Sonny wrote:I'm not a huge portable music fan as I don't want to carry yet another electronic device after cell phone & corporate blackberry. But the more and more I play with my wife's Ipod, I think the Ipod/ITunes combo is pretty slick. It is a live saver on a noisy airplane!
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
I do find it ironic that all the Apple Fans that complained for years and years about how Microsoft/Windows is shoving everything down our throats in a proprietary format - now is 100% behind the Ipod/ITunes format which basically does the same thing. You can't share files between Ipods without some black market/3rd party work around. And every time you attempt to sync up an Ipod with a computer, ITunes wants to wipe the Ipod clean and start from scratch.
You think Apple cares if you give your songs to everyone on the planet? It is the recording industry that cares and requires songs purchased from the iTunes store to carry DRM protection (ACC format). Apple is leading the way in convincing record labels to publish music without DRM -- EMI is releasing their collection in MP3 format without DRM.
All music downloading services (napster, sony, MS) carry DRM. Apple is not jamming any proprietary format on anyone. Zune and the MS posse is far more proprietary. Even songs previously purchased have to be repurchasd from the Zune Marketplace. A song does not require DRM and does not have to be purchased from the iTunes store to play on the ipod. and who uses a jewish cuss word for the their product name?
Using the ipod on different computers simply requires setting iTunes to manually update your ipod. If iTunes is set to automatically update your ipod -- then yes when you plug in an ipod it wants to synchonize it with your library.
Joe T -- I think you may be surprised at the amount of music being downloaded legally thru outlets like iTunes.
It's easy to trash windows. I wouldn't consider it a great product. And the numbder of people that have a problem with Windows might be 100%.