“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!”
In any technological advance, there will be people who find things hard to use no matter how simple they are designed to use. That said, I am happy that iPod is hard to use for some small set of minority since it means that iPod designers didn’t use the lowest common denominator as the basis of the design. Had they done so, some people would have found them hard to use and the majority would have complained that the design sucked.
As far as ripping, who said that they had to spend 40 hours straight to rip 150 CDs? Is this some kind of a race? It took me weeks to rip my CDs since I did it when I remembered to do it and when I felt like doing it. I could not have cared less if it had taken me months to do it.
Re: the author of the article, it is pretty sad that she generalized her incompetence into a rambling article without bothering to balance the article and to “investigate” what the majority thinks of iPod.
OJ,
I know that this is not what you meant, but iTunes has short-cuts (I found them by accident). Once you enter the general info by selecting all tracks and do Get Info (Command-A, Command-I), you can easily change the titles by:
1. Use the Enter key from your numerical keypad. Change it and press Enter again to set the new title. In contrast, Return plays the music from the beginning. Then you can just use up-down arrow keys to navigate.
2. Select the first track, do Get Info (Command-I), fill out the title. Use Tab to go to the next field, and Shift-Tab to go to the previous field. To get to the next song without using the mouse, press Command-N. To get to the previous track, Command-P.
Note: the first method works on Macs only. I tried it on XP and it didn’t work.
I hope the whole world will use fsch insted of the f-word. how cool would that be.
as used the following way
How the fsck do they manage to do anything with their computer if they can’t handle something as obvious as an iPod/iTunes? Weak.
Here’s what happens when you allow M$ users into the party. Crap journalism of the highest order. Idiots.
Taking the i for intelligence out of iPod!
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http://homepage.mac.com/johnhood
I saw this article listed on MacSurfers Headline News and after reading it, couldn’t believe it was not a joke. Are there really adults out there this stupid?
Obviously these idiots haven’t a room temperature IQ between them and anyone who buys into their FUD piece wouldn’t have the 4 year old child’s level of intelligence required to use an iPOD either.
I had to read this, because Charles Arthur, while being objective, as is needed from a journalist, is one of the few that constantly mentions OS-X and Apple as real alternatives. So i was sort of shocked that he might really be calling the iPod hard to use.
But the article isn’t about the iPod per se, it’s about the iTunes and iPod illiterate who buy them as fashion accessories, but can’t get them to work. Remember too that a lot of these will be windows users and their PCs may not be up to the job (in terms of having USB or firewire etc). So while this isn’t entirely Apple’s fault, it still does mean that the iPod isn’t entirely straightforward.
I don’t know what the current instructions included with the iPod are like, but the instructions that came with my 1st gen machine were pretty poor. If I’d bought it for my wife, I’d have had to set it up for her. As it was for me, and I know some of the technical stuff, I simply didn’t need any instructions.
So this is an opportunity for Apple to improve the product. Not by changing anything about the hardware or the interface or even iTunes, but by including an idiots guide to the iPod on a DVD in the box.
The problem is that people who aren’t entirely comfortable with computers need to be guided gently and have stuff demonstrated to them.
One of the people who works for a client of mine bought an iPod, and doesn’t even have a computer at home! He actually got all huffy when my client (his boss) wouldn’t let him put iTunes on the computer he uses in the office because it doesn’t have a very big hard disk. I don’t know if he still has his iPod, but I can see the journalists’ point in the article.
Fucking retards.
I have a Dell laptop that I use to run 1 program in the field. It has a USB hardware dongle for copy protection and will not work in VPC on my Mac laptop. I have used this laptop for 3 years with only this 1 piece of software on it. I never downloaded OS updates from Microsoft because it seemed like a waste of time. The OS slowly began to degrade and crash with greater frequency until it was a daily occurrence so I decided to download those updates. Since downloading I have not been able to reboot. Must be Microsoft’s subtle hint that it is time to upgrade the OS. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Why download questionable updates? Why use Microsoft products? Anyone got a copy of Windows 2000 they don’t need?
Step 1: On CD Insert – IMPORT SONGS AND EJECT
Step 2: Insert your first CD and then get on with your other tasks.
Step 3: Upon successful import insert your next CD.
Step 4: Repeat until all your CD’s are done.
What the hell is so hard? The Independent sucks anyway. If you really want a good laugh try reading The Sunday Times ‘Doors’. Nigel Powell is a joke.
People are dumb…. everywhere you look…. there is another idiot… at least that what I see around here, especially when you get on the road. Spring break is not helping that either… but I am off topic now.
I am not sure why people are so afraid of tech and computers. It is a piece of hardware… it is NOT hooked up to a nuclear warhead that if you press the wrong button you will start WW3. Don’t be afraid of it… the worst that can happen is loosing some data, or needing some software reinstalled. But I guess some people like the computer to run them.
Ohh well.
” I am not sure why people are so afraid of tech and computers. ” – The Dude
I think because they view computers as a complicated machinery that is both expensive and delicate. Most of the time, they don’t want to “break” them (hey, it’s expensive); therefore, they are affraid to make mistakes, which leads to limiting their use to things they know for sure how to do.
david vesey, Re: You people must not have technophobes around you.
You mean the ones who find out I know something about computers and want me to rescue their systems from deathly downward spirals (typically with Windows)?
Many “technophobes” can only comprehend one way of doing something on a computer and that has to be easy to learn if there’s any hope they will. Anything more confuses and overwhelms them. They’re 100% procedural and 0% conceptual. And it gets worse if they try being conceptual without any guidance, then concoct bogus procedures for themselves based on bogus assumptions. So they’re handicapped with bad habits to unlearn and still need to learn something reasonable to replace them.
It’s like a learning virus that comes free with your computer system and you can usually recognize people who’ve been afflicted with it.
R.V., Re: Are there really adults out there this stupid?
Yeah, and once in awhile they’ll throw you a curveball of genius.
The ability of clearly clueless people to somehow “successfully” function in this world never ceases to amaze me.
Hywel, the last sentence of your post sums it up nicely. Unfortunately that gentle guidance and demonstration is unavailable.
This reminds me of a famous pizza place that had a great jingle to get people to remember their phone number:
“Nine six seven, eleven eleven
Phone Pizza Pizza hey eh eh hey”
Well the newfies coming to Ontario could never order the pizza cause they couldn’t find the eleven on the phone’s keypad.
What makes sense for some people may not for others. Try going to another country and figuring out their phone numbering system. Honestly that would keep some of us geniuses awake for a while.