“The overwhelming success of the iPod — which now accounts for about 75% of the 22 million personal music players that have been bought over the last couple of years — is putting well-deserved heat on Microsoft to tune up its much-touted, but now outdated, Microsoft Media Player,” Mike Wendland writes for The Detroit Free Press.
“In a move that Apple boss Steve Jobs claims will take the radio-like downloadable programs called podcasts mainstream, Apple made it easier this week for iPod users to subscribe to their favorite podcasts and have the latest editions automatically available for listening each day,” Wendland writes. “Apple did it through a free update to its iTunes music software, which made thousands of podcasts available for free through the iTunes Music Store.”
“Microsoft’s Media Player — the hallmark of Bill Gates’ plan to record, play and distribute all forms of digital music and video through the Windows operating system — has no such podcast support,” Wendland writes. “And that has a lot of users steamed, especially those who bought rival music players under the Microsoft PlaysForSure marketing slogan and can’t figure out why their iRiver or Rio or Mojo players can’t get podcasts nearly as easily as iPods now can.”
“That doesn’t mean that users of rival music players can’t listen to podcasts. They can. It’s just a lot more cumbersome to get them downloaded to the computer and then transferred to the player,” Wendland writes. “And rival users can forget about going to the iTunes Web site (http://www.itunes.com), perusing the huge directory of podcasts, and then just going to the podcast’s Web site to download the program. Apple has cleverly — some say malevolently — taken great pains to hide the direct link so non-iPod users can see them but not get them.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Microsoft sucks. What else is new? 
Hey PlayforShit
if you are going compare two products, you have to quantify the tests
what bit-rates did you rip?
What audio-formats did you use? aac, lossless aac, aiff, mp3, wav ????
i’m an audio engineer and i’d much rather have audio that sounds great, than something that sounds like shit in two seconds
it’s like the difference between a great steak and a big mac ( no pun intended )
“When it comes down to it – Unless you are using a mac – you aint doing yourself any favors. I leave my mac on 24/7 – hasnt needed to be restarted or has never crashed in 3 years.
NOW – YOU SHOW ME A WINDOWS PC THAT CAN DO THAT! (And if you can then youre one hell of a lier)”
So you haven’t restarted your Mac in 3 years? You’re quite a big liar yourself if that’s what you’re trying to insinuate.
Exactly what favor are you doing yourself by using a Mac exclusively? I’m sure that favor would be in stark contrast to a PC user who’s productivity cannot be realized on a Mac. Why, just a few short days ago Nvidia released their next gen flagship, the 7800GTX to great fanfare. What exactly has been going on in the Mac world lately? Absolutely nothing, until the switch to Intel is complete.
re: Sammy.
If you use OS X – you don’t need to shut down or restart your mac.
OS X does all the maintenance late at night.
The only time I have ever shut it down was to turn it off when I went on holiday.
Just works – simpe as that – Ive had no crashes, OS freezes.
ROCK SOLID.
>Yet another reason iPod seperates it’s self from the tired thirsty pack.
No response from Sputnik yet ??? LOL>
Is it so difficult to understand that the word is SEPARATES! 2 ‘A’s & 2 ‘E’s.
it’s self could do with a check also.
Same as my machine, I leave it on days at a time during the week, since it processes my work overnight, with no freezes and crashes. I generally turn it off during the weekend for when I have no use for it.
Axapta, Navision, FoxPro – surely all products that MS purchased from its ill-gotten warchest fuelled by illegal leverage of a monopoly rather than products of the fountainhead of innovation that finds it difficult to ship an operating system as promised.
On another point, I can rip a nearly full CD-A disc at around 20x to AAC and around 27x to Apple Lossless on a dual 1.8GHz G5 (in other words, a 70 minute disc rips to AAC192 in 3 minutes 30 seconds): it all depends on the settings you’re using as well as not relying on the Mac’s Superdrive which is woeful at ripping (I use a cheap [£39] CD-RW drive). So, if it’s taking you six minutes, you’re doing it wrong.
As for a 50 second sync for a single disc, this is barely credible unless you’re throwing Apple Lossless around, and if you’re throwing Apple Lossless around, there’s no way it’s taking you six minutes to rip.
Also, take a video file (at the moment, seemingly .mov and .mpg only) and drag it to your iTunes library – and look what happens.
This conversation is similar to a “debate” that I had with NoMacForYou several weeks ago, in as much as he/she is a Windows apologist claiming to be a Mac user who patently had no idea of how get a Macintosh to do what he/she wanted and had taken to trolling in order to trawl for free consultancy.
Sammy, I suspect Petey’s statement would have been more accurate had he said he hadn’t been forced to restart BECAUSE of an OS crash for the last three years. If he hasn’t upgraded a single piece of software since then on this machine, it’s possible his statement is accurate, but I doubt it – there have been an awful lot of software updates that require at least a restart of the OS, not a full shutdown. However, I’ll let him correct me if I’m wrong…
Damn. Seems I didn’t even need to say that. I shouldn’t wait so long to reply (or at least refresh the screen more often.)
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DABR….Same Bitrates…same test…
For Sammy, My PC has been running as long as my Mac without a single reboot. 3 months now.. (although I had to reboot when tiger came out:)
“Tested on the same cd.
Rip 3 minutes on WMP
Rip 6 Minutes on iTunes
Burn 4 Minutes on WMP
Burn 6 minutes on iTunes
Sync 20 Seconds on WMP
Sync 50 Seconds on iTunes
Specs
Athlon 64 w/ XP x64
Dual 2.5 G5 / Tiger”
If you are comparing SOFTWARE you would use the different programs on the SAME platform. iTunes for Windoze vs WiMP (Windows Media Player) on the ‘doze.
Thats all opinion, but WMP sure leaves iTunes in the dust in the rip, burn and sync area’s.
The question is; how fast is your CD-ROM drives for each system? I noticed a WAY faster rip time when I went from 36x drive to a 52x drive in my Linux box using Sound Juicer. Of course iTunes at 48x still rips faster than Sound Juicer at 52x!
The biggest problem I see with WMP is its almost endless buffering tangents when streaming video from the web. Of course I never use WMP unless I absolutely have to, which is on a rare occasion.
Specs
Athlon 64 w/ XP x64
Dual 2.5 G5 / Tiger
Of course, the other problem I see is the lack of info on how much RAM is in each system? This also affects how fast a system can rip a CD.
Athlon 64 w/ XP x64: 2 gigs of RAM
Dual 2.5 G5 / Tiger: 512 megs of RAM
re: Playfor sure
SO WHAT ITUNES TAKES LONGER TO BURN A CD!!
WOW – THAT IS REALLY GONNA BLOW APPLES LEAD!! – NOT!
At least Apples AAC format dont sound like shit – Unlike Windows WMA.
God is that format crap – anyone with any serious interest in music wont touch that format.
From Playsfersure:
“Im not talking about trailers you f’ing moron.
Im talking about playing and organizing video just like you do with audio…
Petey, You are a bitch.
Tell me how I can organize my 1000+ mpeg3/4’s with iTunes.
Oh that right..YOU CANT..”
Actually, you can. Try it, drop a video into the iTunes window and watch it organize similarly as to what you can do with music. Guess what, it also handles many other forms of files. Try a .pdf file for instance, works immediately. I have ten bucks on iTunes 5.0 having even better video handling and support for multiple libraries of movies, music, pdf’s, etc that can be handled separately but come together in your main iTunes library (possibly different catergories of course) but in any case, if speed of rip and burn is all you can find then I think you need to be looking harder.
BTW
So podcasts suck now. I remember the WWW when it was nothing more than a few universities and some Star Trek fansites. Look what that turned into.
Give it six months my friend. Then you’ll get it.
The creeping rot within Micorosft is more than stench, it’s overwhelimgly depressing for all those employees who now realize the huge career error they made.
Look at the school kids shouting in the playground!
John
MW: “cause” as in cause and effect
FUCK YA ALL!!! FRENCH KISS MY ASS MUTHAFUCKAZ!!!
YER MOM-
F—————————–AZ!!!
A voice from the gutter.