ModStomp - Games & Gadgets & Stuff! » iPods Suck

More Micro Player Goodness

Zarch — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 14:57:01 +0000

Here at the Modstomp Manor we’ve got a hankering for tiny mp3 players. I go through about 6 a week. With that in mind, watch for me to pick up one of these in the next couple of weeks. Gizmodo has some details on the new Zen Stone Plus in all its tiny OLED glory, so take a look. Expect some follow-up from us down the road.

iPod nano vs. Monster LG Washer

Zarch — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:56:37 +0000

Neither my wife nor I have a good record of checking pockets prior to laundry time, and my nano is the latest victim. What’s worse, we recently got a fancy new LG washing machine, which sounds like a 777 starting up. It’s a beautiful machine, but it’s not good for electronics survivability. The startling thing is the nano has some signs of life. I wasn’t getting it to start up initially, so naturally, I took it apart. I was able to sync it at that point, but it locked up on the screen you see here afterwards. Since then I had to let the battery go dead since it wasn’t taking a reset. After that, it synced again, and hasn’t locked up yet. My only problem now is putting the stupid thing back together. There’s a little ribbon cable connecting the click wheel and the headphone jack to the mainboard, and that’s giving me fits. In the meantime, I’m looking pretty hard at the Creative Zen V Plus as an alternative for this slot (I use the nano mostly as a workout player and for my Audible account). One can tell Apple really doesn’t want end users taking these things apart; there was some prying and peeling back glue, and I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to get the thing back together right. If I were a smarter man, I might work on putting the guts into an Altoids tin or something.

Ten Worst iPod Accessories

Zarch — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 04:20:51 +0000

I’m an iPod owner. I know. It makes me a little sick inside too. For the record, the iPod is currently my #3 mp3 player, behind a Toshiba GigaBeat S60 and a SanDisk Sansa e260. Still, I own an iPod nano 2nd Gen, silver, the cheap one. My reasons (short list) include the very simple podcasting, Audible support, and strong accessory support. Example – it was easy to find a cable the provided a USB plug and a line out so I can charge and have line-level input to my car stereo.

Which brings us to the subject of today’s post. I stumbled on a list of the ten worst iPod accessories. I suppose one would have to try the iBuzz (link probably NSFW) to really decide if it belongs on this list or not. Anyone out there own something on that list and feel like commenting on it?

How to make an iPod even more lame

Zarch — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 02:55:32 +0000

I’ve owned a couple of iPods. It was sort of an accident. I have an aversion to things that are en vogue, so to speak, or at least en vogue to the point of idiocy. Anyway, to put it in perspective, I’ve had two iPods out of an estimated 30 mp3 players that have passed through my hands. One thing I do envy iPod users, however, is the bevy of accessories available. To wit:

That alone is almost enough to make me want to load that iTunes schlock on my system to hog my resources and limit the formats I can play, all within the calming blanket of DRM (I can hardly sleep at night knowing Metallica might not be making money off me).

Anyway, enough iPod bashing. They’re decent little players if you can live within the restrictions, and most people can. Anyone who drops $100 on this thing, however, has probably lost their soul to cankers of evil.

iPod Nano to be swapped for Creative Zen Vision:M

Zarch — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 16:40:51 +0000

Well, I’ve had my little iPod for a few months now. So naturally, I’m sick of it and I want a new mp3 player. The nano is great player, taken by itself; throw in iTunes, however, and it really causes me headaches. For one thing, all my media is stored on a Windows Media Center 2005 PC, so synchronizing involved making a second music library just for the iPod so iTunes wouldn’t frag my current library. Additionally, the iTunes interface really blows compared to WMP10, in my humble opinion. It’s a pain to cusomtize tags, make playlists, and organize music. It’s the Playskool effect – Apple tries to make things too easy by taking away control.

Anyway, check back over the next week or so for a report on the new Zen Vision:M, and we’ll see if I like it any better than I liked my last Zen.

Apple attacks the software for my new Zen Vision!

Zarch — Fri, 30 Sep 2005 23:51:52 +0000

Here’s hoping this is just a fluke, and not some plot by the Mother Brain at Apple to make us all wear stupid white headphones and blink in unison, but Quicktime fragged the software for my new Zen Vision. I was happily unpacking components and slipped the CD with drivers and software into my drive. To my bewilderment, it kept giving me the "This program had an error and had to close" message. Well, I followed the link to more info, and this is the page Microsoft popped up:

After I uninstalled Quicktime, the install of the Creative software went without a hitch. I’d like to believe there’s nothing to this, but in a world of white plastic and hip twenty-somethings rocking out in public to the top 40 on their iPods, nothing is certain anymore.

Anybody else have this problem? Fire an email off to me.