My designer today (a hip young man) mentioned to me that he’d picked up a micro-radio broadcast thing for his iPod so now he could route it through his FM receiver.
And that’s sort of my last barrier to wanting one. I’ve got about 30 gigs of music (all acquired legally!) on my hard drive (ripping that was a chore) and would want to drop it all on my iPod.
Toss in my comfort with FM broadcast technology as I have that for my in-car XM set up (my wheels wouldn’t fit the in-dash stereo) and there we are.
So tell me about these wacky things. I’m assuming they’re not Apple exclusive and will work with my WinXP Dell fairly well. Heck, tell me all about them. And if anyone can pass any more information to me regarding the in-car set up clue me in.
If I have to ask Kyle he’ll just accuse me of being old and try to get a raise.
Bascally you hook one up to your Ipod or other music player through your headphone jack, then set it to broadcast the audio signal at an FM frequency not used in your area. Tune your radio to that frequency and you have your music.
More info and reviews can be found here:
The downside is that you can get interference as you travel from one area to another and it will never sound as good as a CD player in your car, but it does give you what you are looking for.
OK, I get that as it’s the same as my XM set up. But fill me in some more on the whole iPod experience. I get that it’s an MP3 player, fine. But what sets it apart from the others out there?
It’s got seamless integration with iTunes, that can do all sorts of neat stuff. You can create playlists, buy music, etc. It also does neat things like count how many times each song is played, so you can later organize your music by most or least played… stuff like that.
But mostly, the iPod is known for being so easy to use. You can pick one up and figure out how to use it in about 4 seconds. You can use it 1 handed.
Plus, it plays videos. You can buy tons, tons, tons of accessories for it that allow you to play your music on your stereo and your videos on TV. And now, with the price break, they’re extremely competitively priced. $250 gets you a 30 gig version with nice, bright color screen for watching videos.
There’s cheaper MP3 players out there, and ones with more options. But I doubt there’s one easier to use, and I KNOW there’s none that has more accessories. I’ve got 3, and highly endorse them.
iPod and its program, iTunes, are so easy to use. Very simple. I’ve heard from people that some other players’ programs can be more confusing, but a little kid could figure out how to utilize iTunes properly, IMO. And the bonus of the iTunes store is nice, I buy all my music from it now.
And they’re just so cooool. I love mine (and I have an old one, 2nd generation. No click wheel or color screen for me!) and I don’t know how I used to lug around a Discman all the time in the past. It’s comforting to know ALL of my music is in the little box and I can access it all the time. And the new video iPods are really neat too, I think. Sure, watching a movie or show on that tiny screen is odd, but it would be nice to have when one of my classes get cancelled and I’m bored on campus.
I used to have an iTrip (the FM transmitter) but my car’s radio was screwed up so I sold it to a friend. It worked nicely in her car and on her stereo in the dorm. I did the tape adapter thing for awhile, but then my brother put a CD player in my car one weekend when I was out of town and I don’t have a tape player anymore.
Basically I’ll chime in and agree with the assessment of others: focused features, simple to use, a GREAT library to draw from at the iTunes store, and feature expandability via accessories. If there’s a feature you want that’s built in to another product, you can probably buy an add-on for the iPod that does roughly the same thing.
OK, then. What about iTunes? I’ve been using MusicMatch and have my songs rated and song forth. Any idea whether any of that will come over or am I going to have to deal with that again?
Also, are there any DRM issues concerned with iTunes?
iTunes should come with the iPod, if not, you can download it for free off the Apple website.
Just personal story: I got the second gen. iPod back in '03 and it stopped working. Once. Only once in '05 for about three days. I took it to the Apple store and they upgraded my software. I am currently fixing some superficial outer damage (stupid me) on the same three year old iPod. My friends have gotten the later models which are much slimmer etc. but have gone through hair-tearing episodes because the damn thing breaks after 18 months. That could just be us though…
Go for the four year extended warranty, the 12 month warranty may not cut it. Be aware that the Nanos are very delicate; the screens warp easily.
Other than those details, they are fantastic products.
I’ve got the same iPod you do, and it’s remarkably durable. I’ve only had to take it in for “repairs” once, and it turned out it just needed to be rebooted. Something I should’ve known myself if I’d just read the instructions. And this is despite being dropped several times, at least once from a standing height onto a cement floor. It’s acting up a bit now: sometimes the display freezes, but the controls still work and playback is fine, so I’m not too worried about it. After three years, that’s a pretty good track record for a portable electronic device. God knows, my various DiscMen over the years never lasted that long.
iTunes does not add any DRM to your existing music, or to tracks you rip off your CDs.
Music you buy and download from the iTunes Music Store does come with DRM, but it is fairly loose. You can transfer the music to an unlimited number of iPods, and play it on five computers simultaneously. You can store your purchased music on however many computers you want, however only five can play it at the same time.
Also, you can burn any given playlist to a CD only five times. However, this is a non-issue, as if you need to burn more you can just copy one of the five outside of iTunes.
iPods are great! I have owned five (my god, how pathetic is that?) and none of them have ever broken - I sold them all to friends after a year or so, fully operational, for a substantial fraction of what I paid.
If you have any interest in video, wait. It seems pretty likely that Apple will release a cool new large-screen iPod in the next month or so. The quality of iPod video increased tremendously last month, and it should look amazing on the new big screen.
As for the iPod experience overall, it’s just simple and elegant. It’s also cool, and that counts for a lot. Apple is really great about attention to detail (fit & finish, in carmaking terms). Just taking an Apple product out of its box for the first time is a rush.
This is one case where it’s not mass delusion. An iPod really will change the way you listen to music, and for the better.
It’s an mp3 player with a really, really good marketing campaign and a truly brilliant design (at least aesthetically- I think the click-wheel thing is stupid.)
That’s it.
It doesn’t do anything particularly well except drain more of your money because all those peripherals are just soooooo cool.
Imagine that you have every piece of music you’ve ever owned, stored on an impossibly small device. No matter what you want to hear, a few swipes of your thumb and you’ve got it playing. Whatever your mood, you’ve got the music to suit it – any time. For me, the big breakthrough for the iPod (which is no longer unique to the iPod) was the sheer capacity – not just your favorite hits, but every piece of music you’ve ever owned, can be right there at your fingertips. I’ve ripped some 300 CDs (which are no longer cluttering my apartment), about five vinyl albums and a couple of dozen cassettes I’d recorded off the radio back in college, and they’re all there, and they’re always available. (Plus I think I burned through a couple of hundred dollars at the ITMS, but that’s trailed off dramatically lately). I’ve got one of the old clunker 3G iPods, the size of a pack of cigarettes, and the battery still seems to last a long time.
Also, smart playlists – you can make a playlist of, say, 50 (or 500) songs that you think you like. Then you can make another playlist that consists of only songs from the first playlist that have 3 stars or higher. Then sync up your iPod. When you’re playing the first playlist, you can quickly give a song anything from 0 to 5 stars, and if you move to the smart playlist, it’ll only have those songs with 3 or higher stars. If you like that sort of thing (and I do), it’s great.
For some weird reason, I’ve been reliving my junior high days, obsessively listening to The Carpenters for the past week and a half. Just got into that kind of mood, I guess. Whether or not this is a good thing is debatable, but regardless, the music was just sitting in my iPod waiting for me to listen.
It’s more expensive, and has (had?) battery issues. Check out the Creative Zen and Sandisc Sansa units before you buy. Probably a few others too.
I think the biggest issue is the type of music you have. If all of your tracks are unrestricted mp3 files (or any other type of files without DRM coding), then buy a player that supports that format and has features you like. Could be an iPod or non-iPod player. If you are interested in buying new music, then you have to decide on iPod/iTunes vs. everyone else (that uses Microsoft DRM software and Yahoo/Napster/Rhapsody etc. music files).
In my experience, I think that iPod/iTunes is simpler. Everyone else is cheaper, plus they offer subscriptions. Most people do not like the ideas of subscriptions, but try one before you decide. Rhapsody offers free trials. If you like to explore new music, it is a fun way to do it.
iPod/iTunes is probably the better choice for you. You will love it, but you won’t save money.
I was late in this parade as well, but bought a Creative Zen with huge memory, a battery you can remove and replace, and a nice desktop speaker system (all far cheaper than the iPod). I did, however, invest in a better (but pricey) set of extra headphones. You can get a good price on all of the above at Amazon dot com, and do some price comparisons as well.
With 8 gigs, it stores EVERY CD I OWN, on one little apparatus!
If you don’t have someone to show you how to use it, it does take a little getting used to, but luckily, it comes with software and a booklet and before long, you get the hang of it.
Certainly worth the price, and the effort to get all the music in one place!
Let’s just say that I don’t have thousands of CDs, but do have perhaps a couple hundred, so it was huge for me. Here is the one I have.
I still have ample memory to put in lots of photos, although I haven’t quite seen the point in that yet. And my Creative Zen with 8 gigs cost about $240. How much was your 40?
I ask about DRM because I got a new Dell recently. It came with an updated version of MusicMatch and I have a lifetime subscription to MM. Simple enough, right? Not so fast. All of the music that I had personally ripped from CD was no problem. But that songs I’d purchased through MM’s online store wouldn’t update the DRM. MM, now purchased by Yahoo, wouldn’t recognize them or allow me to maintain a login for updating. After a weeks worth of pointless and repetitive tech supp emails from Yahoo (in which they ended up advising me to manually change my registry!) I worked out that I could update the DRM through Windows Media and then they’d play fine in MM.
I hate Yahoo. And I’d hate to go through this again with the existing songs I have. I feel like I have an investment here I’d like to not go back over in terms of DRM and suchlike.
Can anyone address the ratings issue? I’m honestly one of those geeks who rates his songs and likes to use the random playlist feature based on those ratings. Re-entering those would be a bitch and a half.
Thanks!
Oh, last question. My broker advised me when I called him when Apple tanked so bad in what 2000? 2001? That ‘that stock is broken. It’ll take 10 years or more for them to be a good investment again.’ What should I do to him?