Seriously man just get the ipod touch..  You sound a bit ridiculous.  your first sentence says "i hate ipods", but you don't even own one?  So how would you know you hate them?  I know its semi cool for droid geeks to hate apple but really?
Don't you do control systems that your clients can control with their iphone/pod/pads?  Don't any of your customers have cameras at their homes or business that they can check in on with their iphone/pod/pads?  Aren't you in the custom install business?  How are you going to walk your customer thru a problem if you dont own or know how to use one?  How are you going to set up their apps for them for their systems?  
There's a million reasons to own at least an ipod touch being in this business.  Stop fighting it, u can still hate apple even tho after you own it you'll be secretly playing with it all the time b/c it's one of the greatest inventions ever created.

Could not have said it better myself
Welcome to the 21st century people

iTouch from Craigslist. I agree iTunes sux.

You should become an Apple expert, if you're installing the stuff, even if you don't like it. Suck it up.

I suggest you buy an external hard drive to back up your music files, before installing iTunes. Disconnect the hard drive before installing iTunes.

Once you become familiar with iTunes, and the settings, screwing up your music files won't be an issue. A dedicated PC isn't a bad idea, if you have the $. Any old PC/laptop would work fine. It's unlikely that you'd screw up your music files, but there is a chance.

I'm also in the market. My 80g classic was stolen in the burglary.

I have decided on the iTouch. Even though like Ernie, I only need it for music and iPod dock testing/ demos, it can also be used to show the pairing with Apple TV and iTunes. It can help overall with the sale of a bigger system. This includes those nickel and dimer clients who want the budget, audio only zones. Volume controls and so on.

As mentioned in another thread, it is a great way to sight IP cams by yourself. Download super cams app, then enter in the IP addres, user and pw, then you can view your cams on the iPod Touch. For me, this is priceless. They also make an Android app to.

If you still need an opinion, get the latest version of an iPod Touch. Like it oor not, there is a high probability that your customers will be using an iPod or an iPhone, so you should have a minuimum working knowledge of these devices.

I'm not sure why some people hate iTunes so much. Yes, at times it can be frustrating and takes a little getting used too. But in general, its fairly easy to use and has some amazing features. Here's what you should know about iTunes:

-You don't have to pay anything to use it.
-You (probably) won't have to alter anything about your current music collection to use iTunes.
-You can use other media players or services cooncurrently with iTunes if you don't convert your music to proprietary formats
-iTunes does a fantastic job of backing up iPods, iPhones, and iPads. Its very easy to restore data or transfer existing data and settings to a new device
-You can configure your iPod as an external hard drive and bypass most of iTunes

I never 'hated' Apple, but I wasn't a fan. When I realized that just about every piece of CE gear that came out in 2005 was incorporating iPod connectivity, I decided to buy a 30 GB Video iPod so I could at least set one up if needed. I bought it as a tool for work, but I basically haven't left the house without an iPod of some sort for 6 years.

Get an ipod touch.

you can use it for testing ipod docks, and nearly every manufacturer you install has an iphone/ipod touch app.

yes youll need itunes on a computer somewhere in order to get the thing setup. once its setup you can ignore itunes until a firmware update.

when you install itunes do an advanced install and tell it NOT to touch a damned file. then you can still use winamp or WMP or whatever to manage your media.

Also pro-tip.... put at least 1 video file and 1 picture on the thing so you can test EVERY feature.

Sell and install five Bose systems, then get back to me.

also come iOS 5 (fall), iOS will be fully independent from a PC or iTunes.

See, it seems for every person who says there's no problem with iTunes, someone else says it sucks. What I haven't liked from the beginning... might just be a myth. I thought if you had iTunes, all your music became a part of iTunes, and it then had a stranglehold on you... I'm off to start a separate thread and will link to it here:


Yeah, you're right. I still can't help saying that we don't have that attitude about Bose, though. Why is Apple different?


Okay I do that. Then what? To play my music I attach a 1 terabyte dongle to my computer, and then iTunes takes the music over anyway?


I read in that "iTunes definitely screws up your music unless you learn how to make it not do so." That's like selling a car that "starts up in gear with the accelerator floored until you learn how to make it not do so." The damn thing should start up in neutral and let us learn how to get into gear one bit at a time!


Again, apparently iTunes screws up music files.

iTunes does not screw up your music files.

more on this in the "other" thread.

On July 18, 2011 at 16:26, Ernie Bornn-Gilman said...

Sell and install five Bose systems, then get back to me.

What does selling and installing 5 Bose systems have to do with getting an iPod and haveing the ability to use it in a varitety of different ways to help you and your business?

bose isn't the 2nd most valuable company in the world. they also don't reinvent and ignite random market segments like apple does.

Nor do they censor their users (content and software), "break" functionality via software and hardware changes (yeah, that 30 pin connector is awesome!), secretly track their client's whereabouts, go out of their way to prevent you from using the gear as you see fit while publicly stating that it's for your own good, sell phones that don't work as advertised, offer options to opt out of functionality that they then really leave running in the background, inspire hipster douche bags to all pretend to be designers while producing the exact same look as every other hipster douche bag, attempt to force you to use their (poor) sand box to update, push their manufacturing partners 'til the employees have to sign a contract that states that they won't commit suicide, charge end users for beta software (not even Redmond does that!), charge for the equivalent of service packs, claim that they're inherently more secure than the other guys (they're not, they're just a smaller target), suck and suck bad in the enterprise market, pitch their cloud services while using a different operating system to support it (Linux for the motherf#ckin' win), purchase patents but not for the technology (they club people with patent troll lawsuits) and lastly, helmed by an arrogant prick who eats babies.

yup. they are doing it all wrong...
they should be more like linux...