The new ipod classic is a piece of crap. I’ve owned second and third generation ipods, a mini, and a first gen nano and never had a complaint about any of them, but this thing sucks. First, Apple decided to cripple all the new ipods by preventing them from working with 3rd party applications. I never liked itunes and I still don’t and was perfectly happy using ephpod, its free, its easy, and it works. I don’t need a big bloated program to sync and organize and update and whatever else, all I want to do is put music on my ipod… that’s it. I’ve read people have already managed a workaround for this problem, but I’m sure it will be weeks before it’s available to the likes of me. And who knows maybe apple will offer another firmware update and send us all scrambling again.
Why apple chose to do this is beyond me. It’s not like they are selling itunes. What do they care if I use a third party app. Worse, the new ipods will not work with versions of itunes prior to 7.4, which is only available for XP and Mac. So linux users and people like me still running Win2000 (which is still as good as any XP system I’ve ever used) are shit out of luck for now. I did find one program that works, J. River Media Center, which I’ll have to use for now, but it costs $40 and is a piece of crap in and of itself.
Next on my list of gripes the new click wheel is unresponsive and the buttons are sticky. By far the worst click wheel I’ve used on any ipod and I had the very first touch wheel. Of course, I’m having a tough time telling when the problem is the wheel not picking up my finger and when the new gui is simply sluggish (even after the firmware update coverflow still sucks). I’m not interesting in movies, photos, podcasts, or cover art, all I want is my freaking music in a nice orderly list, is that so crazy? Most of my music was ripped off my cds back in 2000 and doesn’t even have art. I just want to turn all the freaking art off, don’t even show me a picture of goddamn music note. Why couldn’t they offer a classic mode, which would have the dual virtue of looking better and running faster.
Frankly, the whole thing sucks. I just get the feeling that Steve Jobs knows how he likes things and has decided that we should all do things that way too. Fucking hell Steve, let me decide how I want to use my goddamn music player. Feel free to include all the bells and whistles you want, just let me be able to turn them the fuck off… you arrogant dipshit.
Also a big wet fuck you to CNET and all the other people who reviewed this thing as 8.3 out of 10 and mentioned none of the above issues. Either you are idiots or getting bought by apple.
I’m skipping the classic myself, as I’ve heard one of the things you’re complaining about: the menu is a little clunky (hopefully they’ll fix that, but who knows).
Regarding your iTunes complaint (why do they care if you use their free program). Apple makes millions off iTunes every year. Just because the program itself is free doesn’t mean they’re not selling something. You using something else means you’re not buying songs from Apple. Reasonable people can debate whether this sucks, but it should not have taken you by surprise. Apple’s website lists the requirements for using the iPod with Windows, including iTunes 7.4 or later. It also lists the versions of Windows that works: XP or Vista.
If you were wondering if that requirement was one of those things where Apple says one thing but they don’t really mean it, perhaps you should have read a review or two. Maybe a site like, let’s say, CNET, has one? Sure enough! And right up top it says “users are required to use the latest version of iTunes.”
And to answer your next question, yes I am an idiot, and yes I have been bought out by Apple. Steve promised to buy me a new fence if I defend the classic whenever an opportunity arrives.
Using ephpod to import music onto my ipod doesn’t preclude me from using itunes to buy music. I still don’t see why Apple cares. Second, I had no intention of using itunes so naturally I didn’t care whether they were continuing support for win2000. I can understand why they would choose not to continue supporting such an old OS for their software, but I can’t understand why they would prevent me from using apps that do run on 2000. CNET discloses if you want to use the newest version of itunes you need XP, they didn’t disclose that if you want to use the new ipod at all you need XP. As for Apple, I suppose your right, they did disclose that the ipod is intended for XP and Vista, but now I know that they are full of it. There is no reason why the new ipod wouldn’t work on 2000, and in fact it does.
P.S. I used a computer with XP and itunes and did find a way to turn off cover art, but I still get floating pictures of music notes which cause slowdown and look stupid. The software/os problems may be resolved eventually but the crappy gui and the especially crappy click wheel don’t look to be going anywhere. Boy do I wish I hadn’t gotten this thing personalized.
Meh, I bought a classic, my second iPod but my first was a first gen shuffle so it doesn’t really count.
The GUI is a bit ‘sticky’ but apart from that it seems fine. The thing is, there’s nothing that really gives you the the same storage space, in that sort of size, for that sort of money (until the new Zunes come out).
Hopefully they’ll improve the GUI as time goes on, but I imagine the classic isn’t going to be their focus moving forward.
iTunes sucks, I can’t deny that. It constantly hangs on my laptop and really dislikes talking to a music library on a network drive. But Apple seems to be moving towards locking down their software, which is probably to keep iTunes traffic high and to appease the media companies suppling the content.
I bought the 2G as my first player, and then I was gifted the 3G, which I still have but doesn’t work too well. I bought the mini for the gym and gave it to my sister when the nano came out.
No you weren’t. Seriously, you were “given” the 3G. I read your thread; I didn’t readed it.**
**come on, I know gifted is perfectly cromulent, but in this instance it sounded damn near illiterate.
I recently bought a nano to replace my damaged iAudio X5. And since this is the pit, I declare that whoever designed the iPod sucks donkey balls.
First of all, it wont work without the piece of crap software that is called iTunes. And it wasn’t even included on the package of the nano i bought, so I had to download it. Then, when I finally installed iTunes, it wouldn’t work because I had previously moved the My Music folder to another hard drive and iTunes is so stupid that it cannot work without the default My Music folder created by Windows.
I searched various forums until I found that I had to manually change entries in the registry to make iTunes to work. Hassle free, user friendly iPod my ass.
When I finally made iTunes to work I realised that iPod ignores filenames and relies only on the embedded tags. Songs with no tags are all lumped as “Unknown Artist”. And the fucking thing doesn’t support WMA, which is about 20% of my music collection.
Another gripe I have is the touchwheel. It doesn’t work well when hands are sweaty and since I mainly use it when jogging this is a major problem. Also using the touchwheel requires some precision in finger movement, so it is quite hard to operate it when running fast. I never had that problem with the joystick style controller of the X5.
The video quality is better that that of the X5 (I believe the ipod screen has a better resolution), but converting videos to the iPod format takes ages and sometimes the resulting video has no sound! The X5 had a very powerful and fast video conversion software.
And finally, the volume is too weak even though I have put the volume limit to the maximum.
I believe the iPod has a great build quality and good ergonomics but compared to other MP3 players on the market it has too many drawbacks to deserve all the rave reviews I keep seeing on the various forums.
While I can’t say anything of the newer Ipods (I’m still using a clunky gen 1 20G that has performed flawlessly over the years, though battery life is down to about 8hrs now), my hubby has a newer Ipod. We both use Anapod for our music management. They do have a one time fee, but it’s been so long that I don’t know what it would be now. Maybe $45 or so?? Anyway, it’s a very straight forward management prog for the Ipod. I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a 3rd party app for their music management.
So, there’s no way to view music as a simple list? Are you positive? If so, I’m definitely down with this part of your complaint. Being forced to use that new flippy system is just stupid. But I’ve rarely seen Apple introduce a new feature like that without there being some way to turn it off and go to a stripped-down system of some sort.
Really? That’s lame. The Mac version of iTunes lets you specify your music folder (it’s under Preferences > Advanced).
ID3 tags are awesome – it’s worth the effort to get them set up right (there are many freeware programs that can parse filenames to automatically generate ID3 tags). As for the WMA thing, the list of formats the iPod supports is well known (MP3, AAC, Apple Lossless and Audible’s format). Would it be better if it supported more formats? Sure! But honestly, you should have done some research and chosen a player which supports WMA if that was a requirement of yours.
After all, the iPod, for all its ubiquity, doesn’t have a monopoly (which is why Apple isn’t getting hauled off to court, Fear Itself). If it doesn’t have the features you need, buy a different player.
That’s an issue with WMA being a proprietary format more than anything else. If these are CD rips, reconfigure WMP to rip to mp3. If not, dBpoweramp can convert them with the appropriate codecs. In general, I suggest you try to avoid formats like .wma, .wmv, and .rm, because of compatibility issues like these.
Of course you can - you just go to “songs”, under the music menu. The same menu where all the other views are (album, genre, artist, playlist, and the new “Cover Flow”).
The classic is my first, so I can’t really compare it to previous ones to have all these complaints (i.e. the “clunky menu” and “sticky gui”. I have no problems with the menu - maybe it’s just that its operation is slightly different than before, so it’s weird to encounter after getting used to older iPods).
Unnecessary. I would have known she meant it was given as a gift. I would not have been under the impression that someone simply handed it to her had she said “given.” Whatever, this is just my goofy ass little pet peeve. I think it sounded stupid – like someone talking about a future inherritance saying “my aunt will bequeath to me . . .” What’s that? you mean she’s going to “leave” it to you, yeah that’s what I thought Oliver Wendell Holmes.
You don’t have to use cover flow, but the cover art still shows up floating next to the menus and still shows up when you play the songs. I want no cover art at all, just the same old list they had before.
