This is why I despise Apple's!

[Rain]

11 hours ago, rfssongs said:

Itunes is really bad for updating songs & getting them to your phone. I can't even get any songs into my phone anymore. My itunes decided it didn't like my phone anymore. That is why I bought a Sansa player.

I was a big fan of Winamp back in the days, and I often miss the simplicity.  

I am an album kind of guy, so for me, playlists were an exception and a spur of the moment thing rather than the norm, but when I did use them, I liked the simplicity and the flexibility Winamp afforded me. Unlike iTunes, you could just drag and drop MP3s in the playlist on the fly and Winamp would stream them from your HD. You could change the order, delete, add, drag and drop entire folders - all on the fly. It was a very intuitive process. 

They did a beta port to Mac but it was never as good.

iTunes insists on importing the media before playing it, so if you want to audition a bunch of files, it's a rather cumbersome process. I took the habit of simply clicking the file to preview it directly in the OS finder. It will play the whole file just fine but you must do it one file at a time and thre's no volume control.

I liked iTunes as a mean to curate my offline music collection (as long as it doesn't wipe all the album covers in an update).  Instead of having a Music directory with folders for every album, you could browse your collection by album cover in iTunes. Which was nice. 

That being said, it's hard to believe that it's been plagued with the same issues for over a decade - albums getting split for no apparent reason was probably my main pet peeve. You'd see the same album cover twice in your collection and realize that one of them had all the songs but the 2nd  and the 7th, which were separated and listed as a different album - by the same artist, with the same title and album cover. 

iTunes has now been replaced by music, but this type of behavior persists. And yeah, the duplicate/incorrect album covers...

 

And this is not the worst - at least these are Iron Maiden albums.

But how does THIS happen? 

 

Now that I have finally started streaming music, I do find it handy to have my music accessible and updated automatically on every device. And I have found this player called Elmedia Player which behaves quite like Winamp used to. But I was so used to Winamp that nothing can really replace it.

[TheMaartian]

On 12/4/2022 at 12:24 AM, Kevin Perry said:

I'm  not an Apple fan by any means (I find MacOS clunky in the extreme), but when you compare an iPhone/iPad UI to the cluster.... that is the Android ecosystem's UI, I'd say they've got a lot right.  Mind you, my work provides me with an Android phone, so I'm not persuaded enough by the UI to forego a free phone ?

Agree with it or not, but one additional variable in the Android world is that some Android phone manufacturers develop their own UIs. I've been on Samsung phones since the Galaxy S3. Samsung delivers their phones with the One UI, which has just been upgraded to v5 for Android v13. I like it, and find it easy to use, which should be one of the two prime directives for UIs: ease of use and functionality. When looking for an Android phone, research the UI for the models you are considering.

I had an early Mac laptop foisted on my when I joined Motorola in '89...because it used a Motorola 68000 CPU. That lasted less than 6 months. I was finally able to purchase a PC and also convert all of my development engineers back to DOS 3, Windows not being usable enough yet for running a real-time database for SCADA apps (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition).

I later bought an iPod. Nice piece of hardware, ruined by iTunes. There was no official Apple support for Windows, so I used an app developed by, I think, Red something or other. Once cell phones became capable of playing MP3 files, the iPod was relegated to the dustbin of history. That was, and will continue to be, my last Apple product.

Well, except for the Apple TV+ app running on my Sony OLED Smart TV, powered by Android TV. My 3 year sub to Disney+ expired and I pretty much hated all of their new series (Loki was the last one that I liked; the newer ones ranged from barely tolerable to downright awful). Apple have created some decent original shows. I have Netflix, of course, and Prime, but Prime here in France kind of sucks because many of the movies provided come only in the dubbed French version, with the original English not available, and they don't even have French subtitles, which would help me learn the language.

[/rant]

Edited December 5, 2022 by John Maar

[TheMaartian]

11 hours ago, paulo said:

Yeah, in theory they had all the ingredients there. Hard to believe that they made such a mess of it really.

Actually, very easy to believe if you've ever had to work with them internally. Being a Director at Motorola and spec'ing Windows PCs into customer SCADA systems, gave me direct access to their internals. A real bloody mess, that was (pun intended).

[TheMaartian]

3 hours ago, Rain said:

I was a big fan of Winamp back in the days, and I often miss the simplicity.  

I am an album kind of guy, so for me, playlists were an exception and a spur of the moment thing rather than the norm, but when I did use them, I liked the simplicity and the flexibility Winamp afforded me. Unlike iTunes, you could just drag and drop MP3s in the playlist on the fly and Winamp would stream them from your HD. You could change the order, delete, add, drag and drop entire folders - all on the fly. It was a very intuitive process. 

They did a beta port to Mac but it was never as good.

iTunes insists on importing the media before playing it, so if you want to audition a bunch of files, it's a rather cumbersome process. I took the habit of simply clicking the file to preview it directly in the OS finder. It will play the whole file just fine but you must do it one file at a time and thre's no volume control.

I liked iTunes as a mean to curate my offline music collection (as long as it doesn't wipe all the album covers in an update).  Instead of having a Music directory with folders for every album, you could browse your collection by album cover in iTunes. Which was nice. 

That being said, it's hard to believe that it's been plagued with the same issues for over a decade - albums getting split for no apparent reason was probably my main pet peeve. You'd see the same album cover twice in your collection and realize that one of them had all the songs but the 2nd  and the 7th, which were separated and listed as a different album - by the same artist, with the same title and album cover. 

iTunes has now been replaced by music, but this type of behavior persists. And yeah, the duplicate/incorrect album covers...

 

And this is not the worst - at least these are Iron Maiden albums.

But how does THIS happen? 

 

Now that I have finally started streaming music, I do find it handy to have my music accessible and updated automatically on every device. And I have found this player called Elmedia Player which behaves quite like Winamp used to. But I was so used to Winamp that nothing can really replace it.

Ever heard of REAPER? (That's a rhetorical question, BTW.) The main developer behind REAPER (by Cockos) is Justin Frankel, who was the main developer behind WinAMP (by Nullsoft). He sold it to AOL in '99, and you can imagine how that went. He later founded Cockos and is still actively developing REAPER.

[Rain]

I had forgotten that connextion between Winamp and Reaper, yes. 

I've not checked Reaper in some time, but from what I remember, the developers were probably the most aggressive on the market in terms of developing an implementing new features - they seemed to be very close to their user base. 

Although TBH, if I had a PC, the first thing I'd try would be Cakewalk. That's where I grew up.

[Notes_Norton]

Getting songs in and out of iTunes was a PITA.

With Windows, it's just drag and drop to the appropriate folder (which you decide).

------

When I had that iPad, I went to Australia, took 800 pictures on my Panasonic Lumix camera.

For Windows, I just dragged and dropped them from the camera to a folder. Ctrl-A highlighted them all, drag and drop the bunch, and it sat there and worked without me paying attention.

I could not get them from my camera into my iPad. I wanted to bring the best of them to show my sisters when I was having dinner with them. Since the Luimix didn't have some kind of Apple proprietary interface and/or code, they wouldn't go.

So I got a FireWire to USB cable, hoping to get them from my Windows PC to the iPad. They wouldn't go directly. Searched the Internet and couldn't find a solution.

So I uploaded them one at a time to a folder on my website, and downloaded them to the iPad. Very time-consuming. What happened in minutes in Windows, took hours and hours plus constant attention to get them to the iPad.

I now have a Samsung Galaxy. I like it much better than the iPad. Ctrl-A, drag and drop, and they move all by themselves.

I can't see myself buying another Apple product, until they learn to play with the standards everyone else uses. They make nice hardware, the OS is fine, but Apple just doesn't play well with others.

Apple calls it an ecosystem, I call it Apple Jail.

On the other hand, there are a lot of people quite happy with Apple products, so obviously they are doing something right. There is more than one right way to do almost anything.

 

Insights and incites by Notes

[Jim Roseberry]

Have a 2021 MacBook Pro (to support clients)

I'm the only one who sees/uses my computers.

Having to enter a password every time I make a change (load a driver, etc) is a PITA.

Having to verify my identity across devices is extremely annoying.  The wife and I have two iPhones, three iPADs, and said laptop.

Then... as a PC user, there's the abomination that is iTunes (crap substitute for proper drag/drop file management).

Apple is all about control... their control

I don't like my machines/gear getting in the way of my work/data.

I don't care about any cult-of-personality (Microsoft, Gates, Apple, Jobs, etc).

 

I see iPhone as the lesser of two evils (vs Android). 

ie: I often have to text video back/forth with bandmates.  With Android, video is compressed so much it's useless.

 

 

[AndyB01]

On 12/4/2022 at 1:30 AM, craigb said:

I've used Lastpass for years now.  Much better than a password-locked Excel sheet (which I, like any other nerd, can hack into in just a few seconds).  Plus you can access everything from any device, including a new one.

Check it out!

https://www.lastpass.com/

 

+1 to this - I use 1Password but have had LastPass in the past - other flavours of password managers are available.

Forget Excel - just get one - it's life changing (in a good way); especially if you put the work in to update all your shared and simple-to-hack passwords with the random passwords generated by the app.

Browser and multiple device integration is top drawer and autofill works perfectly a good 95+%  of the time. 

Just make sure you set a strong, unforgettable master password and you'll never have to remember any others.

Andy

[Grem]

LastPass user here for years. 

Agree with everything Andy said about a password manager too.

[Xoo]

12 hours ago, John Maar said:

Agree with it or not, but one additional variable in the Android world is that some Android phone manufacturers develop their own UIs

It's really the apps, where the UI can vary so much - compare Gmail app with Outlook app for example and how message selection works.  Or where send icons are in different messaging apps.  Like it or not, Apple has enforced some UI guidelines which makes it much easier for Jo/an User to move between different apps with little difficulty.

[TheMaartian]

8 hours ago, Kevin Perry said:

It's really the apps, where the UI can vary so much - compare Gmail app with Outlook app for example and how message selection works.  Or where send icons are in different messaging apps.  Like it or not, Apple has enforced some UI guidelines which makes it much easier for Jo/an User to move between different apps with little difficulty.

Good point.

[Alan Tubbs]

I loved my windows phone.  For phone use (?), calendar, and music.

I have an apple phone which is clunky and kludgey and unintuitive.  Hell, my kid can’t figure out  how to do stuff on it.  For example,  How do you move an icon from one screen to the next app page?

to paraphrase Orwell, it would take an computer engineer to so badly design an app.

however, the rest of the family is part of Apple world.  I can’t get tickets from the wife’s Ticketmaster account, so I’m not sure why I went with it.

[Rain]

19 minutes ago, Alan Tubbs said:

I loved my windows phone.  For phone use (?), calendar, and music.

I have an apple phone which is clunky and kludgey and unintuitive.  Hell, my kid can’t figure out  how to do stuff on it.  For example,  How do you move an icon from one screen to the next app page?

to paraphrase Orwell, it would take an computer engineer to so badly design an app.

however, the rest of the family is part of Apple world.  I can’t get tickets from the wife’s Ticketmaster account, so I’m not sure why I went with it.

Tap and hold the icon. When they start wobbling, drag it to the page of your choice.

That being said, the process isn't as smooth as it could be.

[paulo]

On 12/5/2022 at 9:19 AM, John Maar said:

Actually, very easy to believe if you've ever had to work with them internally. Being a Director at Motorola and spec'ing Windows PCs into customer SCADA systems, gave me direct access to their internals. A real bloody mess, that was (pun intended).

Yeah, I guess I must have been out of the corporate world for long enough to have temporarily forgotten how badly mismanaged even the "best" businesses can be.

[Alan Tubbs]

22 hours ago, Rain said:

Tap and hold the icon. When they start wobbling, drag it to the page of your choice.

That being said, the process isn't as smooth as it could be.

Nope.  The screen doesn’t skip to the next page of apps.  

22 hours ago, Rain said:

Tap and hold the icon. When they start wobbling, drag it to the page of your choice.

That being said, the process isn't as smooth as it could be.

 

[kitekrazy1]

 I find MS and Apple borrow each other's ideas and often it's the bad ideas. 

Look at W11 with the TPM requirement.

My iPad is over 10 years old.  I never really use it.  It makes for a good portable media player on the patio.

 My fascination with portable DAW,  having an iRig, IK keyboard, and all of the cutesy stuff was short lived because you realize it nowhere dents the use of a desktop DAW.    Oh sure it may have some uses to make people believe you are cool in a Starbucks doing DAW stuff.   

[paulo]

2 hours ago, kitekrazy said:

I find MS and Apple borrow each other's ideas and often it's the bad ideas. 

A bit like here in UK v  USA. It always seems like we only copy the awful stuff, but totally ignore the things that they do better than us.

2 hours ago, kitekrazy said:

it may have some uses to make people believe you are cool in a Starbucks doing DAW stuff.

The only people that think that people in Starbucks doing DAW stuff look cool is the people in Starbucks doing DAW stuff.

[InstrEd]

6 hours ago, paulo said:

A bit like here in UK v  USA. It always seems like we only copy the awful stuff, but totally ignore the things that they do better than us.

The only people that think that people in Starbucks doing DAW stuff look cool is the people in Starbucks doing DAW stuff.

Just don't touch my Latte.

[Rain]

10 hours ago, kitekrazy said:

 I find MS and Apple borrow each other's ideas and often it's the bad ideas. 

Look at W11 with the TPM requirement.

My iPad is over 10 years old.  I never really use it.  It makes for a good portable media player on the patio.

 My fascination with portable DAW,  having an iRig, IK keyboard, and all of the cutesy stuff was short lived because you realize it nowhere dents the use of a desktop DAW.    Oh sure it may have some uses to make people believe you are cool in a Starbucks doing DAW stuff.   

I loved having a portable DAW when we travelled, so I could write and record on the road, in hotel rooms. But I can't imagine working in public. Whether it's writing music or a paper.

People bringing their laptop at Starbucks to do homework and work fascinate me. Someone once told me that it was to get out of the house - a change of air. If you really have to, the library would seem a much more logical choice to me.

I know it's probably me, but working on a computer at Starbucks always seems a little "poseur" to me. Most likely thee's a lot of people who need to work during their lunch break and such. But still... Starbucks?

Edited December 9, 2022 by Rain

[Shane_B.]

I used to service office equipment. I installed multifunction machines on business networks for printing, scanning, faxing. 

Our IT guy was a Mac guru. Always telling everyone they were the best in the universe.  How bad MS was.  On and on. 

He set up the networks in all of our offices.  He talked the owner in to forcing us in to a training class one time.  I drove 2 hours to get to the office and he spent the entire day trying to get the network to connect to anything with the Apple name on it. At the end of the day we had zero hands on training and he sent us home with a booklet he made of how to set Macs up on networks with print drivers and how to set up shared folders. 

I also remember how it was very easy to set up print drivers on PC based machines. But if you wanted to hook up to a Mac you had to buy a proprietary 'font interface' to be able to use any Adobe fonts.  That added an additional $1000 to the cost of the machine. The sales people would always without fail forget about the board and end up losing their commission because they would write the leases and get them signed but never put in the cost of the board.

Strictly looking at it from an installation point of view I do not care for anything Apple related. But everyone I know that has an iPhone absolutely loves it though.

As for Winamp ... I absolutely loved it. You can still find it but the current version is clunky and doesn't play well with modern higher resolutions. Someone is still working on it though. Last I checked they were officially planning on releasing it again but it looks a lot like a SoundCloud type of thing.

I loved how you could customize it and all the skins you could get for it. I had one that turned it in to a Analog looking device with VU's. Looked awesome on my 24" flat CRT. Need a magnifying glass to see it now because you can't scale it.

Edited December 9, 2022 by Shane_B.