jotsheet

Oh dear friends, it’s been too long. And even when I did write, about six weeks ago, it was a crappy entry.

I have a good excuse. I got a new job. You’ve probably figured out that I don’t blog about my job, and that’s not going to change, but the new job is the primary reason I haven’t been blogging. I’ve just been busy.

Now that I’ve cleared that up, let’s get to the important thing: I kinda hate my iPod.

Your first reaction to this statement might be, “Hey Tom, you’re a dirty, worthless hypocrite. You said that Apple sucks. Why do you even have an iPod?”

To that I say: you’re right. I am a hypocrite and a sellout and lots of other bad names. But my iRiver IFP-899 broke, and I bought an 8GB iPod Nano because:

1. Everyone seems to think that the iPod software and interface is great. (I shouldn’t have listened to the unwashed masses.)
2. The Nano is a flash memory-based product, so I think it will outlive the 2.5 month lifespan of the average hard drive-based iPod. (This was probably a good assumption.)
3. The iPod works directly on my new Pioneer car stereo head unit. (This has turned out to be very disappointing.)

So why am I unhappy now, you ask? Well, dear friend, I’ll you.

1. iTunes blows.

   I’ve never seen such a RAM-hogging app. It makes Firefox look like Notepad. It’s slow to switch modes, slow to edit the ID3 info on multiple files, slow on everything.

   And worst of all, it blows at syncing. The automatic file management is terrible, so I switched to “sync checked files only.” But that seems not to work–perhaps because I’ve got it in “manual mode” as well–but isn’t the process of me checking 500 songs pretty “manual?” Whatever. I thought Steve was the master of intuitive software. It blows.

2. The iPod software is unreliable.

   The third time I connected it up to the Pioneer head unit, it crashed. And I mean crashed and burned, so hard that I couldn’t turn it off. It was just stuck, with the LCD screen backlit to make things worse. The only way I could fix it was to do a hard reset by holding some key combination. I found that via googling, not on apple.com. Fancy that I didn’t find the info in the “instruction manual” (wow, that’s generous) that came in the too-clever iPod packaging.

3. The clickwheel is grossly overrated.

   Yeah, it’s good for scrolling through long lists of items, but it sucks at moving just one up or one down. I’d rather have my iRiver’s control stick.

4. Most importantly, I hate the way Apple organizes songs.

   This is my biggest beef, by far. I listen to music in two ways. First, I have a set of favorite bands: Pinback, Cracker, Metallica, etc. Then, I have a set of favorite songs, many of which are from terrible, one-hit wonders. I would like to keep these two things separate; sometimes I like to listen to good bands, and sometimes I like to listen to shitty songs.

   With that in mind, this is how I want to see my music organized:

   Playlist > Shitty song by shitty artist
   Playlist –> A few good artists –> An album or two per per artist –> Good songs
   Good artist –> All of artist’s albums –> Songs in the album

   This lets me listen to a playlist of dumb songs, a playlist of good artists, or all of the music from good artists.

   Instead, this is what I’m left with:

   All artists, including shitty ones (ridiculously long list) –> Album (not necessary) –> Song(s)
   Playlist –> Songs (no way to drill down by artist or by artist –> album!)

   It’s totally inefficient and not at all the way I want to organize my music.

5. Finally, the iPod support on the Pioneer DEH-P6900UB kinda sucks.

   Although the unit allows you to directly browse the iPod via the head unit’s screen and using the clickwheel-ish rotary knob, it doesn’t allow you to step back in the iPod menu. What this means is that if I go to Artists --> Pinback --> Summer in Abaddon (album) --> Syracuse (song), I can only change tracks within “Summer in Abaddon.” I can’t step back to Pinback; I have to start over from the top-level menu of the iPod. And because the Pioneer rotary knob is not as fast as getting through long lists of artists as the iPod itself, it’s an excruciatingly slow process to listen to different artists or different albums by an artist.

   Admittedly, this is probably not Apple’s fault, although it may be a limitation in the USB 2.0 interface of the iPod. I hope so, because it gives me another reason to hate Apple. Also, the problem is exacerbated by the organizational problem above, where the list of artists is an untrimmably long list of crap that includes both my good artists and my one-hit wonders.

In conclusion, I am an asshole for buying an iPod. I admit that. Furthermore, the iPod sucks, and I would advise against the Pioneer head unit if you’re looking for quick control of the iPod. Instead, you might try the Harman-Kardon drive+play, which seems to have a much faster UI.

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