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![]() The iPod fails miserably on this count: it requires iTunes installed (or another custom application) to transfer any music to the device. Every music player on the market should have this down to a science by now: The iPod requires custom software to work.That's just crazy talk! And the list goes on: there's no voice recording, no EQ settings, no gapless playback, etcetera. Heck, you might even want to record FM radio. I'll never understand why the iPod chooses to deliberately ignore FM radio and its rich history in the music industry. You'd figure a company that had the guts to make a stunning, wholesale switch to x86 processors could deign to support a few alternative audio formats on their music players. And what of OGG? Or FLAC? Clearly, the hardware is capable, but the political forces inside Apple won't allow it. The conspicuous lack of WMA support is a not-so-subtle f*ck you to the Windows community. Although Jobs grudgingly made the iPod Windows compatible two years after its introduction, he still gets his jabs in. While I can certainly understand the desire to own music, why not give us a choice? Apple's insistence on purchase-only models is a huge mistake. For that same six bucks a month, I could buy a whopping six tracks from the iTunes store. ![]() And it's in a very respectable 192kbps 2-pass CBR format, too. I can stream any of this music to multiple PCs, or I can download it to my hard drive or mobile audio players. I'm a member of Yahoo Music Unlimited, which gives me unlimited access to a massive library of music for 6 bucks a month. The iPod has no support for subscription services.I'd be lying if I said this didn't matter to me. How can I properly rage against the machine with the same standard, factory issue music players that everyone else has? I don't want this to devolve into a knee-jerk rejection of all iThings, but let's be honest here: when every soccer Mom carries an iPod, it's no longer a cool technical accessory. That said, I have some problems with the iPod. The kind that, at least in theory, supports the artists who produce the music instead of ripping them off. They've almost single-handedly legitimized the market for downloadable music. I have a great deal of respect for Apple's iPod juggernaut.
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