Today I will be sharing with you all my recent experiences with both, iTunes, and FaceTime, but remember, this is coming from someone who has been using Nokia devices, and services for quite a while now.

Whilst I was waiting for my iPhone 4, the white one that never materialized, I familiarized myself with iTunes, and the App Store, downloading new apps ready for my new iPhone.  Seeing as the White one never showed up after waiting months, I opted for the black variant.

Anyhow, back to iTunes, as mentioned, I had only previously used iTunes for searching, and downloading applications, and utilities ready for the arrival of my iPhone, that was, until recently where as mentioned in Part 1 of this series of posts of mine relating to the iPhone, using iTunes to Activate my iphone, which I can say went very smoothly, and was far easier than I had expected.

The one area of iTunes I was unsure about was the Music side of things, as I had read, and heard many a horror story about iTunes being a crippled experience for some.

What I therefore planned on doing, is adding a small collection of my music to iTunes, and then attempt to sync with my iPhone. I successfully dragged, and dropped just under 10GB of my music to iTunes, and it took around 8 minutes in total, but then I was faced with missing album art from many of my albums.  This was expected however as I was planning on using something like MediaMonkey on my Windows machine to add Album Art, but in my haste, I forgot prior to transferring.

No big deal, I started looking around the web for a MediaMonkey alternative seeing as its not likely to be available for Mac OS X.  Upon my searches, I came across a post within the Mac Forums where Im already a member, and it was stating that for basic, run of the mill songs, iTunes can add Album Art, so too does an iTunes Bolt On 3rd Part App called TuneUp.  I opted for the former.

Within iTunes, I simply chose the option from the top toolbar to add missing Album cover pictures, and within a couple of minutes, iTunes successfully  replaced all my missing album art, brilliant.

So now, I was ready to sync with my iPhone.  This is the part where I said to myself, “this is too good to be true, and this is going too well, surely something will go wrong now”.

I connected my iPhone via its usb and 30 pin connector to my MacBook, and found that iTunes proceeded to only sync my apps, browser, contacts etc, but no Music.

No big deal I thought, I will ask on twitter, and within a minute or two, several offers of help came forward, and talked me through the simple process.

Basically all I had to do was select my iPhone in iTunes (was previously viewing Music in iTunes), upon selecting my phone, I then simply chose the option at the bottom of the screen to copy all music to phone.

Having selected this option, I forget its actual name now, but selecting that option, iTunes continued to Sync almost 10GB of my music with album art. I thought this will probably take around an hour as thats what I know it would of took me with my old Nokia N97, but amazingly, in less than 5 minutes, all of music was synced, and on my phone, wow!

Apple really do come into their own when it comes to music, and syncing, it just goes to show how far ahead in this industry they really are, I guess all those iPods account for something.  Brilliant overall iTunes experience, and no more fears as I had previously.

Now onto my experience with FaceTime.  Remember, my previous experience of any video calling was that on a Nokia device, and over 3G.

My good friend Nirave from Mobile-Users.net headed off to Dubai recently, and having spotted his amazing photos on his blog, I commented about them, and he suggested I should call his email address, and have a FaceTime chat.

I was haprehensive at first, as my daughter was streaming a video over our home WIFI network, and I thought this is never going to work, but I proceeded to call Nirave anyway, and to my amazement, after a few rings, Niraves smily face was on on iPhone 4!

Chrystal clear, no blockyness, no stuttering, no out of sync audio, nothing, just pure, clear connectivity, it was mind blowing, and I continued to be impressed throughout our FaceTime chat of best part of an hour.!  What really impressed me the most, apart from the superb video quality was the way we could easily switch between cameras, and show each other our surroundings.

There I was on my Balcony, in -10 conditions, snow all around me, and Nirave in the Middle East, 20+ stories up a skyscraper, on a balcony in sun drenched surroundings, it was really a mind changer, and blew me away that both of us, Nokia enthusiasts, both using an Apple product to communicate this way, but tied in with superb performance, high quality, no messing around with dropped signal, or poor picture, it just worked!  We both had a bit of a laugh during our facetime call, mainly about how things change over time.

Now following my above experience with FaceTime, I got the bug, and started calling a few of my friends around the world, some with FaceTime Beta on their MacBooks, and again, and again, FaceTime simply delivers, it just works.!

That concludes part 2 of my Series, watch out for Part 3 where I will be covering photos, and video quality of the iPhone 4 compared to what I have been used to from Nokia over the years!

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!

Related posts:

1. My iPhone 4 Experiences & Thoughts Series Part 1
2. The iPhone 4 Buzz – A Nokia Enthusiast Experience Shared Part 1
3. No White iPhone 4 Until Spring 2011 Are You Kidding Me?!?
4. Apple Store Down – White iPhone 4 Incoming? We Wish – Windows Live Writer Beta Preview? Look In

Tags: apple, EDITORIAL, Platform / OS

This entry was posted on Friday, November 19th, 2010 at 15:21 and is filed under EDITORIAL, not at nokia, Platform / OS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.