4 ms·

A case where the knock offs were sometimes better than the original in my opinion. Where the iPod you still had to use iTunes to get music on to the device, but

A case where the knock offs were sometimes better than the original in my opinion. Where the iPod you still had to use iTunes to get music on to the device, but could otherwise use it as a USB drive(can't remember if you had to specifically allocate space for that or if all free space was available), but on the cheap Chinese knockoffs, you just had the file system on the USB stick where you could dump files and a mp3 files alike and it would shuffle what ever mp3 files it found on there. The iTunes reliance was annoying in general, but it seemed even more out of placed with the "USB stick" shuffle.

greenhouse_gas 9y ago
You were able to install Rockbox (an aftermarket ROM for Apple, Sansa, and a few other mp3 players). Was quite good, had better codec support (played OGG files!) and you could write apps [1] for it. [1]. Don't know if you could call them apps, as they needed to be rebuilt with the OS (don't remember if they were pluggable modules or you literally had to rebuild the OS if you wanted to write an App, but it came out of the box with a few apps and games, and you could write your own in C. Their API was weaker than Android's, but to me more enjoyable.)
FabHK 9y ago
> The iTunes reliance was annoying in general Many people think that way, but I really much prefer to organise my music in iTunes than in the file system. (Even with iTunes, you can always go down to the file system if you want to, but try making a smart playlist in the file system alone...) (Granted though that iTunes has become way too crowded with functionality now.)
- khedoros1 9y ago
  > Many people think that way, but I really much prefer to organise my music in iTunes than in the file system. iTunes + filesystem aren't the only two options. At the time, I usually had my library set up in Winamp and XMMS, and iTunes was annoyingly opinionated about what the structure of the library should be. I would've liked the option to use something besides iTunes.

greenhouse_gas 9y ago

You were able to install Rockbox (an aftermarket ROM for Apple, Sansa, and a few other mp3 players). Was quite good, had better codec support (played OGG files!) and you could write apps [1] for it. [1]. Don't know if you could call them apps, as they needed to be rebuilt with the OS (don't remember if they were pluggable modules or you literally had to rebuild the OS if you wanted to write an App, but it came out of the box with a few apps and games, and you could write your own in C. Their API was weaker than Android's, but to me more enjoyable.)

FabHK 9y ago

> The iTunes reliance was annoying in general Many people think that way, but I really much prefer to organise my music in iTunes than in the file system. (Even with iTunes, you can always go down to the file system if you want to, but try making a smart playlist in the file system alone...) (Granted though that iTunes has become way too crowded with functionality now.)

khedoros1 9y ago
> Many people think that way, but I really much prefer to organise my music in iTunes than in the file system. iTunes + filesystem aren't the only two options. At the time, I usually had my library set up in Winamp and XMMS, and iTunes was annoyingly opinionated about what the structure of the library should be. I would've liked the option to use something besides iTunes.