iTunes = Winamp

[twisterX]

Both are good. iTunes has like everything nicely arranged and easy to get like podcasts but Winamp is good for like just playing songs becuase of the easy playlists.

what do you think?

[Chewie]

I think that I'll avoid anything Apple.
I haven't trusted them since Quicktime 3 was introduced and they seemed to think it perfectly OK to design it to run alongside QT2 instead of replacing it, which it was perfectly capable of doing.
I have been reminded of this by Adobe who made it standard practice for new versions of Acrobat Reader to not uninstall previous ones. Having versions 4, 5, 6 & 7 all installed on a computer (when v7 is perfectly capable of replacing the others) is pointlessly cluttering and almost criminally stupid.

From what little I've heard, Apple's itunes software is a poor encoding tool that has been known to 'phone home' and forward musical preferences on to a third party company. Apparently.

[Sneakydave]

I dont dont have an ipod but ive used winamp for a very long time. It has everything i need, a small skin that can lie on top of the screen not blocking anything important, a very large amount of customisability and plugins, cd ripping to mp3 and a list of radio stations. Theres no need to use Itunes, it doesnt offer any improvement over winamp and theres less choice of plugins.

The only bad thing is that it doesnt seem to like playing some films type files like .avi for some reason. But thats what VLC is for

[nightwalker]

itunes takes way too much resource to run in the bg though

[Xilo]

From what little I've heard, Apple's itunes software is a poor encoding tool that has been known to 'phone home' and forward musical preferences on to a third party company. Apparently.

Please, get your facts straight before spouting useless dribble. iTunes does not "phone home" or any such crap. The only thing it does is if you enable the Ministore which will show you music selections that you can purchase from the Music Store that are popular based upon what you're listening to. No third party is involved, only you and Apple. If you don't want that, just turn it off.

And it's hardly a "poor encoding tool". It can do it's own format that's comparable to Microsoft's WMA and it can do MP3 of any bitrate. Plus, iTunes is the easiest to use to encode files and rip cds.

[erRor67]

Actually I read that iTunes does phone-home but Apple claimed it was non-personal information...

Anywayz, with the ipod plugin for winamp, theres no need for itunes.

[Chewie]

From what little I've heard, Apple's itunes software is a poor encoding tool that has been known to 'phone home' and forward musical preferences on to a third party company. Apparently.

Please, get your facts straight before spouting useless dribble. iTunes does not "phone home" or any such crap. The only thing it does is if you enable the Ministore which will show you music selections that you can purchase from the Music Store that are popular based upon what you're listening to. No third party is involved, only you and Apple. If you don't want that, just turn it off.

And it's hardly a "poor encoding tool". It can do it's own format that's comparable to Microsoft's WMA and it can do MP3 of any bitrate. Plus, iTunes is the easiest to use to encode files and rip cds.

When I write From what little I've heard... you can take it as read that I haven't delved too deeply into discontented mutterings and possibly have only read a small article or two on the subject.

Getting facts straight involved just 20 seconds:

See here:
http://www.spybot.info/en/news/2006-01-13.html

And the follow up:
http://www.spybot.info/en/news/2006-01-27.html

Looks like they did send stuff on to a third party, and a tracking one at that, if you used itunes on a Mac.
Fortunately Apple have learned from the Sony backlash and acted somewhat smartly.

Being comparable to WMA is hardly anything to write home about and the ability to encode mp3s at multiple bitrates similarly means nothing; the question is whether it can do it well.

edit: oh, and it's drivel

[Xilo]

Those two articles say exactly what I posted. The third party has been taken out of the picture. So, it no longer uses any third party. Also, it only connects to anything if you use the Ministore or the Music Store, which both I and the article explained.

By 'comparable', I meant as in filesizes, but imo AAC is a bit better than WMA. Sorry if I was unclear. It can encode MP3s well. Of course, you won't get the same quality as if you had used LAME to encode and really fine tuned the settings. But, being as what it is (a simple right click -> convert), it does a very good job. You'd have to really have good ears and good speakers to be able to tell the difference between encoders.

Oh, I'm just oh so very sorry for making a typographical error.

[Chewie]

You jump down my throat after I voice concern that I heard rumours of suspicious activity (admitted by Apple, and removed from the program) and then you treat me to some sarcasm when I post links to two articles showing we were both right to a degree.

What a wonderful time your family must have tiptoeing around you.

[Busyman]

No offense to fanboys but STFU.

If your take is that some precious product you own has been slighted, try and keep beratement of others to yourself.

Even if you don't own said product, folks on here are just stating opinions.

Xilo to Chewie - "iTunes doesn't do that anymore" is all it took.

Jeez.