So my mom really wants to be able to play our childhood music to her grandkids. But most of the stuff is on records, and so I volunteered to get everything on an ipod and just connect it to their audio system. Now, I am a stickler when it comes to tagging my music and organizing them into folders with proper filenames. So I expected not to have any problems as far as tags go since I've been so diligent about it.
WRONG!! itunes and these i-devices are a tagging nightmare. If you don't know, the only two tags that really matter (as far as organization) on the ipod is artist and album. But it will fuck up that artist tag a LOT. In these tagging protocols, the artist name is stored in multiple places: artist, album artist, etc. Well, the ipod decides to read it from the Album Artist tag, which is the less common one in most tagging programs. Now, that's fine, ok. But what's the worst part is if you try to fix all this in itunes, it will show all the fixed tags in the itunes application, but it doesn't change on the ipod itself. So you have to remove all the music and upload it again. Man, this has taken me hours!
Normally, I wouldn't care. But the BIG problem is that on the ipod, if the album artist isn't done right, a single album can be split up into multiple artists (like eagles, various artists, various) and before you know it, the ipod screen is filled with all these artists that you have no idea where it came from. Bach may be Back or Johann Sebastain Bach or the conductor of the album...and it's all invisible. It's been a nightmare.
Once again, this is the kind of thing that makes Apple evil. The problem for us is this: even after years of these ipods and audio players and tablets, the i-devices touch response (swiping smoothness) and overall interface is still better BY FAR than all the other devices out there. That's it. These competitors (Android, Windows, webOS) better make darn sure their interface can equal that kind of smoothness and responsiveness or else they will NEVER catch up to Apple. Every time I pick up the new Android device I can immediately tell how awful the touch-features are compared to Apple's. Immediately.
I don't know what these other companies are doing with their time. They need to stop everything and just get the dam touch response right. But maybe it's just, who am I to tell them how to do it. But don't listen, fine. Keep coming out with model after model after model with that awful touch response. Keep doing it, it's fine.
Anyway, I hate buying this Apple stuff, but it's a hell of a lot easier than teaching my mom how to use the shitty Android interface.
The good news is I gave my mom a little sneak preview of what this new fangled technology can do, and she was more excited than I've seen in a long time once she heard her favorite records playing again. Now it sounds like I need to do the same for my sisters and their kids! Glad to!
