C
Cymbal Man Freq.
http://www.kfj.f2s.com/index.php/2006-09-16-too-zune
So I somehow found room to be offended by that even though I didn’t want the
feature and knew I wouldn’t buy one anyway. The core reason I can’t use a Zune
or iPod is that both insist on their own evil infection of your machine. iTunes
is the reason I don’t flinch when comparing Apple’s products to the holocaust.
The Zune, like anything that wants to support Microsoft’s DRM stuff, uses the
Media Transfer Protocol to talk to your PC. That means it isn’t a storage device
you’re free to use as you please; everything you transfer to it has to go
through Windows Media Player 10. This is disastrously unreliable, slow and
restrictive. MTP will actually stop you from copying a file type that Windows
Media Player doesn’t recognise to your player, even if the player itself
specifically supports it. MTP devices show up in Explorer, and are mocked up to
look like storage drives, but you’re restricted to the default view, your
right-click options are taken away, and you can’t open files directly from the
device. Explorer is about the only part of Windows that still almost works
intuitively, though XP tried its level best to obfuscate it and mollycoddle new
users into misunderstanding their system, and they’ve specifically crippled it
to be less logical and usable with respect to MP3 players. I will enjoy watching
you fail, Microsoft, even if it is to a greater evil.
Some brands pointedly boycott MTP, or at least pointedly include a UMS option -
USB Mass Storage, an older protocol from the days when things were built to work
rather than monitor and defy you. Sandisk’s Sansa players have had an
aggressively anti-iPod campaign, and bragged about their ‘just works’ driverless
storage device functionality, but they do lose marks for also supporting MTP as
an alternate mode (”I’m clean, but also support herpes as an alternate mode”)
and only supporting video in Quicktime format. Their contempt for Apple’s
proprietry restrictiveness would ring truer if they hadn’t co-opted Apple’s own
grossly inefficient, poor-quality, bloated, slow and disgusting QuickTime
format. More admirably but more cumbersomely, bovine-sounding Cowon make
UMS-only players, proudly support OGG (an open-source music format, more
efficient than MP3), and have a ridiculous 35-hour battery life on their larger
model. My favourite musical gadget site Anything But iPod specialise in
alternatives, and are good about specifying MTP or UMS in their reviews. My hope
is that Microsoft having their own player to pimp will mean they stop putting
pressure on once-cool companies like iRiver and Creative to cripple their
players with MSDRM-friendly FFS-inducing MTP, and that Anything But Zune
launches soon.
So I somehow found room to be offended by that even though I didn’t want the
feature and knew I wouldn’t buy one anyway. The core reason I can’t use a Zune
or iPod is that both insist on their own evil infection of your machine. iTunes
is the reason I don’t flinch when comparing Apple’s products to the holocaust.
The Zune, like anything that wants to support Microsoft’s DRM stuff, uses the
Media Transfer Protocol to talk to your PC. That means it isn’t a storage device
you’re free to use as you please; everything you transfer to it has to go
through Windows Media Player 10. This is disastrously unreliable, slow and
restrictive. MTP will actually stop you from copying a file type that Windows
Media Player doesn’t recognise to your player, even if the player itself
specifically supports it. MTP devices show up in Explorer, and are mocked up to
look like storage drives, but you’re restricted to the default view, your
right-click options are taken away, and you can’t open files directly from the
device. Explorer is about the only part of Windows that still almost works
intuitively, though XP tried its level best to obfuscate it and mollycoddle new
users into misunderstanding their system, and they’ve specifically crippled it
to be less logical and usable with respect to MP3 players. I will enjoy watching
you fail, Microsoft, even if it is to a greater evil.
Some brands pointedly boycott MTP, or at least pointedly include a UMS option -
USB Mass Storage, an older protocol from the days when things were built to work
rather than monitor and defy you. Sandisk’s Sansa players have had an
aggressively anti-iPod campaign, and bragged about their ‘just works’ driverless
storage device functionality, but they do lose marks for also supporting MTP as
an alternate mode (”I’m clean, but also support herpes as an alternate mode”)
and only supporting video in Quicktime format. Their contempt for Apple’s
proprietry restrictiveness would ring truer if they hadn’t co-opted Apple’s own
grossly inefficient, poor-quality, bloated, slow and disgusting QuickTime
format. More admirably but more cumbersomely, bovine-sounding Cowon make
UMS-only players, proudly support OGG (an open-source music format, more
efficient than MP3), and have a ridiculous 35-hour battery life on their larger
model. My favourite musical gadget site Anything But iPod specialise in
alternatives, and are good about specifying MTP or UMS in their reviews. My hope
is that Microsoft having their own player to pimp will mean they stop putting
pressure on once-cool companies like iRiver and Creative to cripple their
players with MSDRM-friendly FFS-inducing MTP, and that Anything But Zune
launches soon.