yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Windows Phone 7 General] eaglesteve:
64GB should be sufficient. You only need to copy those music you want (excluding those you do not want to store on iPhone) to your notebook. Remember you only have 32GB on iPhone. If you select say 2000 songs, it would have already take up close to 20GB depending on your level of compression and mix of musics. Your application may take more than 10GB already if you're power user like myself. You also need to leave some space for your photos and videos, speaking of which can also be drag and copied over without going through iTune if you wish.

There is also another option. Which is to simply drag and drop all your song from your server to iPhone directly without using iTune. Then use a third party music player to play your songs instad of iPod application. This closely resember the winmo approach.
[Windows Phone 7 General] vangrieg:
The problem is not with syncing per se. It's with indexing content by iTunes that slows my PC to a hault. When I tried to do it for my iPod some years ago, I simply killed the process after 96 hours. It was using like 99% of the CPU and I couldn't use my PC at all. It was at 60% then or something ridiculous like that. Every other player does it in some minutes (definitely in less than an hour), and I can use my computer and network just fine. So I dumped the idea then. Later on I installed iTunes for my wife's iPod and it just hung on first launch. I reinstalled and rebooted my PC to get the same result. I finally figure out what was wrong - when I uninstalled it previous time, it kept the library file which pointed to a non-existent network location. I deleted it manually and it worked. Still no improvement on indexing files on the network. It didn't give any error messages, didn't give me any indications of what was going on. It was just damn hanging because the idiots who wrote it didn't separate UI and network browsing in different threads. I can say much more about iTunes, but I don't think it's necessary, it's not a topic that interests me much. I just don't want to deal with this crap, period.
[Windows Phone 7 General] eaglesteve:
If your experience was based on iTune and iPod some years ago, then perhaps you should retry the same process with the updated software. I had no experience with iTune before March 2009 (I too was an iPhone hater and winmo fanboy before then) , but I can tell you that the problem you describe seems abnormal to me.
[Windows Phone 7 General] vangrieg:
I said that I used it with my wife's 3GS just recently, and it's the latest version available. How else would I get problems with the old library file?
[Windows Phone 7 General] eaglesteve:
So how does she perform iTune sync now? How big is her music collection?
[Windows Phone 7 General] vangrieg:
She's not listening to music on her iPhone because of the hassle related with putting it there. When I just bought it for her as a gift, I did copy some music to my notebook and then transferred it, but then when I set it up with her computer everything was deleted (what a smart design), and she never bothered to put it there after that.

She had some bigger problems with iTunes herself. Once it asked if she wanted to update software and she thought the question was about the stuff she bought in Appstore, so she hit OK. :) When it took too long she just unplugged it in the middle of flashing the firmware, and put the phone in restore mode. When I came home and tried to flash it it was throwing "Unknown error" in the middle of the process. I spent an hour or so trying to make the damned thing work, and only managed to flash it after uninstalling and reinstalling iTunes. Granted, she shouldn't have unplugged it, but I'd say that the process of flashing is too easy - try it with HTC phone - you get like 5 warnings in bold, red and whatever.

Another problem was when she tried to put a video there, and you can't deny it's very intuitive. You have "Movies" in three places in the interface apart from File-Add to library - I can't even pick the most stupid out of the four. The latter opens a file dialog where you can choose any file including .avi and hit OK, and it doesn't throw any errors or warnings or anything, the dialog just closes and nothing happens. How cool is that? So she dumped the idea and asked for my help - it took a while to figure out for me as well.

And the most brilliant thing - the "Transfer purchases" item in right-click menu popping up on your iPhone name on the left. How the hell is she supposed to guess she needs to do it in order not to lose all applications together with their data when setting up a sync relationship on a new PC?

So her policy now is not to touch the thing whenever possible, and to always answer "No" to anything it asks. There's no way she'll even try to put music there. Intuitive interface my ass.

By the way, previously she had a WM Smartphone edition device, and never had any problems with it. This iStuff/iTunes "ecosystem" works well, I guess, if you're a user with one device and one PC where all your media is stored. One step sideways from this core usage scenario and you're screwed.
[Windows Phone 7 General] Spike15:
No matter what the blind and just plain stupid fanboys/apologists say, iTunes and the like aren't designed to make things more convenient for the customer, they're designed to give the manufacturer more control.

That's why enthusiasts etc. are opposed to them.There's nothing wrong with copying and pasting raw files, or syncing with WMP, other than the fact that it robs the companies of control of what you can and can't do with your device. That's why things like iTunes are so inconvenient, and why there are so many things you simply can't do with them.

Don't buy into the fascism!
[Windows Phone 7 General] chiks19018:
I doubt it. That would mean all the apps in the apps store would need to be re-written to take advantage of the WVGA. Not possible.

I don't find the iphone screen blocky, unless you are trying to read from 6 inches.
[Windows Phone 7 General] WhyBe:
There's no reason iPhone 4G can't have hardware scaling like WP7. So I wouldn't say "Not possible". With hardware scaling, they could introduce WVGA without breaking anything. This is the same way MS is going to introduce HVGA.
[Windows Phone 7 General] chiks19018:
Interesting......I think we discussed this before....megapixels is not everything.

The imaging software is the one that really really makes the difference. HTC camera software "sucks" to state it mildly. The iphone 3gs video is "amazing" and taking pictures in low light are still good.
[Windows Phone 7 General] chiks19018:
and add to the processing overhead? I guess not. Realistically speaking, there is NO need of any more sharper image resolution for that size of the phone. That is unless you want to read at 6 inches from your face.
[Windows Phone 7 General] Kloc:
WVGA is a good resolution. Everything looks alot crisper on my Touch PRo2 then on an iPhone. I can see the difference.
[Windows Phone 7 General] eaglesteve:
For 99% of the applications higher resolution is completely unnecessary, however on some webpages it is almost a must to have it. Zooming in is not really an option because that would also require user to pan the page left and right to read the complete line. This isn't the case for 99% of the webpages that automatically reflow the larger size text to fit the width of the screen. Only for some rare instances double tapping will still be unable to give user adequate text size. So far I have only come across one such website where the only practical way to read the text is to have higher rsolution screen. Just for this website, I revert back to my old HTC Athena with it's 5 inch 640x480 screen to read the text. unfortunately this website contains lots of lots of very excellent books which I want to read. My problem with my HTC Athena is that it is so clunky, inconsistent is response, freeze prone, that I really am sick of wanting to touch it after being spoilt by the excellent iPhone experience. So I'm now waiting for my ipad to continue using that one website.

Edit: I should correct myself. It is not the higher resolution that's necessary for me to use that specific website. It is larger screen. This website is a foreign language website, and unlike English website, the font must be of certainly minimum size for me to read it without strain. I'm now using third party web browsers that could all on the fly increase or decrease display text sizes, that's not a problem. The problem is for this particular language, the maximum font size is still too small. There is no question of sharpness or clarity therefore resolution is not an issue (hence I was not correct to say that it is a must for me to go for higher resolution). I just need the font size to go larger, and I think a larger screen size achieves this purpose.

I know higher resolution will give me sharper pictures and video quality but for me personally, that's not as important as the screen size. Having said that, I want higher resolution though. Difference between want and need. All other things being equal, I would choose a device with higher resolution. Only if all other things are equal. They are in reality not equal. The most important difference between the iPhone/iTouch screen and the rest is the responsiveness, accuracy, and predictability of the touch screen. This is the single most important aspects of the capacitive touch screen, and iPhone is unrivaled.
[Windows Phone 7 General] witch1:
I've never had probs syncing my iphones or ipods through itunes. Ever. Its very easy, to me.:p
[Windows Phone 7 General] eaglesteve:
Both my young kids did the sync regularly without any issue. I didn't help them in the beginning either. But my wife never ever sync. So is a number of my relatives. Everything is downloaded directly into the phone and they don't attemp to bring any if the info to their pc. One of my aunties never even upgrade the firmware until two to three years later, when another relative (who gifted her the iPhone) came back from overseas to help her upgrade the firmware and update all her applications. Yet she was perfectly happy with her phone throughout.
[Windows Phone 7 General] WhyBe:
Actually hardware-based scaling would not add to processing overhead. Software-based scaling would.
[Windows Phone 7 General] eaglesteve:
iPad has a completely different resolution. All iPhone applications will work in this different resolutions without modification whatsoever.
[Windows Phone 7 General] eaglesteve:
This doesn't sound quite right to me, mate.

In my case, my family has four iPhone/iTouch and we can use ANY computer (since Apple allows us to Authorise each account to up to 5 computers, and we only have four in the network) to sync to the account.

In the past, we use to buy stuffs using four different user accounts, then we realise that we were wasting our money unnecessarily, since Apple allows each purchase and applications to work on up to 5 devices. So, now our approach is to use a single account to share the cost of TomTom, etc and all the musics we bought or rip from CD from the same library, but each can choose its own sets of songs using our own playlist. Each device can also choose to sync its own sets of applications. I'm not as interested in games as my sons and they're not interested in TomTom like me and my wife, but we can have different devices, same user account, and different computer all accessing the same library/purchases.

What you have to do is to go to iTune's preference's sharing tab and specify that you can your music (and whatever else) to be sharable by all the computers in your home network. Then, you go to every computer in the network's iTune to sign on using the same common account used for the purchase. Apple will tell you how many more computers (up to five) you could authorise to use the same user account. You can then do the sync using any of those 5 computers.

Easy. Piece of cake. iTune is fantastic and flexible. Just have to know how to use it, that's all.

I wonder if WM7S sync can be so smart. I hope it does not make the fatal mistake of syncing to the cloud. Nobody can afford to back up 32 or 64GB and to do restore over the cloud, no matter how large their 3G quota is, not even mentioning the problem of storing your eWallet information there yet.
[Windows Phone 7 General] Spike15:
I usually buy products on the basis of being able to do whatever I want with them, not merely what I'm told I can and cannot do.

But enjoy your fascist oppression!
[Windows Phone 7 General] vangrieg:
One iTunes to 5 devices is cool, but how about one iPhone to 3 PCs? Like I said, my notebook isn't the place to store my media, for lots of reasons. Yet it's the best device to serve as the central administering control point.

Judging by Zune software, it seems to be infinitely better. It caters to all possible scenarios, from easy default zero-config ones to my network file storage stuff. It's blazing fast, doesn't have leftovers like in iTunes where there are "Albums" even in places where that doesn't make any sense. It was made as a media manager for PC and devices from the ground up, so things aren't just added there as an afterthought in random places. And it looks really cool - everybody I've shown it to was impressed.
[Windows Phone 7 General] amb9800:
Well, iPhone apps still only render at 480x320 on the iPad-- it lets you either see the app in the center of the screen with black space all around or scale it up to full-screen (on the iPad, this results in hilariously huge UI elements when you scale up something like the iPhone's Facebook app).

Scaling is more feasible when you're talking about different screen resolutions on the same sized device. Microsoft is actually encouraging WP7S developers to use lower resolutions, like around HVGA res, to render complex 3D apps and then scale up (if the graphics exceed Snapdragon's GPU capacity at WVGA).

I'm sure Apple could bump up the resolution without too much trouble in the 4G iPhone if it wants to (through a hardware video rescaler), but the only area it really makes a difference in is in web browsing.
[Windows Phone 7 General] Spike15:
What you mean is:

"Scaling is more feasible when you're talking about different screen resolutions that are the same aspect ratio."
[Windows Phone 7 General] amb9800:
That's something very few people need to do (local sync relationships with more than one PC at a time), so iTunes doesn't enable it by default, but you can do so by editing a text file (see here).
[Windows Phone 7 General] amb9800:
No I did mean screen size-- the main issue with iPhone app display scaling on the iPad is that the latter has a much larger screen, so you end up with UI elements that are much larger than intended.

If you had, say, a 720x480 iPhone with around the same size screen, you might end up with some fuzziness if not properly scaled, but otherwise the app would look fine.
[Windows Phone 7 General] eaglesteve:
The reason why Apple does not let you sync an iPhone to more than one iTune library is to prevent music piracy. How does MS deal with this issue if you can bring the music on Zune and populate it to unlimited PC?

I do not know how you can sync your phone to three PC, but I do sync it to two PC. This is because initially I was dumb enough to buy music for my son using an ID created for him rather than using my own.

To do that, you need to jailbreak your phone and install Swap Tune from Cydia, which is essentially a tool toggle between the two library. See this video on how how it works - it's really simple.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLPE4REjDxU
[Windows Phone 7 General] Spike15:
You don't see anything wrong with this?

You purchased a product and despite the fact that you've bought it and it's now yours, the company that sold it to you is still dictating to you what you can and can't do with it?

Society is in a sad state-of-affairs...

P.S.: Not letting people sync their iPod/iPhone to more than one computer isn't preventing music piracy at all, it's just reducing the likelihood that people will acquire music legitimately to begin with.
[Windows Phone 7 General] eaglesteve:
LOL. Over dramatic aren't you? I'm with you as far as wanting to do whatever I want to do with my phone is concern. Where we differ is you think you can't do it now and perhaps you refuse to take the route of jailbreaking, whereas I think I am now doing whatever I want already with jailbreaking.
[Windows Phone 7 General] Spike15:
Where we differ is that you're buying into the oppression, whereas I'm not.

It's not "over dramatic [sic]", it's pure facts. There's something wrong when you're paying for something only for the company that sold it to you to place upon you additional restrictions. When you buy something, you're supposed to own it, and you're supposed to have a right to do what you want -- within the law -- with things that you own.

Period, end of discussion.

Apple violates this so purchasing from Apple is an example of poor consumerism.
[Windows Phone 7 General] eaglesteve:
When Apple tries to stop you from pirating music, they're cultivating an environment where musicians can see the benefits of listing their works there. We live in a society where there are laws and rules, and that's not necessarily fascism as you put it. You might or might not agree with the effectivness of the way to prevent piracy. Do you think it is any better for the police to get google to help them look into your computer and fine you a million dollars for the 20 songs you illegally downloaded into your computer? If you think it is okay for you to do anything you want to do in life without thinking about how your action affect others and the society around you, then you have'nt quite grown up yet, kid. If you see this as an oppression, I feel sorry for you. You really really need to grow up. You know nothing about society yet, Kid.
[Windows Phone 7 General] vangrieg:
I don't know how Zune software will sync files, I can only see how it allows to manage media. Using multiple sources there is done in an excellent way because they provide an easy, transparent and flexible interface for adding and removing folders and network shares, indexing is very fast, and it doesn't hang when a source becomes inaccessible. So even if they will end up only allowing one PC to sync with, adding files from different sources will still be rather easy.

That being said, I would still prefer direct copying, of course.

As regards preventing piracy, it's rudiculous. They make it a pain in the ass for legal and illegal content equally. And in my case they aren't even providing a legal way because their store doesn't work where I live.
[Windows Phone 7 General] eaglesteve:
You can buy from any store in the world. Many people here in Australia do buy from the US store. Just get a US store iTune card from ebay to do that.
[Windows Phone 7 General] vangrieg:
Not really, but anyway - when you buy elsewhere you get into the same hassle as with illegal content.
[Windows Phone 7 General] amb9800:
That's the case across the board though-- you never have complete freedom with anything you buy. It could be due to legal constraints (e.g. I buy a book, but copyright law dictates what I can and cannot do with it) or that you're actually paying for a license to something rather than buying it (for software). But here we're not even talking about that-- this is simply an issue of product features and limitations. Microsoft dictates that if I buy a Zune, for instance, I can only sync content with Windows PCs. The key thing here, and with limitations found in most products, is that you know in advance exactly what you're getting into.

What's scarier is scenarios in which you buy something and then suddenly it disappears off your device, which in the physical world would be like someone coming to your house and taking what you bought. If Apple finds something objectionable about an app, they might remove it from the App Store, but they don't touch what's already installed on your device. Windows Phone 7 Series, on the other hand, apparently phones home every time you open an app in order to check whether the app is properly licensed and still allowed, meaning Microsoft has a kill switch much deeper than Apple's (which has a kill switch only in Core Location services, in case a malicious app accesses such data).
[Windows Phone 7 General] amb9800:
As far as I understand from the MIX info, you won't be syncing any files through the Zune software. It seems just like the iPhone model-- apps each have their own isolated storage, and if they want to have some mechanism of getting files into that space (through the Internet, etc.), they can do that through their own means, but it won't be handled through iTunes, or in this case the Zune client.

It's actually more limited than the iPhone, because iPhone apps at least have access to peer-to-peer communication over Wifi, etc., whereas WP7 apps won't, so you're stuck with web-only scenarios for anything but Zune-managed music and videos.

If there were file syncing beyond that, WP7 would need WM-style file management, and it'd be useless in any case, because WP7 apps are expressly disallowed file access outside their isolated storage sandbox.

There's some possibility MS might make an exception for its Office apps, but even that's doubtful-- it currently looks like the primary mechanism of getting documents to WP7's Office apps will be syncing with Windows Live SkyDrive.

MS' developer FAQs basically say if your apps need to store files (meaning presumably it's not something you can just display from the web), you need to either build your own solution for getting them there from the web (within the sandbox), or just stick with WinMo 6.5 (:rolleyes:):
[Windows Phone 7 General] vangrieg:
Yes, you are right, I should have used the term "media" instead of "files", although I would expect them to expand that to office documents as well. Most iPhone apps solve that somewhat by embedding browser controls as far as I can see, and that's very limiting and often inconvenient.