Succumbing to the iPod

[chipotle]

I’ve been kicking around the idea of getting an iPod for years, but haven’t been able to quite justify it to myself. It’s been less a matter of price than of where I’d use it and—as odd as it might sound—what I’d listen to.

See, I’m actually more of a radio listener than a “listening to my own library over and over” listener. I want to hear new stuff, and unless someone is coming along and inserting things into your music collection when you’re not paying attention, it can’t do that. Of course, modern commercial radio isn’t that good at it, either; in Tampa, I listened to WMNF, a community radio station, that was good at that. Out here the closest thing to WMNF is the (in)famous KPFA, flagship of the Pacifica Radio network. (Anyone who spends a week listening to Pacifica will, from that point on, giggle uncontrollably whenever someone describes CBS or The New York Times as “the liberal media.”) As much as this would get KPFA’s fanatical listeners up in (politically correct) arms, though, WMNF is a much better station. This is why I ended up being an XM Radio subscriber.

But, as I’ve been trying to ride the rails more, that’s 90 minutes a day without availability of radio. And at work I don’t have one, either—which I don’t usually want, but sometimes it’s nice to have the option. That removes one objection. What removes the other is podcasting.

I’ve been an RSS convert for a while, using the redoubtable NetNewsWire to read several dozen web sites. It took me quite some time of noodling with RSS before it suddenly “clicked” and I understood what the attraction was. Podcasting has been the same way, but I figured this one out much faster once I realized there might actually be interesting podcasts out there.

So, last night, after kicking around my budget still more, I decided to buy the smallest iPod that was actually useful to me—the 4-gig iPod mini. (The iPod shuffle is a fascinating little gadget, but it’s not what I want.) It’s difficult to explain “Why an iPod rather than another MP3 player?” without setting off a flame war—any statement which equates to Apple does things better than their competitors will make people furiously write rebuttals, to explain why Apple isn’t all they’re cracked up to be and/or why their competitors in any given space are better. As Dave Barry might say: I have studied this field in exhaustive detail, and after painstaking evaluation, I can state objectively that you are all on crack.

So anyway, I bought an iPod, and after a bit of dorking around, I’ve decided the best way to use it will be to have it automatically sync specific playlists in iTunes:

• My “Recently Played” smartlist, so it automatically picks up new music (or old music that’s re-caught my ear);
• My “Rated Songs” smartlist, which simply collects all the songs I’ve given star ratings to;
• A “Podcast” list that I’ll create tonight, to which NetNewsWire can be set to automatically populate when it downloads podcasts I want.

Of course, this requires me to start finding programs I’d be interested in. I’ve discovered that there are some NPR programs being podcast, including Living on Earth and On the Media, both of which I like but rarely get a chance to hear. And there’s lot of strange little music shows out there, plus the rapidly growing universe of wow that’s amateur crap! that you’d expect from such a medium, which I will probably not have the patience to sort through looking for gems.

On the chance that any of you are mired in podcasts, anything I should be particularly looking for? (Or specifically avoiding?)

Comments

[shaterri.livejournal.com]

Well, this isn't particularly iPod-specific (I had my reasons for choosing Brand X instead of the iPod, but I won't bore you with them :-), but more on the radio tip: it's not NPR-oriented, but you do have 89.7 KFJC (http://kfjc.org/) available in the Bay, which is pretty much the best college radio station I've found... they do stream, though they don't do any sort of podcasting unfortunately. Likewise, along similar lines, you should check out Radio KAOS (http://www.kaosradio.org/) (no, really) from just south of here, which looks to be exactly the sort of community station you're looking for; again, they broadcast live over the net, but again (unfortunately) there's no podcasting available (AFAIK)...

[twentythoughts.livejournal.com]

Well, what the iPod -has- got going for it is a really, really solid design, both ergonomically and in build, and iTunes, which is an excellent program. My Creative Zen Touch is pretty danged good - and it does have a better battery capacity than the iPod - but Creative Mediasource Organizer is a bit too buggy to be wuv'd.

As with the whole Mac VS PC argument... It's really just a matter of solidity. You know you're getting something that won't break down within half a year when you get it from Apple. Apparently. S'what I hear from everyone who actually has a Mac, and as a PC user whose computer now takes two minutes to boot up into Windows XP and runs slower than it used to even though it's completely spyware-free, that's the reason why I'm getting a Mac the next time I'm buying a computer :)

[chipotle.livejournal.com]

An artist friend of mine was trying to decide between buying a Mac and a PC for his first computer, and he observed that when his other friends talked about their machines, the Mac users said, "Look what I did with my computer!" and the PC users said, "Look what I got my computer to do!" And that really captures my "pro-Mac argument" better than anything else.

The iPod mini that I got is their second generation one, which has an 18-hour battery life -- which still isn't as good as the Zen Touch's, but it's quite a boost from their original 8-hour ones. And, I'm already an iTunes slut, so.

[polarisslbm.livejournal.com]

iTunes is probably the worst program I have ever used. I can no longer play music on my laptop because it arbitrarily decides to take just about every format it wants, irrespective of my telling it not to, and also likes to copy files all over my hard drive, even though I told it to stop.

Then iTunes has that thing where you can buy songs. But I do not do that, because it gives even less money to the artists/bands...

Instead I went and did some research and picked up a lot of music I like from a period that MTV all-but-claims did not exist : the 80's. As opposed to VH1's 'the 80's were a period between the awesomely uniform music of the 90's and the amazing virtuosityness of the 70's' outlook... anyway, it doesn't matter, because I am sure you will not listen to what I say anyway.