Monday, November 16, 2009

iPod and iTunes, my thoughts

While working in Boston, and then in London, we had the freedom to download iTunes onto our work laptops. So, all music and podcasts were on my London computer. But, now in Paris, we cannot even sneeze on our keyboard without asking for administrator approval it seems. As I try to spend most of my day with headphones on listening to music, I needed to break down and buy one of the original, large storage, iPods as I only have the tiny Shuffle. I bought one when in the States in September.


After spending enough money on the iPod ‘classic’, the newest version too, I have a few suggestions :


1) Volume. I use Shure SE210 sound isolating ear buds (I love these!). Because of the noise reduction, I often turn the volume way down low and still find it loud enough. Problem with my new iPod – the volume cannot be turned down all the way to zero. So its quietest setting is still too loud when I’m walking to the Metro early morning, on the train, etc.


2) When I go to Music, the Artists, why isn’t there an alphabet that allows me to immediately jump to a letter? I hate having to scroll through everything. And, when I’m at Pearl Jam and I want Aerosmith, I might want to go PQRST...XYZA .. why won’t you let me? Why do you insist I go backwards through the alphabet?


3) On the ‘Now Playing’ screen, the song name scrolls past so you can see the whole thing, but why doesn’t the artist name, or the album?


4) I added the clock so it appears in the top left corner, opposite the battery symbol ; and it is in 24h time like I want. But why when the screen fades out does the clock on the main screen show up in 12h?


5) Why can’t I add/change a rating of a song on my iPod? I can change contacts etc in my BlackBerry and that syncs with my computer, so why not with an iPod? (And don’t tell me to get an iPhone, I want the functionality on my iPod)


5a) Same concept – why can’t I add/delete a song from a playlist while on my iPod? If I‘m using this the most and not sitting in front of my computer, what am I supposed to do? Keep a paper list of ratings and/or playlist changes?


6) This is more for iTunes, rather than iPod, but I think a feature should be added so I can see what playlists a song is in. You know, like in Gmail how a message can be in several folders and you can see that plain as day.


Am I missing something in the settings?

1 comment:

Howard said...

3. I've always wondered this.

4. I'm surprised there isn't something in settings.

5. I have an old 3rd gen iPod Classic, I could do ratings on it by clicking the button while a song is playing and cycling through info about it. One was rating and I could "turn the wheel" to set the rating.

6. In your iTunes Music Library, right-click (or control-click) on a song's title and select 'Show in Playlist' from the pop-up menu. A submenu will pop out, showing all of the playlists the song belongs to.