Re: Yet another iphone question
 

Having been a frustrated iTunes user for years on various wintel devices I would have agreed at that time it's crap. However, as I have gradually migrated to mostly Apple devices across my house iTunes has served me better and better.

One of the features I love most is iTunes DJ. When we have parties, I place iPod touches and ipads around the place and anyone can request a song to add to the playlist at the time - saves a lot of arguments around the stereo.

Additionally, it integrates seamlessly with my Denon amps which are all network connected so ts easy to play any music in any room.

I honestly feel that we are really no further forward than we were 10 years ago. Ether configure your life to all wintel or all Apple - that saves the fewest problems. Android devices seem to work reasonably well with Apple devices on common app platforms.

Just my opinion, your mileage may vary.

Re: Yet another iphone question
 

Closed system = stops malware.

Only Apple software = ???

No Flash = no loss. On my Mac, Flash causes 94 per cent of my system crashes.

No Adobe reader = in all honesty, Preview is sufficient for most people. Unless you're heavily into editing and creating PDFs, this isn't an issue.

Re: Yet another iphone question
 

Stops external apps being used.

Mac, says it all really ;-) Many websites use flash.

If you use your phone for business you're not going to want to be downloading Word documents all the time but PDF's so Adobe reader is a must for me.

Re: Yet another iphone question
 

I can read PDFs on my iPhone...

Re: Yet another iphone question
 

^. What he said. No problem with PDFs on my iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Re: Yet another iphone question
 

I reckon this debate will last longer than time.

In summary;

Apple stuff - for people who appreciate design, simplicity, functionality, 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 apps to help out or to entertain and the ability to use their phone for almost everything.

Android - for people labelled more like Geek / Techie types who want to be able to **** about with it, change it, fanny around and generally get a bit excited about things like that. Or for those who believe owning Apple is being a sheep and you're just conformin..zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Re: Yet another iphone question
 

You mean it stops unauthorised apps being used - i.e. apps that haven't been tested to ensure that they are malware-free or aren't going to do something else (intentionally or not) to cause you pain. And it's a total irrelevance to most users anyway, since they already have access to God knows how many hundreds of thousands of authorised apps that do everything they could possibly want, and quite a few things they didn't know they wanted to do.

Of course, if you really really want to be able to dick around with iOS you can jailbreak it and then it becomes as vulnerable to malware and plain ol' crappy apps as Android is. A friend who is platform-agnostic and owns both Android and iOS devices says that the iOS apps are usually of a better quality than Android ones, simply because there's that gatekeeper there enforcing some kind of standards.

Only the crap ones that haven't been recoded to use the much more efficient HTML5. And they'll be forced to change soon anyway, since Adobe officially ended support for Flash on Android on August 15th (with the release of Android 4.1).

Mobile Flash is now dead, and good riddance to its buggy battery-sapping bloatedness. I know some people like sticking with outmoded technology, but really, HTML5 is the way to go. Apple saw that back in 2007 ;)

There's been an official Adobe Reader app for iOS for over a year. And you've been able to open PDFs on the iPhone and iPad since the first day they went on sale. I don't actually have the Adobe Reader app installed, but I read PDFs on my iPad all the time. The ability to open PDFs has always been an integral part of iOS, just as it is with the Mac OS.

Re: Yet another iphone question
 

Because I'm one of those pesky people who's actually interested in things. That means that when someone says "it's crap" about something that I think is very intuitive and works very well, I'm interested to know exactly *why* they think it's crap. You never know, they might have an opinion that makes me rethink my own position.

In 7 years of using it I've never once experienced it randomly reorganising my music collection. I have no idea what it's doing with folders, since I don't care what's going on at the back end - why should I? All I know is that everything sits inside subfolders in the main iTunes folder. I value iTunes for looking after all that stuff for me; life's too short to be bothering about which folders your music's kept in when you've got a front end that allows you to access any track within a few seconds without needing to know where it is on the drive.

Re: Yet another iphone question
 

You notice this being more of a issue with kids sites, those Disney and TV channel games and learning sites are the worst for being Flash.

The Malware thing not being allowed on Apple Apps, is also false, plenty of duff apps get put up there, Apple don't really test for it. Sure those dodgy apps get pulled after a while, but they also pull genuine things for arbitrary reasons with no recourse too.

It works simply because it got there first and is massive. Doesn't make it a better or worse system though....and it's not been great for folks who've tried to do Kickstarter projects either mind.

Re: Yet another iphone question
 

Like I said, it works for you, so you've no reason to think other wise. But when it does this shit, it is kack and it does and you really notice it if you've already got a organised music folder and move some of it in for iTunes to look at because it then faffs it up by default, meaning you end up with loads of duplicates.

I suppose it's great if you've never used anything else or had no music collection and started with iTunes and stuck to Apple platforms. It's not so great if you've using various media players over various platforms.

Re: Yet another iphone question
 

Their days are numbered. Within a year from now, we'll probably find that they've all converted to HTML5. Where's the value in mobile sites using Flash from here on out?

Re: Yet another iphone question
 

my itunes now has about half the songs in there with duplicates, some have upto 4 or 5 duplicates. I have tried using many different cleaning tools to fix this and had some success but to be honest its so utterly ****ed now that i just avoid using it for anything other than backing up or updating the iphone or ipad. My passionate hatred of itunes is near limitless. this is of course not even mentioning how much of a resource hog it and all its ****ing sub programs can be.

I wish apple would just have the courage to start from scratch on a new program as im pretty certain nowadays they could design and build a really nice media center

Re: Yet another iphone question
 

I doubt it. HTML5 has been knocking around as the holy grail for ages now and the uptake hasn't exactly been that massive of a switch from Flash in the commercialsphere.

Large commercial entities, schools and banks just don't move that fast and don't necessarily care about mobile devices like tablets.

Re: Yet another iphone question
 

which is incredibly short sighted of them

there is a special place in hell for websites, web designers and companies that use flash.
if i get a flash loading bar on your website, bye bye i wont even wait

Re: Yet another iphone question
 

Oh I know it, but that still doesn't change things.

And they don't tend to be selling you shit, you're already tied to them, so they can't be bothered to change.

Either because they're a school and you're using their site for classes, or they're your bank and you're looking up your statement...plenty of stuff like that, so it's a case of use it or not, but you don't really have a alternative.