Saturday, June 28, 2008

When You Just Want Your Shit To Work!


**Please read end for problem resolution***
I'll admit, I'm lazy, but technology fascinates me to no end. I'll get to the lazy part in a bit, but I simply have to know how everything works, and when I do, I then need a new challenge. I know more than 99% of the human populous about PC's, XP, Vista and, well... even 2000, 3.0, 3.1x and even DOS. Now my latest quest as of this year is all things Apple.

Six months ago, I didn't so much as own an iPod. Yes, I had MP3 players, but just not an Apple product. Today, nearing the end of 2008, I own (in this order) an Ipod Nano, 24" iMac, MacBook, (had an iPhone for 10 days but sent it back because ATT's calls had more drops than Murine and Visine put together) and now my latest acquisition is the iPod Touch. Regessing a moment, if T-Mobile had iPhones, I'd be on that faster than Jerry Yang would say YES to another Microsoft offer.

Getting back to my iPod Touch, I'll tell you why I posted this blog, and why that title. I mentioned I have a Nano, and although its only 8gb, it actually does everything I need, only the screen is too small for my taste. Enter Touch. If you are a loyal Apple user, you know all about things working. Even though Apple's OS X is not perfect, the small shortcomings are not near annoying enough to move back to any PC, for me, and likely for most of you. That being said, my iPod Touch should work at least as well as my Nano no? It does what it does pretty well, but what it doesn't do is play my synced video podcasts. I get audio with a frozen screen where video should be. Same sync to Nano yeilds perfect video, albeit tiny in comparison.

Yes, I'm a tech, and yes there is likey a solution, but the "Genius" at the apple store told me to force the settings on all videos in the individual settings so it sees it as a video. Now, lets get this straight: My 8gb $199 Nano knows how to distinguish everything perfectly, but my $499.00 Touch can't figure it out? As I opened this Blog, I've admitted that I'm lazy. Especially when I need to dedicate a fair amount of time getting Album Art for about 10% of my music library which is a complete time bandit if ever there was one.

I have a strange way about me sometimes. If I can't correct this easily, I might just throw in the towel and return the Touch and go back to my trusty, true, and tiny Nano. Surely there are many other ways I can spend $500.00. What can I say? I just want my shit to work!

***Problem Solved***
Well, lets just chalk this up to slightly bad ergonomics of the unit and lack of logical thinking when I needed it. The unit works, and does so very well, but here is where I went wrong, and where Apple can make a bit of an adjustment.

Going into 'Music' on the iPod Touch, there is a section for Podcasts. Although Podcasts are not music, this is the buttons name. I guess Audio is not sexy enough. This Music button is where I kept going into to find my grand list of Podcasts, audio and video. They are all in there. When I select an audio Podcast, it works fine. When I select a video Podcast, I'd get only the audio portion with the begining image of the video frozen on screen. For this reason, I never looked elsewhere to make it work.

The resolution is, in order to see those video Podcasts, you need to go to Video from the main screen. When I did this, I had a list of my downloaded videos, but when I scroll down, beneith the downloaded videos, there is a section called Podcasts. There, again, are the listings of all the Video Podcasts, only now, from this section, they simply work.

Why apple allows these videos to be indexed in the audio section of 'Podcasts' is beyond me. The Touch is a great and powerful unit, but a bit more thought could be put into the clear seperation of video and audio PodCasts. I say, just have a completely seperate Podcast main button, and seperate Audio and Video folders within. Then even a linear thinking logical person such as myself can operate the entire unit without the hand holding of instructions.

2 comments:

Josh said...

That's interesting. I had considered the Touch as well due to its larger screen, but just couldn't bring myself to spend the money for a smaller size. i currently have the iPod classic which also has a fairly small screen. But I found a not-perfect-solution that does soo much more. I'm not sure if you've heard of the Nokia N800/N810 but its a killer little unit. You can pick up the N800 for about $250 right now and the N810(has flip out keyboard, GPS and a few other extra features) for about $400. There is software that nokia provides that will convert almost any video you have to a format that the N800 will play pretty much flawlessly. You should check it out. I tether it with my verizon phone as well and get fast'ish internet all over the city.
(I'm cybertron2600 from twitter btw)

TechFrog Blog said...

I am familiar, and really look forward to other competing items. Especially when WiMax gets going

I am here to...

How comfortable are you with technology

What is your main computer system?

About Me

My photo
I have been a Technology Consultant for over 15 years and am sometimes referred to as the Tech Guy To The Stars as many clients are of the Hollywood crowd. I haven't needed a business card in over a decade as I have made my living by word-of-mouth. I have a sick passion and addiction to efficiency. From my hybrid car to how a business office can be run more efficiently with today's technology. Knowledge is power, and my purpose here is to share what I have learned with those that can use it. I'm forever a student as well, so along the way, my eyes and ears are always open to new ideas, new technologies and just new ways of doing things