Drag the photo’s from iPhoto to your desktop or anywhere you want on the HD. File -> Export. User/Pictures/iPhoto Library -> Show package content (I’ll give you this one, it’s a bit silly, but the former ones are pretty obvious).
While Windows loves to make you click-click-click and let you nose around on the HD, OS X loves to let you drag’n’drop pretty much everything so you don’t have to dive into the HD (and possibly get lost), less clicking, faster workflow. Yes, it requires a user that’s been using Windows for the longest time to get used to it, but it really isn’t that big of a deal once you’ve taken the first step.
I’ll explain to you why I stepped over to a Mac. I’m not a tech-head. I hate tinkering with hardware (risking breaking it even more). I hate installing required software or drivers to keep everything riskfree. I hate pondering whether to pick videocard A or videocard B… Or maybe C? Oh wait, there’s a D, E, F, G, H, I and J as well? Bugger! I also hate trying to find an application I need from an endless list of apps. So having less choice and just picking the first one that pops up is a blessing for me.
The iMac I have now… Does it work? Yes. Have I had any issues with it? A minor one, got fixed pretty fast as well (Firmware issue). Can I use my applications on it? Yes I can (I’m an animator, cartoonist and digital designer). Can I play the games I like on it? Yes I can. Is it a powerhouse that puts everyone else to shame and can it run the latest games n highest visual settings? Nope not really, but that’s not what I want from a computer. I want it to work and offer me ways of having fun, and while PCs work as well, Windows doesn’t… At least not for me. Out of 13 years of experience with both Macs and Windows, the workflow on OS X just can’t be compared to Windows.
If OS X ran flawlessly on a normal PC, I’d most likely get a PC next time around. Because Macs are just a different kind of PC. They have the same technology (looking at the Mac Pro here), they have the same compatibility and can be upgraded just as easy (just takes more effort to find the parts for it because it’s not as widespread as PC). The major difference is the OS, and in terms of workflow (13 years of experience with both Mac OS (9-X) and Windows (95-98-2000-XP-Vista) talking here), OS X blows Windows straight out of the water. And for that alone, I’m willing to pay the Apple-tax.
Too bad OS X will never run on PCs flawlessly, because if it did, it would lose a great portion of the worry-free aspect (and bother with drivers and other software again).
Oh boy, I walked into a bit of a war here…
I don’t have much to say about Mac’s, except that I don’t use one, so I’m not really in a position to argue about them. I have used a Mac, and I’m just fine with my PC at the moment.
But, back on topic, I just got a ZuneHD for Christmas here, and I love it. I have used a Touch and enough of it’s features to compare them I think… I’m just going to tell what each can do, and what each can’t. Call it like I see it.
1)Actual Device - The ZuneHD is slightly smaller than an iPod Touch. A Touch has a fairly simple shape, rounded, polished silver back. The front is black. A little thicker than the Zune. It has one button on top for power/lock, a button on the side for volume, and a button on the front for the ‘home’ button.
The Zune’s shape is a little more defined. The front is flat, with a long skinny ‘home’ button near the bottom. The bottom section of the device is finished in a matte [black in my case] color of your choice, and the back is a brushed metal casing, again in your choice of color. And separating the front and back halves is a silver stripe on either side of the device. The back has beveled edges, and visible screws at each corner. There is a button on the side set into the silver stripe which brings up play controls, and a button on top for power / lock.
Both have accelerometers. The Zune has an HD Radio. The iPod has a microphone and external speaker. The iPod has an Intel mobile processor and the Zune has a powerful Nvidia Tegra processor.
My take: The back of the iPod Touch, due to the nature of polished things, tends to get a lot of fingerprint marks on it unless you by a case for your iPod. The Zune, in contrast, is a brushed steel [black in my case] back and fingerprint marks are minimal on the silver model, and non-existant on the black model.
The accelerometer on both seems solid, but the Zune’s seems to respond a little quicker than the iPod Touch’s. Otherwise, the same. And finally, weight. The iPod feels like a solid, and fairly heavy device. When weighed in the other hand, the Zune feels ridiculously light. Although the device is smaller than the touch, it is a LOT lighter, and considering that they both have about the same hardware, this is impressive.
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Screens - The Touch’s screen is bigger, although not by much. I believe the Touch is a 3.5 inch screen, and the ZuneHD has a 3.3 inch screen. As for quality, I do have to give it to the Zune’s OLED screen. It’s vibrant, the blacks are amazing, and it just looks sharper than a Touch’s screen. I have held them side by side, and I can say for sure that the ZuneHD’s is much better.
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Interface - The iPod’s interface is simple. There is a home screen with several pages of icons for the iPod’s various functions. All apps, games, and organizer functions are located here. My memory is a bit foggy, and I can’t remember whether or not the music and settings icons are set off by themselves. To return to the screen, the user simply pushes the ‘home’ button. The menus are snappy, stuff loads pretty quick, scrolling is done by dragging your finger up and down, and it’s smooth. When you release, the scrolling keeps going a bit and slows to a stop. To lock the iPod, you press the power button on top. To unlock, you press the home or power button and the wallpaper appears, where you have to slide a small square across the screen to unlock the iPod.
The Zune’s interface is a little more traditional. The home screen consists of two ‘halves’. On the foreground on the right, there is a list of items: Music, Videos, Pictures, Marketplace, Podcasts, Internet, Radio, Social, Apps, and Settings. On the left, there are icons for Now Playing if you have music playing, recent songs, artists, and apps, and any newly added songs, artists, and apps. And section for ‘Pinned’ items, which are like favorites. Anything can be added here, apps, radio station, pictures, albums, artists, songs, websites. A tap brings this half of the menu to the foreground, and the list on the right falls to the back. The music menu is divided into artists, albums, etc. just like a Touch. One thing I’d like to add, is that when at the home screen on the Zune, if you tilt the device, everything sort of wobbles around, giving the impression that everything is floating. It’s kind of neat. When the device is playing a song, a screensaver will appear after 20 seconds. Now, this is different every time, but it displays the artist and song and album, album cover, time remaining, etc. in a fancy way. In the background of the Now Playing screen and screensaver is a picture of the artist. The interface is smooth and snappy, and utilizes the accelerometer for added eye candy effects, as explained before. No lag. Black background with white writing. Locking is done in the same manner as the iPod, except that the lock screen makes you slide your background picture upwards, revealing whatever you had going underneath.
This was what Garthbartin was arguing about before. On an iPod, all of the apps and things are located on a central screen, and if you have a lot of apps, finding a particular one could be a LITTLE more difficult than on the Zune, which has it’s functions categorized on the main screen menus. That’s all he was trying to say.
- Apps - The iPod has a lot of apps. A LOT. There’s no denying this fact. Some are free, some you have to pay for. There is an app for almost anything. The most recent iPods have some 3D games on them, but I haven’t played them, so I can’t say much about them.
The Zune does not have many apps at this time. There are about 15 available on the Zune Marketplace, stuff like Twitter and a Calculator. Most are games. Audiosurf Tilt is extremely fun, and better graphics than any iPod game i’ve seen on the commercials. It is possible, using XNA game studio, to add user made-apps to the Zune. At this time, all apps for the ZuneHD are free. Facebook is a planned app, Twitter has already been released.
- Internet - Both connect to the internet via a wifi connection. Both are solid. The iPod uses Safari, which is a very good mobile internet experience. The Zune uses a very modified version of Internet Explorer, not related to the one in Windows Mobile. Currently, there is no flash support for either, although the iPod can watch Youtube videos with the Youtube app. Flash support is planned and in development for the Zune.
6)Device Specific - The iPod Touch has a built in microphone, and an external speaker, which is nice. Also, the external volume buttons are a plus as well, since the Zune doesn’t have those. The button on the side brings up the play controls on the screen (Play, pause, next, previous, volume up and down), which I haven’t found to be a problem yet, it’s just different. It’s nice that you can control your music from anywhere in the interface that way tho.
The Zune has a built in HD radio, which I don’t use much since I’m in a rural community, but it’s free, so when I go the city I can use it. The Zune has a wireless sync capability, meaning you can sync music to the device over a wireless network without the need to plug a cable into your computer, which is also a really nice feature. And finally, the HD part of the ZuneHD. The device has the ability to play 720p high definition movies rented on the Zune Marketplace (Same as on the Xbox 360). The device itself can’t display the movies in high-def on it’s own screen, the movies are downscaled. But if you buy the dock (which is a little stupid, it should have come with it) you can hook it up via HDMI to your HD tv, and watch it in it’s full 720p glory. The dock includes a wireless remote, so it could become part of your home entertainment system.
And I think that’s about it. Obviously, I can provide more information about the Zune since I have one, but I’ve tried to write this all as neutral as I could, even though I am a little bit biased towards the ZuneHD. These are just the features of each as I have observed them. Let me know if I missed anything (and I’m sure you will :p)
EDIT: Also, forgot to mention about the software. The Zune software is awesome, and easy to use, you just drag and drop to copy stuff to your Zune. As well, it automatically downloads all of your album info for your songs, and I’m not sure if the Software or the Zune does it, but for all of my artists on my Zune there is a bio, pictures, and discography and related artists. I didn’t do any of that, it was all done automatically. As well, the automatic Podcasts are nice.
EDIT 2: Sorry for the wall of text, I got a little carried away
Just discovered that ipod touches only sync with one computer at a time; if you want to sync with a new computer, you must forget the old one and erase all content from your ipod. I’m sure there are work arounds, but this is just ridiculous. My friend gave me his ipod touch so I could put a bunch of movies on it, and it wouldn’t let me sync on my computer without deleting all the content.
I recently bought a ZuneHD black 16 gig and have a custom skin coming in the mail. I’ll show you guys when the skin gets here. I love it. It’s amazing. I’m paying for Zune pass and I am sharing it with my bro and will also share it with my friend when she gets a ZuneHD for her birthday. For 15 dollars a month you get unlimited music for 3 Zunes and 3 Computers. And songs and apps can be downloaded directly from the Zune from marketplace. You can also stream songs if you don’t want to dl them. About 80% of the videos and songs were given to me by my brother or by my friends.
Since my brother got his ZuneHD and started showing it to people, we’ve been able to get one person to buy one (two including my friend who’s getting one on her birthday) and have gotten 2 more people to seriously consider getting one, one of which is an “ipodfag”. There are also 3 more people who bought a ZuneHD without our encouragement. I’m sure many more would buy one if they had the money.
Also, could a mod please rename this thread to “ipod touch versus ZuneHD” and put it in the massdebating section?
I’ve had a ZuneHD for about a month now after having nothing but iPod since the very first generation of them.
Things I like,
-Interface, arguably better, but I like it A LOT more. Using iPod interfaces seems pretty mechanical (but it works), ZuneHD interface flows extremely well. I had some trouble figuring it out at first, but that is just because I was used to an iPod, now it’s vice versa.
-Size, thing is small, but it’s not so small you forget you have it.
-Screen is fucking brilliant looking. There is no other commercially available electronic with a better screen.
-Rugged, at first I was scared of even putting it in my pocket thinking that brilliant screen would get scratched. I’m sure it can get scratched, but while I have treated it with care, there have been moments I thought there was no way it wasn’t scratched. It still looks brand new.
-Sound quality, when listening to music there are more factors to the bit rate when it comes to how good the music sounds. I already have myself some mid-range $60 Sony Earbuds that sound fantastic so I wanted to test the actual hardware, I did some sound testing on both my iPod and Zune after I got it. Zune definitely delivers.
-What apps? Some complain apps are everything. But I have over 160gb of music, filling all 32gb of the Zune’s storage was no problem, I couldn’t put an app on it if I wanted. Besides I use it as an MP3 player not a gimped computer.
-Web browser is surprisingly awesome, pages load fast, pages load full sized, and pages render properly. Pinch gestures are extremely responsive.
-Wireless syncing, no USB cable? No problem!
Things I don’t like
-The Zune software could use a few bug fixes.
-Would be nice to be able to enable disk use. When you plug it in, only thing that will recognize it is the Zune Software. There are some easy hacks that enable this, but it being an officially supported feature would be grand.
You should buy a Zagg screen protector, I’ve got one on mine. They’re indestructible, but you have to be very careful putting them on, I accidentaly got some junk stuck under my screen protector while applying it. ),:
Also, I very much suggest you install audiosurf it’s really fun. And at all the people who go apps apps apps apps, buy a netbook or, if you only use game apps, a psp.
I’ve been casually shopping for some screen protectors, is it just one of those static stick like ones? Pre-cut for the Zune?
I had Audiosurf on it, yeah it’s fun, but I removed it to fit more music.
I think the only app I would sacrifice music for is the Facebook one whenever it comes out.
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All laptops overheat when running windows. PC and Macs. Actually my friend had an Asus laptop and he would have to put it in the freezer every hour or so to cool it off (he had massive fans on it btw) while my MacBook Pro never had any problems
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Mac systems have hardware made specifically for them. That’s why the systems run so well. PCs have lots of different hardware and thus have compatibility issues all the time.
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I can do anything on my Mac that I can do on my PC.
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Refer to #2.
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You obviously haven’t shopped around for Mac accessories.
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So you just compared Microsoft’s Zune Service to a third-party Apple service? Why do you try to use incomparable information like this? Do you HAVE to win the argument? Is this an OCD for you? You lost when you brought in third-party services…
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I have opened my MacBook Pro several times with no problems…
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Isn’t that the same with PC laptops?
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Refer to #2.
I have both a Mac laptop and a custom built PC. I love them both. But what I don’t like is Windows. 7 Finally started making things more easy but only because they started to borrow from the Mac OS. The Mac OS it the easiest to navigate and use OS I’ve ever used. If Windows would use OSX’s filing system PCs would finally be close to perfect.
Oh and stop saying the same damn thing over and over. Audiosurf, Audiosurf, Audiosurf! OMG that is the only game you have mentioned. iPod Touch has many more better games… GTA Chinatown Wars, MiniGore and tons more but I have to leave now to list them…
/facepalm.
You do realize that laptops are designed to be able to withstand more heat than desktops, right?
You do realize what a MacBook Pro is right?
You do realize that Asus laptops are total crap, right? I once had to reformat one when I worked as a IT-helper last summer. This mothertrucker was warmer than an oven at its full power, craped when I put better RAM stick in it and cost twice the price it should have.
Well you and your friends need to learn how to check the “MANUALLY MANAGE MUSIC” checkbox. Or copy the movies onto his iPod as a disk so he can add them to his library. Jeez, stop parading your ignorance as a legitimate argument.
Hmmm…no. Just because your friends are very ‘monkey-see-monkey-do’ doesn’t prove that the product you’re advocating we all buy is better.
So…basically…its the same as iTunes?
iTunes is the iPods slow retarded brother, but yet they care and rely on one another, end of story.
Ok, that was out of line, but really.
Weird, I see anyone recommending an Apple product in the same manner.
No. Better.
-Uses less resources
-For the love of Satan, Odin and Christ (in that order) Zune software actually monitors the music library and automatically adds whatever is put in the music folder! I cried tears of joy when I moved from iPod to Zune and found I could do this. Don’t give me crap about the “add to iTunes folder” they added, it’s a hunk of shit.
-Doesn’t look like it was shit out of an aluminum foundry.
So, your argument that the Zune’s apps are superior is based on a single game? No matter how good that single game is, you’re still talking about one game compared to literally swathes of others.
Your dismissal of apps because they’re inherently not part of the music player you’re trying to market is like saying that you shouldn’t cook anything but rice in a rice cooker. Everyone does, and that’s a big reason why people buy rice cookers, but trying to market one that doesn’t and just claiming that that’s “not what you should do with it”, isn’t a valid argument.
The Zune is competing against the iTouch. Not a netbook or a PSP. And if you are comparing them against the netbook or the PSP, the latter two win at everything but size and weight. And, since it is competing against the iTouch, it has to cede that it looses on the amount of apps. There is no argument in defence of this.
And just by the by, a lot of the games I’ve had a ridiculous amount of fun with on the iTouch are free, whereas all the games on a PSP (and most of the games on a netbook) cost money.
Uhhh, no. I used iTunes before I had an iPod; its functional, practical and fast. Especially on my Mac.
Well…that IS also a useful feature of iTunes. Ever notice that little folder in your My Music folder called “Automatically add to iTunes”. Just copy your music into that and it’ll automatically add it and move it to the correct place in your My Music folder. Or you could, you know, drag whatever new music you have into iTunes and let it do it for you.
How exactly is it a hunk of shit? You drag stuff in there…and it adds it to the library. What exactly is wrong with it?
And the iPods look fantastic. Wouldn’t trade it for anything. Least of all a Zune.
Funny, I don’t see anyone randomly quoting parts of my arguments out of context without an appreciation of what I’m saying.
What I’m saying is that people jumping on the Zune bandwagon isn’t a reason to buy a Zune. I tried iPod alternatives, but found that Apple did it best. And they still do. That isn’t bandwagoning; that’s objectively finding the best product and buying it.
So did I, in fact I still have one of the very first iPod model made
I loled, iTunes after 30 minutes of use ends up using as much memory as Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, I would hardly call that fast. It’s a bloated piece of software that Apple should be ashamed of.
Yeah, I already said it’s a hunk of shit
Because I like controlling my own property. I want MY folder structures, I DON’T want to wait for iTunes to sort out the folders. So compare the 10 seconds it took Zune to notice there was new music and add it; to iTunes, dragging the music over it, wait for it to make the folders…hope the music was tagged properly, if not I then re-tag it, and wait again for iTunes to adjust the folders accordingly. All the while it’s doing this, iTunes is locking up acting like it’s being run on a 10 year old laptop not a gaming desktop while it’s little progress bar preventing me from browsing the library.
Zune does ALL of this importing in the background.
That’s subjective, because I’m the exact opposite. I see an iTouch/iPhone/iPod and see what everyone else has, I see a boring diluted product.
Because you’re really just regurgitating Apple commercials.
What I’m saying is that people jumping on the iPod bandwagon isn’t a reason to buy a iPod. I tried other alternatives, but found that Microsoft Zune did it best. And they still do. That isn’t bandwagoning; that’s objectively finding the best product and buying it.
Uhhh, nope, you haven’t read my post correctly. I said that I used iTunes years before I even got an iPod. Its proved to be the most reliable, most useable and most functional music management system out there, and while I think it can be improved, I’ve never once desired to swap. I tried out the Zune Media Player, and while I thought that it did look a tiny bit more polished, there’s no way I’d sacrifice iTunes for it.
And memory =/= speed, just btw.
You know, you CAN organise your own music (if you’re truly that pedantic). Just drag the new music into iTunes once you’re done organising.
What you’re saying is that after completely organising it, Zune automatically picked up the music. Except, iTunes just requires one step more than that; you need to drag the folder tree that you’ve set up into the Library section of iTunes, and it adds all the music (assuming that you’ve set it not to automatically arrange your music, but god knows why you’d want them arranged any other way).
The only time I’ve ever had to wait a substantial time for iTunes to do its thing is when I’ve been adding 12,000 songs in one go. And I really don’t do that very often.
This is the problem with all these threads; these products are as much about fashion as they are about functionality - a lot of the discussion fundamentally comes down to the concept of choice and opportunity cost; you pick one because you can’t have, or want, both. Hence, your choice is often driven by subjectivity based on your fashion preference, not your objectivity. Its the same with laptops; so much of them is now how they look that the better looking products dominate over the worse looking products, even if the uglier ones are better value for money (cf. Macs).
That said, however, I think your side of the fence lacks some of the objectivity that you really need when buying such a product, and you shouldn’t let your blatant Apple-hatred blind you from even the possibility that you’re just a tiniest bit wrong.
And you’re just regurgitating Zune commercials, except that you and your compadres consistently manage to dilute this thread with complete nonsense.
Oh now please, you’re being ridiculously camp here. You and your ilk have said some patently wrong things here to stir up some Apple hatred, and regardless of how you got to that conclusion of not buying Apple products, you’re trying to make us hop on the bandwagon with some pretty major logical fallacies. Clear up your arguments a little and bring in some moderation, then I might even take you somewhat seriously. Until then, please take your straw men, factual irregularities and complete impossibilities elsewhere.
um, not to feed the flames but
more memory used by iTunes means the less memory for the rest of the system = slower performance for everything.
The problem comes down to the fact that iTunes is a streamlined, polished, well working application… when running on a mac. Everything about itunes was devolped and optimized for mac, then it was quickly ported to windows. I use OSX quite often and the music player of choice is iTunes, But when I comes to windows… I’ll stick with the zune media player.
EDIT: Just an FYI, the Zune social will be down for 24hr starting today. There upgrading a bunch of stuff and Microsoft stated that there will be new updates for the program and all of the existing Zune devices will have a new firmware upgrade available.
[COLOR=‘DimGray’]w00t i <3 firmware updates, It’s like getting a new toy for free! If you have a psp you know the feeling.[/SIZE]
Obviously you didn’t read mine either. I’m no stranger to OSX and Macs in general, I was saying I even have a first generation iPod…you know those bricks with the 5gb Hard Drives; Just to prove a point I have been using iTunes for a very long time.
Read the post below yours.
I just timed iTunes and Zune starting up and delay before I could play a song.(cold start, aka just reset the computer)
Zune - 4 seconds
iTunes - 19 seconds
Yes, and I did for many years, it’s a frustrating process that takes much longer than it should.
Yes, I go onto my external HD via Windows 7 Libraries make a new folder with the artist name then inside that another folder with album name and release date then put the files inside said folder, it’s a 10 second process. Unless you’re horribly slow at making new folders, but that’s one’s own problem. So, even if I am at a friends computer or I am away from my desktop, I can still organize my music via my folder structure and naming system, then the next time I plug that external drive into my desktop Zune will have that music ready to play in the time I can type the artist name to search for it.
Also being that I have a laptop, I can install my Zune software to it, I then take said external hard drive, plug it in, and being that I set Zune to monitor the drive when it can, any new music I had from my desktop, is ready to play on my laptop. No fucking around with library files, album art files. It just works. Oh wait, isn’t that supposed to be Apple’s line?
Also, If by some chance I find a album name or artist name was misspelled in the actual windows folders, I can rename them and Zune won’t freak out and put a ! next to the song and then needs to be manually relocated. It just sees it as a new artist/album and adds it, notices it’s already there and changes the path…all streamlined like.
Why add extra steps? Isn’t the whole philosophy behind Apple to be “simple”. I found a much better alternative and I’m probably going to stick with it unless something better comes along…like if Winamp pulls their head out their ass or Songbird starts to not suck.
I want them organized like this
My Music > Artist Name (Country)* > (Release Year) Album Name > .mp3s and a .jpg of album art + any lyric files.
*Yes, I do have more than one artist with the same name from different countries. Granted this can be done in iTunes (Country only), but when it comes to wanting the albums to be in order of release year, something I have to do myself.
I got a Zune because I was sick of Apple, I was sick of iTunes and it’s bloated ass, I was sick of trying to import music to iTunes only for it to not want to import and I had to make a carbon copy of that file in an MP3 converter for iTunes to import. I was sick of waiting 5 minutes for iTunes to import an album, I was sick of piss-poor battery life (even after getting a new battery), I was sick of iTunes inability to show album art at the rate my scroll wheel could browse my library. I am not using Apple products because of their business practices, I’m not using Apple because of their practice of marking up a product because of a logo. All of these are reasons I would never buy an iPod again compared to “fashion”
I’ll take functionality and speed over a god damn logo.
What Zune commercials? This one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3psd0AFAquU Yea, I definitely said “Hell yeah motherfucker, it plays music, videos and HD motherfuckin radio!”
Oh you must mean the ones for Zune Marketplace? I don’t use Zune Marketplace.
Please, point them out.
I’m not trying to make you buy a Zune, I’m trying to make you realize why I bought a Zune and abandoned Apple.
So basically you not only drag around a Zune, but ALSO an external hard drive that has all of your music on it? Interesting.
Except that doesn’t seem to be where you’re stopping; you seem to continue well past that point and into the realm of “I’m right and everybody else is wrong and they should know it”. Garthbartin has taken to proclaiming himself the absolute kind of illogicality, and if you want to see some truly absurd arguments just read back through this thread, and his other Apple-hate threads. I’m sorry for lumping you both into the same category, but I’ve found that misinformation has played an annoying large role in this particular saga.