Just because you can't see any other reason, that doesn't mean it is the only reason.
Another reason is speed of UI and battery life. iTunes and iPod keeps a database of all the songs in the library, with both caches of the ID3 tags and a few fields that are iPod/iTunes specific. If the iPod had to read from each audio file's ID3 tags all the time, that would be slower and use more battery. Worse still if e.g. the play count in the ID3 tag of a file had to be updated after each play.
But of course the main reason for it is no doubt to discourage accidental or casual viral piracy. An MP3 player with a full two way sync of files, if used on machine A, then machine B then machine A again would result in 3 machines containing the entire contents of all devices. Apple pioneered Music download stores - they would never have got record labels on board if they had created such a viral piracy device.
I can certainly see that an iPod is not the preferred device for someone seeking to increase their music collection by such viral syncing.
First, the dialog that says "we're going to sync to an empty library and erase all your music" DOESN'T EXIST. Well, as far as I can tell. I've been looking and I've found no evidence.
First problem: you're talking price with a contract. Which means you need to examine the length of the contract and what's included to know if that's comparing like with like,
Second problem: a cheap noname Android phone is not an equivalent of an iPhone.
they're made thinner, new batteries are used... It's overdesigned in some ways, but the selling point is that it's a "design" in the first place for people who care what a laptop looks like rather than how it works.
thinner and better batteries are not "what it looks like". It's more time away from mains power / less weight. And yet because of the case design, being thinner isn't giving it more flex, which means reliability doesn't suffer.
Then you've got stuff like SSDs on the new Macbook Airs. You've got Magsafe connectors - that's saved me expensive repairs several times.
That whizzed right over your head. Of course my Granny doesn't yearn for her twin tub. She's got the common sense to prefer it when machines do her chores for her.
The Iphone 4 is now £35/mo, the Desire S is £25/mo and the HTC Sensation (a much higher specced phone than the Iphone4) is £30.
The Sensation is a far closer tech comparison for the iPhone 4 than the Desire. But the software (built in and third party availability) is much worse. At £5 a month difference most people would prefer the iPhone 4.
I know a bunch of non-car geeks who complain about how it used to be they could pretty easily fix many minor problems of cars from the 60s-80s
Oh I've heard them too. But I'd say that they ARE car geeks. People who aren't car geeks don't want to fix the car themselves. But the reality is that the cars of today have faults far less often than the cars of the 60s-80s. e.g. Computer controlled timing of fuel injection is much less user tinkerable than carburettors. They are also many times more reliable. You CAN fix a carburettor problem yourself. You probably wouldn't have the problem in the first place with computer controlled fuel injection.
The biggest issue I have is that it seems important to me, even as a user, to know where my files are.
In the early days of banking, it was important for people to know where their bank notes were held. Where's the safe? Is it secure? Can bank robbers steal from it? Nowadays nobody cares. You give your cash at one bank branch, or you trust that your employer has. And you trust that when you want it, an ATM will give you notes of an equivalent value. Nobody cares how they do it. What happens to the money in the meantime.
So long as you have an easy way to put a song onto a computing device and and easy way to get it out again when you want it, what do you care where it's stored? It's an implementation detail. An as you rightly point out if it ever does matter, then that's a flaw in the abstraction and is an argument for fixing the flaw, not for retaining file system management.
Media Managers like iTunes or WinAmp are fine, *as long as you're in that program*. I only use Winamp, and I like the playlists etc. But I can't put the playlist on my car stereo, where I can copy the files over in Explorer just fine.
Modern car stereos tend to be compatible with iPods.
Abstraction is only useful if it works across other programs, so it needs to be in the OS, not bolted on in another application.
Well it needs standards for it to work technically, whether that is implemented in the OS or the app, and whether it is open or proprietary.
But the user shouldn't be exposed to the implementation. And that's what accessing the file system is.
I don't think that's a really valid argument, 99% of media players that aren't the iPod support more music and video formats than the iPod does by default.
Possibly. Particularly with open audio formats. But not being compatible with OGG and FLAC isn't really an issue as MP3 is the overwhelming common case for downloads, with AAC coming second. And CD rips will be in whatever format you choose.
But those MP4 players don't support more video formats than iTunes is able to automatically transcode from.
And that's the big thing right there, and what the average geek seems to be unable to comprehend...geeks hate Apple products because you can't do whatever you want with them...but in the Real World of stupidity and moronicy...not being able to do whatever you want with a device is an advantage. They want simplicity.
You're halfway there. Thing is, lots of geeks love Apple products too. If a geek's work is programming or administrating some complex IT system, the last thing they want is to be futzing around with flaky technology that's not central to their work. They want something that just works. Something that's well designed.
powerpc was for some time far more capable than x86.
Originally, yes. That's why Apple originally chose it. But by the time Apple migrated to X86, PowerPC had been behind for years.
it eventually lost its advantages because its manufacturers could not care less about its development, not because it was "less popular"
It's manufacturers "could not care less about development" because it wasn't selling many i.e. it wasn't popular. We're talking business not mood swings.
How could they be so wrong? They weren't. Steve Jobs just had luck, plenty of it.
Yeah that's right. And Dvorak is just unlucky in being wrong on every other prediction he's made about Apple as well. Heck not just Apple, he's probably the world's most unsuccessful predictor of the tech business. If he didn't have an intriguing surname that coincidentally is the same as a QWERTY keyboard alternative, nobody would know who he is.
You know Tim Cook has been at Apple for 13 years. He was hired by Jobs soon after Jobs return to Apple. He's seen everything Jobs has done to make the company what it is today. And Jobs has seen everything Cook has contributed to Apple's business over those 13 years. Cook has also deputised for Jobs when he's been away with health problems several times since 2004.
Jobs knows very well what he's getting as his replacement in Tim Cook. Essentially Cook has had a 13 year interview and trial period. I'd be a lot more concerned if Jobs was hiring externally.
It won't have USB, because USB doesn't carry the audio/video signals that the proprietary connector does. And for the mobile products Apple wants visual simplicity. One multi-role connector, not multiple connectors.
Last time he left the company just wandered around in a fog. I would expect that to happen again this time.
I wouldn't. Last time there was a power struggle, and a sugar-water salesman won and pushed Jobs out. The company was heading in a direction Jobs hated.
This time Jobs has had a lot of time to consider his failing health, and has spent time making sure that Apple is set up in a manner, and with the best execs, to continue on a successful path.
Most of the people who know best how Jobs inspired successful products and a successful company work for Apple, and are keen to continue his successes.
Wozniak was the one who designed PCs that people wanted. Steve Jobs...is not a designer of anything other than good business plans.
Woz was a talented engineer who knew how to connect a 6502, some memory and some other chips on a circuit board. The one who knew "what people wanted" and told him what to design was Steve Jobs.
Only on Slashdot would electronic engineering be considered more important than vision and good business plans, in making a successful company.
Apple went downhill after Sculley forced Jobs out. By 1997 they were on the verge of bankruptcy. Jobs turned the company around and they are now one of the 2 most valuable companies in the world. Woz hadn't been there since the late 1980s. You'd have to be a complete idiot to credit Woz with Apple's success rather than Jobs.
You're confusing "marketing" with "making a better product".
Palm was good as a PDA back in the day. By the time they added phone functionality, there were better products on the market. When the iPhone came out, it had way better built in apps and UI than anything from Palm, but it lacked the ability to add apps. Once the iPhone was updated to allow Apps, everything Palm had was completely outclassed. Previous generation stuff. And Palm never caught up.
My point, which you still don't get, is that you're gaining absolutely nothing in terms of ease-of-use by picking Apple over another mp3 player vendor. In fact, depending on the task, you'll have a more difficult time with the Apple product!
That might be your point, but it simply isn't true. I bought a Mac and I bought an iPod. I put a music CD into the Mac and iTunes started up and ripped it, and ejected the CD at the end. Rinse and repeat with a stack of CDs. I have a stack of CDs ripped in iTunes without pressing a single button. I then connect the iPod via USB, and after OKing a dialog all my music is on the iPod ready for play.
Not only is your non-Apple solution not easier than that, it's impossible to envisage a system that's easier than that. What are you going to do, eliminate the one button press?
I buy an album of MP3 songs from Amazon. I drag and drop the folder onto the device icon. The songs are copied to the generic device. Again, seamless to the generic player.
Right, so you now have a copy of the music in your Downloads folder and on your MP3 player. Do you leave that in the Downloads folder? Where do you play it from if you want to play it on your PC? Would you want to move it to somewhere in your My Music Directory? Do you need to navigate to some sub-folder? Perhaps you are storing by artist? Or by album name? Do you want to rename the folder to fit into your own naming scheme?
Did you ever do housekeeping on a non-geeks computer, and find MP3 files all over the place? Some in Downloads, some under My Music, Some under My Documents, some on the desktop. I did.
Oh yes, then there are PCs with different downloads directories for different browsers. God I hate PCs.
With every other MP3 player, you don't have to worry about your music magically disappearing.
There are many ways your music can "magically disappear" with other MP3 players. Doing a select all then hitting delete for example would be the equivalent of answering yes to a dialog that said it's going to wipe your iPod.
But then there's all the ways you can physically lose or break your MP3 player. After all as the contents of your MP3 player has apparently been built up from the contents of multiple PCs, you aren't going to magically restore the data to it as you will if you buy a replacement iPod to replace a broken one.
Want to copy music from your iPhone? Find a tutorial, download some sketchy software, pray. Want to copy music from your Blackberry, Android, etc.? Plug it in, drag and drop.
All devices have pros and cons. The anti-Apple crowd on Slashdot have found a single con with the iPod/iTunes system, and apparently that rules their decision. However, most people buy iPods rather than other MP3 players because the pros of iPods outweigh the cons for them.
Enjoy your non-Apple MP3 player of that's your choice. No one is forcing you to make the same decision as others.
Number of times I've wanted to put music on my MP3 player from someone else's computer, in 10 years. Twice. I've got them to email the file to my computer instead.
Number of times I've benefitted from iPods auto-syncing: Every single time I've added music to my collection. So that's hundreds of times.
Would I swap from an iPod to a drag-'n'drop style MP3 player? No fucking chance. Manual file management is a chore, not a pleasure.
My granny loved her twin tub washing machine. It had the facility for her to drag the clothes from the washer tub and drop them into the spin dryer tub. Drag'n'drop. Simple. She bemoans todays front loading washing machines which automatically transition from washing clothes to drying them, without her intervention.
Why should she have to learn a new way of washing clothes? It's ridiculous.
So this new "search engine" thing is a device that allows you to claim anything you like without having to back it up yourself? In that case, I say the earth is flat. And I bet that search engine thing will find something to back me up.
Slashdot Mirror
How many times do I have to reply to your posts with evidence that is does?
http://www.ipod.org.uk/ipod_sync.gif
Just because you can't see any other reason, that doesn't mean it is the only reason.
Another reason is speed of UI and battery life. iTunes and iPod keeps a database of all the songs in the library, with both caches of the ID3 tags and a few fields that are iPod/iTunes specific. If the iPod had to read from each audio file's ID3 tags all the time, that would be slower and use more battery. Worse still if e.g. the play count in the ID3 tag of a file had to be updated after each play.
But of course the main reason for it is no doubt to discourage accidental or casual viral piracy. An MP3 player with a full two way sync of files, if used on machine A, then machine B then machine A again would result in 3 machines containing the entire contents of all devices. Apple pioneered Music download stores - they would never have got record labels on board if they had created such a viral piracy device.
I can certainly see that an iPod is not the preferred device for someone seeking to increase their music collection by such viral syncing.
No dialog box that says "we're erasin' your stuff" -- I love how Apple users felt the need to LIE about that! Pathetic.
They aren't lying. There is no conspiracy. You have just got it wrong.
First, the dialog that says "we're going to sync to an empty library and erase all your music" DOESN'T EXIST. Well, as far as I can tell. I've been looking and I've found no evidence.
You're wrong. Not only does it exist, the button you have to press to continue says "Erase and Sync".
http://www.ipod.org.uk/ipod_sync.gif
QED.
$300+ iphones, $50 android phone.
First problem: you're talking price with a contract. Which means you need to examine the length of the contract and what's included to know if that's comparing like with like,
Second problem: a cheap noname Android phone is not an equivalent of an iPhone.
they're made thinner, new batteries are used... It's overdesigned in some ways, but the selling point is that it's a "design" in the first place for people who care what a laptop looks like rather than how it works.
thinner and better batteries are not "what it looks like". It's more time away from mains power / less weight. And yet because of the case design, being thinner isn't giving it more flex, which means reliability doesn't suffer.
Then you've got stuff like SSDs on the new Macbook Airs. You've got Magsafe connectors - that's saved me expensive repairs several times.
Design is as much how it works as how it looks.
That whizzed right over your head. Of course my Granny doesn't yearn for her twin tub. She's got the common sense to prefer it when machines do her chores for her.
The Iphone 4 is now £35/mo, the Desire S is £25/mo and the HTC Sensation (a much higher specced phone than the Iphone4) is £30.
The Sensation is a far closer tech comparison for the iPhone 4 than the Desire. But the software (built in and third party availability) is much worse. At £5 a month difference most people would prefer the iPhone 4.
I know a bunch of non-car geeks who complain about how it used to be they could pretty easily fix many minor problems of cars from the 60s-80s
Oh I've heard them too. But I'd say that they ARE car geeks. People who aren't car geeks don't want to fix the car themselves. But the reality is that the cars of today have faults far less often than the cars of the 60s-80s. e.g. Computer controlled timing of fuel injection is much less user tinkerable than carburettors. They are also many times more reliable. You CAN fix a carburettor problem yourself. You probably wouldn't have the problem in the first place with computer controlled fuel injection.
The biggest issue I have is that it seems important to me, even as a user, to know where my files are.
In the early days of banking, it was important for people to know where their bank notes were held. Where's the safe? Is it secure? Can bank robbers steal from it? Nowadays nobody cares. You give your cash at one bank branch, or you trust that your employer has. And you trust that when you want it, an ATM will give you notes of an equivalent value. Nobody cares how they do it. What happens to the money in the meantime.
So long as you have an easy way to put a song onto a computing device and and easy way to get it out again when you want it, what do you care where it's stored? It's an implementation detail. An as you rightly point out if it ever does matter, then that's a flaw in the abstraction and is an argument for fixing the flaw, not for retaining file system management.
Media Managers like iTunes or WinAmp are fine, *as long as you're in that program*. I only use Winamp, and I like the playlists etc. But I can't put the playlist on my car stereo, where I can copy the files over in Explorer just fine.
Modern car stereos tend to be compatible with iPods.
Abstraction is only useful if it works across other programs, so it needs to be in the OS, not bolted on in another application.
Well it needs standards for it to work technically, whether that is implemented in the OS or the app, and whether it is open or proprietary.
But the user shouldn't be exposed to the implementation. And that's what accessing the file system is.
I don't think that's a really valid argument, 99% of media players that aren't the iPod support more music and video formats than the iPod does by default.
Possibly. Particularly with open audio formats. But not being compatible with OGG and FLAC isn't really an issue as MP3 is the overwhelming common case for downloads, with AAC coming second. And CD rips will be in whatever format you choose.
But those MP4 players don't support more video formats than iTunes is able to automatically transcode from.
And that's the big thing right there, and what the average geek seems to be unable to comprehend...geeks hate Apple products because you can't do whatever you want with them...but in the Real World of stupidity and moronicy...not being able to do whatever you want with a device is an advantage. They want simplicity.
You're halfway there. Thing is, lots of geeks love Apple products too. If a geek's work is programming or administrating some complex IT system, the last thing they want is to be futzing around with flaky technology that's not central to their work. They want something that just works. Something that's well designed.
powerpc was for some time far more capable than x86.
Originally, yes. That's why Apple originally chose it. But by the time Apple migrated to X86, PowerPC had been behind for years.
it eventually lost its advantages because its manufacturers could not care less about its development, not because it was "less popular"
It's manufacturers "could not care less about development" because it wasn't selling many i.e. it wasn't popular. We're talking business not mood swings.
How could they be so wrong? They weren't. Steve Jobs just had luck, plenty of it.
Yeah that's right. And Dvorak is just unlucky in being wrong on every other prediction he's made about Apple as well. Heck not just Apple, he's probably the world's most unsuccessful predictor of the tech business. If he didn't have an intriguing surname that coincidentally is the same as a QWERTY keyboard alternative, nobody would know who he is.
You know Tim Cook has been at Apple for 13 years. He was hired by Jobs soon after Jobs return to Apple. He's seen everything Jobs has done to make the company what it is today. And Jobs has seen everything Cook has contributed to Apple's business over those 13 years. Cook has also deputised for Jobs when he's been away with health problems several times since 2004.
Jobs knows very well what he's getting as his replacement in Tim Cook. Essentially Cook has had a 13 year interview and trial period. I'd be a lot more concerned if Jobs was hiring externally.
It won't have USB, because USB doesn't carry the audio/video signals that the proprietary connector does. And for the mobile products Apple wants visual simplicity. One multi-role connector, not multiple connectors.
Last time he left the company just wandered around in a fog. I would expect that to happen again this time.
I wouldn't. Last time there was a power struggle, and a sugar-water salesman won and pushed Jobs out. The company was heading in a direction Jobs hated.
This time Jobs has had a lot of time to consider his failing health, and has spent time making sure that Apple is set up in a manner, and with the best execs, to continue on a successful path.
Most of the people who know best how Jobs inspired successful products and a successful company work for Apple, and are keen to continue his successes.
Wozniak was the one who designed PCs that people wanted. Steve Jobs...is not a designer of anything other than good business plans.
Woz was a talented engineer who knew how to connect a 6502, some memory and some other chips on a circuit board. The one who knew "what people wanted" and told him what to design was Steve Jobs.
Only on Slashdot would electronic engineering be considered more important than vision and good business plans, in making a successful company.
Apple went downhill after Sculley forced Jobs out. By 1997 they were on the verge of bankruptcy. Jobs turned the company around and they are now one of the 2 most valuable companies in the world. Woz hadn't been there since the late 1980s. You'd have to be a complete idiot to credit Woz with Apple's success rather than Jobs.
You're confusing "marketing" with "making a better product".
Palm was good as a PDA back in the day. By the time they added phone functionality, there were better products on the market. When the iPhone came out, it had way better built in apps and UI than anything from Palm, but it lacked the ability to add apps. Once the iPhone was updated to allow Apps, everything Palm had was completely outclassed. Previous generation stuff. And Palm never caught up.
My point, which you still don't get, is that you're gaining absolutely nothing in terms of ease-of-use by picking Apple over another mp3 player vendor. In fact, depending on the task, you'll have a more difficult time with the Apple product!
That might be your point, but it simply isn't true. I bought a Mac and I bought an iPod. I put a music CD into the Mac and iTunes started up and ripped it, and ejected the CD at the end. Rinse and repeat with a stack of CDs. I have a stack of CDs ripped in iTunes without pressing a single button. I then connect the iPod via USB, and after OKing a dialog all my music is on the iPod ready for play.
Not only is your non-Apple solution not easier than that, it's impossible to envisage a system that's easier than that. What are you going to do, eliminate the one button press?
I buy an album of MP3 songs from Amazon. I drag and drop the folder onto the device icon. The songs are copied to the generic device. Again, seamless to the generic player.
Right, so you now have a copy of the music in your Downloads folder and on your MP3 player. Do you leave that in the Downloads folder? Where do you play it from if you want to play it on your PC? Would you want to move it to somewhere in your My Music Directory? Do you need to navigate to some sub-folder? Perhaps you are storing by artist? Or by album name? Do you want to rename the folder to fit into your own naming scheme?
Did you ever do housekeeping on a non-geeks computer, and find MP3 files all over the place? Some in Downloads, some under My Music, Some under My Documents, some on the desktop. I did.
Oh yes, then there are PCs with different downloads directories for different browsers. God I hate PCs.
With every other MP3 player, you don't have to worry about your music magically disappearing.
There are many ways your music can "magically disappear" with other MP3 players. Doing a select all then hitting delete for example would be the equivalent of answering yes to a dialog that said it's going to wipe your iPod.
But then there's all the ways you can physically lose or break your MP3 player. After all as the contents of your MP3 player has apparently been built up from the contents of multiple PCs, you aren't going to magically restore the data to it as you will if you buy a replacement iPod to replace a broken one.
Want to copy music from your iPhone? Find a tutorial, download some sketchy software, pray.
Want to copy music from your Blackberry, Android, etc.? Plug it in, drag and drop.
All devices have pros and cons. The anti-Apple crowd on Slashdot have found a single con with the iPod/iTunes system, and apparently that rules their decision. However, most people buy iPods rather than other MP3 players because the pros of iPods outweigh the cons for them.
Enjoy your non-Apple MP3 player of that's your choice. No one is forcing you to make the same decision as others.
Or you could just click on the "Transfer Purchases from "Narcc's iPhone" menu item in iTunes.
Number of times I've wanted to put music on my MP3 player from someone else's computer, in 10 years. Twice. I've got them to email the file to my computer instead.
Number of times I've benefitted from iPods auto-syncing: Every single time I've added music to my collection. So that's hundreds of times.
Would I swap from an iPod to a drag-'n'drop style MP3 player? No fucking chance. Manual file management is a chore, not a pleasure.
The built in help does not reliably inform the user how to do a backup of all of their purchased and downloaded content.
Why isn't every file on your computer backed up? There's no need for a special case for iTunes purchases.
My granny loved her twin tub washing machine. It had the facility for her to drag the clothes from the washer tub and drop them into the spin dryer tub. Drag'n'drop. Simple. She bemoans todays front loading washing machines which automatically transition from washing clothes to drying them, without her intervention.
Why should she have to learn a new way of washing clothes? It's ridiculous.
So this new "search engine" thing is a device that allows you to claim anything you like without having to back it up yourself? In that case, I say the earth is flat. And I bet that search engine thing will find something to back me up.