I started this petition (http://www.petitiononline.com/13421509/petition.html) and i am posting it in various forums hoping i can get a lot of signatures. We've got a good amount already, but i figure this is a good place for it, since this mostly effects audiophiles.

I am sending the petition over to Apple a few times a week until i get some sort of response from them. But i need it to keep getting bigger as i send it. So please, if you want gapless playback, please sign it, and get others to also. If you could pass it along to others who might interested, or even to other forums, i would greatly appreciate it.

The people who run iPodlounge.com have been gracious enough to post it on the home page of that site (www.ipodlounge.com, look under "Top News Headlines"), so i hope it is starting to be seen as a legitimate petition, especially by Apple.

What do you guys think? Good idea? I mean I guess it can't hurt right? (even though Apple might not give a crap about it)

It's also good to tell Apple directly, if you care enough, www.apple.com/feedback/ipod.html

Thanks for reading,
Mike

we need HE-AAC support, too

BTW, signed...but if Apple is the Apple that I knew, I doubt that they would listen to this petition

Hi, I already signed that petition about 2 weeks ago as well as sending feedback directly to apple. Thanks MBHockey for taking the time to set this petition up and spreading the word.

Bonzi, thank you for your kind words.

Mgz: What is HE-AAC support?

MBHockey, HE-AAC is high effiency Advanced Audio Coding. HE-AAC enables better quality at lower bit rates. Ahead's Nero Digital AAC encoder utilizes HE-AAC to deliver better quality at bit rates of 64 kbps and lower. LC-AAC, or low complexity AAC, is what is used by Apple's iTunes AAC encoder. LC-AAC is good for bit rates around and above 128 kbps. HE-AAC should not be used above 96 kbps.

I would love to see Apple implement AAC support, but I already encoded my collection with iTunes in 128 kbps AAC and am not going through all that agian if they change the AAC encoder around to make the songs gapless. I guess I could just rerip the albums that need gapless support. Anyhow, I'd honestly settle for an excellent crossfader in the iPod and iTunes. The iTunes crossfader is shady at best and the lack of one in the iPod is disappointing.

Done. I already contact Apple through their "customer care" not long after I bought my 3G iPod, complaining about the missing gapless, among other things.

Based on my experience, it is very likely Apple will never even acknowledge the petition. Like they never acknowledged the battery problems, EU volume limit, etc.

Apple is so close to haveing a "perfect" portable (for my uses anyway), but they just fall short with little things like this. A few small changes based on user feedback would be nice, but I'm not holding my breath...

I wouldn't bet on a firmware upgrade being able to fix it... I'd guess it's an issue with the decoder ASIC as opposed to something which is caused by the firmware, or Apple's engineers would likely have already fixed it.

Similar thing with the AAC-HE support. HE is certainly too intensive to decode with the iPod's CPU.

(this is assuming that the 4G still uses ASICs to decode, which I believe it does... can't find any tech specs on the 4G anywhere)

(edit: give them credit, they did acknowledge the battery "problem", which isn't really so much of a problem as an issue with current battery technology. It was mostly just a dirty trick by the Neistat brothers to try and get themselves publicity, which they suceeded in doing very well)

I would gladly re-rip the albums necessary for gapless playback, if Apple found a solution. I don't know though, they sell a lot of 'gapped' versions of continuous albums on the iTMS, so maybe that is why they are holding out on it?

Can you guys think of anywhere else to post the petition?

i signed also. if the mini-ipod would support he-aac and gapless playback along with their "replaygain" (dunno whats the true name apple gave to it) it would be the PERFECT mp4 player. Maybe some flac support would be cool too...

I've added a post about the petion in Apple Discussions for both iPod and iPod mini.

I expect that is where the main part of iPod buyers would go to find out why/if their iPod do gapless playback.

Hi. All these years, I was under the impression that as consumers, we had the right to demand companies for products that would serve our requirements. Since when did we have to beg and plead a particular company to release a product that would work the way it is supposed to in the first place? By doing this, aren't you empowering Apple and their egoisitic policy-makers? No wonder they take their customers for granted. If an iPod doesn't play songs properly, boycott it and choose something else. Buy a Rio Karma, buy an iRiver. Heck, buy a Creative Zen Touch. The iPod doesn't even decode MP3s properly for God's sake!! Boycott Apple and teach them a lesson they will never forget.

Well, rohangc, you always have a choice not to buy, but...

As someone who work developing products for power plants I can tell you that it is sometimes difficult to find out exactly what our customers really appreciate.

We have a bunch of ideas of what to include in upcoming releases of our product, but our customers don't want to wait forever before getting an update.

In a nut shell: We have to prioritise which features to include in our next release.

A big company like Apple have to do exactly the same. Decide what to include next by finding out what customers really want next.

The petition is a way to help Apple prioritise in order to get gapless playback closer to the top of the list of things to include in future updates.

I personally think it is a far more direct way of communication than just stop buying their product - which would leave them guessing in the blind what they had done wrong.

it's peculiar that in these times a company is willing to listen to their marketing division's opinions on what the public wants, but doesn't really have much time to listen to what the public actually do want...

my biggest gripe with apple (there are many) is the lack of a reset button. those mains leads wear out too quickly from yanking them out of the wall. if you're on a laptop, you'll be there all night.

[edit]

oh, btw, i signed it.

i might get an iPod at some point - the linux port for the 'pod has promise, and if vorbis and mpc can be optimized to the point where it plays in > realtime, it'll remove the last hurdle that prevents me getting one (apart from money, of course)

Uhh, holding down the power button on _any_ mac for 5-10 seconds will force a hardware power off even if it is completely locked up - which should rarely, rarely happen (as I type from my PowerBook with a 32 day uptime). There is absolutely no reason to yank the power cord.

edit: Also, I have never seen an instance where control-apple-power didn't reboot a mac (also even when fully locked up)

Since gapless playback support on portable players is one of my pet peeves, I signed the petition immediately.

I sincerely hope one day gapless playback will be standard on the majority of players. That way, at least the people who want a portable player and can't stand the additional gaps will finally have a wide choice of players to choose from.

I did that a while back, but got an email from the apple discussion admin moments later telling me why my post was deleted. I hope the same doesn't happen to you!

What is so destructive about a petition that you can't post it on the discussion boards?

Apple is really, really starting to annoy me, and i've been a mac user for 4 years now.

Well, I suppose you could post it on some of the video sites too. 3ivx.com has a lot of mac users and a lot of people that use AAC. I would imagine there are a lot of people there that own iPods. Also, doom9.org might be a good place to post it.

Just received an e-mail from Apple...
They removed my subject on acount that it



The only point I can have violated would be posting an URL that was not a direct answer to a user's question.

Now I'm going back to answer user that actually requested the URL.

We will see what Apple do not then.

Already signed the petition. I just wanted to point you all to another big issue. The Composer Tag.

When used with more than one composer, as contemporary music is mostly created by collaboration between different individuals, it can quickly become a real mess. So we need the ability to use several Composer Tags per file.

Here's what I wrote to Apple Feedback:

"While I do love my iPod, recently I've had some problems organizing my songs by composer.

I think it was probably meant to be used with classical music, but when we start using more contemporary music, it quickly becomes a big mess.

For example, if I have a song written by Lennon & McCartney and another one written just by Lennon, they won't be grouped together even though they should both appear under Lennon. As you can imagine, the more songs one has, the bigger a mess this can become, especially with the way music is created nowadays where there are lots of collaborations.

I propose a very simple way of fixing this, that should be easy to implement in a future software update. Just allow us to have several Composer tags in one file, so we can have a Lennon tag and a McCartney tag, and when the software reads them, correctly places the song in both folders.

While the implementation of gapless playing and HE-AAC support remain as big issues, I understand there might be some hardware considerations regarding these problems, but multicomposer tagging should be very easy to do and a very big improvement in usability.

Thanks a lot and keep up the excelent work."

Hehe, that last one is the real monster. Apple doesn't even want a user to question their policies or procedures. If Apple were a government, that would make them a dictator. Nice. I guess constructive criticism isn't allowed either???

Don't take it personally. I've had dozens of my posts removed from the Apple Discussion forums. It's pretty totalitarian over there. I've just stopped posting there as often.

I'll post a link to the petition at the index page of RareWares when I return home tomorrow.

iPods, especially the mini, are selling like hotcakes, without gapless playback. All review sites gave the iPods almost perfect scores without gapless playback. Do you think Apple executives would worry about gapless playback capability? Also, in the past, online petitions hardly ever worked.

Besides, not many DAPs out there can do gapless. Even for Rio, it's only on the Karma. Why bother with a feature that even your competitors don't bother with?

I understand the problems a company has to face when it designs a product. I am an engineering student myself and I know what you mean. However...



It is such attitude that pisses me off. I bet your company is constantly trying to provide customers what they want. Your company listens to their demands. I don't think your company releases products which don't perform the basic tasks properly, yet sells the product at a very high price. I don't think your company does what Apple just did to you. This is downright rude. We must teach Apple the lesson it needs to learn. That's all.

haven't you figured out yet? Apple doesn't listen to it's customers, and they dont care what they have to say. I know this first hand from my 3 ipods that i had to return because of horrid customer service and the lack of quality in the iPod. Never again will anyone convince me to pay $100 MORE for something that does less, crashes on me, then literally kills itself. To hell with the iPod, if you want gapless playback get a better mp3 player

I'm quite skeptical about online petitions... But signing doesn't hurt me either, so I did it... I have a 4g iPod!

I got mail from Steve Jobs regarding gapless playback for iPod petition!

Following our discussions regarding our quest for gapless playback and Apple's deletion of posts with hyperlinks I was excited to see a mail from Steve Jobs in my inbox.

Could it be that Steve Jobs was making an announcement and a copy would be send to all those requesting gapless feedback?

Turned out the mail was from a user on Apple Discussions calling him-self Steve Jobs1. Anyway my post a iPod mini about the petition with hyperlink and everything was alive and kicking.

I also posted the hyperlink as an answer in the "Who else want's gapless playback thread" as a direct response to a users question. That hyperlink is still there.

LOL, that was actually me. I was very surprised that they actually let me register that name.

I finally gave up on waiting for Apple to make the iPod gapless. I ditched my iPod for a new Karma. I wish I had just bought the Karma to begin with. It's a shame Apple can muscle their way into the market with an inferior product because they have so much money for marketing. But that's life :-(

It's also a shame that Rio has discontinued the Karma. Does anyone know if they're planning on releasing a new similar player (hopefully with a larger HD)? I might buy another one so it will last me until the rest of the audio player market catches up... It's an awesome player :-)

I adopted a new philosophy, a little while back:

"It doesn't matter how much something can do as long as it does it right!"

Right now my DAP of choice is a Sony Hi-MD player. ATRAC3(plus) doesn't have *amazing* sound quality, but it's definitely good enough for portable use. The software is adequate, and so is the battery life, for something that's flinging a disc around all the time. Not to mention, MiniDisc recorders have a true recording capability, where the field recording you make is stored with the same compression as music you have uploaded from your computer. Not this "voice recording" thing you see on so many MP3 players.

The only bad thing I can say about Hi-MD is this. The first series of Hi-MD recorders had a bug with editing Hi-MD discs where trackmarks would be thrown off and if you continued editing the disc would be corrupted and you'd have no choice but to format. Fortunately the bug is not present when using the old established MD mode.

Yeah, so what that Hi-MD doesn't support Ogg Vorbis, AAC, MPC or even MP3? foobar2000 and SonicStage together will let you transcode virtually anything to put on MD or Hi-MD.