SonicStage for Sony digital media players: SUCKS

Thanks Sony.

As I mentioned in my previous post on the Sony MP3 player I purchased, the software that comes with it is a steaming pile of what corporations call 'software'. It is supposed to 'support' your device, but the truth is your device is worthless without this software (unless, in my case, you can use the FM radio, too), and by that I mean, there is no alternative to this software (yet).

SonicStage is a good example of moronic design.

First and foremost, most people ALREADY HAD their music in a folder heirarchy before they bought their player. Does sonicstage care? No. It reads the folders and indexes them for its own purposes, and pulls all your storage structure and 'sorts' it by what color the album art is, or by nose-hair length of the drummer, and your third alternative is to sort by number of syllables in the 'thank you' section of the liner notes.

IDIOTS!

So, perhaps, you say, this wouldn't be so bad to use. Maybe there's a way to find your music. It removes all your sorting and seems to sort it by how it thinks the music is identified... well... your options are:

View by:
Album/playlist
Album
Playlist
dynamic playlist
all tracks

Sort by:
artist
genre
album
date imported

and then, an extra detail in the menu,

icons (all categories)
icons (single category)
details (all categories)
details (single category)

And of course, rather than just keep the display simple and straighforward, it's all prettied up, which litreally translates as "lots of wasted space".

I would imagine that if you had compiled your entire MP3 library from scratch using their software, it might almost be bearable. Take a cue from winamp, Sony. The for-free, extremely popular MP3 player which has minimal and easy-to-understand interface.

Thanks for calling in Dilbert's boss to re-invent the wheel. We're all so glad to have to act retarded for 20 minutess in order to get our music onto your player. I drag my player around way longer than I normally would without changing it out because your software makes my blood boil.

Dorks.