Ranting to /dev/null

I didn't want it to be this way. Why did you leave?

I loved you. You know that. I treated you well. I spent time with you. I even went and changed for you. But it just wouldn't work for you, would it? It didn't matter what I did.

So, I guess this is goodbye, iPod.

Had you fooled there for a second, didn't I?

Here's what happened. For no reason that I can discern, about two months ago my my iPod utterly refused to connect to my computer. Can't figure this out for the life of me, and I've spent two months messing with it. I reformatted my drive twice. I upgraded the firmware and to the latest versions of iPod Service and iTunes. I went to the Apple "Genius Bar" in SoHo to have them take a look at the damn thing. I even installed a new Firewire card, hoping beyond hope that that was the problem. It wasn't.

So I ditched it for one of these, an Archos AV140. It's 40GB. It not only plays mp3s, but displays pictures and, get this, digital video. When you play a song, the album art is displayed behind the normal info outputs. But more than that, it records all of these things too. So the next time I go to a show, you should see the bootleg on this page within a few days. It's got a remote too. Not a remote like the iPod remote, but an actual wireless remote control.

It's not as sexy as the iPod, that's for sure. And the interface isn't anywhere near as sleek. But it likes MusicMatch, and plays nice with Windows, something the iPod has never really been happy about.

I'm back in business.

Posted by ryan at October 21, 2004 03:03 PM | TrackBack