Philoking.com

Download Handbrake, and VLC for this tutorial.

What’s that you say? Subscription sucks because you want to own your music? Here are some numbers for you.

What’s that you say? let me explain a little further. I pay $14.99 per month with my Zune Pass subscription. It gives me access to millions of songs to download, and I get to keep 10 songs DRM free per month. At iTunes prices, DRM free is $1.29, so that’s $12.99 worth if iTunes music per month, and I get to download unlimited DRM’d music to listen to for the additional $2 per month.

Basically, if you were to fill up your iPod Classic 120GB device with the cheaper DRM’d music at $0.69 per song, it would cost you roughly $11,000. I can download at will, all I want for $14.99 a month for the same songs at the same quality, also under DRM control. At the monthly rate, I would be 95 years old by the time it because more expensive than buying them from iTunes. That’s 61 years!

I have been a devoted Zune/Zune Pass user for about 3 months now, I have two iPods that I haven’t touched in that time. The device is awesome, great interface, built in FM Radio and Wifi that allows you to sync wirelessly and download new music wirelessly.

Why are you still using an iPod again?

I am really curious about something. iTunes is a media player, right? QuickTime is a codec and a browser plugin for the most part, correct?

I mean, iTunes plays MP3 and other media files, I can see there being file associations to open iTunes with certain file types. I know that it’s meta-data is all stored in XML.

Can someone please explain to me why I would possibly need to reboot after updating iTunes? What kind of hooks are you installing on my computer Mr. Jobs? I don’t understand….

So when iTunes originally shipped it was a cute little media player with I would say at least 60% of the functionality it has now. That was 2001 and I remember it weighing in at around 20.1MB. It’s 2008 and it’s about 70MB. That’s quite the growth considering that the only big changes have been video playback and iPhone management.

Size doesn’t really bother me that much, it’s good software, it could be 200MB and I wouldn’t really care, I just wonder when I am forced to reboot, what else is Apple trying to force into my system.

We already know that they will stop at nothing to trick you into installing Safari for Windows, and they blackmail you into installing QuickTime, but what is it? Mobile Me support?

I am not sure, but I have to say that I am pretty much in love with my Zune lately and the Zune 3.1 software is a much more complete and interesting experience these days. I can learn about bands, who influenced them, who sounds like them, find other uses that like them and see what else they are listening to, and get a regular stream of new music that the iTunes store is too cumbersome to show you easily.

I would have balked if you had told me I would be saying this six months ago, but the truth is even with 3 Macs in my setup, I listen to the Zune device all the time and use the Zune software as my music player. Why you might ask? Zune Pass. Today I open it up and it knows me and says, "Hey dude, the new Nickelback is out and you might also like this David Cook fellow…" I pretty much get all you can eat music (even sweeter with the keep 10 addition) and I download the two albums and crank them as we re-arrange the house today. Who could ask for anything more.

I saw this as an email offer from Amazon this morning. Did they just lose their mind?

Retail is $150 for the latest 4GB Nano. What the hell? If you look in the list below they show a newer model for $134, and then show that 43"% of people are buying the old one at $349. I think not.

From OEDB.org:

If you think that iPods are used just for listening to music, you obviously haven’t been keeping up with the latest technology. The Apple-developed music player now features all kinds of accessories to help you study better, and now other companies are in a rush to get their designs in sync with the iPod. Pre-teens, college kids and even adults are taking advantage of the educational benefits an iPod affords them. From downloadable podcasts to just-for-iPod study guides and applications, learning on the go has never been easier. To find out about the many different ways you can transform your iPod into a learning device, check out our list below.

Read the tips here