I was about to switch over to the 3G iphone from my Verizon pearl 8130. I can't handle the trackball, half keyboard, and small screen anymore. The new pics of the 9500 are keeping me interested.

Will the 9500 load up songs from itunes- or am I going to only have overpriced songs from the vzw store? I'm not buying music twice.

I don't know for certain but you can be bet on two things:

- Verizon's stock software and install won't make it easy to move your iTunes managed music to your BB

- RIM won't leave you hanging in the (perceived) battle against the iPhone

So I think you'll find things to your liking in the end.

MediaSync which launches with the 9000 will work to sync your iTunes files.

Yes and no. It will play your non DRM tracks from itunes, but if you purchased them on itunes, you're SOL with BB. The only solution would be to burn those protected songs to CD then, re rip them into itunes. A lot of work.

None are DRM- all are my own CD rips. So that should work. Now I wonder about podcasts...

There is a better way, get doubleTwist and it removes DRM for you.

nice!

If you have the files as mp3's then you're fine. iTunes is just a music player and it works as a place to buy songs. I use bit torrents so I never buy songs, but I use itunes to play them.

All you would have to do is copy the mp3's to most likely a microsd card to use with the phone since there have been rumors that it is only a 1gig hard drive on it.

PIRACY IS A CRIME MR! I hope you have the companies / writers permission. hahaha.

SoundTaxi is the best product i have found to strip DRM from itunes songs. You can point it to your music folder and it will keep the internal folder structure on output. For example, you have My Music -> Kid Rock -> ****y -> Cowboy and it will output the same way. You can leave it running full time and it constantly monitors your download folder. Best investment I have made in a LONG time.

I'm hoping it will bookmark podcasts and audiobooks like my ipod. That way I don't have to search back through the file to get back to the part of the book or podcast I left off.

Or use something like JHymn or Requiem. Although that would no doubt be a breach of fairplay's Ts & Cs and therefore copyright and therefore not to be condoned or endorsed.

I read about it on another site - don't know if it works, so don't ask me!

So, just to be clear, if you strip the DRM from the file, then Thunder will support the iTunes format (I think it's .aac or something)?? For some silly reason or another I never changed my default iTunes settings to import my CD's as mp3 which I am kicking myself for now. If the Thunder will support this format, that would be pretty sweet!!

Yep - it should.

.AAC is exactly the same as.m4a (an mpeg-4 audio file) - both my Blackberry Bold and my Blackberry Curve (and in fact, my Blackberry Pearl) support it and play it back beautifully, album art and all. As long as it's not a DRM track - if you rip it yourself from a CD in the iTunes format, it should work absolutely fine.

I would be gobsmacked if the all singin' all dancin' multimedia Thunder didn't support that format. You can be 99.99999999% sure it does.

The Bold, with decent headphones, sounds actually very very good with a typical mp3 or m4a track (ie encoded at 128 kbps) - much better than the tinny sound you'd get on other or older mp3 playing mobiles. I'm not an audiophile, but I can't tell that there is any meaningful difference between playback using the same tracks and phones on the Bold and on my 2G nano.

I fully appreciate that if you up the encoding (to lossless or a very very high bitrate mp3) and you are a "Golden Ear" or audiophile, then you can tell the difference, but I suspect the majority of the music listening public won't notice the difference at this level (or more importantly, won't care).

EDIT: Oh, and one of the reasons I am sticking with my Bold over the iP3G (which I also really love despite it's SERIOUS shortfalls) is that I can migrate to the Javelin and, if the touchscreen implementation and size format is any good on it, the Thunder in due course.

Yes, I understand that it will work with itunes

I'd think iTunes Plus tracks would work, as they have no DRM. Personally I'd buy tracks from places like Amazon, straight MP3, no DRM.

Agreed.