The non-Apple gadget thread

[beatmunga]

These are good:

[H20nly]

you don't have to sync. every other device on the planet will let you move it if you want to.

So how do you get music on and off your device?

yeah, what ian said.

or *drum roll* a USB cable.

after connecting that any kind of OS browser displays the files.

yes, that thing you love to hate allows us to do exactly what the fuck we want with all our media and files when ever we want to do it. if we hit delete the OS says "are you sure you want to delete this shit?"

or if we copy the files and we already have that song, picture, same named and file type object, on the device... it says "there is already a copy of" this shit "do you want to overwrite the existing one or cancel?"

yeah. that is the annoying level of intervention other tech offers - a last chance to change your mind and/or a prompt to make sure your finger didn't betray you.

it's no wonder you can't figure out why we want USB as a means to move shit... Apple has kept you in bunch of makeshift tents in the backyard since they abducted you when you were a kid. they told you that you didn't need those files or that they would "hold them for you".

poor beats how will you assimilate with the rest of the world now that you know the shocking truth... of how easy it is...
... and how uneasy it has been?

hang in there! they'll have a boom box with playlist cloud storage for your new phone soon.

[beats me]

Too much hostility in response to a technical question.

PS. The only thing you really need the magical Apple syncing cable for is charging. You don't need to connect it to a computer ever because 95% of what you might want access to is available through the cloud. I don't even know what the remaining 5% would be, but I'm open to finding out.

[H20nly]

*hugs*

[beats me]

*hugs*

Right back at you…you fuckin’ guy.

My roommate has an Android phone and is a little less brand passionate about things. So I asked him how he puts music on his phone. He said he didn’t and then asked my opinion on unlocked iPhones because he just had to replace his Android phone for the 3rd time in less than a year because of the OS freezing up. His hope turned to disappointment when I told him the unlocked base model iPhone is $650.

I would like to hear about the Galaxy S III from a user that can talk about it intelligently with specifics because it seems to get praised on par with the iPhone.

[ian_halsall]

Come on iPhones etc. are great kit but one of the ways they got to where they are now is by being extremey protectionist and then using the profits from their music business to fund their technical lockin

I don't want to pay Apple for music and have whatever proportion go to corporate California coool Apple thanks

I love the iPhone but iTunes - do me a favour - when you use it on 2 computers it wipes out your music unless you are very careful

Utter rubbish.

Use copy trans manager and you can copy files onto your iPhone and iPad a bit like explorer.

[beats me]

I love the iPhone but iTunes - do me a favour - when you use it on 2 computers it wipes out your music unless you are very careful

Not sure what you mean by that. If I put a song in iTunes it uploads it to iCloud in seconds, seconds after that I can stream that track on my iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, or any of my computers. I can also download that track to any of those (except the Apple TV) and if I delete it from any of those there is still the cloud backup.

I also have it setup that whenever I buy a track on iTunes it will also automatically download the track to 3 computers (main computer, media server computer, and DJ computer)

Hasn’t been flawless 100% of the time but most of the time it has been.

Are you using PCs? I've heard iTunes is kind of shit on PCs.

[regretfullySaid]

Itunes is shit on pcs. It's not as laggy as it used to be but the home sharing is fuckall consistent. I tried to use it as my go to for 5 minutes but here were my main deal breakers:

Watched folders have to go My documents or some static place or it can only be one directory. No.
Home sharing Seemd to work fine with ios4 but then 5 came and it worked like, once.I have another directory of incoming downloads for checking stuff out I may not be sure of before it goes into my main music folder where it's spic and span and organized like an OCD's bathroom.
Laggy as fuck, can't handle 20,000 plus songs
No custom tag iirc

Foobar otoh:
Custom everything.
Monkeymote app lets me control my music player - volume, search playlists, database, album, artist, genre, folders.
If i want to stream the music to my ipod i push an icon.
Instant search results with no lag.
Custom tags, i like my publisher, style, start and end keys tyvm and i like that i can sort my searched bu order of bpm then start key. I get some tags from discogs that itunes doesn't support, buhbye
Can use it as a server and stream it to wherever else via http, it's its own cloud.

you can still probly do some of that with itunes, correct me but still, no. I like to roll my own.

[sporkles]

If I put a song in iTunes it uploads it to iCloud in seconds, seconds after that I can stream that track on my iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, or any of my computers. I can also download that track to any of those (except the Apple TV) and if I delete it from any of those there is still the cloud backup.

When you say "put a song in iTunes it uploads it to iCloud" - are you trying to tell me that music that you've acquired through other channels than iTunes can be uploaded to iCloud?

[ian_halsall]

I have been totally misquoted - I never use iTunes...

Or iCloud or any of thoser preposterous Apple technologies.

[sporkles]

^ Ah, sorry. My bad. Fixed.

[ian_halsall]

My reputation has been done untold damage by this slander.

people will now think I am a knobhead that uses iTunes and before I was just a knobhead.

[sporkles]

I am a knobhead that uses iTunes.

[arctic ranger]

[regretfullySaid]

To put it in perspective though compared to WMP itunes is a dream