I want a music player that will play nicely with Linux and from a company that will not try to sabotage me at their will. When I buy music from the Apple Music Store, I can not play it on Linux.
I know about FairKeys, but this is not a product that could be shipped by Linux distributions that are afraid of getting into a lawsuit. So it effectively can not enter the mass market of free software users.
I have always been annoyed at this, and today I found this on BoingBoing: iTunes upgrade used to remove more features (disguissed as an "upgrade") and a follow up (through Dave Winer).
Luckly Slashdot has pointers to a bunch of new iPod Killers: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.
Certainly Apple has a couple of years of advantage in terms of improving their product compared to their competition, but am going to spend my money into funding products and companies that are not out to screw me or limit what I can do with the device I purchased.
If people have good experiences on a good portable player, let me know. Am looking for something with 20 gigs of space and possibly ogg support. FM and recording are pluses, but not very important.
Posted on 01 Nov 2004