Mini Review iPod touch 16gb

Overview

Early in September, Apple announced the new iPod touch would be available by the end of the month. I had read a lot of good things about the touch and when I finally got my hands on one, I just had to have it….So here I am with a...

Well people at work always ask if i've bought myself a new toy !!! They know all about my gadget lust !!!!! Will be asking Santa for a new flat screen tv for Chrimbo me thinks !!!!

Well you can hardly knock iTunes just because you've made the mistake of locking yourself into someone else's proprietary format.
This just shows the danger of not using open source formats. Unless you want to rip the whole lot again, or have an appalling loss of quality by converting, you're now at the mercy of one corporation, just like all the i-slaves. Personally, I'd rather not have Gates and Jobs dictate how I access and listen to my music. After all, who knows what device or platform you'll want to use in 5 years' time?

I don't think lack of WMA support is the only reason to hate iTunes.

And if you're going to crticise a company for tying down their products and locking in their customers then surely you must be talking about Apple, not Microsoft.

Apple are the company trying to force their customers to use Apple software to connect to Apple products. I can use any piece of software to connect my MP3 player to my PC, or none at all (it just shows up as a USB drive).

And as I was writing in my blog, I'm converting my CDs into a digital library at the moment. I'm using FLAC to get a great lossless copy digitally and that will be locked in the library. I can then use apps like Media Monkey to convert to the appropriate format for whichever device I'll be using without being locked in.

People are lazy and Apple/Microsoft relies on that. You do not have to use iTunes at all to use or sync an iPod. Apple like to tell you that you have too though. The only time you need iTunes is if you want to buy protected content from Apple's store. More fool you if you get locked in to that.

I have used TVersity to act as a server and as I have codecs installed to replay FLAC files I don't need to convert at all for listening. I can even use the Wii to listen to them! Not that I want to Yet the XBOX still can't 'see' any media over wi-fi whether I use Vista and MCE or TVersity!!! And they are from the same manufacturer!!!

I still try and buy the CD so I can decide how and when and where I listen to the tracks.

I was criticising them both - especially for the evils of DRM - although at the moment Jobs is turning out to be a far worse control freak than Gates (e.g. the iPhone lockdowns). If I buy music I expect to be able to play it on whatever I like when I like - which you can't do with a proprietary format and DRM.

WMA is the worst format of all to pick for archiving a music collection, because it's supported only be a small number of platforms, isn't the best quality, and by the fact that if you want to transcode it to another format, you'll lose even more quality (like MP3, you can't put back what it threw away on the first conversion). Whereas FLAC will give you pretty much the quility you had from CD, no matter what format you transcode it too. I can also play it natively through my Squeezbox - and the difference in quality between that and MP3 on my home system is astounding. The only downside is that it takes up more hard disk space, but that's not an issue now storage is so cheap.

I had no idea 5 years ago (let alone 10) what I would be using in 2007 to play music (especially on the move), so there's no way I can know in the future. Ripping and storing my collection to a lossless open format gives me some insurance that whatever I end up using, it'll still be accessable, and will sound as good as it does today.

I've just installed TVersity on my Windows Home Server plus all the codecs and can now listen to my FLAC library from any of my PCs using a browser!

These Windows Home Servers are interesting things. I'm wondering about using it as a local mail server next....

TVersity is great isn't it, the ability to view content in a browser is excellent... And it works fine with the XBOX on the main TV as wel.

I really need to sit down and get TVersity running on my xbox.....

It's easy, although you do have to disconnect the MCE PC first....

Ah, maybe that's why mine didn't pick up straight away then. I didn't get chance to play with it really.