. My friend has an Archos and it just does everything it's supposed to with minimal fuss, has a nice battery life and is about 2/3 the price of the iPod with the same storage.

 

Eeh, ever heard about "alternatives to original software"?

 

I don't know if Sony improved their software, but I used it about 5 years ago and again one year ago, I saw little improvements.

As I said I have no experience with Archos players with one exception. My friend had a Archos media thing and it didn't charge via USB, which is really dumb since it's battery life was blegh. It was decent for the amount I used it to stream video on my Xbox though. I always liked the iPod UI though, I really liked my iPod Classic when I had it though. I have a ridiculously large music collection so I usually need a 64 GB or above for my music, not a lot of Mp3 players can support that.

"y dew u need that much moosiq on ur playa/"

Cause it's nice to have absolutely everything on one single device.

While I'd often go for the physical copy like CD or Vinyl when I can, I can't deny the portability of carrying my entire music collection when I'm outside of my house. iPods generally fit what I'm looking for. While the sound quality isn't the best, it's serviceable and unnoticeable to casual listeners. I just wish my music collection didn't have varied volumes, that pisses me off.

As I said, I haven't seen a Zune in person since the first models in Canada. Even then, I haven't seen a high capacity Archos player above 32GB here either.

The only way iPods support .flac is through jailbroken methods. Even then you can't add those types of files like regular .mp3 or whatever fucking file Apple uses.

Also these programs that can play .flac on the iPod are garbage. They're buggy, and have the worst UI in the universe. Combined with some of them can only stream them.

While there's alternatives to iTunes, there's no way of getting .flac files to work on an iPod by alternative software.

 

I meant alternative players on the iPod Touch.
And one method I sometimes use is to pick a VLC media player copy on your PC, then stream .flac/whatever files to your iTouch.

 

That's just pointless, why not just listen to them on your PC?!

You could order online!
https://store.archos.com/archos-internet-tablet-p-5007.html
Even charges off USB!

 

I stand corrected.

@vivo: It's all about appealing to the consumers' taste and attitudes. The second someone makes an new electronic it becomes a "must have." It's so a la mode type of crap. The majority of the populous is all females anyways just look outside and see how much females outnumber the males. The thought of it just kind of scares me.

 

Did you read my post? I mean seriously?

Females barely outnumber males on a global scale, I think it might be your area. My town is mostly old male farmers for example.

Dear lord, I'd have to pay an even higher price than I did my iPhone with a three year contract, or more than an iPod classic. nothx.jpg

 

Defeats the purpose of having an iPod if you're just gonna stream it from your PC.

 

Well...that is the ultimate model!

 

You guys apparently don't see the point of streaming...

It allows you to play music while being on-the-go..without having to store it in your device...

 

Do you live in a particularly large house? Are you incapable of going to the kitchen without your music? Why would you need to stream on a daily basis. Iirc you live with your parents, do they not let you play music on your speakers? You can't stream from your PC if you're, on your way to school/work/college, at someone else's house, popping down to the shops, etc.

 

Yes. Almost always yes. Because then you have space left for other things. I have none my iTouch/future iPad fits in. I can, with a really small 3G dongle.

 

Then it's tailored to YOU. A purpose of an mp3 player is to bring your music with you EVERYWHERE, this is not adequate for streaming in any sort of way.

Case in point, I only listen to my iPhone outside of the house, I listen to it in my car, at work, basically anywhere but home. Streaming .flac or anything from my house to my iPhone is impractical.

Also storing things on the device is FAR superior than streaming in almost every way. BUT the iPhone/iPod/iPad does not natively support flac files so you have to use jailbroken programs to get them to work and these programs suck.