Retro or else: you decide

[AArdvark]

I took one of my old Zunes* and filled it up with 1940s and 50s music and old time radio shows then I hooked it up to play thru my 1944 Phico floor model radio. I set it to shuffle and let it go.

Is it:

A] Cool and retro.

B] Lame and pointless.

C] Don't you have better things to do?

D] All of the above.

I could have made this a poll but screw it.

* I'm kinda embarrassed to admit that I have a zune, and slightly more embarrassed to admit that I have three of them. What else would I use 'em for anyway.

THE
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AARDVARK

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I have heard that the Zune was much better than the iPods that came out around the same time. I am inclined to believe that, as iTunes is one of the ten worst pieces of software ever written.

[Roody_Yogurt]

I'd vote for "A," although if the sound is clear enough to almost break the illusion, I'd wonder if there's any cool ways to fuzz it up a little more or give that not-quite-full-reception sound to it.

[AArdvark]

The old time radio shows sound authentic as they are old enough. If I set the tone knob to full treble the music sounds 'old'.

Got a 30 gig white brick-like device, a 30 gig Halo 2 brick-like device and a 30 gig HD model. I like the hardware but the Zune software is bloatware. They could have used MediaPlayer to interface with them but no, they had to make a whole 'nother program to do the same thing. And there's no way to sync it without the zune software. Well there is, but you have to jump thru hoops to get it to work. I still use mine every day when I don't want to beat up my phone battery.


THE
MEDIA PLATFORM
AARDVARK

[Erebor]

I would stick up for iTunes, but I really haven't used it much in its last five incarnations, or so.

Still, that comment sounds like it came from a person who's never used OpenOffice.org.

If you want to talk lame software, there you go. Open source as bad as we all knew it could be.

That probably didn't help much with your original thread, though...

[Flack]

My first mass portable mp3 player was a Zune. I quite liked it, at the time. That was during my "give me anything but an Apple product" phase. If I weren't able to completely manage my iPhone and iPad without using iTunes, I'd probably still be avoiding iOS devices. iTunes is absolutely dreadful on a PC.

[Flack]

Ack! I forgot to comment on the original topic. I think it's a great idea. For some reason, the less practical the project, the more I enjoy it. Class and style rule over portability, I'd say.

[Erebor]

That may be true, but you ignored the greater principle that anything is dreadful on a PC, including the PC itself.

It's hardly fair to expect Apple to program with PCs in mind, considering they've given you a superior hardware platform for over 30 years.

But, if you think that's bad, try running Internet Explorer on a Mac, or anything remotely Microsoft-related on a Mac. For my money, the only useful product they ever created was Word.
I routinely make it a point to delete all the Microsoft software on my hard drive, anytime I get a new computer.

That said, I'm not really familiar with Zune, and wouldn't have had the vaguest notion of what one was, if not for this thread. I'm all for 3rd party software and devices, though.

--Erebor

[Flack]

It's hardly fair to expect Apple to program with PCs in mind, considering they've given you a superior hardware platform for over 30 years.

I just pigeon-holed you as a "Macs are superior no matter what" guy which immediately triggers my shields and makes me shut down, but I'll just say that I don't think it's hardly fair for Apple to program with PCs in mind. Given the law of standard distribution it stands to reason that there are more PCs running iTunes than Macs. iTunes is so awful for the PC that there's an entire market for third party programs to manage iOS devices when there wouldn't be if iTunes was remotely usable.

Anyway, these conversations haven't gone anywhere in 30 years and I don't expect this one to, either.

But, if you think that's bad, try running Internet Explorer on a Mac, or anything remotely Microsoft-related on a Mac.

It's hardly fair to expect Microsoft to program with Macs in mind...

[AArdvark]

There was a time when I had an ipod mini, one of the second generation ones I think. itunes worked...ok. I didn't have nearly as much music as I do now so I never really got deep into it. I think it was just set up playlists and sync them. Something like that. My wife still has her ipod so anytime she wants to change something I have to reinstall the software.

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AARDVARK

[Erebor]

You pigeon-hole correctly.

And my opinion, (since 1994) is well-earned.
For the sake of argument, I pigeon-hole you the opposite way.

You clearly think PCs are superior, no matter what, and you have a "majority rules" mentality. You think that whatever the majority says goes and must be correct. That purposely ignores the fact that the majority of people are morons and always have been. Most of the human population once believed the Earth was flat. Most of the population engages in organized religion. Let's hear you make an argument that either of these groups are correct.

"Majority rules" does not fly when it comes to facts, and I can make a factual argument demonstrating that Macs have been technologically superior to PCs at every level of development since 1984, using a side-by-side comparison. However, I'd prefer not to argue with you either, since I deem it a waste of energy.

Mac users make up 20% of computer users (and rising). Apple had a niche market with iTunes, and releasing it for PCs at all was a bonehead move, in my opinion. They did it solely for the purpose of making a profit, and in the process destroyed whatever leverage they had from a business standpoint to encourage people to by Mac hardware. I believe they actually lost profit, in the long run.

So, software designed to run on Macs doesn't work perfectly when ported to PCs... big deal. You seem to imply something sinister there, when in reality they were gracious to even release a PC version. Let alone, for the moment that Microsoft *deliberately* wrote bugs into its Mac version of IE, so that people would start blaming their Macs, instead of knowing where the real culprit was, and run out and by a new computer.

I would have released it for Mac and Linux, and let that be that.

And, just in case you still value public opinion for anything, social trends are going my way. People are buying more Apple computers (not just iOS devices), and Apple has been the most profitable company on the planet for the majority of the last 5 years (may still be, for all I know). Microsoft is rapidly going into the toilet.

That shows that people can wake up, *eventually*.

You can't stop progress, and you can't keep down superior technology.

For the record, I liked Apple way before it was cool-- during the ten years when some corporate waste of space was running it into the ground. Alas, pre-teens and teenagers don't have generally have a lot of money to invest.

--Erebor

[Tdarcos]

AS NOTED BELOW, THIS IS A SUMMARY.

I like the hardware but the Zune software is bloatware.

Three words: DRM. Anything that supposedly has to protect the media creator from the customer using the media has to be big and fat to support the protection methods lest someone use it in a way they don't like.

They could have used MediaPlayer to interface with them but no, they had to make a whole 'nother program to do the same thing.

My guess is Media Player's interface does not scale down effectively, so that something designed for a 640c480 minimum screen fails miserably on a 2" screen at probably 200x200 if that.

Actually, they could have gone even simpler, as I'll note in the followup article: http://www.caltrops.com/pointy.php?acti ... pid=176463

As for your choice of music, there is lots of stuff from the 40s, 50s and earlier that still hold up. Back in the '80s Tacio did a remake of Puttin' on the Ritz, a song by Irving Berlin to celebrate the 1920s, which he wrote in 1927. The song's content is so good it can still stand up after more than 60 years. Something that can't be said about either me or Irving Berlin.

[pinback]

I work with PCs and Macs every day.

I hate Macs.

Pigeonhole this.

[Flack]

For the sake of argument, I pigeon-hole you the opposite way.

Nope, off the mark. I'm a "whatever works for you" / "whatever's best for the job" type of guy. I don't think PCs are better at everything all the time. I'm more of a live and let live kind of guy. I may be stereotyping here, but that's one problem I have with avid Mac users. Most Mac users I've met seem to feel the need to convert others to their platform, while most PC users (or at least me) don't feel the need to convert anybody to anything. It doesn't matter to me what kind of computer anyone else uses, to be honest.

At work we are 100% Windows-based, so that's what I use at home for the most part too, save for dabbling in Linux on my Raspberry Pi machines.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Here's my take, having used a Mac every day for work for the last year and a half, to go with decades of everything PCs have done. Though now we're blurring the lines between hardware and software:

- OS-X included a BSD shell. This is great! You can get lots of work done. I have a hard time giving Apple credit for throwing their hands up at the command line and just using the disk operating system of a former "competitor."

- I can't take OS-X seriously as it is literally impossible to click on an icon and traverse directories as it's setup by default. I had to install a third-party program for that.

- You can't delete a file if you have it highlit n "Finder," which is wretched, by pressing the delete key on your keyboard. At this point, we're not dealing with something serious.

So mad props for putting a Unixy shell for me to do stuff in, that's awesome and waaaaaaaaaaay better than trying to use cygwin on Windows. In my opinion.

As for Windows, people are saying that Windows 10 will send Microsoft your encryption keys. No idea if it's true or not and I don't care, I will never install that piece of shit on anything I own. I'll stay with 7 and eventually transition over to Ubuntu or Mint as my home OS.

[Tdarcos]

I work with PCs and Macs every day.

I hate Macs.

Pigeonhole this.

As I have both a Power-PC AND an Intel Mac, I notice that the version of BSD that OSX runs really has a bad Samba implementation.

I have a Buffalo NAS which I use so that files I work on are not stored on any one computer but are available to any computer. You set it up once with the root directories you want and the only time you ever have to reboot it is if you add or delete a root directory. You access it as a Windows share and it looks like any other computer on the network.

You run a live CD Linux distribution and its Samba implementation is either nearly as good as Windows Networking or is just as flawless. It is significantly more work and effort to recognize a network share on Mac than it is on Windows OR Linux.

[AArdvark]

I thought these dumb hardware arguments went out at the turn of the century. maybe I just don't post on those BBSs anymore. People like what they're gonna like. What's better is just an opinion, so nobody wins.


THE
BUT EVERYONE GETS
A TROPHY
AARDVARK

[AArdvark]

Back on topic. This is my radio. Well, it's the same as mine, anyway. I had to refinish the wood and replace the fabric in front of the speaker.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I thought these dumb hardware arguments went out at the turn of the century. maybe I just don't post on those BBSs anymore. People like what they're gonna like. What's better is just an opinion, so nobody wins.


THE
BUT EVERYONE GETS
A TROPHY
AARDVARK

I'll split the thread if we get more posts on it, sir.

Great work with the radio!

[LG to lazy to log in]

Any Paul Harvey in rotation?