I have been stimulated into writing this by a slashdot article (not worth linking to) where people were arguing about the merits of installing Rockbox onto a compatible audio player … such as the iPod. Some people seem to think that replacing the standard iPod software is heresy!!
Or at the very least are complaining that Rockbox does not work the same way as the standard firmware.
I am in a somewhat odd situation … I bought an iPod after I was aware that Rockbox supported the iPod (and specifically avoided the 80Gb Ipod as it wasn’t supported at the time) to replace a rockboxed iRiver iHP100 (more commonly known as an iHP110) that was suffering from a lack of battery “oomph” (and yes I had tried replacing the battery). I spent probably just a couple of minutes in the native firmware before switching to the Rockbox firmware because I did not want to re-encode several thousand OGG-encoded tracks.
Now obviously I cannot criticise Apple’s interface or functionality on the iPod because I have not really used it.
However I can say that the Rockbox firmware is a perfectly adequate interface to run on an iPod and is getting better every week. Some of the features the Rockbox has include :-
- Multi-codec support to play MP3, OGG, FLAC, AAC, WAV, … encoded files. I haven’t pulled down the full list but you really cannot get an audio player offering more codec support on a portable device. Not everyone needs this of course, but it is nice to have the choice.
- The default Rockbox interface is kind of ropy on the iPod, but it is “themable” and some of the themes are pretty good … just have a look at the Rockbox Themes website (I have linked to the iPod Video themes)
- Numerous “plugins” for playing games, displaying photos and other miscellaneous things. I must admit I don’t use them too much, but being able to play Jewel whilst bored waiting somewhere does come in useful.
- The standard mass storage method of storing audio tracks in a way that can be easily accessed outside of iTunes does mean it is easier to copy some tracks to another computer easily. Of course I mean the freely distributable tracks!
Rockbox does have some disadvantages … the battery life is relatively poor compared with the native firmware (but very much better than an iHP100 with a tired battery!), and if you have a lot of investment in iTunes you will suffer from the lack of support (although the Rockbox database will track down files stored on the iPod whether they were put there by iTunes or just copied).
The most sensible advice for an iPod user thinking about making the switch is just to try it out. You may like it or you may not, but you don’t have anything to lose as you can always go back to the standard firmware. In fact as you can easily switch from one to the other, you can try out Rockbox gradually over time … go back to the native firmware when you are lost, and go back when you are feeling adventurous.
Another advantage that the existent Rockbox provides, that many people miss is that it may just put some pressure on Apple to improve their native firmware. If Apple notices that many of their iPod customers install Rockbox, they may be inclined to take a look themselves and start implementing features in their native firmware to “keep” their customers … surely something that would be good for all iPod owners.