[ugh]

While brilliant in some respects, Apple’s sometimes selective attention is also pretty well known ;-)

The popular thing to do is to speculate that Jobs just doesn’t care about classical music at all and for that reason it’s neglected.

[blasdel]

Archos didn't care about classical music either.

The reason it works for tzs is because Archos didn't give a shit about metadata at all — they implemented the crappiest thing that could possibly work. Apple's use of a metadata database prebuilt by iTunes makes using the iPod massively easier for the vast majority of people.

This infuriates the drag-and-drop anoraks that had been obsessing over their folder structure ever since they started downloading metadataless MP3 files from FTP sites and IRC fserves in the 90s.

[tzs]

The player didn't care about metadata. However, it did understand playlists, so Archos would bundle with player software for the PC that DID use metadata to organize things, and would sync with the Archos by writing out playlists that reflected that organizaion.

Thus, an ordinary user could indeed have an iPod-like experience of letting software manage his player for him (although the player Archos bundled was not as good as iTunes).