Apples and Oranges; or Mac versus Microsoft

This Christmas, the family audio players were upgraded. The home Music Library has grown larger with monthly downloads from eMusic subscription and converting my old analog files to digital media. So what was I waiting for?

I bought two solid-state SanDisk Players that were refurbished and sold online from Buy.com. Both of the units work with Windows Media Player (WMP) 10 and later in a manner similar to iTunes for the iPod devices.

· The first was a Sansa e250 player that is comparable in size and features to the iPod Nano, and allows a MicroSD expansion slot to add music in addition to the device built-in 2GB flash memory. The battery is replaceable and it allows with Windows Media Player (WMP) 10 and later to synch files onto the player in “MSC” mode with Windows explorer (“MTP” mode selection does not work the same as “MSC”). The method was not described in the user manual, but after reading the Sansa player forum and some trial and error effort, I figured that the music tags and album art could not be transferred onto the device any other way. SanDisk provides separate downloads for the media converter software for transferring photo and video items to the player. This player was under $30.

· The second player was a similar Sansa c240 player with 1GB of flash memory, that has a smaller display than the e250 and some mechanical differences in the controls based on a less expensive Sansa product line. It seemed to work out of the box, but I discovered that some issue kept interrupting the playback and I had to return the item for replacement. This one has a MTP mode that works very nicely. SanDisk provides separate downloads for the media converter software for transferring photo and video items to the player. This player was under $20.

I bought my daughter a purple Apple iPod Nano 16GB solid state player and I bought a refurbished iPod Classic 160GB hard-drive based player for myself.

The new 4th generation iPod Nano comes in vibrant colors and a new curved aluminum and glass design. With just a few clicks, the new Genius feature finds the songs on your iPod Nano that go great together and makes a Genius Playlist for you. Thanks to the built-in accelerometer, you can rotate iPod Nano to flip through album art with Cover Flow. Watch movies and TV shows in widescreen. And view photos in either portrait or landscape. Shake to shuffle. Just give iPod Nano a shake and it shuffles to a different song in your music library. The crisp, bright picture makes watching movies and TV shows amazing. For those about to rock, the nine colors and the curved, all-aluminum and glass design are high fashion; so don’t put the iPod nano down. It’s beauty is not just skin deep; the new Genius feature turns the iPod Nano into a highly intelligent, personal DJ. It creates a playlists by finding songs in your library that go great together. You can also shake, shuffle, and roll; just shake and it shuffles to another song in your library, thanks to the built-in accelerometer. Turn it sideways and view album art in Cover Flow. I had to upgrade the home computer to iTunes 8.01 from version 7.5 and was impressed with the ease that it all came together. It was almost $200 with an added leather case.

The sixth generation iPod was coined with the suffix "Classic" by Steve Jobs. The sixth generation Classic dramatically improves battery life, claiming up to 40 hours of music playback and 7 hours of video playback. So I bought a refurbished iPod Classic 160GB hard-drive based player at a substantial discount from the Apple Store on Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving) to replace my 4-year old iPod photo 60GB player, that was near capacity (the additional capacity was a planned upgrade for viewing Photos and Videos in addition to music playback). During the Let's Rock Apple Event on September 9, 2008, the thicker 160 GB models were discontinued in favor of a thin 120GB version. The remaining Classic 160 GB models were sold at heavy discounts over the holidays. I noticed the front plate of the iPod is now made of anodized aluminum instead of polycarbonate plastic, and the "Signature iPod White" has been replaced by black or silver. This means that white is not a color option for any iPod in the iPod family. The sixth generation Classic also introduces a completely overhauled user interface, incorporating more graphics and Cover Flow. Apple released a firmware update, 1.1.1 for the iPod Classic, to among other things, improve the sound quality. Another update, 1.1.2, corrects bug fixes, another minor update. It was $250 with an added leather case. The Outlook calendar synch didn’t work, so I resorted to manually adding the calendar items in “disc mode” by saving them to the iPod calendar folder as “.ics” files as an external drive. I needed to upgrade my laptop iTunes software to support the iPod Classic, but chose to use the iTunes 7.6.2.9 from iTunes 6.4 based on the player requirements and features that the classic supports. In searching for this version, I discovered that iTunes does not allow deprecated software to be downloaded from Apple.com, so I searched and found a copy of the deprecated software on a different server not affiliated with Apple. The install went without a hitch. A security issue with QuickTime required a separate download to update this version.

I converted my recorded TV shows from Windows XP Media Center and Pocket DVD Studio Video saved as Windows Media Video format by using the Roxio Easy CD/DVD Creator Suite version 9 to convert the video formats to something only an iPod or iTunes can play. Usually, it’s a format of H.264 video, up to 768 kbps, 320 x 240, 30 frames per sec., Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 kbps, 48 KHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats as automatically selected during conversion.

I had converted my Audio Compact Discs some time ago, but the metadata tagging software that is part of both iTunes 7 and WMP 10 are significant improvements over the older RealPlayer One and MusicMatch 7 versions. I was pleasantly surprised to find that latest RealPlayer 11 contains a flash video converter that allows downloading YouTube videos to the hard drive so they can be played while offline or using the a playlist library in RealPlayer. I still use my old MusicMatch Plus version 8 to rename media files and tag music on the home network drives; and it remains an agile software product that can quickly execute batch processes across the network and build remote music library files with compatibility that the newer players don’t seem to have. Yahoo has purchased MusicMatch and wants me to shell out another $20-30 to “upgrade” a product that I have paid for three times already. It’s hard to justify the expense, when the features are provided as standard in the other software media players I already own.

The Windows Media files created from some cassette tape analog media recordings I digitized in the Windows XP Microsoft Plus! Digital Media Edition (DME) of the Analog Recorder were initially saved as Windows media Audio (WMA) files. I had converted these using the Windows Audio Converter, now bundled free with WMP 10 and later. I chose the mp3 format and ripped them at 192kbps. I was unpleasantly annoyed when I discovered that the folders were protected so I could not properly share the music files across the home network. I had to delete and recopy every music folder that contained the converted files, because some copy protection on the folder prevents you from just using the Windows File Manager to reset of the folder permissions, as one would normally expect. Despite the delay, I finished the file conversion project in time for a successful Christmas day, with both players fully charged and playing away Christmas tunes.