Roxio Boom Box - Essential Software for your iPod (Mac) Description:

Roxio Boom Box - Essential Software for your iPod (Mac) review:
5 stars (Great bunch of apps at the right price) - I was pretty excited as soon as I heard about this product and got it right away.



Audio Hijack - works perfectly as advertised. I've been using this to record music from VH1.com to fill my library and I figured out also how to use it to record the soundtrack from music DVDs and from iTunes. It's brain dead easy to use and the quality is good.



MusicMixer - after a pretty lengthy amount of time it had scanned my library. I have about 5000 songs and it took over 4 days. But it was worth the wait - it definitely makes some smart choices and groups songs that sound good together.



Spin Doctor - I haven't tried this one yet - but my father has a bunch of stuff he's hounding me to try it out with. Seems like a good addition.



iPodder - I like this one. Fits really well with iTunes and there's a ton of interesting stuff to fill my commute time now.



Speech software - I don't really have a need for this one and the voices are a bit corny - although there's a coupon on the disc for better voices from another company.



All in all I'm happy with this purchase. Unlike the previous reviewer who seems to have a personal vendetta against the music industry I'll focus on this product. Roxio certainly does not hide that these are products that have been available for a while from other developers - what Roxio brings together is 5 great apps for the right price. The Mixer is $30 by itself. AudioHijack is $16. iPodder is $24. Speech is $16. None of them are free - contrary to what the previous reviewer says. If you bought them all separetly you'd spend alot more - so even if you only use a few of the apps you're coming out ahead.



Ignore the crazies and focus on the software and you won't be disappointed. It really does make your iPod better.
2 stars (Software is available elsewhere for free, Music Magic Mixer is disabled.) - When I heard that Roxio was making this software suite, I was thrilled and the reviews were great. The thing is, though, it's not made up of Roxio products. Almost all the software in this package is available as shareware on the original developers' sites. If you came here for Music Magic Mixer, why not save yourself 25 bucks and just do a Google search on "Music Magic Mixer" to find the shareware version. When you do, you'll want to download the free version first, because you'll quickly discover that the software is disabled for a lot of your tracks. If you do the right thing--exactly what the music industry, Christian conscience, and libertarian free trade ideology says you should--that is, if you actually buy your music from iTunes, those songs won't show up in the mix. Music Magic Mixer won't read them because they're in proprietary formats.



(This isn't the first time software has been disabled to appease the music industry. The new iTunes software no longer uses iSync to sync with iPod because people--gasp!--might actually transfer their own music from their iPods to their computers, an especially useful capability if you want to use your iPod to double you disc storage rather than to just parallel your music library.)



The Mixer could be cool, but the developers were too chicken to work around the proprietary format, I guess. Wouldn't it be ironic if we all started paying for our music before downloading it from Limewire so that we can have un-lame (i.e., un-disabled) versions of the songs we bought. It would be a marvelous act of civil disobedience, one begging for the absurd intellectual property rights trial of the new millenium. Right now, it's like the Special Olympics of music management software out there.



The text speaker in this package is an exaggerated version Apple's text-to-speech enabled Text Editor and doesn't sound any better (i.e., it doesn't improve the available technology one bit). iPodderX is free on a website of the same name. I've had a free version of Audio Hijack for over a year, and Audio Hijack won't record iTunes played through remote speakers . . . a pretty serious flaw considering that AirPort is one of the core features of the Mac. Finally, lots of freeware will let you record and remix an incoming turntable stream.



Unless you're planning to pick up your music somewhere other than iTunes store and/or only use your CDs to put your music into iTunes, the only truly cool thing in this suite (the Mixer, which is available half price elsewhere) is essentially broken if you're an honest person and buy your music. Woops! How do y'all free market "be fair to the artist" folks feel now that you gave into the music industry and essentially guaranteed that music management software will be less usable than it could be into the indefinite future. Thanks for squashing creativity, folks.



Sorry, Roxio. Get some fortitude, unbreak this software, and I'll change my stars.