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I mortgaged my future with a Mac

rachelbythebay.com

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Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#81

Post by coldtea »

As much as I don't like using the word "FUD", this piece pretty much begs for it. Or, rather, the usual semi-informed opinions presented as fact.

For example:

>They're going down a road where I don't want to follow.

What road exactly is that? Anything concrete, or simply you don't like the Mac UI anymore? Because the "lock-up" things are just BS. There's nothing you cannot do in a modern OS X that you could in OS 10.1. The App Store just makes it more convenient, and sandboxing is optional.

>I don't intend to use whatever comes after Mountain Lion -- not that they even talk about OS X any more.

They don't? Last time I checked they had two Keynote presentations about Mountain Lion, which was released half a year ago. And they announced IIRC that they OS X will be released in an annual basis. Plus, they released several new laptops with some state-of-the-art features (hi-dpi displays) in the last 10 months and the redesigned iMacs. And yes, those are meant to run OS X.

>But, I'm stuck. All of my music is in iTunes, having been re-imported from the original CDs over a period of time. I can just re-rip all of it on my Linux box, but that's going to suck. Or, I can try to grovel around in their grungy database and try to make sense of it and "export" things, but I'm sure that will be even worse.

What exactly will be worse? Just copy the files over. You can even arrange iTunes to put it in nice folders based on album/artist for you. The mp3 metadata will still be there, because it's in the file. You might lost some data like "scores" and "recently played" but the same would be true with any player, open source or not. There's not a standard format to interchange such things.

>Another problem is going to be iPhoto. I've cropped, rotated, geotagged, sharpened, level-adjusted, and done countless other things to my thousands of pictures. They all also live in some database which is effectively opaque. While there's probably some way to get it out, it will be far from trivial.

Really? Because I find it quite trivial. Just drag the bloody images out of iPhoto and to the desktop. Or "export". Or use one of ten utilities to help you with the process and offer more control. Or write a ten minute Applescript.

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#82

Post by johnminter »

stevejb wrote: post #25

The concluding sentence, "I'm not looking forward to the next couple of years in tech.", strikes me as incredibly odd. The technologies and software that we have available, whether you use Linux, OSX, or Windows, or anything else, has more potential than ever before. It seems like something to be excited about.

Perhaps because she realizes how much work it will be for her. If one uses many non-standard applications, changing platforms or even a clean install of an OS - Win, Mac, or Linux takes a lot of effort before one can get back to the productive work one bought the system to do. That is complicated by interoperability with auxiliary devices. Choice can be great but often comes with consequences that can be costly. Hmmm - isn't that really the message of Rachel's rant...

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#83

Post by WiseWeasel »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #76
blub wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see what you mean. All my music in iTunes is neatly organized inside the Music folder - DRM free and easily copied to any device. The iPhone is a different matter, you have to accept that you will lose (a lot of) freedom for the syncing convenience. There are some apps that allow you to exchange data over wifi through FTP/WebDav when one does not want to use iTunes at all.

I guess I'm thinking of TV shows and movies, which are DRMed.

And Amazon's downloadable videos aren't? All online video "purchasing" services are DRM-laden crap. Blame the publishers.

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#84

Post by coldtea »

crististm wrote: post #34
epistasis wrote: post #4

I'm not sure I understand the specific complaints in the post. The metadata in iTunes is stored in a standard way, attached to the audio files themselves. All the playlists, repeated track infromation, etc, is stored in an XML file with simple structure. This should be as easy to convert as if the music database had been stored anywhere else. Similarly, for iPhoto, much of the metadata is attached to the photos thems…

"Storing data in any application results in some restrictions [...]" - I think you understand her point pretty well.

No, he doesn't, and I don't too.

How would that be different with any Open Source application?

There is NO common interchange format for music information besides the embedded mp3 metadata. Of course iTunes (and ANY other player, OSS or not) has to store non-standard stuff outside those. And even if it stored them inside, there is no consensus about the naming and interoperability for metadata not in the standard list.

So there's nothing in her points that can be particularly applied to Apple or iTunes.

It just makes no sense to say "I'm going to use Ubuntu mp3 players because of this" -- because the situation there would be the same.

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#85

Post by MatthewPhillips »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #83
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm thinking of TV shows and movies, which are DRMed.

And Amazon's downloadable videos aren't? All online video "purchasing" services are DRM-laden crap. Blame the publishers.

Amazon's videos are available on a wide-variety of hardware platforms, so I'm much more confident purchasing from them.

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#86

Post by coldtea »

rosser wrote: post #63
crististm wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, what? You end up confirming what I said: it's an application issue - be it free or proprietary. But in her case, phone syncing in a proprietary world is more of a problem. I think she meant it like "I'm dependent on MAC Technology and I can't get out".

(FYI, an appreciable number of the downvotes you're receiving are probably because you're consistently using male pronouns for the author of a post on rachel bythebay.com. You might want to fix that, and your assumptions...)

And what if it's a male called Rachel? (Like the "boy named Sue"). Or this guy:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1290&dat=19900628&...

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#87

Post by crusso »

crististm wrote: post #51
crusso wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because the author mentioned that it's some kind of Mac problem. You'd have the exact same problems switching from "free" software running on Linux. Really, I think the article should have been titled: I am Now Dependent on Modern Technology and Don't Like the Alternative

No, what? You end up confirming what I said: it's an application issue - be it free or proprietary. But in her case, phone syncing in a proprietary world is more of a problem. I think she meant it like "I'm dependent on MAC Technology and I can't get out".

You're assuming an abstraction of what she posted and claiming that's what she meant as her point. Her use of Mac/Apple/iTunes/Jobs as specific references without explicitly making the point you're making mean that we can't logically rely on your assumption.

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#88

Post by [deleted] »

spindritf wrote: post #72
epistasis wrote: post #4

I'm not sure I understand the specific complaints in the post. The metadata in iTunes is stored in a standard way, attached to the audio files themselves. All the playlists, repeated track infromation, etc, is stored in an XML file with simple structure. This should be as easy to convert as if the music database had been stored anywhere else. Similarly, for iPhoto, much of the metadata is attached to the photos thems…

> Storing data in any application results in some restrictions in how that data can be transformed and/or used in the future. And not all applications are equal in that regard. I store plenty of data in Dropbox, never run into any problems. Same with git, mutt, Shotwell, Rhythmbox... Usually, exporting doesn't involve any action. All the data is just stored in files that can be used by any application. There is a str…

[deleted]

Re: I mortgaged my future with a Mac

#89

Post by rosser »

coldtea wrote: post #86
rosser wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(FYI, an appreciable number of the downvotes you're receiving are probably because you're consistently using male pronouns for the author of a post on rachel bythebay.com. You might want to fix that, and your assumptions...)

And what if it's a male called Rachel? (Like the "boy named Sue"). Or this guy: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1290&dat=19900628&...

It's not. Rachel's posts have shown up on HN often enough that this isn't even a question any more.
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