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A Newbie's Review of Rockbox: First Reactions

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Nymm:
Heard about Rockbox from a friend and decided to try it. I have a 30G iPod Video

ZOMZ. Ughhhh. I'm not liking Rockbox. I'm just too much of a Rockbox newb to truly embrace it.

Problems:

#6. Menus are too complex and take too long to navigate. It's hard to tell where to find things.
#5. Auto installer, Rockbox Utility, is incomplete and won't allow you to import themes during initial setup. That means manual theme setup which = pain in the ass.
#4. Can't customize some of the content. I'd like to delete some of the plugins I could care less about. Like the "metronome" or the crappy calendar that doesn't display the correct dates.
#3. All instructions are in nerdspeak. HELLO. I bought an IPOD. That tells you something about my lack of techno savvy.
#2. Can't customize the menus. No "settings" controlls like for iPod that aloww me to display only the menus I want.
#1. NO. CUSTOMIZABLE. PLAYLISTS. Big fail. Big. Playlists are how I listen to my music. I'm not gonna hen peck, song by song, from 13G of music just to get a que going.

Pros:
Doom. Playable on your iPod. And it comes free, automatically. ONLY reason I haven't removed Rockbox.

What Rockbox needs is an interface like iTunes that allows you to control all your preferences, MAKE PLAYLISTS, download new themes, etc..

Hopefully, there are solutions to my problems and I just haven't found them yet. I think the idea of Rockbox is pretty cool and I want to like it. But it feels a bit over thought. I just wish I could keep it a little simpler and control what features and controls end up on your iPod from your computer.

If any of you know of solutions to any my issues that I have missed (and I fully acknowledge I could have missed some), please let me know.

Many thanks to all the people who have worked so hard on all this! You guys Rock!

gevaerts:
I'm just going to respond to one or two objective issues and leave the rest to people who like debates :)

--- Quote from: Nymm on March 04, 2009, 04:02:34 PM ---#4. Can't customize some of the content. I'd like to delete some of the plugins I could care less about. Like the "metronome" or the crappy calendar that doesn't display the correct dates.

--- End quote ---
You can delete them. Plugins are plain files on the disk. It won't gain you much space though.

--- Quote ---#1. NO. CUSTOMIZABLE. PLAYLISTS. Big fail. Big. Playlists are how I listen to my music. I'm not gonna hen peck, song by song, from 13G of music just to get a que going.

--- End quote ---
rockbox supports standard m3u playlists.

Llorean:
6) We welcome a streamlined menu layout, but nobody's ever actually been able to produce one that's better than the existing one, just complain about it.

5) This is a volunteer effort. Feel free to complete the work on the theme site so this feature can be enabled. Until such time as people stop complaining about it and choose to do the work, you're going to be stuck having to do the manual install.

4) Yes, you can delete plugins.

3) You're installing an ALTERNATIVE FIRMWARE. Hello, you may have bought an iPod but replacing the firmware on an embedded device is not "very basic computer use." The terms used in the manual are chosen to be things you can look up if necessary, but be precise and accurate where possible. If they're too complicated for you, maybe you should take a step back and reconsider why you chose to install Rockbox. It's meant for people who want a more advanced MP3 player. That means you're going to have to think occasionally.

2) This is true. This is intentional. As you've noted the menus are complex, and to make providing support easier for it (and maintaining the code itself easier) we chose not to allow menus to be customized. Remember, nobody gets paid anything for this software, so sometimes we're going to take steps to make the job easier on us. If a few button presses more to get to the item you want is really too much of a hassle, you can modify the source yourself to remove the options. If that's something you're unwilling to learn to do, please don't complain about the intentional choices we made, when we're the ones doing the actual work.

1) Playlists work fine. I import playlists from my PC or make playlists on my device all the time.



It may be a "newbie's" review, but it would be polite to take the time to do some learning before complaining, just to make sure you avoid complaining about, for example, features like playlists which are described in the manual.

If you're just installing Rockbox for doom, seriously go back to the Apple software. It's intended to expand the functionality of the devices dramatically. That simply cannot be done and maintain the same level of simplicity as the original firmware.

Chronon:
Theme installation (extracting an archive to the root of the player) may be a "pain in the ass" to you, but this doesn't really seem like a valid point of complaint when the original firmware doesn't even support themes.

bluebrother:
unzip -d /media/ipod themefile.zip is a pain?

I'm not sure what you mean about "customizable playlists". You can use playlists just fine, and you can edit them on the go. You can even create your own search in the database and use that to create a playlist.

If this all is too complex for you -- well, then Rockbox simply isn't for you. And if the only reason for not removing Rockbox is doom, well, I don't need to say anything.

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