You're *not* "copying files" to an MP3 player
on
Origin of the iPhone
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· Score: 1
See, I'm not an expert on UI design, but frankly I like the whole copying file operation to be consistent - copying from one hard drive to another, from the hard drive to a usb drive, from the computer to a phone via bluetooth, from one computer on a network to another,...
But that's the whole thing: you're not "copying files" to an MP3 player.
Well, okay, if you want to move your presentation on your MP3 player so you can copy it to the laptop in the conference room, sure. That's copying a file. And you can do that with an iPod just like with any other external memory device.
But your MP3 songs aren't ordinary files. They're songs. They have metadata, they're part of playlists, they have relational data such as CD cover images and songtexts. Almost nobody uses Windows explorer to manage songs, so why force people to use Windows explorer to put songs on an MP3 player? It makes no sense. You listen to your songs in an MP3 player application. You manage your songs in this application. You probably also subcribe to a bunch of podcasts, which are also in your MP3 player application. And if you have iTunes, you probably have some movies and TV shows in there, too. So ther's an application which knows everything about your songs. Yet you want to throw all of that away and copy your songs by hand?
I have an iPhone and an iPod nano. I use the iPod when I go jogging and the iPhone for everything else. I synchronize podcasts to both devices. I put movies and TV shows on my iPhone, and I put music on my iPod. My iPod is connected to my Mac whenever I don't use it, and my iPhone is connected to the Mac once a day. I always have a random selection of songs on my iPod, selected from well-rated but "not listened to for some time" songs. I automatically have the latest TV shows on my iPhone. When I start listening to a Podcast on my iPhone and then listen to the same podcast on my iPod, the device starts exactly where I stopped listening on the iPhone. It all just works automatically; other than plugging the devices into the Mac, I do nothing at all. If I rip new music, it's automatically included in my playlist. If a new TV show comes out, it's automatically put on my iPhone. If a new podcast is published, it's automatically put on both of my devices. I don't have to think. I don't have to copy. I don't have to manage. I don't even see that as "copying."
There is no reason at all why people should be forced to look at this as "copying" when it has nothign to do with what we normally call "copying" other than being the same "technical" action. I honestly don't understand why people want MP3 players which have to be managed manually, in the Windows explorer. I have yet to hear one actual argument which explains to me why this is a good thing, and what I gain from throwing away all the functions I have for manual copying.
You make a statement about bytecode, then claim its blazingly fast? Granted, it is faster than an interpereted language, but its nowhere near the speed of compiled language.
As an absolute statement of fact, this is not true. Since bytecode is compiled to native code when the application actually runs, it can optimize compilation to the current target platform, and it can take current usage pattern into account when compiling. There are many cases where I would expect code compiled at runtime to be faster than precompiled code.
It should be noted that throwing a tantrum is bad manners, and this is independent of whether it's an asshat or a saint doing it. So you've worked under Jobs and seen him "throwing a tantrum"? That's certainly intersting.
Only a fool Wait, you're actually trolling me. Please ignore my answer to your other post, as I will yours from now on. I suggest you get a job or a girlfriend or something to occupy your time. Thanks, and have a nice life.
Only a complete fool would argue that a crypticly named set of directories and files that you have to use software to fix beats a mountable drive with well named MP3s.
I congratulate you on insulting me. Now I look forward to actually hearing an argument explaining to me why the hell a cheap cop-out like just mounting an MP3 player as a file sysstem is actually a good thing, and why I'm a fool for preferring the MP3 player which provides more features such as syncing and automation. I think I've explained to you why I prefer my solution: I just plug in my iPod and iPhone to get all the data on them updated individually, automatically - new songs, ratings (which sync both ways), podcats, TV shows, and so on. Please explain to me how preferring the easier, better solution makes me a complete fool.
Oh and do me a favour. Stop getting your buddy to mod you insightful. It's tragic.
Well, that's actually an interesting idea you got there. The fact that you think so highly of your absurd idea that you assume everyone modding my answer to your post up must somehow be a buddy of mine makes you a pretty damn sad fuck. This might be news to you, but not everyone thinks managing an MP3 player by hand like it's 1995 is actually a good idea.
Oh, and do me a favour. Stop modding me overrated with your sock puppet accounts (because I don't actually think you have a buddy).
Wait, wait, the iPhone is a phone with the computing power close to my current PC (an old VIA, I can bet the iPhone has a better GPU than my on-board one). Almost its full size is one big screen. Doesn't all this imply that it should be able to run videos easily?
Yes. And?
If I would want a phone with less features, I would bloody not spend 900 euros on it
That's you. I moved from a new P990i to an iPhone. It has a lot less features, but I actually use the features it has, and I'm a lot happier with it.
For example, if I want an MP3 player, I want to be able to mount it like a flash drive and copy music to and from it.
Why?
Okay, I get copying from. That's useful. Fortunately, the iPod actually does allow for this. All your music is stored in an invisible directory which can easily be accessed.
I just don't get the "copy to" thing, though. I hate those dumb players which force you to use the OS to put music on them when I actually use software to manage my MP3s, and then take a few minutes after I turn them on to read all the ID3 tags into a database, or even worse, just display the music in the hierarchy it is on the device. Not to mention that it leads to all kinds of cumbersome idiocies if I add new music to my library and then want to add only the new music to my player. Also, I use smart playlists extensively. For example, my music collection does not fix on my iPhone, so I use a smart playlists which puts a bunch of random new songs on the iPhone each time I connect it to the Mac, as well as the most recent episode of my favourite podcasts, and new episodes of TV shows I like. Why in the world would I ever trade this to an MP3 player which makes me do all of that by hand?
I really have no clue why anyone could possibly think that less features could possibly be better, especially after all the other things you've said.
You want crippled? Your crappy MP3 player which forces you to put music on it using the Windows Explorer, that's crippled.
I'm afraid I don't get the point of the rest of your rambling about subnotebooks and Apple.
Which is all fine and good, but the iPhone is NOT A SMARTPHONE. At ALL.
Does it matter? What do people use their smart phones for? Personally, I mainly used my Palms and P**s for their calendars. The iPhone does that. It also has a working browser and an acceptable mailer, so it actually does more for me than the smartphones I've owned. And in february, there'll be an SDK, too.
Is the iPhone a smart phone? Depends ony our definition. Will it replace people's current smart phones? Hell yeah.
Frankly, 90% of the vaguely-sourced article strikes me complete and utter made-up bullcrap. It contains all the typical probably baseless preconceptions about Jobs and Apple that these articles and books usually contain. I doubt anyone actually closely involved with the project contributed anything to the article.
I assume you have not read the article. The point of the article is that so far, carriers like AT&T have dictated the features phones were allowed to have. Apple has changed that. Thus, the iPhone changes the rules by which the cell phone industry in the US works. Android could not have done anything like this.
Apple isnt being aggressive enough in adding features that the iphone lacks.
I'd argue the "lacking" features are what makes the iPhone good. The copycat phones which look like iPhones b ut offer all the features of Windows Mobile are missing the whole freaking point of the iPhone: It's simple and easy to use.
Android is nice, but it can't do what the iPhone has done. Well, actually, that is wrong. The iPhone didn't do anything, Apple did. And Android has no Apple. The whole point of the article was that Apple went to AT&T and basically told them "We'll give you exclusivity if you allow us to do whatever the hell we want." Android can't do that.
I am amazed that people are willing to buy an iPhone at full price AND a pay for an expensive 2 year contract. No wonder Apple is making hatloads they have made people pay twice.
Well, it's either that or not have an iPhone, and since the iPhone is, for a lot of people, so obviously superior to any other cell phone, it's worth its price.
I live in Europe and I did buy a US iPhone, and interestingly, it's the cheapest phone I've ever owned. Despite of them being subsidized, I paid more for my previous cell phones (which include a P800, a Treo 650 and a P990i).
I live in Switzerland. Every phone I've ever bought (from different carriers) has been sim-unlocked. I think it's possible to get SIM-locked phones, but you can easily get them unlocked. When I leave the country for any significant amount of time (which is often, as you can't spit in Switzerland without hitting three other countries), I buy a local pre-paid SIM card. A few months ago, I went to Cuba for two weeks, and my Swisscom SIM card actually worked, including Internet access (which is kind of a joke - my phone had faster Internet than the local, foreigners-only Internet cafés).
Europe's like what...the size of Texas? (...) Your comment displays your ignorance of America (much like most American's ignorance of Europe is so frequently pointed out.) The country is freaking HUGE.
Is this supposed to be a joke, or are you really that dumb?
Another WTF. It's just capitalism in action. Just because something is a normal result of capitalism doesn't mean nobody is allowed to complain about it.
"Ow, it's raining again, this sucks." "WTF, rain is just the laws of physics in action, you can't demand that gravity stops just because you don't want raindrops falling on your head!"
You may as well leave the network open. It's trivial to recover a WEP key.
But the intention is obviously different. If I find an open Wifi, I assume the owner is okay with me using it to check my mail. If it's WEP-encrypted, I assume he doesn't want me using it.
Here's how you recognize a fanboy: He claims something worse is actually better for some weird reason. Now observe:
the ps3 adds motion sensing as well. You didn't know that? It's actually a lot nicer than the wii's in my opinion, because it's not used on its own as much
Most people acknowledge the Wii is less powerful than the other 2 current systems
Everyone acknowledges this. It has nothing to do, however, with whether the three are in the same generation. This is a temporal question, not a question of power.
Yeah, I understand your point, I'm just telling how the words are actually being used by publishers and developers.
Except they're not. 360, PS3 and Wii are current-gen systems. Xbox, PS2 and Cube are last-gen systems. Everybody uses the words like this, except fanboys who feel the need to complain about Nintendo at every opportunity.
Next-gen is a perfectly legitimate term to describe the PS3 and 360; it distinguishes them from the Wii and PS2, which are consoles that are still viable development platforms, but are not in the same league as the 360/PS3 in terms of graphical power.
I think your English skills are a bit lacking. Let me help you with this:
dictionary.com: generation/dnren/
1. the entire body of individuals born and living at about the same time: the postwar generation.
PS3, 360 and Wii are part of the same console generation.
I think it would be feasible to get rid of region lock and include an English language version in most games. Some games already do this (Phoenix Wright on the DS, for example), because even some Japanese people appreciate an English language option in order to learn the language. The games don't need to be published over here, just give me the option to buy them and play them in English.
Slashdot Mirror
I have to give you that :-)
But that's the whole thing: you're not "copying files" to an MP3 player.
Well, okay, if you want to move your presentation on your MP3 player so you can copy it to the laptop in the conference room, sure. That's copying a file. And you can do that with an iPod just like with any other external memory device.
But your MP3 songs aren't ordinary files. They're songs. They have metadata, they're part of playlists, they have relational data such as CD cover images and songtexts. Almost nobody uses Windows explorer to manage songs, so why force people to use Windows explorer to put songs on an MP3 player? It makes no sense. You listen to your songs in an MP3 player application. You manage your songs in this application. You probably also subcribe to a bunch of podcasts, which are also in your MP3 player application. And if you have iTunes, you probably have some movies and TV shows in there, too. So ther's an application which knows everything about your songs. Yet you want to throw all of that away and copy your songs by hand?
I have an iPhone and an iPod nano. I use the iPod when I go jogging and the iPhone for everything else. I synchronize podcasts to both devices. I put movies and TV shows on my iPhone, and I put music on my iPod. My iPod is connected to my Mac whenever I don't use it, and my iPhone is connected to the Mac once a day. I always have a random selection of songs on my iPod, selected from well-rated but "not listened to for some time" songs. I automatically have the latest TV shows on my iPhone. When I start listening to a Podcast on my iPhone and then listen to the same podcast on my iPod, the device starts exactly where I stopped listening on the iPhone. It all just works automatically; other than plugging the devices into the Mac, I do nothing at all. If I rip new music, it's automatically included in my playlist. If a new TV show comes out, it's automatically put on my iPhone. If a new podcast is published, it's automatically put on both of my devices. I don't have to think. I don't have to copy. I don't have to manage. I don't even see that as "copying."
There is no reason at all why people should be forced to look at this as "copying" when it has nothign to do with what we normally call "copying" other than being the same "technical" action. I honestly don't understand why people want MP3 players which have to be managed manually, in the Windows explorer. I have yet to hear one actual argument which explains to me why this is a good thing, and what I gain from throwing away all the functions I have for manual copying.
As an absolute statement of fact, this is not true. Since bytecode is compiled to native code when the application actually runs, it can optimize compilation to the current target platform, and it can take current usage pattern into account when compiling. There are many cases where I would expect code compiled at runtime to be faster than precompiled code.
While you're at it, make it run on the iPhone. I'm still missing Sim City from my Palm days :-)
I congratulate you on insulting me. Now I look forward to actually hearing an argument explaining to me why the hell a cheap cop-out like just mounting an MP3 player as a file sysstem is actually a good thing, and why I'm a fool for preferring the MP3 player which provides more features such as syncing and automation. I think I've explained to you why I prefer my solution: I just plug in my iPod and iPhone to get all the data on them updated individually, automatically - new songs, ratings (which sync both ways), podcats, TV shows, and so on. Please explain to me how preferring the easier, better solution makes me a complete fool.
Oh and do me a favour. Stop getting your buddy to mod you insightful. It's tragic.Well, that's actually an interesting idea you got there. The fact that you think so highly of your absurd idea that you assume everyone modding my answer to your post up must somehow be a buddy of mine makes you a pretty damn sad fuck. This might be news to you, but not everyone thinks managing an MP3 player by hand like it's 1995 is actually a good idea.
Oh, and do me a favour. Stop modding me overrated with your sock puppet accounts (because I don't actually think you have a buddy).
And a nice weekend to you, sir.
Yes. And?
If I would want a phone with less features, I would bloody not spend 900 euros on itThat's you. I moved from a new P990i to an iPhone. It has a lot less features, but I actually use the features it has, and I'm a lot happier with it.
For example, if I want an MP3 player, I want to be able to mount it like a flash drive and copy music to and from it.Why?
Okay, I get copying from. That's useful. Fortunately, the iPod actually does allow for this. All your music is stored in an invisible directory which can easily be accessed.
I just don't get the "copy to" thing, though. I hate those dumb players which force you to use the OS to put music on them when I actually use software to manage my MP3s, and then take a few minutes after I turn them on to read all the ID3 tags into a database, or even worse, just display the music in the hierarchy it is on the device. Not to mention that it leads to all kinds of cumbersome idiocies if I add new music to my library and then want to add only the new music to my player. Also, I use smart playlists extensively. For example, my music collection does not fix on my iPhone, so I use a smart playlists which puts a bunch of random new songs on the iPhone each time I connect it to the Mac, as well as the most recent episode of my favourite podcasts, and new episodes of TV shows I like. Why in the world would I ever trade this to an MP3 player which makes me do all of that by hand?
I really have no clue why anyone could possibly think that less features could possibly be better, especially after all the other things you've said.
You want crippled? Your crappy MP3 player which forces you to put music on it using the Windows Explorer, that's crippled.
I'm afraid I don't get the point of the rest of your rambling about subnotebooks and Apple.
Does it matter? What do people use their smart phones for? Personally, I mainly used my Palms and P**s for their calendars. The iPhone does that. It also has a working browser and an acceptable mailer, so it actually does more for me than the smartphones I've owned. And in february, there'll be an SDK, too.
Is the iPhone a smart phone? Depends ony our definition. Will it replace people's current smart phones? Hell yeah.
It should be pointed out that the people who actually know Jobs tend to disagree with this public notion of him as a mercurial asshat.
As for your comment on the iPhone, you don't understand what the fuss is precisely because you think that more features make a better phone. Please!
Frankly, 90% of the vaguely-sourced article strikes me complete and utter made-up bullcrap. It contains all the typical probably baseless preconceptions about Jobs and Apple that these articles and books usually contain. I doubt anyone actually closely involved with the project contributed anything to the article.
I assume you have not read the article. The point of the article is that so far, carriers like AT&T have dictated the features phones were allowed to have. Apple has changed that. Thus, the iPhone changes the rules by which the cell phone industry in the US works. Android could not have done anything like this.
I'd argue the "lacking" features are what makes the iPhone good. The copycat phones which look like iPhones b ut offer all the features of Windows Mobile are missing the whole freaking point of the iPhone: It's simple and easy to use.
Like the iPod, the iPhone is useless without a PC. Synchronization, backup, music, podcasts, videos and so on all require a PC.
Android is nice, but it can't do what the iPhone has done. Well, actually, that is wrong. The iPhone didn't do anything, Apple did. And Android has no Apple. The whole point of the article was that Apple went to AT&T and basically told them "We'll give you exclusivity if you allow us to do whatever the hell we want." Android can't do that.
http://scottbournefacts.com/
Well, it's either that or not have an iPhone, and since the iPhone is, for a lot of people, so obviously superior to any other cell phone, it's worth its price.
I live in Europe and I did buy a US iPhone, and interestingly, it's the cheapest phone I've ever owned. Despite of them being subsidized, I paid more for my previous cell phones (which include a P800, a Treo 650 and a P990i).
I live in Switzerland. Every phone I've ever bought (from different carriers) has been sim-unlocked. I think it's possible to get SIM-locked phones, but you can easily get them unlocked. When I leave the country for any significant amount of time (which is often, as you can't spit in Switzerland without hitting three other countries), I buy a local pre-paid SIM card. A few months ago, I went to Cuba for two weeks, and my Swisscom SIM card actually worked, including Internet access (which is kind of a joke - my phone had faster Internet than the local, foreigners-only Internet cafés).
Is this supposed to be a joke, or are you really that dumb?
"Ow, it's raining again, this sucks."
"WTF, rain is just the laws of physics in action, you can't demand that gravity stops just because you don't want raindrops falling on your head!"
But the intention is obviously different. If I find an open Wifi, I assume the owner is okay with me using it to check my mail. If it's WEP-encrypted, I assume he doesn't want me using it.
Everyone acknowledges this. It has nothing to do, however, with whether the three are in the same generation. This is a temporal question, not a question of power.
Except they're not. 360, PS3 and Wii are current-gen systems. Xbox, PS2 and Cube are last-gen systems. Everybody uses the words like this, except fanboys who feel the need to complain about Nintendo at every opportunity.
I think your English skills are a bit lacking. Let me help you with this:
dictionary.com: generation /dnren/
1. the entire body of individuals born and living at about the same time: the postwar generation.
PS3, 360 and Wii are part of the same console generation.
I think it would be feasible to get rid of region lock and include an English language version in most games. Some games already do this (Phoenix Wright on the DS, for example), because even some Japanese people appreciate an English language option in order to learn the language. The games don't need to be published over here, just give me the option to buy them and play them in English.