How to Use Your iPhone as an iPod

The new iPhone is a gorgeous device with so many possible implications. The only problem is how expensive it is to buy and maintain. The unit itself costs 600 dollars for the better 8GB model, and the cost of a phone plan and all your multimedia downloads can be insane.

However, there is a way to make this amazing piece of equipment function essentially as an amazing 8GB iPod with a barrage of high-quality features.

You can actually make your iPhone's maintenance almost costless! No monthly fees on ANYTHING. All you have to sacrifice is the phone capabilities...you'll continue to be able to use the Internet through a Wi-Fi connection, you'll continue to have all of the fancy playback features, and you'll be able to download hundreds, even thousands of songs, movies, and tv shows for free! Doing this can turn your expensive iPhone into the cheapest, coolest iPod the world has ever seen!

Ok, fair question. Why would you want to use such an expensive piece of equipment essentially just as an iPod?

Well, it's simple. Pound for pound, the iPhone is better than the iPod at just about everything...and even the things that the iPod has over the iPhone can easily be fixed with the next iPhone software update. Here's a quick rundown of iPod vs iPhone.

• iPhone has cover flow, iPod doesn't.
• iPhone has touch screen scroll, which allows you to browse through a much larger selection of songs, much faster.
• iPhone has a way larger text and image screen, which makes it look a lot better during playback. The cover art nearly covers the entire screen.
• iPhone's animations are a lot cooler. (The "flip" effect when you're browsing albums, and the changes of orientation depending on how you hold it.)
• iPhone can change the equalizer setting automatically based on the genre of the song.
• iPhone lets you skip songs and pause playback from the headset, iPod doesn't.

Ok, so an iPhone would make a great iPod without really needing the phone capability...but how would you get rid of the phone ability and that blasted expensive service plan? In order to even activate your iPhone and be able to do ANYTHING with it, you have to start a contract with AT&T. This is totally bogus, and a bunch of crap...but you have to. So what do you do? Do the contract...activate your iPhone...shell out the bucks to activate the phone and get your plan...and then cancel your contract within 3 days to get a full refund of your activation fee!

That's right, if you cancel within 3 days, you can get OUT of that HORRIBLE phone plan with the ridiculously expensive AT&T, and still have an activated iPhone. Basically all you lose is the phone capabilties, and I believe the Edge hookup. So...what's the problem? You still have Wi-Fi access, you still have the amazing camera ability, and you still have one hardcore multimedia playback center.

Too sweet, right? Just ONE more problem though...

iTunes is built by Apple for one reason and one reason only: to rip you off and rob you blind. It costs 99 cents a SONG. $10 an ALBUM (on which of course you know there'll only be like 3 songs you actually LIKE).

How RIDICULOUS is that?

There IS a better way, my friend. There just so happens to be a site where you can drop a small chunk of money for permanent access to a peer-to-peer filesharing network specifically designed for multimedia downloads maximized for use on your iPhone. The price of the access is less than I'd expect to pay for a month's normal downloads with iTunes, and you'll never have to pay them a cent again. Essentially, you pay for the software, and then you get free downloads for life. Not just music either, but movies, music videos, even tv shows. Shoot, I think I even saw some eBooks on their site. Go figure.

But seriously. Anybody who's used any kind of mp3 player knows that you cycle through your music a lot. The stuff you like today isn't necessarily gonna float your boat tomorrow, but what will you do if every day you spend 5 bucks on a few new songs? Go broke, that's what you'll do. And then you'll be bored because your $600 iPod doesn't have anything good on it.

I'd think it'd be a lot smarter to just give iTunes the one-finger salute and get the software for this other site. I mean, it's pretty much like Limewire custom-made for iPhone users...and just to put your mind at rest I'll be glad to let you know that it's decentralized, so the site's never going to go down because the network got sued. Let us not be forced to relive the horror of Napster.

So don't pay Apple and AT&T all your hard-earned cash. Your iPhone can be the pimpest, most awesome iPod the world has ever seen, and you don't have to pay for the rest of your life.

Get your iPhone, get it activated, and shut down those AT&T gluttons. Then, stick it to those greedy fools over at Apple and get all the free iPhone downloads you could ever want through the first ever exclusively-iPhone filesharing network.