I live in a townhouse…are your speakers pointed towards the shared wall? (Actually, “as loud as I want” is not all that loud, heh.)
Also, iPods are uuuuuuuugly. They look “ever-so-discreet” and clinical, like a package of birth-control pills, or maybe a tampon case. BRRRR!
To be fair, when I was a kid the radio and radio/cassette walkmen were just starting to become affordable. My mother claims they were a godsend on long car trips, proving to be the one thing that shut us up once and for all. I’m talking “less than $50” affordable, though. Adjusted for inflation it might actually be cheaper with the iPod.
Meh, it seems at the ripe old age of 33 I’m already ancient and hopelessly out-of-touch with “where it’s at” as you kids say! ::slaps knee and smokes pipe while adjusting cardigan.::
For me, the best thing about the iPod is the size. I used to keep all my CDs in two big binders. This was a pain in the ass: the binder were unwieldly, it was hard to find the CD I wanted, the CDs kept getting scratched from regular use. Plus, the binders took up a lot of space, and space is at a premium in my house: especially bookshelf space. Of course, the binders were a huge step up from the cabinet I used back when I still kepy my CDs in their original cases.
But now? Now my entire music collection takes up slightly more space than a pack of cigarettes. My CD binders are safely buried in the back of my closet, where I only need to access them to add newly purchased CDs that I’ve already copied to my iPod, and therefore never need to look at again. Plus, I can find any album, or any song, with the touch of a button. No more flipping back and forth through one (or both: I’m not a good filer) binders trying to find the one CD I want to listen to (not to mention the wallet binder I used when I was listening to music at work or in the car, or having to check through all the various CD players I own in case I listened to it recently and forgot to put it back: “not in my discman, not in the CD changer on the stereo, not in either of the game consoles on the TV, not in any one of the four CD drives installed in my two computers, etc.” Whenever I’m listening to music, it’s on my iPod. Period.). No more trying to remember which of the avant-garde CD designs with no text on them is the CD I’m looking for. No more forgetting which track is the song I want, or what album it was on. It’s all clearly labeled and easily accesible on my iPod.
True enough. And the problem there is that most of the music I hear in those places really sucks. If I’m going to the store, I can bring my iPod: no more muzak! If I’m driving, I can hook my iPod up to my car stereo: no more commercials! No more DJs! No more scanning for a station that’s playing something remotely tolerable! I bring it with me to work every day and plug it into the stereo there. Kinda hard to hear of the machines, but much more convenient than bringing a handful of CDs with me every day and having to stop work and clean myself up every forty minutes to swap discs.
I’ll have plenty of time to enjoy the silence once I’m dead.
Eh. I don’t buy into the whole “culture of terror” we got going on in this country. I wear my headphones most always when I’m out walking; have been since I was a teenager. I’ve never been the victim of any crime that would have been preventable if I hadn’t been wearing headphones. But that’s really a whole seperate debate.
Because I can play my iPod as loud as I want through my stereo. It’s like I’ve got a 300-disc changer attached to the thing. I just set it to shuffle, hit play, and I don’t have to touch the thing again until I’m ready to turn it off. No swapping discs, no skipping over the one or two songs I don’t like on the album to get to the songs I do like (songs I don’t like get deleted). Plus, I’m listening to music I’d almost totally forgotten about. I was big into Iron Maiden in highschool, then got all “sophisticated” in college and stopped listening to them. But I kept the CDs, and on a whim ripped them with the rest of my collection, and I’m just now remembering why I liked them so much ten years ago.
Well, then you should probably not buy one. Me, I spent close to $600 on mine, counting periphreals and the extended warranty, and I don’t regret a single cent of it. Best purchase I’ve made since I bought my very first PC.
Well, I hope you got a good chuckle out of this post, then.
Oh, and for the record, I think iPods look pretty slick. Sort of retro-modern. I like!
I live in a second-story condo. Doesn’t matter where I point the speakers, the folks downstairs are right there. And I work in a cube farm, near a bunch of loud people, so having decent music and headphones is very important.
I have it sitting in its dock on a shelf with a set of creature speakers. Great sound, easy to use. Everything is right there and it looks slick (thanks to the dock).
We throw it into the car for long trips, and it makes plane trips and dentist appointments much more bearable.
I’ve got no beef with anyone who doesn’t like iPods for any reason, but if you tell me I bought it because of slick marketing, I’m likely to get a little offended.
In iTunes, you don’t have to “locate” files; you tell iTunes where your music lives, and it puts the files away for you. You shouldn’t have to be combing your hard drive keeping track of thousands of music files; there’s simply no benefit to it.
And let’s put to bed this notion that you have to send your iPod back to Apple for a new battery. PDASmart makes a home-battery-replacement kit that includes simple instructions, custom tools, and a new battery.
I love my iPod. I want to have its sleek white babies. But sometimes when I’m walking down the street and I see others with those anti-headphones (aka non-black) I don’t want to nod politely like we’re members in a cool new club, I just feel obnoxious.
I’ve also started using the iPod as a general unit of value/currency e.g. ‘How many iPods did it cost you?’ ‘Yeah, I’m making about 3 iPods a week now. 40GBs, natch.’ That’s not obnoxious at all, though.
Also, I think having access to all those songs at once is giving me ADD.
While I have your attention: are there any MP3/iPod style thingies available which have an FM and an AM radio built in? I know, I know, but that’s what I want.
AndrewT:PoGo! does it. I had to scroll down quite a bit to find that you can, in fact, use it as a bog-standard MP3 player as well. Unfortunately, the most memory you can get on this thing is 128 MB.
Ooh, and both the Pogo and the Neuros can record from a line-in! That’s it, I’m’a gonna save up and get me a Neuros. You people have no idea how many cassette tapes I have cluttering up my car, constantly getting lost and re-found amidst all the other crap that’s cluttering up my car. If I can just hook up my portable cassette player and rip the tapes directly, that’s going to save a lot of ass-pain. It gets annoying, wanting to listen to Cypress Hill but only finding Oingo Boingo, a few George Carlin tapes and National Lampoon’s The White House Tapes.
And this has changed my opinion on the iPod a bit. You wanna spend more and get less, that’s your prerogative.
Oh, forgot to mention one thing. While the Pogo’s onboard memory is limited to 128 megs, tops; there’s nothing keeping you from moving the radio bits from the Pogo to your computer, then recording more.
Thanks for finding that for me. So it’s basically a radio recorder that also does MP3. I wonder if it has as nice a PC download interface as the iPod, and features like shuffle etc. I imagine I would mostly use it as an MP3 player but listen to (not record) radio occasionally.
How many nominal “tunes” will 128mb hold?
BTW it does says that it has a “SD (up to 256MB) / MMC (up to 128MB) expansion slot for adding additional memory”.
Case In Point: Rainbow Man - The Pogues => Popcorn :eek: - Hot Butter => Accidents will Happen - Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Dry, to the point, funny and oh-so-true.
Something I’ve thought, but probably never posted: I, for one, look forward to the day when people on this message board have more discussions about their iPods than they do about their cats or their favorite Star Wars (or Star Trek) moments.
picker, I recommend the Lansing travel speakers (for the beach), a Belkin iPod RCA cable and if you drive alot (and can deal with a small amout of interference); the car radio convertor cradle.
Hmmm, 30 some-odd posts to your thread and no mention of the iPodlounge? In case you havent stumbled across it yet, it’s a valuable resource.
I looked into the PoGo RadioYourWay. It sounded like a really awesome idea, since I listen to a lot of programs on Public Radio and would love to be above to record programs to listen to at my leisure. Unfortunately its average rating on Amazon is currently three and a half stars (which, to their credit, is up from the two and a half they had when I was shopping for an mp3 player.) If I’m going to drop serious money on a hunk of electronics, I need to be pretty confident in the product.
It’s highly debatable whether I “got less” in purchasing an iPod. I have an mp3 player that will also play the many songs I’ve downloaded from the iTunes store.
In the past, I’ve fallen for doohickies that claim that they’ll do everything under the sun, all in one convenient, easy-to-use package, and typically I’ve found that, while they can do lots of stuff, usually don’t do any one thing particularly well. The only exception is my Swiss Army Knife, paragon of multitaskers. So when someone says that Product X is better than Product Y, because Product X has “more features” so you “get more for your money,” I am always skeptical. YMMV, naturally.
I’ve got a question. I’ve been thinking about getting an iPod and the idea of the ‘shuffle’ function really makes me want to get one. However, I have a lot of classical music (ex- music student talking) that I’d like to have access to now and again on the iPod, but when I’m walking home from work (when I would love the shuffle feature) I generally prefer to listen to rock/pop etc. There’s no point trying to listen to classical music over traffic noise. The dynamic range is too great, you either can’t hear the quiet sections or else turn it up and then get your eardrums blasted to smithereens by the sudden loud bits.
Anyway my question is - can you sort the music into sections/ folders so that it will only shuffle through a specified genre??? And if it doesn’t when they do add this feature do I get any royalties?
Wow that was quick. Thanks ultrafilter. Man I have got to get one now - but I’ve already asked for skiboots for christmas - oh decisions, decisions. So much to consume, so little time…
To an extent, I think this summarizes the differences in design philosophy between Apple and most other software/PC makers. Apple concentrates on building devices and software that do a few things really well, while others stuff in as many features as they can, which can adversely affect a product’s usability.
iPod fanboy checking in. I grabbed a 15GB in March, then decided I had to have the dock and the carrying case, so I returned it for a 20GB (third generation) model. It was love at first sight. :swoon: I copied my CD collection and other MP3s to it, which amounts to aroun 3,000 songs. I listen to it at least six to eight hours every day. On the way to and from work, through most of the work day, while doing work around the house, etc.
When the new ones came out with the mini-style click wheel I dumped mine on eBay and bought a 20 GB one of those. Easily the best purchase I’ve ever made.
Oh, and I like iTunes. I actually got hooked using that before I was even considering getting an MP3 player. I like the way it organizes everything with normal and smart playlists. I use the comments field to specify things further from there. So I have playlists that only play stuff I know how to play on guitar, only clean stuff when the niece is around, only play Morrissey and the Smiths, and so on and so on. Love it!
I picked up a “podsleeve” for it lately too to protect it. It hides some of the natural beauty of the iPod, but it’s great for sticking it in my pocket while I’m working out or mowing the lawn.
And word to whoever mentioned AM radio would be a good idea. The “feature rich” models never interested me because (a) I don’t need to record anything and (b) I can’t stand any FM stations in Dallas. I can’t really stand AM either, but at least the rabid right-wing talk shows are worth a laugh.
Rumor has it that we’ll be seeing an iPod with some kind of video functionality soon. Oh yes, it will be mine.
So far it seems like the biggest advantage the iPod has is size. The Neuros thing that TentacleMonster has some sweet features, and the Zen Touch apparently has amazing sound plus an advertised 24 hour battery life, but neither seems to be able to compete with the size of the iPod. The Zen Touch review page it said that the company specificially doesn’t recommend using the Zen Touch for jogging because the touch pad is really sensitive. Does the iPod have the same problem with their touch pad?
(Actually, “as loud as I want” is not all that loud, heh.)
So when someone says that Product X is better than Product Y, because Product X has “more features” so you “get more for your money,” I am always skeptical. YMMV, naturally.
- oh decisions, decisions. So much to consume, so little time…
Easily the best purchase I’ve ever made.