Be Excellent To Each Other

Pictures, specs, and a video: http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/13/zune ... der-today/

Devil's in the details, but I'd say this might be Microsoft in "Mobile UI that doesn't suck" shocker.

It'll only be any good if you can write your own apps for it.

For comparison, a 16Gb Zune is $220 and a 32Gb one $290. So, approximately the same price.

Well, since I have more than 64gb of music, that is useless for me.

Do you need to have all of your music on a portable device?

No.

However, I do need to have the music I want to listen to right now on there. Which could be anything from my more than 64gb collection.

Whether it's 1gb or 64gb, having an MP3 player where I have to plan beforehand what I want to listen to doesn't really interest me that much.

I think you're in a minority, Lewie -- one so small it's increasingly being marginalised by the player manufacturers.

Just out of interest, and I'm making no judgements here, but did you pay for all 64 gigs of music? If so, how much did that much music cost?

So, unless I've misread (which is pretty likely), you mean 'yes'?

Paid for most of it. Although mostly from Charity shops/sales. I very rarely by full price new releases. Paid probably an average of £3 an album.

A lot of it is free downloads too, or presents.

And yes, a big chunk of it is teh pirated.



It's not so much "need", more just that if I am going to be paying a lot for an MP3 player, I am not going to want the hassle of picking and choosing what I want on it, I am going to want one that fits all my music on.

I'm with Lewie. 90% of the time my mp3 player just literally sits on "shuffle everything". I want as much on there as possible which is why I've no idea what to replace my dying 40gb creative with since everyone switched to sucky flash drives.

The obvious answer is the 120gb Zune but the bastards won't sell it here. The only other one I even know of in the UK with that kind of capacity is the ipod classic.

And that's a no.

That's exactly my opinion. Next time I have money, and no someone who is going to the USA, I'll probably get a Zune120 if there is not a better alternative about by then.

To be fair, if you rip lossless, that's only about 106 hours of music; my personal iTunes library is 164 hours (and is overwhelmingly legal, barring some rarities I couldn't buy and the very occasional thing I copied and probably don't really want). Mine is only 12.1 Gb though.

I'm with Doctor. At risk of invoking Grim... (Grim..! GRIM..!), my iTunes currently sits at 68.9 days, the vast majority of which is lossless. There is no portable that big, that I'm aware of.

For me, selecting stuff isn't such a big deal. My music library has always been bigger than my portable media player. Am I going to want to listen to the Doors/Devics/Sinatra/Death Angel tomorrow? Perhaps. Can it wait til I get home? Yes.

I'm going in march, hoping to survive till then.

Ace, I might even have money then too. If I do, I shall hassle you to get me one.

This is my number one complaint with iTunes. I want it to rip every single thing I feed it twice; once in 256k AAC and once in ALE. When I play on the machine or stream to another iTunes over the LAN, I want it to play the ALE version; when I sync to my iPhone or another flash iPod, I want it to sync the AAC one; maybe I choose which I want on an iPod with a hard disk. I never want to have to think about which version I want or even see the two versions, I want all that tucked neatly away.

This seems so obvious a thing to me I cannot fathom why they haven't done it yet.

To be fair I don't know of any other library management doodads that do this either.

It ain't perfect and it only really works for drag-and-drop players rather than iTunes, but...

http://mp3fs.sourceforge.net/

A horrible workaround would be to write a script to rip to ALE in folder "Album", and convert to AAC in folder "Album (Portable)" setting the Description to "Portable". In iTunes (or using the SDK), add both versions, show the Description column, sort by it, and drag to separate playlists.

I think that might work, because the NAS has somehow ended up with two copies of one CD, and iTunes happily added both earlier, with identical filenames and tags.

An easier alternative would be to do the dual ripping, and have two user accounts; ALE in one users's library, AAC in the other, and just make sure to sync against the right one. Duh.

Oh, and yes, it annoys me too that I can't have ALAC on the computer, and have iTunes down-convert to AAC during sync (or generate an AAC cache during slack time between rip and sync, deleting it when it's on the iPod, or never, if I tell it).

Edit: Hm, turns out I ripped at 128kbps last time. That leaves 2.7GB on my 16GB Touch after putting the entire 3600 song collection on it. I was going to re-rip at 256kbps. Damn.

The touch is interesting certainly but obscenely expensive for a 16gb music player.

Yes, it does other things but then that's always the argument for PS3 over 360 and I wasn't convinced there either. A version with a hard disk might be interesting but I suspect I might have the feeling I was missing out on all the excellent apps that require the phone's data connection.

I am aware of this. I nearly made it work on my NAS once, just because. As you say, it's not much use for iPods because of the formats -- I specifically want AAC, not mp3, because you get much higher quality at the same bitrates.

Which part of my being a loved up hippy Mac user made you think I would live with a horrible workaround?

My current workaround will begin when I embark on a CD reripping programme, which I need to do soon. I'm going to rip twice, into two iTunes libaries, on two computers: AAC onto the Macbook and ALE onto my PC. The PC can then be in charge of streaming to my home stereo.

If you could read my text you'd know that the Touch is going to be cheaper than the Zune HD... And I don't think it's fair to compare pricing between flash-based and HDD-based players. The flash-based ones are far more durable and have much longer battery life and hold enough music for most people; the rest is just economics in action.

I don't think that'd be a huge problem, actually. My iPhone spends 80% of its time on a WiFi connection (well, it used to in last workplace. I've never hooked it up to current workplace's WiFi, so it's less than 80% now I suppose). The last 20% is annoying but not necessarily crippling.

The App Store will remain the killer app for the iPod Touch and iPhone for some time to come, and attracting developers is what Apple's competitors have to get right to compete effectively. Android is the most likely looking candidate I think.

Well I'm in the same minority as Lewie. So we're the good ones.

I don't have time to decide what I'm going to listen to before I leave the house.

You "must have 100 gigs of music" guys could just hope that netbooks keep getting smaller, I suppose.

It's solely when I'm at home for me - on the basis that the work wireless requires a token-authenticated VPN, and I'm damned if I can be bothered setting that up.

I don't see why I should have to, the point of these devices originally was to carry a collection. If I'm going to decide then why spend more than the £25 my tiny 2gb Creative Zen Stone Plus cost me. If I'm deciding then that's well over 24hrs of music right there and the plus has a perfectly good screen to browse it with despite being quite literally the size of a small pebble.

If I've got an all singing, all dancing player that cost probably 8 times that with fancy cover browsing and the like, I want to be able to access "My music" on it. Not "The bits I've presorted" because as soon as I've put thought into what I want to listen to I might as well just take the tiny 2gb thing.

(In reality I use the zen stone for spoken word, usually radio 4 comedy where I *DO* know what I want to listen to. It spends its life about a quarter full because if I've chosen there's little point having "More than the battery life of the player" on it.)

I do slightly wish I'd gone for the 32GB iPhone. Not enough to warrant shelling out an extra hundred quid, though.

Are you suggesting the manufacturers should be compelled to sell an unprofitable device to satisfy the small number of people dissatisfied with flash based players?

I suspect there'll always be at least one or two HDD-based devices to pick from, but if you have niche needs you're never going to have much choice of device to buy, particularly if you rule out the market-leading device (iPod) before you even get started. Whining about it isn't going to change the economics.

Well like I said, 16 or 32, it's still probably a subset so if you're making a choice anyway the difference is highly likely to be pretty minimal. Even 16gb is enough "choice" for 2 weeks away if you're being forced to make the choice in advance.

It certainly isn't in my case. 3Gb is about it - and I can't see it reaching 16 for a long long time.

Still, maybe there's a market for a niche MaxStorage device, as I imagine those with >32Gb of music probably aren't that fewer (if at all) in number than those with <32Gb.

Indeed, but 32 over 16 still gives you roughly double the amount and a lot more room for your different moods. I don't change the music on my player very often, so more storage is always going to benefit me, even if I'd still essentially be choosing a subset of my music library.

I have no need or want to carry my whole music collection around with me. Through the power of MAGIC I have set iTunes up to randomly assign me albums every time I sync it up. It's great rediscovering stuff I haven't listened to for ages. If I had everything on there I'd probably just listen to the same ten albums over and over again.

My 16GB iPhone currently has 7.48GB of music, 569.5MB of photos, 2.53GB of apps, 273.9MB of "other" and 3.46GB free.

See, my problem is that there will be times I just need to hear a certain song/album.

If that ever happens, I can quite happily wait until I get home.

Well that is what I have to do most of the time now, but I'd prefer to not have to wait.

Edit: although a couple of times youtube on my phone has done the job.

If I really wanted, I could set up a playlist of favourites and make sure those albums are always synced, but I can't be arsed. I might do it when I get the 3GS and have double the capacity.

Remember also that these devices are being sold as PMPs. They are designed to let you store and watch movies. How many movies could you get on a 8gb device?

See, I do shuffle, and only shuffle.

As with every portable device my main concern after space is battery. I used to get loads of time out my mini disc play but little music choice... also most of MD seem to have started to go wrong.

My Ipod is OK but I really want something I can listen to for a good 100 hours (around) before having to recharge it. I'm not sure there are any players out there that can do that yet.

Same goes for phones. I hate having to remember! I'm terrible at it.

With mp4 compression, two-channel audio, and downsized to 480px, a film takes up 700Mb-1Gb or so. About 400Mb per hour is a reasonable estimate. You can come lower than that too, I was watching BSG rips on my PSP that were 185Mb for 45min and didn't look shit (slightly crunchy MPEG artefact in dark areas).

Well that's why most of the time it shuffles the entire collection. I get a "What the hell is this?" moment at least once a day.



Certainly a days worth. But I also imagine you're going to be more willing to make the choice of what movie to watch and even less likely to want to shuffle scenes like you do with single mp3s off albums.

Although thinking about it, that could be excellent.

But that's a technology limitation anyway. Even encoded down to say 200mb an hour or so for a device, the largest 1.8" hard drives are 250gb. That's not going to be a complete TV and movie collection for a lot of people whereas I'd imagine it'd be very few people with music collections any bigger in acceptable compressed quality.

You're in a similar boat to the ones who want more storage space: most buyers would prefer an advance in battery technology to be used to power more features rather than prolong lifespan.

If you are able to wait until you get home to hear a song you really want to hear, then why can't you use a normal sized music player and wait til you get home for a song if its one thats not on it?
I don't need my full music collection about with me, I usually just have it on shuffle. There are a couple of albums that I always like to have like Sigur Ros and St Germaine but otherwise I'm happy for it to be choosing for me.

I don't think I've ever listen to a media player for more than three hours in any one day before arriving somewhere I could charge it. Storage is more of a priority, though being an iPhone I do a lot more than play music, and the battery life gets absolutely hammered.

This looks promising.

http://www.zii.com
Backed by Creative.

If the iPhone could out of the box stream from iTunes at home, with simple usability and no stupid restrictions, I'd be down to the O2 website immediately. Even though my collection currently fits on my Touch and I really just stick my NIN collection on shuffle most of the time anyway.

Edit: Ooh, Zii looks good, and that introductory offer is tempting. Shame with VAT and duty $399 is more like £500.

I don't know. The Zune has in the past used .NET (& XNA) which would make it rather attractive to a fair few people. Beats buying a mac just to develop for the iPhone, and having to learn a new SDK, and related gubbins.

I accept your reasoning, but there is no announced Zune app store though, nor any plans for one. Which means even if Microsoft announced it today, it'd be, what, twelve months before it became an asset to the platform? By the time devs got their heads around it, shipped a decent selection of apps, and there were enough sales figures in the first wave to convince the second wave of devs it was all commercially viable, etc etc.

Dunno. If it's .NET CF, then you've already got a big load of apps and developers, just waiting for a handy distribution platform.