Paul Thurrot badmouths iTunes once again

[Sirin]

http://www.connectedhomemag.com/Audio/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=50518

And what if those songs were made available in much higher quality formats than the low-quality 128Kbps AAC format that Apple currently uses?

How the hell are they low-quality? Maybe it's his ears. To me they sound crystal clear and they save a whole lot of space compared to AllOfMP3's 192kbps music.

The site describes itself simply as an online music store with hundreds of thousands of albums, with free music previews that feature the entire song—not just a 30-second sample, as with iTunes.

Good. Let me get out Audacity and start recording so I can get the song for free instead of paying.

 

[AvSRoCkCO1067]

iTunes does have a great User Interface - and the simplicity of its Music Store and seamless iPod integration are lightyears ahead of what the competition offers...

BUT:

Audiophiles continue to turn to CDs for their music, as the quality is unarguably better. Additionally, the iPod continues to lack 'gapless' playback, something many iPod-users have been begging for for years.

We all love Apple here - but let's not forget, Apple products continue to have problems and they should continue to improve. The audio quality, although efficient in its disk usage, could definitely improve...

Paul Thurrott is a strange guy - at one moment, he is cheering on Apple products, arguing that they're the simplist, most user-friendly, most cost-efficient products on the market. However, the next day he'll post some Apple-hating, 'Microsoft will never lose' blog on his website. Personally, I love reading the guy's work - but I always take it with a grain of salt, as the guy's mood changes often.

He's praised iTunes time and time again...and bashed it time and time again...I wouldn't take too much offense to his commentary .

 

[x86]

I have to agree with the part about the quality of the music. 128Kbs is just not good enough... If only they could bump that up to al least 192Kbs, and allow their songs to be played in standard MP3 player (My car for example) I would start using their services. I know, Iknow, I'm a dreamer...

 

[treblah]

Thurrott is a tool who intentionally riles up Apple users to get page hits.

Example:

Apple locks you in to its iPod MP3 player by making iTunes-purchased music incompatible with non-Apple devices.

He happens to forget the 100 million CD players that any iTunes purchase can be burned CD and used on.

 

[QuantumLo0p]

Paul Thurrot is a knob.

Paul Thurrot is a knob. He must have internal struggles on a constant basis. He seems to consistently contradict just about everything he says. He says that Macs are a non-issue in a Windows world then proceed to do full-blown reviews of new Apple releases and also comparisons of Mac OS and Windows. He obviously likes many things about the Mac OS, probably more than Windows.

This is where he stumbles and degrades his credibility. He constatly points out Windows' many, many flaws but he stops short of jumping the sinking ship. Even the rats are long gone but he keeps climbing higher and higher up the masts to keep out of the water. If the beloved Windows OS experience is better than the Mac experience then why bother wasting time to analyze the Mac platform? His il-logic takes away any credibility.

Back to Thorrot and the Mac OS, I would have to conclude that Thurrot does like the Mac platform more so than Windows. However, he seems to be stuck on Windows for reasons that I can only speculate. Shall we? Yes, let's speculate! It's so fun and Thurrot is a static target.

Well, I feel Thurrot doesn't want to admit that most of the Windows users out there really are just lemmings. They blindly and complacently follow one another and do not concern themselves with things like the U.I., how bad an idea the registry is, a virus list that reads like Encylcopaedia Britannica, the apparent state of Microsoft security being nothing more than an afterthought and the good parts of its feature set that are overwhelmingly copied from Apple. I think that Paul is lemming but doesn't want to admit it or, worse yet, doesn't know he is a lemming. I think he secretly dreams of Microsoft dumping the registry and being able to uninstall applications by dragging them to the trash.

At any rate I still will read his articles once in a while to keep up on the propaganda. His material (F.U.D.) could never make it as a column on a site such as cNet or PCmag so I just follow the occasional link to his articles.

 

[Timepass]

Thurrott is a tool who intentionally riles up Apple users to get page hits.

Example:

He happens to forget the 100 million CD players that any iTunes purchase can be burned CD and used on.

you forget burning degrades the quility even more but as for mp3 players he right on the complaint it locks you into apple (and please dont give me the burn import crap. It lowers teh quility even more).

I would say apple should offer higher quility in the formate. 128 was used a long time ago back when mp3 where a pretty new thing. Now people rip in 192 as the standard. I think the music store should move up to that number as well.

Also iTune is not the best media player out there. there are better ones.

The iPod standing alone with out it software side is by far not the best player. if just looking at the player there are better players out there that add several very nice things I wish my iPod would have. One of those items being an FM reciever. Something I wish apple would just put in the iPod. It would cost them less than 1 extra buck and add so much to it. Now the software tie in is the nice part. And where it gets it power. There is a lot of potention in the WMP set up and it does show a lot of promise in getting a good competor player off the ground.
Getting around the music store is another matter but I see the courts, laws and the record companies forcing the issue on apple in the next few years and that will no longer be an issue.

 

[frankblundt]

you forget burning degrades the quility even more but as for mp3 players he right on the complaint it locks you into apple (and please dont give me the burn import crap. It lowers teh quility even more).

as i understand it, burning does not lower the quality if you are burning it in an uncompressed (audio cd) format. It's only when you re-compress by changing the format to mp3 or re-importing (even at a higher sample rate) that you lose quality.

You might also note that the other download sites lock you out of Apple by using wmf (?) for their drm.

As for better media players - I'm intrigued. What are they? (always willing to try new stuff)

 

[NicP]

you forget burning degrades the quility even more but as for mp3 players he right on the complaint it locks you into apple (and please dont give me the burn import crap. It lowers teh quility even more).

I would say apple should offer higher quility in the formate. 128 was used a long time ago back when mp3 where a pretty new thing. Now people rip in 192 as the standard. I think the music store should move up to that number as well.

Also iTune is not the best media player out there. there are better ones.

The iPod standing alone with out it software side is by far not the best player. if just looking at the player there are better players out there that add several very nice things I wish my iPod would have. One of those items being an FM reciever. Something I wish apple would just put in the iPod. It would cost them less than 1 extra buck and add so much to it. Now the software tie in is the nice part. And where it gets it power. There is a lot of potention in the WMP set up and it does show a lot of promise in getting a good competor player off the ground.
Getting around the music store is another matter but I see the courts, laws and the record companies forcing the issue on apple in the next few years and that will no longer be an issue.

I hope apple doesn't add a fm player, fm sucks, there are no decent stations here and it would add to the bulkiness of the ipod. I have a fm radio everywhere i go anyway on my phone which i never use, plus there is a fm radio attachment for the ipod if you are really desperate.

What did you mean by better players than itunes? I like the organisation of itunes but i really would like gapless playback, do u have any suggestions?

 

[Daveway]

But, without better AAC compression, they would have to increase file sizes. This would skew the number of songs people have known that iPods can hold.

It could cause some marketing woes.

Ex: "Wait, my iPod said it could hold 5,000 songs. Now it can only hold 3,000?!1?!1, WTF"

 

[zap2]

I hope apple doesn't add a fm player, fm sucks, there are no decent stations here and it would add to the bulkiness of the ipod. I have a fm radio everywhere i go anyway on my phone which i never use, plus there is a fm radio attachment for the ipod if you are really desperate.

Well since you have an FM radio, there clearly is no reason for apple to add FM to the iPod

But i would rather see the iPod stay the same size and Apple add it, as it only the size of a iPod shuffle control for FM Radio.

 

[dmw007]

Paul Thurrot is a knob. He must have internal struggles on a constant basis. He seems to consistently contradict just about everything he says. He says that Macs are a non-issue in a Windows world then proceed to do full-blown reviews of new Apple releases and also comparisons of Mac OS and Windows. He obviously likes many things about the Mac OS, probably more than Windows.

This is where he stumbles and degrades his credibility. He constatly points out Windows' many, many flaws but he stops short of jumping the sinking ship. Even the rats are long gone but he keeps climbing higher and higher up the masts to keep out of the water. If the beloved Windows OS experience is better than the Mac experience then why bother wasting time to analyze the Mac platform? His il-logic takes away any credibility.

Back to Thorrot and the Mac OS, I would have to conclude that Thurrot does like the Mac platform more so than Windows. However, he seems to be stuck on Windows for reasons that I can only speculate. Shall we? Yes, let's speculate! It's so fun and Thurrot is a static target.

Well, I feel Thurrot doesn't want to admit that most of the Windows users out there really are just lemmings. They blindly and complacently follow one another and do not concern themselves with things like the U.I., how bad an idea the registry is, a virus list that reads like Encylcopaedia Britannica, the apparent state of Microsoft security being nothing more than an afterthought and the good parts of its feature set that are overwhelmingly copied from Apple. I think that Paul is lemming but doesn't want to admit it or, worse yet, doesn't know he is a lemming. I think he secretly dreams of Microsoft dumping the registry and being able to uninstall applications by dragging them to the trash.

At any rate I still will read his articles once in a while to keep up on the propaganda. His material (F.U.D.) could never make it as a column on a site such as cNet or PCmag so I just follow the occasional link to his articles.

I agree, Paul Thurrot is indeed a knob.

 

[grockk]

Well since you have an FM radio, there clearly is no reason for apple to add FM to the iPod

But i would rather see the iPod stay the same size and Apple add it, as it only the size of a iPod shuffle control for FM Radio.

who listens to FM? the only time i listen to FM is when i tune into my iTrip!

if you bundle too many features it only adds clunkiness and difficulty navigating the interface. i want a camera to take pictures, a phone to make calls and a mp3 player to play mp3s, not some gadget that does em all but does it half ass

 

[Timepass]

I hope apple doesn't add a fm player, fm sucks, there are no decent stations here and it would add to the bulkiness of the ipod. I have a fm radio everywhere i go anyway on my phone which i never use, plus there is a fm radio attachment for the ipod if you are really desperate.

What did you mean by better players than itunes? I like the organisation of itunes but i really would like gapless playback, do u have any suggestions?

Well thank you for telling me why you have no ground to argue. You stated your self that your phone can cover it. And it sucks to be you living in an area that doesnt have any good radio stations.

As for size adding to the iPod I highly doute that it would add any. Lets a chip or 2 to cover the decoding. A software to handle choosing the station and stuff, oh and the antina yeah run it on the inside edges of the ipod. All still in side the same closer. net change 10-20 more grams of mass. BOY that is a lot.

The attachment adds a lot of bulk to the ipod and they break pretty easily.

So from my stand point I dont see any draw backs to it. Doesnt change the size of it. doesnt had any noticible mass. So it a huge plus for a lot of people. I normally listen to the radio in my car because either the DJ are good or I like the music it plays that I dont have for my iPod. Sucks for you that you are in area with no quility stations. Where I am I have about 3-4 that I enjoy listening 2 and I wish my iPod could pick them up.

As for better players, well the mac doesnt have any really. for windows there are quite a few choice out there. WMP 10 and above it really pretty nice minus is search funition is not as nice but orginzation wise it just as good libary is just as nice of keeping updated. Plus you can set it to rate the songs for you which is really nice. Something I wish iTunes would do for me. It takes up less system resourse than iTunes.

I sorry but iTunes is a ram hog of media players out there. sitting at around 60megs on my desktop here. Compared to windows Media player running of the same libary and same song is at 30megs on top of that is running the vislizer to try to make it use more. So it taking up 1/2 the ram and being the active window itunes being in the mimized window... Or we there is winamp. Useage wise it is not as nice as itunes but it is even lighter than WMP on system reasourse useage. iTunes is full of bloat and a lot of it. It is ineffencely coded. I would go over to WMP if I could move my playlist over and the search funition was dynmic and active like iTunes.

 

[SC68Cal]

Frankly, I haven't had a pair of earphones yet that really highlight the difference between 128 and 256kbps in sound. The iPod was not really designed with Home Audio in mind.

My two point are this:

How much of the bitrate gap and "percieved" difference is just a placebo effect. I think I read some studies that say that you cannot tell the difference between bitrates, I don't remember what ones, but I would hazard a guess and say anything greater than 512kbps is going to be very difficult to tell the difference between.

And for those who wish for the Home Stero sound quality, can't you just fine tune the sound with EQ to regain some of the lost signal that compression entails?

I had a flash iRiver player and Windows MP 10 back in the day, and honestly the integration was piss poor. Based on that experience, I would never use a Windows Media Player device ever again. I swear to god, in the process of converting them into a smaller bitrate from my library, the songs would get corrupted and when you played them on the player the song would playback at half speed. It was just awful. I had to pack a tiny flash player with my lossless files in order for them to play properly. I was lucky to get 5 CDs on it, if I didn't push my luck.

 

[frankblundt]

Also iTune is not the best media player out there. there are better ones.

As for better players..

So, actually there aren't any is what you're saying
iTunes is a hog on Windows, but works brilliantly with enough RAM, and is fine on the Mac. I haven't seen any others that come close for usability, functionality or plain style.

 

[dmw007]

So, actually there aren't any is what you're saying
iTunes is a hog on Windows, but works brilliantly with enough RAM, and is fine on the Mac. I haven't seen any others that come close for usability, functionality or plain style.

I agree, I have yet to run across a music/media player that is superior to iTunes.

 

[treblah]

Frankly, I haven't had a pair of earphones yet that really highlight the difference between 128 and 256kbps in sound. The iPod was not really designed with Home Audio in mind.

My two point are this:…

I totally agree. So does a professional audio engineer.

 

[rhsgolfer33]

So, actually there aren't any is what you're saying
iTunes is a hog on Windows, but works brilliantly with enough RAM, and is fine on the Mac. I haven't seen any others that come close for usability, functionality or plain style.

iTunes runs perfect even with 256mb of ram, I'm running iTunes, MSN Messenger, Windows Media Player, and Firefox without a problem, thats even using a integrated graphics. There arent any other players that come close, I've tried WinAmp, WMP10, and various others and they arent as easy to use, nor do they look as good as iTunes.

 

[ezekielrage_99]

I got to love those unbiased anti Apple articles out there, they are fun to read

I do agree with the 128kbps, I record everything in 256Kbps to 320Kbps and it sounds great even though it's a slightly bigger file size. On my Sennheizer headphones I can't tell the difference between 128Kbps to 320Kbps but on my Altec Lansing THX speakers there is an audable difference in the sound quality.

 

[cplusON3R]

Well thank you for telling me why you have no ground to argue. You stated your self that your phone can cover it. And it sucks to be you living in an area that doesnt have any good radio stations.

As for size adding to the iPod I highly doute that it would add any. Lets a chip or 2 to cover the decoding. A software to handle choosing the station and stuff, oh and the antina yeah run it on the inside edges of the ipod. All still in side the same closer. net change 10-20 more grams of mass. BOY that is a lot.

The attachment adds a lot of bulk to the ipod and they break pretty easily.

So from my stand point I dont see any draw backs to it. Doesnt change the size of it. doesnt had any noticible mass. So it a huge plus for a lot of people. I normally listen to the radio in my car because either the DJ are good or I like the music it plays that I dont have for my iPod. Sucks for you that you are in area with no quility stations. Where I am I have about 3-4 that I enjoy listening 2 and I wish my iPod could pick them up.

FM radio? is that still an issue? hey.. the 90s called. they said the 80s left a message talkin' all crazy about how they want their lame FM stations back. all thats left on the radio are commercials and guess what.. more commercials... oh yes and the same music thats being looped every 10 minutes. theres rarely anything new and when something new DOES come out it gets spun every friggin hour!

I used to listen to the radio for local weather/traffic/news... but I can just look that up online via my cellphone. want some new/interesting music without all the talking and interuptions? sat. radio is where its at. once I bought a new headunit for my car I made sure that badboy was xm/ipod ready.. if you were to check my presets you'd see its still set at 88.7.. lol.. fm radio.. you're one funny dood.

 

[unfaded]

http://www.connectedhomemag.com/Audio/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=50518How the hell are they low-quality? Maybe it's his ears. To me they sound crystal clear and they save a whole lot of space compared to AllOfMP3's 192kbps music.

A. AllOfMP3 can be lossless if you choose, for a lot of songs, increasing quality, which is a great option to have that iTunes does not and prevents many audiophiles from using the service at all (i.e. me)

B. 128 kbps AAC is total crap, but if you can't hear it, then you can't hear it. Some people are pickier than others.

 

[Hertog]

The problem is not with iTunes, or URGE or any other Music Store for that matter, but with the record companies. They demand relatively low quality and DRM to limit the customers rights. AllOfMp3.com doesn't deal with the record companies, and is therefore, in some countries, just as illegal as downloading using eMule or BitTorrent. The fact that more options/better quality at a fair price is just what the customers want, seems to be irrelevant..