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Comment by lifebeyondfife | Hacker News Reader

I agree that we should choose the best in class wherever possible, but doesn't Apple assume that you're all-in? The reason I bought an Archos when the first iPods came out was because it let me treat the mp3 player as a portable harddrive i.e. I wasn't locked into iTunes.

Some Apple products are second to none but for reasons of pragmatism, I'm Windows + Linux VM + Android phone.

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I might be a bad millenial, but I just use my phone for talking, text chat, and chrome. The apps are pretty much the same so every few years I can just pick the best looking phone at the time with no lockin.

Google lockin is a lot more significant because they offer actually useful services that I do want to centralize.

I am glad to see more things having moved to the web, and less app-preaching being pushed nowadays. I barely use any apps (except maybe for shazam?), mainly for battery-preservation. Maybe i 'm too spartan, but the slight inconvenience is worth it.

With you on Google lock in. I'm off all significant Google services except Gmail. Still waiting for a paid, web based mail provider with quality search.

I recommend FastMail, it's refreshingly fast after Gmail and the search works great. They have a free trial.

> but doesn't Apple assume that you're all-in?

Who cares? Isn't that a bad thing ? As an iPhone-only apple user, i had no problems making it work. OTOH, I find their "special" charging cable ridiculously unnecessary.

You're misremembering. The first iPods did mount as a disk for general file storage. They weren't locked into iTunes either... they supported MP3, AAC, and several other formats.

Yes and no.

Yes you could put files on there, no you could not access them from inside the iPod UI.

If you wanted to put music on a iPod it had to happen via iTunes. And only AAC (in an Apple wrapper) and MP3 was supported without transcoding.

With Archos there was no special software, just dump the files on there and go.

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