ah, good then.
i take that back, except for the shuffle

I have been a cell phone luddite for the past five years.

Mine was, like, a $15 Nokia. It finally died a slow, painful death and would only hold a little charge. It could barely text...

My carrier is already AT&T so it was little effort to drop $99 for an 8 Gig iPhone now that they are on-sale.

I've only had it for 2 days but I am totally pleased.

sorry, I digressed...

Also be aware that iTunes is the worst platform to burn CDs from. I learned this a couple of years ago when, after burning a trove of discs, most only had a few tracks burned to the disc and/or the discs skipped. Little to my knowing, the iTunes burn-speed is set very high. However, I found that even if you configure to a lower speed, it only ups your chance of success by a small percentage. I don't burn enough discs to justify buying some other sort of burning format, but if you do burn lots of media you may want to choose one.

or just use windows media player.
never have had a problem with it

iTunes is a horrible piece of software. No player should force me to check forums to see if I should upgrade to the newest version, lest it be full of more bugs than the previous one...

Considering Apple apologists use the argument 'it just works', my technophobe sister bought a new laptop, installed iTunes on it (which she had to download, as the new iPods don't need to come with any software anymore) and plugged in her iPod to charge it. Apple, in their wisdom, have it automatically set to synch with your computer. The empty iTunes she had on her laptop emptied her iPod of all her music. Awesome.

The RIAA didn't force Apple to fill their iTunes mp3's with DRM either...

Look, Apple isn't perfect. Fro example, I had to get a new Airport Express wireless router because after the 10.5.6/10.5.7 updates to the OS my wireless was acting crappy. My "base station" was a Linksys WRT54GC that suddenly would drop the connections. Tried every trick I knew and then said "Eff this..." and just bought the Airport Express. Not too happy I had to do that, but will say I actually like this tiny router a lot.

And iTunes can drive me nuts as well.

But the thing is I'm not into slamming tools, but just point me to a better tool. In fact, I'm no Apple loyalist but they make a rock solid UNIX development platform in OS X and I'm damned happy. If Windows worked better, I would use them. But I don't have time to waste playing around with all the Windows craziness.

So if the iPod Touch sucks and iPods suck, fine... What else can someone use that can be less "suckier"? The MP3/MP4 market is quite pathetic... Which is shocking because it's been years since the iPod was introduced to the world and nobody has come close to coming up with a better device.

Will say for mobile computing without the need for a smartphone or something like that the Nokia line of pocket devices looks interesting.

you're right!
i was looking into an mp3 player today, and seriously, nothing stacks up to the quality and looks of an apple product. but i just can't get one because i do not like itunes.
these are the three i am looking at, because of price and i'm looking for something like the ipod nano
http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Sansa-Vid ... VP6ISQR9QF
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001C3 ... d_i=507846
http://www.amazon.com/Coby-Flash-Video- ... gy_e_img_b
blegh

Any of the creative mp3 players have much, much better sound quality than the iPod. Plus you don't even need to use software to put mp3's on. Just drag and drop like normal file structure. They all look hideous though, and we know how much that counts for in the market.

my dad has a creative, and it is the easiest piece of technology i have used. ever.
and yes, they are ugly as sin.

Meanwhile, over in London, Birmingham, Kent and Wolverhampton....

An international fraud in which a gang allegedly made thousands of pounds downloading its own songs from online music stores with stolen credit cards has been cracked by the Metropolitan police and the FBI, the Met claimed yesterday.

The gang are alleged to have made several songs which they gave to an online US company, which then uploaded them to be sold on iTunes and Amazon.

Over five months they bought the songs thousands of times, spending around $750,000 (£468,750) on 1,500 stolen US and UK credit cards, according to the Met. The criminal network then also allegedly reaped the royalties from the tracks, pulling in an estimated $300,000, paid by the two sites, which were unaware of the fraud being committed against them.

It looks like I am the only person who didn't like their iPod Touch. I have the 1st generation model. The thing I hated about it was (I believe) corrected in the 2nd generation however...that being a volume button on the machine itself, rather than making you take the display out of 'sleep' mode and sliding your finger across that slider to wake it up (those with a touch know what I mean) and adjusting it on the screen. I NEVER use my Touch because of the volume adjustment which I do a LOT at work. I currently use the most recent incarnation of the iPod Nano (16G model).

As for iPods in general, I think they are very user friendly and simple to use. No 'useless' features, just excellent design and an elegant interface which is why people are willing to pay the extra $$ for them. And lest you think I am just an Apple fanatic, I am not. Though they are purported to be designed well and with an elegant interface, I detest my Mac, which I am currently forced to use, pending replacement of my PC which crapped out on me.

I've also never had a problem with iTunes (though it does seem to update a LOT, which isn't a good thing when you are still on dialup like I am). My music library is 99 percent from cds I ripped on my own. I did buy a couple albums through iTunes, but don't do it anymore. I'd rather buy the cd and 'own' it concretely and not have DRM getting in my way..

That's one way to make some royalties. Wonder what the songs were like....hehe?

Looks like the new iPhone 3G S has a faster processor and double the RAM of the ipod touch and iPhone 3G.
http://www.macrumors.com/2009/06/10/iph ... wervr-sgx/

32GB iPhone would seriously rock. I have a 16GB and been pretty happy with it aside from it bursting at the seems with music and it being a total I FART A LOT to back up since I got rid of the computer I set it up on. It only wants to Sync with that old account on my old mac
I really love having the camera too. Even though its pretty lowfi it has a pretty decent lens for a phone camera. Im sure the new one will only be better.
I'd have to strongly agree....get the phone to save carrying more crap around!

Isn't iTunes now totally DRM free?
http://gizmodo.com/5124588/itunes-gets- ... se-over-3g

So what do folks think of the 3.0 upgrade? I never thought I would have much use for cut/copy/paste but I'm using it all the time now.