Improve Your iPod with Rockbox

polar_bear` writes "The allure of the iPod is undeniable -- they're well-designed, sleek little music players that pack a lot of features into tiny packages. However, iPods fail to deliver when it comes to support for free codecs like Ogg Vorbis, and -- let's face it -- iTunes leaves a lot to be desired. If you'd like to enjoy the hardware goodness of the iPod with GPLed firmware, give Rockbox a try. Tim Lord explains how over on NewsForge.com." NewsForge is also a part of the OSTG network, and Tim Lord is "timothy", one of our own editors.

Comments

Link to the Article

[Anonymous Coward]

LINK to the article.

Re:Link to the Article

[Kristoph]

The link was added subsequently. Please do not denigrate those who are trying to help.

]{

So...

[thebdj]

So to start, iTunes sucked in 2003? The only article the submitter had going to be 3 yrs old this year. The other site really doesn't say anything except, I hate paying money for music. So great examples about the lack of iTunes.
Really, if you want to advertise the firmware that might void your warranty (not went EULA reading yet), for some added features, then go ahead. I honestly think OGG audio sounds HORRID. But please do not post your own little attack with the article.

Re:So...

[Fahrenheit 450]

People don't like itunes because it's essentially a gateway to the itunes store.

So, because I've been using iTunes for years without ever buying anything from the iTunes music store means I'm somehow using it wrong?

This argument is really just beyond silly. If you don't want to use it to visit the music store... well don't. It's like complaining about some TV channel because you don't like one of their shows. If you want to use your non-"drm laden" tracks with iTunes, just drag and drop to import and you're golden. Or, you can use another player if you want, it's no skin off my nose, just don't use such a silly damn argument for your reasoning...

Re:So...

[mjsottile77]

This sort of thing is the typical FUD that emanates from OSS zealots. An iPod, using music ripped from CDs to either MPEG-4 audio (AAC, or Advanced Audio Coding) or Apple lossless, gives both high quality AND freedom. If you own an iPod, it's not likely that you care about interoperability with other players (unless you give your music away). If you rip your own CDs, you don't have "DRM-laden music". I dislike iTunes as much as the next person, although not for DRM reasons (I like the physical CDs as "backup").

See, iPod != iTunes music store. It's a perfectly reasonable audio player that on it's own does NOT impose DRM rules on you (other than not being able to easily copy files OFF on someone elses computer). So it lacks OGG support -- yes, OGG sounds good (I don't know what the previous poster was smoking - OGG sounds fine). The iPod doesn't force you into anything even related to the iTunes music store if you don't want to use it.

And why would anyone want a "wealth of codecs"? I can't see why someone wouldn't just choose one, and stick with it, and possibly use a higher quality second choice for a subset of their music. My iPod supports a "wealth" of codecs already anyways - just not OGG.

Re:So...

[Tumbleweed]

Fortunately I was able to mod you down a little as your post is complete flamebait.

And then when you commented in the discussion, your moderation was wiped out, unless you're using a second account. :)

Re:So...

[marc_gerges]

Please name something that is a "Feature" not available on the iPod.

Gap less playback. Just can't live without it when listening to live recordings.

It's the one big thing that kept me from buying an Ipod, but I've ordered a Nano now.

And, I like the fact Rockbox seems to cope nicely with keeping one's music organized in folders - without any internal database. Makes it nicer to use the device on multiple computers, and actually use it as mass storage when you prefer listening to your tunes on a computer.

Re:So...

[DWIM]

A "wealth of codecs" is only really important when you are pirating your music from fellow people who cannot decide on a single standard and you don't want to have to be bothered to convert your booty before it goes to your player.

This is unbelievably ignorant. A wealth of codecs means that you have a wealth of choices. It means that the vast population of digital music listening people are likely to find their chosen format(s) is supported by this firmware.

For individuals, they most certainly can and do have multiple formats of music in their collection legally. I have some mp3's and a vast amount of ogg vorbis. The mp3's were free downloads. The ogg vorbis are all ripped from my own CD collection. I also have some WAV files, which are my own recordings. And I happen to like the fact that I actually have the choice to try some of the other codecs, particularly the lossless ones, such as FLAC.

Remember, choices are a good thing.

Not worth the hassle anyone?

[Odiumjunkie]

If I was going to go through the hassle and risk of an Ipod firmware upgrade, I'd greatly prefer the freedom and flexibility of something like Ipod Linux, rather than just a multi-codec jukebox platform.

Re:Not worth the hassle anyone?

[darrenf]

Couple things:
Hassle and risk?
Took me about 15 minutes to add the rockbox firmware to my iPod. As far as risk, no one has broken their iPod yet with Rockbox, and I can't imagine how they would... If something truly 'bad' happens, you can always use the iPod restore utility, even if the firmware is completely junked, since that functionality is built in to a read-only portion of the hardware.

As far as comparing it to iPodLinux, the two projects have very different goals. iPodLinux wants to take a general operating system and cram it onto a music player with as much original functionality as possible, whereas Rockbox is designed from the bottom up as a replacement firmware for music players that has better support for more formats with more features and eventually, a better interface (the most lacking aspect of Rockbox ATM).

Also, it's strange that this article mentions Rockbox only in the context of iPods, considering that it was originally designed with Archos and iRiver players in mind, and has only been working on iPods for a couple months. Hence, many things which work nicely for other targets are still quite broken on iPod.

It does have a very active dev community (I can cvs update every 3 or 5 days and see a new major feature working) and is a lot of fun to tinker with, but as far as a 'better' replacement for the iPod firmware, I really wouldn't say it's quite there yet.

Re:Not worth the hassle anyone?

[Ptur]

firmware-tampering risks? What firmware tampering risks?

Installing RockBox (and IPL) is completely 100% risk-free on ipod! Sure, there's no fancy idiot proof installer, and we should also remember that support for ipod is in early stages (but already working nicely), but you cannot brick your ipod!

Worst case, you need to use the apple recovery utility.

And once RockBox is installed, upgrading it is just drag-and-drop a bunch of files, as the bootloader is 'set-and-forget'.... ... and yes, RockBox has been mentioned on /. in the past, though not the recent past.

It all makes sense now

[Ohreally_factor]

Timothy "Lord"?

So he had his God-complex before he became a slashdot editor?

Just kidding Timothy. Please don't smite me.

Re:It all makes sense now

[gEvil (beta)]

Would you prefer CowboyJesus?

Re:It all makes sense now

[numbware]

Only if we get CmdrMohammed!

Also consider iPod Linux

[fak3r]

I installed the latest iPod Linux last week, they even have an OS X installer now, makes it far easier than it was (not like it was hard then anyway) and I love it. Gives me all the functionality of the Apple side, plus more. Also once you install it, the bootup will show you the 'Apple' logo, then if you choose Linux it'll give you Tux listening to an iPod, but if you just let it boot to the Apple side, the new (old) logo is the old 'smiling mac SE'! So nice to see that again on an apple boot! I'm sure there must be an OS X hack to make this come back...ah, so nice.

iTunes sucks?

[MustardMan]

So, just so I'm straight on this - TFA seems to indicate that the only way to get files onto rockbox is drag and drop. How, exactly, is this better than auto-sync? I plug in my ipod, all my podcasts, videos automatically re-encoded by my eyetv, and any songs I've downloaded with cabos are all automatically added to the player. Yeah, it sucks that the directories aren't in human-readable formats on the ipod, but there are plenty of third party apps to pull songs off an ipod. I keep the installer for a windows and mac version stored on my ipod.

I have yet to find a player that gives me the functionality of itunes, either. I use smart playlists CONSTANTLY to generate groupings of songs I'm likely to want to hear. Again, all handled automatically and sync'ed every time I connect the ipod. Most players don't even have the library management I have come to enjoy from itunes. The closest I ever came when I was on windows was the MEXP plugin for winamp (http://www.mexp.dk/), but that's still a far cry from itunes.

I know a lot of people who don't own ipods and still use itunes to manage their music libraries. I guess if it doesn't run on your platform of choice, that means you can't use it - but it doesn't mean itunes sucks.

Re:iTunes sucks?

[jcr]

How, exactly, is this better than auto-sync?

But it uses Ogg vorbis! It's GPL! Really, GPL is a feature, it's not just something to puff up your chest about! Oh, and it's got to be better, because otherwise rockbox is just somebody wanking for geek cred!

-jcr

Re:iTunes sucks?

[slux]

Very funny. You know, if you actually happened to have some music in that format, or any other that iPods don't support (and iPods are pretty bad as supporting a variety of audio formats goes) I think you'd find that no matter how absolutely reality-distortingly fantastic the original iPod firmware is in every other regard, it's pretty damn useless if you cannot listen to your music.

You don't even have to willingly rip your music to Vorbis - maybe you like listening to Net labels such as this one.

Rockbox /= Linux (and it's better in a lot of ways

[Anonymous Coward]

As a user who has been using Rockbox since its very first first release on the archos recorders, I have to implore all of the Linux fanboys to PLEASE not jump on the bash Rockbox in favor of Linux bandwagon. Rockbox has an entirely different philosophy than Rockbox Linux and offers several advantages, including:

Portability - Rockbox is written in C has long been designed to be hardware-independent and will compile for a whole range of mp3 players, including Archos, Apple, and Iriver Models.

Sleekness - Since Rockbox is a specifically mp3 player OS, it doesn't carry a lot of the bloat with it that Ipodlinux does. As a matter of fact, its near instantaneous boot times are one of the best aspects of the firmware.

Multiple Codec support - All the biggies (except the closed ones) are there or are under development.

Direct Disk access (this one is a biggie) - No more f-cking around with the monstrosity that is the Itunes database. For those who prefer a filesystem approach, this is a godsend, and for those who like a tagged DB, Rockbox has just added support for a pretty nice platform-independent db of its own that can be generated on teh fly by the player!

Great Community - Of all the homebrew firmware efforts for various devices that I have had experience with, Rockbox has by far the most helpful and motivated bunch I have seen.

Bjorn, Linus (no, not THAT Linus) and the rest of the Rockbox crew represent some of the best guys in the Open Source community and deserve the thanks of anyone supporting OSS. So, please no "Linux runs on my Ipod, toaster, and 8 of my 12 marital aids!" nonsense, and let's give these guys a hand.

Denied!

[Rob T Firefly]

The allure of the iPod is undeniable

I deny it. I've never really seen the appeal of the iPod over the tons of comparable, cheaper, multi-standard hard-drives-with-headphones out there.

Re:Denied!

[Dr_LHA]

Girls own iPods. You'll never get laid showning them your iRiver.

Re:Denied!

[brickballs]

60 gigs is what did it for me. There aren't to many players out there that have 60 gigs of storage on them.
The click wheel is nice too, although not a dealbreaker in and of itself.

seriously, what does this offer?

[holden caufield]

I've read through the article summary, the article, and the rockbox site, and I can't find a simple answer to the following question: What is it that this firmware offer (besides its open-software-ness). It appears that it provides ogg support, but there's not a clear description of anything else.

I also enjoyed how the author was looking for very specific things in his portable music player, and then ignored them due to price. That is capitalism at its best.

Re:seriously, what does this offer?

[drivelikejehu]

I'm an iRiver user, so I don't really know the differences between what rockbox offers on the iPod vs the iRiver, but here are some of the enhancements that made me go rockbox and never go back:

1) Gameboy emulator. Simply download a rom and execute it on your unit, and voila, instant gameboy game.
2) As was stated before, instantaneous bootup, as well as loads of other little features like changing the font used, etc.
and the main one that attracted me to rockbox:
3) Enhanced recording support. On the iRiver firmware, for some reason there was a 750mb filesize limit on the files you'd create while recording with it. So, when recording to wav it would only record for 75 minutes at a time (at which time you'd have to start recording again which would take about 10 seconds to actually start). Now, I'm an avid show taper, and have completely switched from DAT to the iRiver for recording shows. Rockbox completely does away with this stupid limitation, and increases it up to the fat32 filesize limit of 2gb. So, now I can record for over 3 hours straight. Also, recently peakmeters were added (and in the iRiver firmware you can't even control the input level when using line in, only for mic in). There's also pre-recording, which uses a circular buffer (of a length you specify) when you open the recording screen. So, I set it to 30 seconds, and once the band gets on stage I hit record, and it includes the last 30 seconds, so I don't have to guess when to start recording. Now, I don't know if there's even recording support for the ipod, although I've heard it might be possible through the headphone jack? If so, it would definitely be worth it to switch to Rockbox.

Re:seriously, what does this offer?

[grishnav]

*cough*

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/Feature Comparison
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/WhyRock box

Re:seriously, what does this offer?

[mmkkbb]

OK, I'll spell it out loud and clear for everyone.

Rockbox.

Offers.

Gapless.

Playback.

iTunes is just fine.

[Funkcikle]

I'll ignore the three year old list of complaints about iTunes, dealing with such hot issues as Titanium PowerBook drive speeds. But for someone like me:

* who does not have five trillion CDs I need to convert at once;

* who does not care what format they are in as long as I can listen to and search the files;

* who doesn't worry about album art (I already have the CDs to see that! Who can honestly say they listened to CDs on their stereo whilst holding the CD case a few inches from their face, other than when on drugs?);

* who doesn't particularly care about how much money "the poor artist" gets (if they can come up, either individually or as the kind of collective people whining about royalties infer they are, with a system which is as easy and as affordable as iTunes, I WILL BE ALL OVER IT)

and who in general just needs something to play music on his computer, everything I read about "this sucks" and "this is better" and "use that" is quite irrelevant.

So I cannot order my music files by Album in the iTunes main display. Boo bloody hoo. As long as it sits in the background, plays the music and allows me to effortlessly import new files and CDs, I really am not concerned with what else is out there.

Re:iTunes is just fine.

[Doc Scratchnsniff]

I happen to be a person who considers a good album to be a work of art in its own right, not just a collection of songs. Not being able to easily play my mp3s by album easily keeps me from ever considering an iPod.

I do not understand this statement. Here are the steps to play a particular album on an iPod:
1. Click Music.
2. Click Artists.
3. Scroll to the particular artist.
4. Click.
5. If you have multiple albums by that artist, scroll to the appropriate album.
6. Hit the play portion of the wheel or dedicated play button.

If you wish to listen to all albums for a particular artist, skip steps 4 and 5. It will play the albums in alphabetical order. If you know the name of the album you wish to listen to, but not the artist, change the word "artist" to "album" in steps 2 and 3.

Not just for iPods...

[Civil_Disobedient]

Rockbox development has been going on since (I believe) the original H120-series from iRiver. There have been several enhancements and new models that it works for.

I bought an iRiver H320 specifically because Rockbox development had advanced to the point that it could reproduce the features of the stock firmware. These days, it's gone lightyears beyond what iRiver had planned. Just a small list of improvements:

• Album Art
• On-the-go playlists
• Real peak meters (excellent for recording, and something that nearly every other MP3 player manufacturer neglects!)
• Custom skins
• Doom!

I held off on buying an MP3 player until it could work as a satisfactory replacement for my MiniDisc recorder (primarily used for recording concerts). The current RB source offers the ability to activate the backlight when your recording meters clip! Fantastic for recording in darkened event halls.

Check out current developments for the H320 series over at Mystic River.

Re:Not just for iPods...

[PCM2]

I bought an iRiver H320 specifically because Rockbox development had advanced to the point that it could reproduce the features of the stock firmware. These days, it's gone lightyears beyond what iRiver had planned.

For the H120, also. Maybe the biggest feature the Rockbox firmware brings is true gapless playback for all formats except MP3 -- and then again, if you encode your MP3s with LAME (and who doesn't?) you can get gapless with those, too. This is a feature that iRiver promised H120 owners but never delivered. Thanks Rockbox!

Am I the only one that actually likes iTunes?

[green pizza]

What's with all of the iTunes dissing? I'm happy with iTunes. It's a slick app, has more features than I'll ever need, and I *love* the smart playlists feature. The only thing better would be a full regex feature, but even then I'd probably just keep using the existing smart playlists gui. I really have no complaints anymore. I thought the Windows version sucked up a little too much ram, but now that all of my machines have 512meg or 1gb, I really don't notice the memory footprint anymore.

I've used MusicMatch, MediaPlayer, SonicStage, RealOne, and Anapod. I prefer iTunes by far.

Re:Am I the only one that actually likes iTunes?

[jambarama]

Give "Amorok" a try. I don't know if it's been ported to Windows, but IMHO it is the best media player out there. It has all the usual - links to iPod, supports automatic tagging (musicbrainz), cd burning, intelligent playlists, - plus it actively watches a directory for new music, finds other music you may like based on what you play (audioscrobbler) and has all sorts of advanced features. It is terrifically customizable, and has a reasonably light footprint considering it's options.

iTunes is very nice, but amarok is killer.

Nice list of complaints

[Have Blue]

I like how the list of what's wrong with iTunes is from three years ago.

Not finished...

[Maugrim]

Currently Rockbox isn't complete, everything works really well, and I plan on putting it on my iPod, but we experimented with my friends iPod Video and some of the battery stuff isn't complete, so with Rockbox he only gets about 4-6 hours of battery life. So give it a few more months for them to finish it, then enjoy!

Winamp Folks, Winamp for crying out loud

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm posting as an AC because I'm at work and don't have my password handy.

1. Download and install Winamp 5.21

2. Get ML_IPOD 1.31 plug-in - do not use 1.3 provided on the Winamp plug-ins page. The an improved version of this is supposedly to be included in the next release of Winamp. Native Winamp support is limited without the plug-in to enabling you play the tunes off your iPod only. ML_IPOD 1.31 allows you formatting, creation of playlists most importantly maintaining your iPod.

3. Sorry, but right now you still have to pay for Winamp PRO version to be able to rip OGG, WMA, etc., to .mp3 or .aac - you can blame Apple for that.

And get the ClearOne skin. And get the Winamp CD Case RC3 from Aqua-soft or NeoWin.

My Point? ANYTHING is better that the bloated CPU stealing piece of SHIT that iTunes has become...

Mike H. - Columbus, Ohio

Should be cripple...

[Chanc_Gorkon]

I woudl be crippling my iPod by using rockbox. It would take away video from my 5th gen. Listening to OGGS ain't with that!

Rockbox on the Archos

[devilsbrigade]

before i bought my Ipod, i had a 20 Gig archos jukebox. I found out about Rockbox and flashed it. I enjoyed it, at the time the Ipod was well out of my price range, and the Firmware flash was as close to the ipod as possible. It listed your Songs by artist, which was my preferred way to list them, in folders, much like itunes. You could play the whole list, or just a particular artist. You could change the Screen, invert it, flip it, negative it, and the EQ was probably about 10 times better than the one on the archos. Best part was, the firmware was seriously just a folder the loaded before the archos...deflashing it was as simple as deleting the rockbox folder.

"Still" leaves a lot to be desired?

[jpellino]

Based on what - a three year old diatribe about three-versions-ago iTunes on the second-slowest TiBook ever made?
Downhillbattle? So they don't like paying for music. So don't use iTMS, rip your CDs - these folks seeem to think iTunes forces you to buy thru Apple.
You want to pimp apps here, great - but citing old and irrelevant arguments?

Doom II included!

[Anonymous Coward]

Heres a video of a later rockbox release running Doom II on a 5G iPod.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra6rqKSqBSk

That seems a pretty good incentive to try Rockbox.

Part of the allure of the later iPod models is the purty OS X looking UI they sport.

From the screenies I have seen of Rockbox its a white text on a black background menu system.

Food for thought.

Submitter uses poor links

[necro81]

The link that the summary included about leaving a lot to be desired dates back to October 2003. Many of the issues have since been taken care of in the 2-1/2 years of software revisions and updates. The first few issues that the article states are really hardware problems related to the Titanium powerbook, which is even older.

The second link the submitter uses (desired) links to a long rant about how the iTunes Music Store gyps artists out of their due and is a poor choice for end users because you pay too much for lossily-compressed music.

And yet, the submission is about Rockbox, which is a replacement for the firmware inside of an iPod (and some other music players). The open-source firmware allows you to change the look and feel of the user interface and supports some other music codecs. This allows the iPod, its users, and independent artists to be freed from the tyranny of iTunes and iTMS [some sarcasm added].

The relevant link to Tim Lord's article at Newsforge is missing from the summary entirely, although its existence is alluded to.

Do I dare to use the term non sequitur here? Changing the firmware on your iPod will only change how you interact with music you already have now. It won't change how iTMS or iTunes work. I would argue that it doesn't do much to help out independent artists, either. If you want to support artists directly, you aren't going to be buying label-backed music from iTMS anyway. How many independent artists release their materials solely using Ogg Vorbis? I'll note that, until this past year, iTMS didn't even break even.

Don't get me wrong - Rockbox is really cool. I think having a customizable interface for the iPod is a neat thing to tinker with. I would agree that the iPod should support more formats than it currently does. But trying to introduce people to Rockbox by using old links and feeding on barely-related resentment for the iTMS model, while forgetting the relevant link at NewsForge, is a strange way to go about it.

OGG

[shidoshi]

Ah, Slashdot... always making it seem like the rest of the world outside of Slashdot actually cares about OGG. Seriously... can we stop bringing it up every time the iPod is mentioned? Most people don't care. I know what OGG is, and understand it, and I STILL don't care. If a great deal of iPod owners cared, Apple would have given the iPod support for it by now, trust me.

Some people on here like it - we all understand that. Just, you know... ease up a bit.

Rockbox Does support Video

[meehawl]

For good reason - it doesn't support video.

You sound like you are very sure, but you are wrong. Rockbox has supported video on my Archos for several years now. It's an impressive feat, considering the extremely limited CPU available. I don't doubt that as soon as the major plumbing work for Rockbox on the beta iRiver and iPod platforms is finished, video will be implemented.

Media Center

[meehawl]

I have yet to find a player that gives me the functionality of itunes, either

That's just because you haven't tried Media Center. I enjoy its more expressive SmartLists, and use it to sync between the Archos, iRiver, and iPod players. MC is what iTunes wants to be when it grows up.

Like installing Linux on a Mac mini...

[argent]

Apple's hardware isn't all that exceptional. It tends to cost more and have fewer features than competing brands... the idea of spending extra for a Mac or an iPod and then replacing the native software with open source code that runs just as well (or better!) on more powerful, less expensive, and often better designed hardware from other vendors just blows my mind.

I will acknowledge that there is some advantage to the iPod... not because the hardware is so good, but because the hardware has remained consistent enough for an accessories market to thrive.

But, still, if it wasn't for Apple's software I would have neither an iPod nor a Mac.

Re:Like installing Linux on a Mac mini...

[eltonito]

To comment that Apple includes fewer hardware features than competing brands is ignoring the fact they continually push new technologies that other companies blindly ignore. USB is a shining example of this. Apple was the first to embrace it and without them PC's wouldn't have moved away from legacy components for years*. I can't imagine life without a USB MP3 device or my 1GB USB flash drive and I don't think USB would've progressed so quickly without Apple pushing it.

Unfortunately FireWire was never met with the same open arms by the PC industry, but that's mostly due to improvements in USB 2.0 and PC manufacturers drive to save $10 per system on something that would see limited use. Me? I use the hell out of FireWire and I'm happy Apple includes it.

Admittedly the quality of the hardware they include can be questionable (dear god, why do their choices in optical drives suck so bad) but their feature sets tend to be respectable.

* I went to COMDEX the year before and the year the iMac broke. I recall few manufacturers pushing USB the year before, but the post-iMac era was all abuzz about USB. PC and peripherals manufacturers seemed to be rushing onto the bandwagon with buggy and poorly thought out products and add-on's. Admittedly, PC's had USB before the Mac but no one committed to using it the way Apple did.

Re:Like installing Linux on a Mac mini...

[default luser]

The thing is, Apple supplements their boring, typical hardware by releasing unique devices that are ahead of their competition.

Just look at the Mac Mini. When it was released, NO vendor had a desktop anything like it, and even today the Intel Mac Mini is competitively priced with Intel Core-based knockoffs. The difference is, the Mac Mini is ESTABLISHED thanks to Apple taking a risk, and the rest are scrabbling for marketshare.

The original Ipod was smaller than anything else, but offered the capacity of a hard drive player. It was ungodly expensive, but it became rooted because the industry took too damn long to respond to the threat.

The Nano is another recent product that still has no competition. I don't know how, but Apple managed to get a deal for flash devices twice the capacity of their competitors (32Gb, while the rest of the industry was on 8Gb). The result was the 4GB Nano, with room for Apple to upgrade the line to 8GB in the future (once the 32Gb chip becomes cheap).

The fact that the Nano 2GB was priced at only $10-30 more than most other 1GB players shows just how lazy and wussified the whole industry is outside of Apple. Apple set the standard for pricing of 1GB players with the release of the Shuffle, but then instead of the industry pushing prices down and capacity up, they coasted while charging $10-30 less than an equivilant Shuffle. Then, when the 2GB Nano was released for $10-30 more than a 1GB player (despite the fact that the Nano used TWO 8Gb chips), was still competitively small AND had a smashing screen, the rest of the industry looked painfully stupid.

THIS is why Apple owns the industry...because they're the first manufacturer since DIAMOND MULTIMEDIA's RIO PMP to really PUSH the industry.

I have purchased Creative Labs Muvo players in the past because I WANT drag & drop without having to use a media library, but with Rockbox now I can turn any Ipod into exactly the interface I want. Suddenly, I don't have to compromise on larger size and less capacity for about the same price just to get some key features I need...Rockbox makes that possible.

Full Disclosure: I bought my first apple product EVER last week, a Mac Mini. The OS is decent, but I could care less about the apps. I don't like Safari, so I have Firefox. I don't want to be forced to use a media library with Itunes, so I went through the trouble of installing XMMS. I bought the Mini because it was tiny, VERY quiet at nominal room temperature, competitively priced with other small Intel Core solutions. It also offered me the chance to try OS X, but fall back to Windows or Linux if I really hated the experience...that's something no other small Core box could offer.

If the industry continues to lag Apple concerning small flash players, I may purchase a Nano or equivilant sometime in the future.

Re:iTunes DOES suck

[Fahrenheit 450]

Why can I not view my music in a tree view? I *hate* having to scroll through 1000's of songs to find what I'm looking for. So, I want to be able to view the tree by artist, genre, year, and that should just about do it.

See that eyeball looking thing in the upper right hand corner that says "Browse"? Click on it.

Re:Finally...

[XenoPhage]

Agreed.. I've had an H140 for a few years now and I still can't see the draw of the iPod. Yeah, it's pretty. Yeah, the buttons are a little easier to use, but I would NEVER give up the ability to make my own directories and order my songs the way *I* want... I use it to store all sorts of information in addition to music..

I haven't jumped into the rockbox pool yet, but I've been watching it for a long time.. I'm almost ready to take the plunge.. Almost.. Just afraid of bricking my iRiver.. I use this thing *EVERY* day!

Re:Learn to Link

[Firehed]

While stated a bit trollishly (??), it's definately true. I'd bet 95% of iTMS purchasers aren't aware that they're downloading .m4p AAC files and not mp3s. AAC might not be open-source, but at least 80% of the players on the market support it. Likewise - I'm hesitant to rip any of my music to Apple's lossless format since no other players support it, but I've still bought a few tracks from iTunes where that's much more of an issue as I can't just re-rip them. As it is, 320k would probably be OTT for my listening needs. Yeah, I'd like flac support too, but in reality no other player I'd want (not that I want to change players) supports it either, so I'll live with it. While the iPod could do with a decent crossfade option, ogg's gapless playback isn't enough to make me want to give a crap about the lack of support for it.

Why not do something useful and try to get minidisc players to support mp3? I loved the features of that thing, but that god-awful software just ruined it (having to transcode from basically the world standard for portable audio to some limited-transfer proprietary thing was easily the worst idea in the history of portable devices).

It's not worth their time. Even if Apple adds ogg support by means of general-purpose CPU decoding, the people bitching for it will find something else to bitch at. Apple's doing well and people need a reason to hate them for it. Just give it up, people!

To parent poster: I tried the same argument about a week ago. I was just bitched at too. You can't win this one, so I'd just give up before you get modded down.

Why All the Hate for Rockbox?

[Castar]

Wow, I'm surprised. Here's a group of people working on an open-source project that has been very successful, hacking in features for electronics that the original manufacturers didn't see fit to include. It sounds like something Slashdot should be all over, right?

But no... Because they think that some improvements can be made to an Apple product, they're suddenly demonized. People are falling over themselves to say just how *utterly fantastic* the stock firmware and iTunes are, and how horrible Rockbox is for even attempting to change it.

iPods aren't perfect. Perhaps they're good enough, but there are some major features that they lack in regards to other forms of playing music (like, say, CDs or even LPs), a big one being gapless playback. Rockbox is trying to fix that. And not specifically for the iPod, in fact the iPod isn't even their main target. They started out improving the iRiver players, and now they're porting it to many platforms.

As has been noted elsewhere, it's not done yet. It's a very early port (a few months old) and the official release milestone target for iPod support is sometime in November.

I don't run Rockbox currently, because I have a Rio Karma which is already perfect. ;-) But I at least applaud them for taking their free time and trying to make DAPs better for everyone.

Re:Rockbox /= Linux (and it's better in a lot of w

[hattig]

No more f-cking around with the monstrosity that is the Itunes database. For those who prefer a filesystem approach, this is a godsend, and for those who like a tagged DB, Rockbox has just added support for a pretty nice platform-independent db of its own that can be generated on teh fly by the player!

wtf? do some people just go out to make things difficult for themselves?

In all my time as an iPod owner I've never had to deal with the iTunes database.

For every minute I haven't had to 'f-ck around' with renaming files, sorting out the filesystem for my media, etc, I've done something far more enjoyable, worthwhile or profitable. I used to spend a lot of time dealing with my Foobar2000 + file system setup, and I'll never get that time back. iTunes is actually a pretty good application out of the box, and when it comes to listening to music, I'm far more into 'appliance mode software' that 'build it from scratch' software.

And then you say that (clearly due to demand), the software has added in a system that does all this. However someone else said the UI of Rockbox sucked. I appreciate all the technical effort and knowhow and skill that has been put into writing this software, but clearly it is not being written against what users want to do on their system.

So tell me again, as someone who has his CD collection ripped in AAC, an open format that actually isn't half bad, why I, and the vast majority of iPod owners, would want to downgrade their iPod experience?

It's fun to have Rockbox on my iPod

[stonefry]

I put the RockBox firmware on my 5G ipod about a week ago because I saw that you can play doom on it. That being said, I did some research before I loaded it. As has been said here, you cannot void your warranty or break your iPod by uploading new firmware. If anything goes wrong, you can always do a full restore. I have all of my music backed up anyway, so the worst scenario would be having to wait 15 minutes for the 50Gb or so to load back on to the player.

Look, the firmware doesn't take a whole lot of space on the player and you can always boot into the original Apple firmware whenever you want by holding down the menu button when starting the player. So just go for it, it'll be fun.

I am a big fan of open source software, especially when it is worked on so actively. The games are pretty neat too. Let's face it, iPod stinks in the extras department. When I get bored, I can just boot into RockBox and play some Pac-man or Arkanoid. It's also fun to show to friends.

The only down side is the battery consumption, it really needs some optimizing in that department.

-stonefry

Re:Learn to Link

[X0563511]

You're an idiot because you are closeminded, irrational, and overly hostile (for no apparent reason).

Ogg probably never did any harm to you, and if you don't like it you're welcome to your opinion. But expressing it in such a manner is just immature.

Actually Released yet for Ipod?

[Devalia]

Whilst the iRiver releases are there, and i hear work great, last time i checked (a week or two ago) the Ipod Support, whilst functional was strictly Daily Builds -- most of which worked well, but lacked polish to a usable point at the moment - what I saw worked well, just the bugs etc - I installed it with no problems on my Ipod Video (tho installation meants extracting broadcom drivers video support isnt there yet (unless I missed it) and put on a more bearable GUI there were quite a few problems (trying to go back to menu from playing screen etc) and crashes requiring a reset werent uncommon.

On the other hand, not ahving to use software to transfer, other than nautilus/mv are a great advantage, and I cant wait for a full release of this. Keep up the good work :)

benefits of codec support

[David Jao]

A "wealth of codecs" is only really important when you are pirating your music from fellow people

I've been using slashdot long enough to have a four digit UID, and I must admit that I have never during all this time seen anybody say anything more false. In fact, not only is your statement false, it is the exact opposite of the truth in an egregiously offensive and inciteful way.

Since you seem to lack even the minimal imagination necessary to envision why non-pirates would ever want to use an alternative codec, let me put it to you bluntly and in great detail. Right now, as of this writing, the aotuv vorbis encoder is widely believed to have by far the best sound quality of any codec at low bitrates. There are detractors who disagree, but the funny thing is, those decractors never bother to perform any actual listening tests, and if you bother to perform actual listening tests, you'll find that ogg vorbis not only wins the quality battle, it wins it by a metric mile.

We're talking stuff on the scale of "Ogg vorbis at 96 kbit beats the world's best mp3 encoder at 128 kbit and no other codec at 96 kbit even comes close to beating mp3." That kind of thing.

Now, before you get all up in arms about how portable players have unlimited disk space and file size is no longer a constraint, let me remind you that the iPod nano has a maximum of 4 gigabytes of disk space as of this writing, and no other flash player on the market has larger capacity. Thus anybody in the market for a totally skip-proof digital audio player is stuck with a maximum of 4GB drive capacity, and in this context, file size is important.

Therefore, people who rip their own CDs and play them on flash players have tremendous incentive to choose the highest quality audio format when ripping their CDs, so as to maximize the use of their portable player's limited disk space.

That is why a wide range of supported codecs is important. Coincidentally, Rockbox supports ogg vorbis on the iPod nano, which is exactly the usage scenario I describe.

But wait, there's more!

Vorbis may be the quality leader today, but this has not always been the case. In the past there have been periods where vorbis was not the quality leader, and in the future I fully expect other audio formats to surpass it in time. Hence, in order to guarantee the maximal utility of an audio player in the future, it is mandatory that the user must be able to add support for new codecs as time goes on, in order to take advantage of the high rate of improvements in the audio codec landscape.

Needless to say, the only way to guarantee the ability to add new codecs in the future is to run free software on your audio player. Coincidentally, that's exactly what Rockbox is: it's free software.

For all these reasons and more, a wide range of supported codecs is necessary to have in an audio player, ESPECIALLY if you rip all your music from your own CD collection and thereby possess total control over the choice of what codec to use.

It's getting there...

[WDubois]

... but it's not there yet. I installed the daily build from some time last week on my 4G iPod. Basically, it's a scrolling text screen interface. Fine, that's easy to deal with. Once I got it to recognize my already installed 18+Gb of songs I tried to play. Unexplained pauses abound. Although this is (somewhat) addressed in the FAQ (and none of the suggestions applied to me, BTW) it was in itself a dealbreaker. Sorry, gapless playback infers that you don't also have gaps during the songs!!!

I understand that it's still a work in progress, and I admire the work that's obviously gone into this. Just not ready for primetime yet. I'll check back in a few months and see where it is then. Meanwhile, Apple's own OS is working fine for me.

BTW... FWIW, I'm not using iTunes at all. I'm a Gentoo Linux user that alternates between Amarok and gtkPod for interfacing to my iPod. Right now, Amarok is my favorite. Just right-click to choose (an album, song, or playlist) and transfer.