Android: General Chat

[Stevo985]

Well that's what i mean. In the long run I'll be better off. But I'm off on holiday on Wednesday and I'm really not sure if I'm going to have everythign converted by then so its pissing me off

There's nothign wrong with iTunes apart from this, imo. As a music management tool it's the best one I've used, imo. Been trying to use Windows Media player and/or winamp over the past few weeks due to the new phone but they're nowhere near as good. Luckily I've found an app that can sync my phone to my iTunes, but it still requires everything to be in mp3 format.

I'm going to keep using iTunes going forward, now that I know I need to import everything in mp3 format it'll be fine

[Ponky]

Vendor lock in is a crap thing.

I tried iTunes once, it ruined my whole music collection. Not to mention it's pretty terrible to use. I really wondered why people choose to inflict it upon themselves. Is it because 'everyone else uses it so it must be alright' ?

itunes is the sole reason I refuse to use apple products even though the rest of the famjily have iPads, iPhones and iPods coming out their ears.

I can just plug my Galaxy SII into the PC, drag & drop whatever i want to use, and I'm off...

[CVByrne]

Stevo use double twist then to wireless sync your music from itunes. If you are gonna keep using it the double twist will be a real boon.

[Stevo985]

Ah, that looks pretty good actually! Will download that and give it a try. Thanks

[limpid]

There's nothign wrong with iTunes apart from this, imo. As a music management tool it's the best one I've used, imo. Been trying to use Windows Media player and/or winamp over the past few weeks due to the new phone but they're nowhere near as good. Luckily I've found an app that can sync my phone to my iTunes, but it still requires everything to be in mp3 format.

I'm going to keep using iTunes going forward, now that I know I need to import everything in mp3 format it'll be fine

"I was forced into handcuffs and now I don't want to be handcuffed any more, I find the purple fur comforting and I am choosing to keep wearing them."

Do you have Stockholm syndrome or is it cognitive dissonance?

[Stevo985]

There's nothign wrong with iTunes apart from this, imo. As a music management tool it's the best one I've used, imo. Been trying to use Windows Media player and/or winamp over the past few weeks due to the new phone but they're nowhere near as good. Luckily I've found an app that can sync my phone to my iTunes, but it still requires everything to be in mp3 format.

I'm going to keep using iTunes going forward, now that I know I need to import everything in mp3 format it'll be fine

"I was forced into handcuffs and now I don't want to be handcuffed any more, I find the purple fur comforting and I am choosing to keep wearing them."

Do you have Stockholm syndrome or is it cognitive dissonance?

:|

But I won't "be in handcuffs" once everything is in mp3 format, so that doesn't make any sense.

Sorry, I realise being positive about anything apple related is frowned upon in here.

[CVByrne]

No it's just that the whole itunes is shackles. There are loads of far better ways to manage your media once you are free of itunes. Though I do understand that you will be required to familiarise yourself with new software where you are already familiar with itunes.

[Stevo985]

What are the shackles?

I'm genuinely interested to know. Because from my experience as purely a way of managing and listening to your music, iTunes is perfectly fine, and is better than Media Player and Winamp which are the two alternatives I've had most experience with.

I could get used to Media Player, but it's just not as slick and straightforward as iTunes.

As I said, apart from the format issue, which is a huge ballache for me right now, I'm unsure of the negatives.

Again, this isn't me blindly defending something for the sake of it. If you give me a good enough reason why it's such a bad thing then I'll make the effort to move to different software, I'm genuinely interested to know. It's just I don't see why I should when I find iTunes to be better.

[CVByrne]

I don't have much experience of media managers. I think the whole thing adds an unnecessary layer of software where none needs to be. I just use my devices memory as a removable drive and access it over wifi. I just drag and drop music in. Can't see why I'd want a media manager.

But from other people's experience, mainly friends who owned ipods. Itunes was frustrating. In fact I loved how creative media players were drag and drop while Sony and Apple were using media managers.

Anyway, for me the whole thing is moot. I keep my music, all of it on a micro sd card and back it up on a removable hard drive.

[darrenm]

It's genuinely not that liking iTunes being pro-Apple that's the issue, it's that I found it really terrible. I'll elaborate.

I used to use Ubuntu as my sole OS. On it there were a few music players, Rhythmbox, Banshee and Amarok. I used Amarok as it had lots of powerful features, was quick and it worked in the way I felt comfortable with it. As time moved on I was forced back into using Windows 7 as I needed to play games and Ubuntu with the new Unity interface was awful.

So when back in Windows world I thought I'd try iTunes as up until then I'd been blocked from using it by Apple. I installed it and out came the familiar Apple over-antialiased fonts which makes the screen look blurred and the grey colour scheme, completely out of keeping with the theme used inside the host OS. I know some people love the Apple look and feel, but to me it's a bit dated.

First task: Find some missing album art. Turns out I need an Apple ID to do that. Hmm, not especially happy to do that but whatever. So I sign up and try to get album art again. I need to put credit card details in to download it. WTF? It apparently won't charge me but for every Apple ID you have to put CC details in before it 'activates' the account. Morbid curiosity forced me into putting the details in and it couldn't find half of my album art anyway.

Next task: My music folders were a bit of a mess. Wouldn't it be great if iTunes could sort them for me based on the tags. So I turned on the option to let iTunes manage my library and my music starts disappearing. Turns out it moves it all into it's own folder which is in a hidden location, then starts spamming it up when it comes across tags it doesn't recognise etc.

There were lots of other usability issues like being unable to create dynamic playlists based on my own criteria, lack of customisable views etc. but I forget most of them now.

So I gave Windows Media Player a try. Even with my massive dislike of anything Microshat, I find it absolutely brilliant. It sorts any music I put into my Music location into the correct folders based on tags, the album art and missing tags tools are excellent, dynamic playlists are excellent, syncing and burning work perfectly, it doesn't make me sign up for anything to do anything, and so far I haven't found any feature missing that I've needed. To out-Amarok Amarok is some feat. Only criticism is it's a bit slow to start up.

Again, if anyone wants I can revisit my tests and do a side-by-side, but as a completely uninitiated 'green' user coming into media players and looking at WMP12 and iTunes fully objectively, WMP12 was fantastic and iTunes was awful.

Conor, give WMP a try for syncing your media. It works with Android devices perfectly.

[limpid]

Stevo, what are you spending your time doing now that you wouldn't have to do if you'd never had the handcuffs put on? It seems to me you are changing the natural way to do things so that you can keep wearing the handcuffs.

I may be missing something here, but I use rsync to "manage" my music and have never felt the need for some software to help. I have a large number of FLAC files with some high-bitrate MP3 files and I maintain multiple copies for resilience. Squeezebox just works, google play just works, files copied to my phone just work. I've got cross converters for when I need to use something with handcuffs (Roku, I'm looking at you).

Actually the phrase "manage my music" is a bit daft. itunes lets you manage your device, not your music. Music is just files in folders and you can manage those with a file manager.

[Stevo985]

I'll give Media Player another crack once everything's converted to mp3 and see if I can get used to it.

Just didn't seem to be all that user freindly in comparison to iTunes.

Maybe that's a lack of familiratiy, time will tell. But I didn't feel like it was any better.

Conor, I use iTunes to play music on my laptop. I realise I could get everything onto my phone using drag and drop, but when I play it on my laptop I like to have something that it's easy to browse albums etc on. So if I've got that it makes sense to then use it to sync with my phone

[Stevo985]

Stevo, what are you spending your time doing now that you wouldn't have to do if you'd never had the handcuffs put on? It seems to me you are changing the natural way to do things so that you can keep wearing the handcuffs.

I may be missing something here, but I use rsync to "manage" my music and have never felt the need for some software to help. I have a large number of FLAC files with some high-bitrate MP3 files and I maintain multiple copies for resilience. Squeezebox just works, google play just works, files copied to my phone just work. I've got cross converters for when I need to use something with handcuffs (Roku, I'm looking at you).

Actually the phrase "manage my music" is a bit daft. itunes lets you manage your device, not your music. Music is just files in folders and you can manage those with a file manager.

I'm converting the music that was in .m4a format into mp3 format because my phone won't play .m4a files. I'm not converting it so that I can keep using iTunes. Regardless of if I use iTunes or Windows Media, i'd have to convert them back to mp3 otherwise they won't play (unless anyone can offer an alternative which would save me the time)

As I said in my previous post, I don't have a music manager to put stuff on my phone. I'm aware I could do that through files and folders and dragging and dropping. I use it for when I'm using music or videos on my computer. Which is quite a lot. In fact it's more often than I use music on my phone.

So if I'm using it for that, it's nice that I can use the same software to sync musci and playlists with my phone

[limpid]

So you had handcuffs, but now you have the key and are choosing to use the handcuffs anyway? Definitely Stockholm Syndrome then

I can only hope that one day you'll realise how much Windows is restricting you too.

[Stevo985]

Again, I ask what exactly are the handcuffs in your analogy? Some software that you don't like?

I fail to see why it would be described as "handcuffs". Because you prefer other software? Or no software at all?

That's perfectly fine, but it's a pretty shit analogy, that's all.

As for the Windows thing? I'm sure you're right, technically. But seeing as I use my laptop for little more than browsing the internet, listening to music, watching films and the occasional piece of work for my job (Excel spreadsheet, no choice in that department) I fail to see how moving away from windows would be of any great benefit to me. But feel free to enlighten me.

[darrenm]

Stevo, what are you spending your time doing now that you wouldn't have to do if you'd never had the handcuffs put on? It seems to me you are changing the natural way to do things so that you can keep wearing the handcuffs.

I may be missing something here, but I use rsync to "manage" my music and have never felt the need for some software to help. I have a large number of FLAC files with some high-bitrate MP3 files and I maintain multiple copies for resilience. Squeezebox just works, google play just works, files copied to my phone just work. I've got cross converters for when I need to use something with handcuffs (Roku, I'm looking at you).

Actually the phrase "manage my music" is a bit daft. itunes lets you manage your device, not your music. Music is just files in folders and you can manage those with a file manager.

I'm converting the music that was in .m4a format into mp3 format because my phone won't play .m4a files. I'm not converting it so that I can keep using iTunes. Regardless of if I use iTunes or Windows Media, i'd have to convert them back to mp3 otherwise they won't play (unless anyone can offer an alternative which would save me the time)

As I said in my previous post, I don't have a music manager to put stuff on my phone. I'm aware I could do that through files and folders and dragging and dropping. I use it for when I'm using music or videos on my computer. Which is quite a lot. In fact it's more often than I use music on my phone.

So if I'm using it for that, it's nice that I can use the same software to sync musci and playlists with my phone

That's pretty much my use case. I play lots of music from my PC and from my phone. I need a decent program that allows me to play stuff on the PC with my playlists, quick and easy selection of artists, albums etc and nice playlist progression features. I could just drag and drop stuff onto my phone but as Google Music watches my WMP library and auto syncs playlists and media I don't have to do any of that.

[Rob182]

If I have a Galaxy S2 on contract with O2, but didn't pay for insurance, and now it is playing up all the time, will O2 be able to help Me? Or will I just be wasting my petrol to drive to Merry Hill Tonight?

I mentioned a few pages back that my phone occasionally overheats & freezes. I can cope with that, but for months I've had a problem when recieving long text messages from my gf.

The first half of the text will be fine, but then it'll cut off and the second half of the text will be part of a text she sent me ages ago.

I did a factory reset but it's still doing it!

I'm due an upgrade next April, but I might make a trip to Merry Hill Tonight and see what they can do, if anything.

Any thoughts?

[Stevo985]

Ring O2.

Haven't done it myself, but my sister said when she broke her phone, they (they being O2 I THINK although it may have been Orange, but they might have the same policy) allowed her to take out a 12 month insurance policy there and then and claim for the phone on that.

Ties you into a 12 month policy, but will fix your phone.

There's probably other options so let other people chip in before you do anything

[mykeyb]

Always used to use Window Media Player until the wife got an Ipod and other apple flavoured products followed.

We are now back to just 3 Ipods but now have several Android devices too. Is there a way to set up Windows Media Player to use the same library as Itunes or will they both play badly with each other.

[Stevo985]

No that'll work. In Windows Media Player, go to "Library" and click "Add to Library" (or something like that anyway). Select the folder that your iTunes music is in, and then click "Add" or "OK" or whatever button it is in there. It'll scan the folder and add any music files to your Media Player library