“Everybody wants Apple’s digital music player, but few realise how hard it is to use. It’s the epitome of cool, a must-have item rated No 1 with teenagers, oldies and muggers alike. Yet the iPod digital music player has confused so many thousands of new owners that the gadget has spawned its own service industry – to help technophobes download their own songs,” Charles Arthur and Helen Johnstone report for The Independent.
“Even though the designer-creation from Apple has been flying off the shelves in a storm of favourable publicity, few realise how complicated it can be to operate. Some music fans complain they have to upgrade their computer to get the iPod to work. Others report spending hours or even weeks transferring just a few tracks from their CD collection to the new player,” Arthur and Johnstone report.
“It can take around 40 hours to transfer 150 CDs on an ordinary computer, even though this barely dents the iPod’s massive capacity… Now companies are springing up to meet the need, including the London-based wePod, which does the hard work of converting disc tracks into electronic files for the iPod, using its own specially developed software,” Arthur and Johnstone report.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Either thier editor royally screwed up this piece after they submitted it or Arthur and Johnstone can’t muster a pinch of logic between them. This piece calls the iPod “hard to use,” but it is really an article all about the length of time it takes to rip a bunch of CDs with iTunes or any other piece of ripping software. This piece has nothing at all to do with iPod beyond the fact that having one likely means you want to convert your old CD collection for use in an iPod. In fact, the iPod is clearly one of the easiest-to-use digital devices ever created, as umpteen reviewers have noted. And, yes, it does take a long time to convert hundreds of CDs into AAC or MP3 files. But, that’s not the iPod’s fault at all, now is it?
Related MacDailyNews articles:
New iPods causing temporary ‘iPod Widows’ worldwide – January 26, 2004
A Coke drinker’s forced migration to Pepsi in quest of free Apple iTunes – February 04, 2004: “First, you must know that I recently upgraded to a 40 GB iPod and I have been re-ripping my 400 or so CDs into AAC 192 kbps files (yes, I have deluded myself into believing I can hear the difference over 128 kbs AAC; I suppose I read too many issues of “The Absolute Sound” way back when). This ripfest is a life-changing event in and of itself, as those who’ve gone through the same process at least once can attest. I have the CDs in alphabetical order; yes, I am a “Type A” Mac-using personality and I’ve just finished ripping The Cranberries, so I have a long way to go. Of course, I must have pristine artwork for each CD, too. Woe is me!”