hi folks for a start i know nothing about them, except what they look like. my hubbys just bought us a new car (bmw - which came prepped for an ipod)
its his birthday in june and id really like to buy him an ipod to complete the stereo equipment in the car so this is where you guys come in with your advice.
i have seen the itouch on tv and it looks fantastic and im sure he would love it, ive seen but dont understand the difference between 1st generation and 3rd - what does this mean,

can i download the apps that friends have on thier iphone and can one of these mp do it but another cant.

are there any better stores to buy them in or can i order it online cheaper.

i apologise for all the questions but id really like to get the present right and not blow money on something he would prefer to upgrade but be too embarrassed to say so.

thanks

There are only 2 generations of ipod touches out, the 2nd launched in September. The generations are simply updated 'better' versions, i.e the ipod touch 1g is the very first one launched, and was then replaced by the ipod touch 2g the main differences were shape/design, software changes etc

You can download all the same apps that you can for the iphone.

You'll only really find the 2nd gen touch out for sale as obviously it surpasses the first so you shouldn't get too confused while out shopping.

Personally I'd buy direct from apple like I did, but places like amazon do them about £10 cheaper

I get the impression you wouldn't have wanted any sort of MP3 player if it wasn't for your new car. If that's the case, then do you just need something that plays music, or do you really need the all-singing all-dancing luxury of an iPod Touch if all it's going to do is sit in the glovebox?

There are 4 basic models of iPod:
[LIST][*]The iPod Touch - Much more than just an MP3 player. It's basically a pocket computer. An iPhone without the phone (or camera or GPS).
[*]The iPod Classic - An evolution of iPods in years gone by. It's main strength is its capacity. Still being based on a hard drive, it has 120 gigabytes of storage, which is enough for even the most massive of music/video collections. The downsides are it's a bit bulky, and it lacks the bells & whistles of the Touch.
[*]The iPod Nano - The most popular iPod. Like a Classic, but much smaller. In size as well as capacity; up to 16 gigabytes.
[*]The iPod Shuffle - The cheapest iPod. Tiny. No screen.[/LIST]
So I guess it just comes down to how much music do you want to carry around with you at once, and do you need anything but music playback with the occasional bit of video?

hi

thanks for your advice. your kinda right really any of them would suit. the itouch im sure if he had he would use all the facilities that you have the option of, hes recently got an external media hard drive so he could in theory transfer movies to it for holidays and things so that whats putting the itouch in my head. like i said i really no nothing about them so i wasnt aware you could play videos on the ipod classic. if you can ive seen them quite cheap. are they still reliable enough i remember a few people when they came out were let down by faulty units but im assuming that was just teething problems.

the applications thing we've seen advertised on tv and it looked like it would be fun, but i agree certainly not central to using it with the stereo.

i really do appreciate your help
thanks,

ive got lots more to look into

I have a iPhone and a 80GB classic for the car as my one also came wired for a iPod as well. For the car I do like something with a big hard drive and so I can carry my whole music collection on it and sometimes I just put it on shuffle and hear music that i have not heard for a while or is not already on a playlist.

A touch would be good if you are going to use all the features.

Totally agree - buy direct from Apple, and you can then get the free engraving; quite nice if its a present.

the 2nd gen touch added support for a microphone, so in theory with the right headset, it could be used for VOIP/Skype calls.

Not all apps are compatible with both the Touch and the iPhone - I've had one game (can't remember which) that wouldn't install on the Touch.

Its a great bit of kit overall though - the kids love it for gaming and videos, and I like having it for music playback in the car. Just wish the the in-built iTunes would actually subscribe to podcasts ....

Whichever one you go for, make sure it has enough capacity to hold all your CDs (so as an earlier poster says you can put your whole collection on random play - it's like having your own radio station without the waffle, and great to hear stuff you haven't played for ages).

As a (very) rough guide, 100GB of strorage should hold 1,000 CDs. Videos and films take a LOT more space! Be aware that a 80GB iPod won't hold 80 GB of music, as some is used by the device itself. Expect around 90% to be usable by you.

oh right thats great thanks

can i ask a few other things to anyone that has a clue, firstly do i have to use the itunes site and download all my albums again (pardon me for being incredibly blonde on this one)

im assuming i can transfer all my own cds to the ipod and any new albums that i want i can download from the apple site.

a few friends have ipods, can i connect on thier computers and transfer over some of thier albums or do i need to download them myself

does anyone know if a car is ipod prepped it will only take an apple ipod or does it just mean its prepped for any generic mp3 player.

thanks again

If you've got the CD's then you can just transfer them over, really simply to do so it shouldnt be no problems and yep you can download new songs/albums via the Itunes store.

I've got the classic and I can download songs from other peoples PC's but I cant upload songs from my Ipod to their PC.

Dunno about the car dock question im afraid.
Hope that helps.

>>does anyone know if a car is ipod prepped it will only take an apple ipod or does it just mean its prepped for any generic mp3 player.<<

I can only speak for my 2003 VW Golf, but it only takes an iPod, AFAIK it's a bespoke Apple connection.

You can transfer your own CDs there is no need to have to buy from Apple, Amazon do a nice service with much better quality then iTunes.

You can't plug in a ipod into others computers but you can put other peoples music on a USB stick or some other storage device and add it to your library. Most of the HDD based iPods have a a 3rd party utlity that will allow you to browse the contents of the drive.

As for the car most of them if prepped for a iPod will only work with iPod as they use a specific adapter. In my merc it works really well as I can browse the drive via the buttons on the steering wheel.

No, I don't believe you are correct here.

Amazon uses 256k MP3. iTunes uses 256k AAC. Being at the same high bitrate, both should be decent enough quality for portable music player usage. However, if one does offer noticeably better quality over the other, it would be more likely to be the more modern AAC codec that would offer it.

Just because it is ACC doesn't automatically make it better, rip a ACC track in iTunes and then rip a MP3 using Exact Audio Copy and then encode it using LAME and the results are so much better.

I have bought three tunes from iTunes and all three sound worse then the music I have either ripped myself, bought from myself or the odd tune that I got from newsgroups. Maybe their new lossless ones are better but also being in ACC makes then useless with all my other kit, they don't seem to like to stream to my 360 beacuse of the DRM.

To my ears, even iTunes old 128k AAC format sounds exactly the same as an original CD. However, I did a quick Google for tests done by folk with more 'golden ears' than I, and I didn't find anyone else who concluded as you have. Seems the consensus is that at high bitrates, LAME can bring MP3 up to the quality level of AAC, but not "better" than AAC as you claim.


iTunes "new" format is not lossless. They're 256k AAC lossy compressed. And they do not have DRM. If the iTunes tracks you have do have DRM, then they're not going to be of the higher bitrates type that you claim is of lesser quality than Amazon's MP3s. As such, how do you know they're worse?

If you read what i said I said of the ones that I have bought, the fact that offer more then one standard of quality just muddies the matters more. Plus ripping the tracks yourself you can get the best quality and I still prefer buying and owning a CD then a download. We will just have to agree to disagree.

I think the general consensus is that once approaching bit-rates of 192k or above, in blind tests, very few people can actually tell the difference between mp3/AAC and the real CD. However, that doesn't mean the advice to use Amazon is unwise...if only for the fact that MP3 is the De-Facto standard when it comes to digital music players.

Come to purchase a new player, and you can guarantee that it's going to work with MP3. Stick with AAC, and you're looking at a restrictive list of players that support it. As far as I'm aware, there are very few in-car players which will support AAC files natively.

However, OP, seeing as you're already used to purchasing CDs for your music listening, I'd probably suggest that you keep doing that. You then get guaranteed future compatibility, as you'll be able to create files in whatever format you need, plus you can take the CD and use it in other players in your home, in other peoples cars and even take it to work if you feel the urge!

thanks guys for all the advice,

ive got another question if someone wouldnt mind looking at this and offering their opinion,


http://www.bmw.com/com/en/newvehicle...on_0309_en.pdf

this to me looks like list of compatible mp3 players which then connect thru an adaptor of sorts that connects to the mp3 player

is this right??
or again am i being totally blonde!

Looking at the list it says they have tested out the old software for the iPod touch and it worked. This may, or may not, mean the new software works. However since it says it works with the new iPhone software, which is 99% the same, i dare say you'll be ok.

hi

thanks again for that, i met someone before that uses one of the little creative units, this is simillar right?
bar all the apple stuff like apps?

Yeah, bar the Apps side of things the iPod Touch is that - a music player.
Creative is a very good brand as well. This summer the new Samsung P3 is coming out and it looks great - don't know if it would work with your BMW though.

going purely on the add at the bottom of the page is pointing to the apple lol

thats the thing i dont want to get sucked into the whole apple corps thing if i can get away with it

i really like the zen x-fi and it loks more reasonable in price for all we are realistically going to use it for.

the p3 looks impressive too!

"Apple corps?"

You are buying a device to use it and enjoy its features in your new car. Why should it matter who makes the device and if it happens to be from the leading music player manufacturer?

Apple car stereo modes or interfaces are typically supported in a dedicated way, meaning you have much more functionality and options than you would by simply connecting much less popular mp3 players in a standard, but very limiting, USB mass storage device mode. The auto manufacturers can afford to do that because of the iPods huge popularity and user base.

Your choice boils down to using a less popular mp3 player in basic usb mode, which can often be very slow if you have a large library and which will have just very basic functions in terms of interface options or you can buy an iPod and use the dedicated support that BMW has put into your car that will give you more options on how to use and interact with your music. After all, the music and how you interact with the music, that's what it all boils down to.

I say definitely get a classic iPod for the cheaper cost and the much larger storage capacity. Most people I have known who have said they didn't need that much storage usually ended up changing their minds. And remember that music files today are on average twice the file size they used to be. All iTunes store music, as of recently, is now 256 kbit/s AAC as opposed to the previous 128kbit/s effectively making a 120 gig iPod only as useful as a 60 gig music device.

ACC encoding at the same bitrate is better quality than MP3 encoding - it is a much newer compression.

Considering your BMW is very likely to have an iPod dedicated connector and you were drawn to the iPod Touch because you think your husband will like the apps it suggests to me you really should buy the iPod touch lol.

Creative mp3 players are not mini Macs in your pocket and cannot run the vast array of applications a iPod Touch can nor will a creative device interact as well with your BMW.

As has been already covered, an iTouch is all very nice with its ability to do so much more beyond music, but whether to get one depends on whether her hubby would use those features beyond the short term novelty period. If however its going to spend most of its life sitting in the glovebox playing music, then an iClassic would fit that role much better, with much higher capacity, and for less money. It'd be a waste having an iTouch just to play music.