How lovely that you’ve got it all worked out for everyone else. Heaven forfend that for some people, having music around might actually increase their appreciation of the world in general. No, that could never be. Judge! JUDGE!
:rolleyes:
You know, you don’t have to use earbuds or headphones to use a player. I use mine about seven hours every day, and all of that is either through my car stereo or plugged into my computer speakers or home stereo.
Of course, you may still have a point. I haven’t seen an exquisite painting yet today.
Sure, I like to use winamp, myself.
I love plugins.
Gosh, if I hadn’t been distracting my consciousness with some boring old prog-rock album on my iPod this morning, I could have been admiring all the exquisite advertising placards on the bus.
Yes, everything but the iPod is akin to toilet water. Sounds like you were the first in line for the koolaid!
Maybe they’re listening to a museum style walkthrough podcast of all the art?
Did you mean DMX?
When I bought my original, click-wheel 5 gigabyte iPod, it represented an extreme upgrade from a Creative Nomad Jukebox hard drive player that took hours to sync with my music collection and, due to an unfortunate manufacturing defect, had a battery life of five minutes. While I was able to get an RMA and a functioning Nomad Jukebox, I sold it months later when the iPod came out because it was the only mp3 player on the market that didn’t suck. It was disgustingly easy to operate, it updated my entire music collection in 1 minute, and soon after, the iTunes music store launched. I never looked back.
So was I being some kind of consumer whore? I bought the best product on the market. I paid a premium, and I got what I paid for–a beautiful integrated and functional system. Have some third party products achieved parity? It’s arguable, I guess. Maybe the market has caught up (I haven’t followed it too closely), but I doubt it. Because it was such a radical improvement over anything else that was available, the next time I need to buy an mp3 player, it’ll undoubtedly be an iPod.
Someone released a superior product, people bought it in shitloads, and you’re calling them all out? What the hell for? Because Apple has a really good marketing department? Oh, boo hoo. I’m sorry that effective advertising annoys you.
Marvelous!
Not at all, my anonymous friend…I am “calling out” the consumers, those drinking the koolaid. Steve Jobs managed to enlist millions of minions to his army of storm troopers with flashy style and superior marketing/design. Sure, its a superior product, and it clearly meets a demand. I think now, though, its beyond demand and is becoming dangerously close to one man’s utopia. Microsoft has a practical monopoly and people call them out on it all the time, Im doing the same to Apple and its IPod.
Why the hell should I have to download anything, when just about every other player on the market is happy to read the files directly off the filesystem?
It’s a frickin’ USB mass storage device. You shouldn’t need what’s essentially a driver for it, unless your OS is older than 1999.
iTunes, and just about every alernative to it that I’ve run across, suck balls.
BTW, I own a 1GB Shuffle, and use a little python script that somebody wrote to rebuild the dumbass database every time I add songs to it. But I only got it because I wanted a bigger thumb drive, and I figured I might as well get one that also plays mp3s.
The script won’t work on the bigger iPods, though, so fuck them. If I ever feel compelled to blow a few bills on yet another toy, I’m getting an iRiver.
Damn that debonair Steve Jobs and his crafty buisness acumen!
Seriously, Apple veers somewhat close to a vertical integration model of buisness in that they essentially control the sale and playback of digital music. But digital music is still a drop in the bucket compared to what’s bought in brick-and-mortar stores and played back on CD players. It’s still largely a niche. Hardly appropriate to call it a monopoly at this point. It’s popular, sure, but not the only game in town. If digital music was the only thing people were buying and they were only buying it online, I’d be more worried perhaps. But there are other ways to get music and other ways to play it. I don’t think it’s fair to compare it to the Windows OS.
And, while we’re on the subject, under the Windows “monopoly,” Apple still sold computers. A lot of them. Enough to keep them afloat, if only just. The iPod originally just looked like an attempt to sell more Macs. It’s come into its own, sure, but it’s a “halo effect” product.
Oh, that explains it. You’re just nuts.
“Dangerously close to one man’s utopia”? What the hell does that even mean? We’re talking about MUSIC PLAYERS!
And since others have called out on your quote, I’ll highlight my favorite part:
My god! He’s giving us what we want! BURN HIM!
Susan
flicks bic frantically
Ah, for those days of yore when we snobbily judged people on the music they listened to, not the technology they played it on. 
I actually still use a minidisc player, or as I like to call it, the cotton gin of the portable music world. Seriously, you can cram 8-tracks in there if you try hard enough.
DMB = Dave Matthews Band.
And here I was thinking he wasn’t hip. 
[sub]must look in the mirror[/sub]
I find it interesting that you keep using the name “Kool Aid”. Brand over-saturation or something? Seriously, dude, it was Flavor Aid. I’m not joking.
That evil Edwin Perkins has done a great job in his brainwashing of the masses. Flavor Aid is cheaper. No, it doesn’t come in as many flavours, but it does what I want it to do.
:dubious:
Because there’s far more functionality then just reading off the HD
How exactly do they suck balls?
I can rip and burn cds at the touch of a button, transcode different file types, and can easily browse tons of pay and free content.
Seems like decent functionality to me.
Ain’t the free market great?
And what’s with this “radio” business? Back in my day we walked uphill in the snow both ways and paid 200 franks just to hear Beethoven fart the opening to
“Erocia” and we liked it! I can still smell the sausages…
Congrats. You somehow managed to take a legitimate point (the danger of technology cutting people off from each other and the rest of the world) and presented it in such an unappealing way that people forgot about the idiocy of the OP (until he opened his mouth again) and focused on your snobbiness. Bravo.
Shut it, Anastasaeon. The meme is Kool-Aid. Nobody cares that it was Flavor-Aid. No, you’re not fighting ignorance. You’re being the equilivant of that kid nobody liked in second grade who memorized all the presidents and would beg people to let him recite them.
Damn, I was in such a great mood earlier tonight. Then Amazon.com pissed me off and now I read that crap. Ugh. Cranky.
You’re right. I got cocky. I apologise.
First off, I wasn’t saying that the mp3 player I have is better than an iPod. I’ve never owned an iPod. I have heard music through my friend’s iPod, though. I was just going through the reasons why I got one over an iPod. It was actually a Christmas gift from my girlfriend, but she knew I wanted one. 
It has an FM radio which I liked, because there is a few radio shows I listen to. It has a microphone which I like because I do quite a bit of writing, and it’s good to get my ideas down right when I have them. It can also record FM radio, which is also great for me. I didn’t want to shell out $49.00 USD and $22.95 USD for these functions, which you’d have to do with the iPod. I realize that these two things aren’t very important to many people, but it’s one of the reasons this particular mp3 player appealed to me.
I don’t remember saying that they made it for me. Just that I prefered the controls of the Micro over the iPod. I can sort of understand how you would see me as attacking iPod from my post. I thought the final things I said would have made it obvious it was more, “This is why I got Micro, and I understand why people buy iPod.” …than… “I hate iPod and everyone who buys one is an idiot.” I take a more live and let live attitude on the whole thing.
Excellent, as I said originally, there is a reason you chose iPod over the others. I got mine because I like it, you got yours because you like it.
This is my exact sentiment. I thought the last two things I said at the end of my post conveyed that same message. Perhaps I wasn’t being as clear as I could have been.