http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=726513I feel your pain . . I feel your pain . . [/link]

Grazie

Can you email the files to yourself or load on you tube / face book and download to your computer from there?

Apple makes some nice products, but I would never consider them due to their over-control of software / hardware and lack of compatibility with the rest of the world's information systems. I've never liked their proprietary approach as it's too limiting.

Same frustration here.
Crashed a hard drive recently so guess what; I'm caught with what's on my iPod for now.
I know there's an app for iPod to computer (iTunes) so everything's saved but that's another additionnal pain.
Anyone uses or tried the Archos products ? Not a phone, but as a replacement for iPod and portable storage (pictures, audio fx or ambiances) , it could be nice (if working well with no bugs)...

I have now developed a way to go both ways, without needing to use emailing.

A] I can load onto my desktop directly from iP4 to edit in Vegas NOT using iTunes.

B] I can transfer finished files into the iPhone.

C] I can do the same with Photos too.

I'll add that the process for ttansferinv stills is a little less than archaic. iPhone sees only "folders", on e I grasped this I pop files into these folders and then go ahead and transfer. Bizarre!

But, once mastered my iPhone has now become a great biz tool.

Am I considering an iPad? What do you think?

Grazie

srode, think what your are saying. Here I am half a meter from my PC. I have to send it YouTube thousands of miles away, then get it off their servers to my PC here. It reminds me of "The Big Bang Theory" episode where they dimmed the lights of their apartment via the internet. I think the Apple logo should serve as a warning sign replacing the Skull and crossbones usually found on poison, "Don't Touch"

OK Grazie, what's your secret?

Big vote for Archos here. I've got a 404 that's been used 5+ hours a day for over 4 years now. I had to replace the battery once and buy a new usb/power cord this year, but other than that there have been no issues.

It's almost completely plug&play. It handles every audio format i've tossed at it and most every video format i've tried works well. It's replaced most of my on-location recording machines.

There are only two things i would like different. There's no line-in on the unit itself so i have to put it in the dock to get that function. It does require drivers to be installed for full data transfer capability. I wish it would simply show up as an external drive when plugged into any USB port, but alas it's not quite that friendly. However, once the driver is installed then it is simply a drive letter and file transfer is drag & drop in Windows explorer.

> OK Grazie, what's your secret?

( . . don't tempt me - lol . .)

OK, to which part?

Grazie

There is a utility that lets you copy files to and from your iPhone. I got it for my daughter a while back but I can't remember what it's called. Maybe somebody else knows what it's called.

> There is a utility that lets you copy files to and from your iPhone.

Now THAT'S what I want!

Grazie

I'm loving my new Pantech Crux from V******.
Acts as a high-speed USB2 device, I just drag movies and songs from iTunes to the device folder (have to rename .m4v to .mp4).
Has a normal stereo headphone jack too (imagine that).
Screen res is not an iPhone, but at 400x244 it is respectable.
I downsized a DVD in Handbrake and it plays beautifully on the phone.

If I had written itunes I would be so embarrassed. How could anyone release such worthless code with such a great device? One has to go to YouTube to get workarounds and hacks. I tried to import to Vegas but that failed. Don't tell me I have to buy FCP to enable me to read my phone.

How quickly we forget... Snow White's experience with an apple was a lesson not to dismiss.

Don't blast iTunes too badly. It's an absolute dream of functional near-perfection compared to the software that comes with Sony's MiniDisc recorders.

Of course, one of the primary aims of the MiniDisc software was to prevent the user from copying files, not facilitate it.

I stopped using my ipod some years ago and since have gotten a Sansa Fuse. I like the concept of Slot Radio but have only one disk (which contains the Billboard Top 100 songs of many genres back for decades). I have only loaded Quicktime on my machine to handle outside video and I refresh the image of the computer after I'm done. I have a credit at the ITunes store which I have no plans of using. I don't have anything personal against Steve Jobs or Apple but I chafe when I have to say "Mother, may I?" to any company to do rather mundane tasks.

iTunes is perhaps the worst piece of commercial software I have ever used. In addition to being bloated and slow, it is completely unintuitive and inconsistent. You can drag individual movies to the movie folder, but if you want to add photos, you have to first drag them all to one single folder on your computer and then sync to that folder. It then takes forever to fiddle with the photos and transfer them over, and it leaves behind thousands of folders and files that it creates, unecessarily chewing up disk space.

And of course music files -- the original reason for the iPod and then iTouch -- are a complete joke to manage. For instance, with an iPod Shuffle, if you try to do anything outside of the straight-jacket mentality that iTunes forces on you, ALL your music will be erased from your Shuffle, even when you just want to add a few songs.

Pitiful.

To help others here in this forum who hate this horrible software as much as I do, I can suggest two shareware programs. The first, which works really well for managing and copying your music is called Floola. It doesn't work with the iTouch, but does work with some of the other "i" products. It is, in my estimation, what iTunes should be, at least the portion of iTunes that manages and copies music.

For photos, and for copying files BACK from your iThingy to your computer, you might try CopyTrans. There are actually several programs at this site, including one that deals just with photos. This program requires that you have iTunes installed, so you can't get the beast off your computer, but it will let you do some of the things people in this thread have complained about.

It is amazing to me that a company which can produce such marvelous hardware has, for so many years, been unable to even come close to mastering the art of software design. Apple's application software has always been bad, and iTunes is the worst of this bad lot.

Side note on iTunes, I've pretty much boycotted it all together. Several months back my iTunes account got hacked and I started getting email receipts for a bunch of stuff I didn't buy, many of which were for the same $49 app that's name was written in a foreign language and bought multiple times. I don't even have an iPhone to run an app. All told they ran up almost $400 worth of charges. Within moments of getting the receipts I was on the phone. Their tech support told me that their fraud department or whatever it was could only be contacted via email. The reply I got was far from helpful:

"I urge you to contact your card issuer as soon as possible to inquire about canceling the card or account and removing the unauthorized transactions. You should also ask them to launch an investigation into the security of your account. Under the circumstances the iTunes Store cannot reverse the charges for those purchases without chargeback orders from your card issuer. You will want to call your credit card company, give them the dates and amounts of the charges, state they are unauthorized and request chargebacks for those amounts. This is also the way you will get your money back. "

Upshot is they would not return my money even though, as I pointed out in a following email, that this was a known issue. (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2366129,00.asp)

It was galling to me as a customer that they would not simply cancel the charges even though I brought it to their attention within ten minutes of the charges being made and they were able to reply within thirty. It ended up taking me nearly two months to get a refund. Not good faith customer service if ya ask me. Seems like they knew about it and preferred to not deal with it almost in hopes that many wouldn't jump through all the hoops necessarily to get a refund so they could keep their ill gotten gains. I'm just lucky they didn't get me for more as some were banged for thousands.

Upshot is I won't be doing business with Apple anymore.

- Ray
Underground Planet

My Android phone makes it all pretty simple: connect with USB cable and copy music to my Android music folder. Apple's attempts to simplify this are quite lost on me.

iTunes should get the

Heh, heh....

Apple's already won that one - they based the Mac OS on it... <rim shot>

Apple used to be quite different.

In 1979 I purchased an Apple II and, ugrading constantly, I kept it as my only computer for TEN years!

Back then Apple led the way with "open" .. (what's the word?) .. architecture / software? This led to many third party software titles, and even a couple of Apple II clones. Up until this time IBM was a "closed" company, but (following Apple's lead) IBM came out with the IBM PC and open architecture for it.

Those were the "good ole days" ;-)

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By the way .. I've never had iTunes on anything and hope I never will. The ONLY reason I have Quicktime installed is that it's necessary for certain programs.

*Don't blast iTunes too badly. It's an absolute dream of functional near-perfection compared to the software that comes with Sony's MiniDisc recorders.*

In 2010, who the hell is still using MiniDiscs?

In 2010, who the hell is still using MiniDiscs?

Until just a few months ago, my sister-in-law who is a successful independent radio producer.

Mike

Oh, i tossed the MDWalkman in the drawer the day i got the Archos and it hasn't seen the light of day since. I was just pointing out that there was a transfer software package WAY worse than iTunes.