On the Upcoming MC9 vs iTunes for Windows debate...

[c.c.r.]

Originally posted by TimB
On the upcoming MJ9 vs iTunes debate...

all other things being equal I'll stay with MJ9 as the availability of their developers is unparalleled IMHO.

-=Tim=-

Hell yeah, Tim.

My thoughts on WinnieTunes are along those same lines. True, I believe that MC9 is a wee bit hard to learn and hard to use... it's not the most user-friendly app on the planet. iTunes is disgustingly easy to use.

So, I thought that when WinnieTunes comes out, I'd consider switching even if playcounts/ratings were available in MC9; I'd switch just for the ease of use.

But then, compare customer service, and it's a no-brainer.

I have experienced obscenely good customer service from Steve Grove (the developer of the iPod plugin), Jim Hillegaas (the freakin CEO of J River) and the rest of the J River crew.

I've heard dozens of horror stories from Windows users who dare to ask Apple for customer support. Hell, even MacNet.com is complaining about Apple's casual disregard for their customers as of late. There is no contest in my mind who will win my loyalty and my endorsement when WinnieTunes hits the market.

WinnieTunes will be better than MMJB. That's a fact.

J River has and continues to earn my respect and my business.

[Doc Holiday]

I think I will stick with MC. I just love this program so much. Plus I don't think with iTunes you can use LAME. Which is what I encode all my music with. With MC the more I play with it the more I like. I just keep finding more and more things it can do.

[dmt1]

Originally posted by Doc Holiday
I think I will stick with MC. I just love this program so much. Plus I don't think with iTunes you can use LAME. Which is what I encode all my music with. With MC the more I play with it the more I like. I just keep finding more and more things it can do.

You're absolutely right--there is IMHO a significant drop off in quality w/r to Apple's ripper/encoder combo as compared to what you can do with MC9, or EAC/LAME.

Itunes does have the advantage of ease of use, and that's going to appeal to a number--probably majority--of new ipod users. AAC support is also in Itunes favor, although I'm still not sold on AAC (unfortunately it will be quite some time, if ever, before Jriver makes AAC available for MC9, according to Steve).
But it may be mute point; it Apple doesn't enable playcounts, I'll refuse to use Itunes music store anyway (and I'd really love to see playcounts available--it would significantly help me get around the "not so random" random setting on the ipod--seems like if I listen to 30 songs each day on random, I get a fair number of songs each day repeated.).

[nekura]

Actually, it's very much possible to use iTunes with LAME, it just requires an AppleScript to do it. It's quite easy actually; about as simple as setting up MC9 to use a non-crappy version of LAME.

[dmt1]

Nekura--you're back!! I thought perhaps you were abducted by the same aliens who got Adam....:D

[CanaMacPod]

To make winPods as cool as mac ones we need iTunes right? To enable all those things that are disabled? So even if you end up prefering MC9 over iTunes, you'd have to get iTunes first, right?

[ashawley]

Originally posted by CanaWinPod
To make winPods as cool as mac ones we need iTunes right? To enable all those things that are disabled? So even if you end up prefering MC9 over iTunes, you'd have to get iTunes first, right?

Ah, no sir. Not true at all my Canadian friend. We just need Apple to "un-disable" the features that they disabled on the WiPods (playcounts, soundcheck). Then all we need is for Steve and crew to code up MC9 to be able to read/write to those files that have previously been disabled.

iTunes is not needed one bit (except for WinnieTunes and that's not and iPod thing as far as I'm concerned).

Adam

[nekura]

Originally posted by dmt1
Nekura--you're back!! I thought perhaps you were abducted by the same aliens who got Adam....:D

My Dance Dance Revolution addiction (and a ton of schoolwork) took precedence over the iPodlounge forums, and unfortunately, I've been iPod-less for two weeks now because the fragile headphone jack had exposed one of the remote pins when it broke, which didn't fair so well through a drop when one of my friends decided to kick the back of my leg while I was walking with the iPod in my hand. Then when I returned it to CompUSA, the guy who took my iPod entered in totally wrong information (he didn't even get my State right, let alone my name or anything else), which I didn't notice until I went back on the Monday afterwards to check up on the status of things. A very nice lady there corrected all of the information, and I went there again yesterday to see if any progress had been made. They finally had a gift card for me, but it wasn't activated, so I couldn't buy a new iPod yet. The lady told me that it should be activated on Monday, and if it is, I'm going to try my hardest to get there afterschool, or if not Monday, then on Tuesday.

I never realized how much I love my iPod until I've been without one for two weeks. During my Saga of Sadness, I've been using a Sony CD player with 30 seconds of skip protection, which just isn't enough for me anymore, nor is a mere 80 minutes of music. I swear, after I get my new iPod, I'm throwing my CD player against the wall multiple times. >_<

[CanaMacPod]

OK, thanks Adam!
Oh, and sorry to hear about your problems, nekura. Good luck!