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I'm not familiar with the specifics, but I would be inclined to believe that it does. Personally I own an Audigy and an iPod and they don't work very well together. Creative apparently diverges from the 1394 standard thus the "SB1394" label. This is designed to work mainly with Creative devices although I doubt they've actually managed to do anything significant to it. That said iPod users frequently complain about it as the iPod can be rather touchy about the Firewire chipset it'll work with. Mine is just this side of usable (times out every so often and I get a badly transfered song, this also leads to slower transfer speeds in general).

To check into the iPod just a bit beyond the hype and positive comments check out the iPod support page (Windows iPod, but you can get to the Mac version from the same page). There are frequent problems with battery usage (it never turns off, just goes into a sleep mode which has often had serious power drain problems), connecting to the computer, firewire cards, etc. Not to mention the terrible (more or less complete lack of) manual and abyssmal software (MusicMatch Jukebox... an old version too as the newer ones apparently don't work. ephPod works much better and has many features that were excluded from MusicMatch, but sorely desired. I've gone terribly off-topic, but I do love my iPod despite it's faults.

MusicMatch does suck, but there are a couple of other apps that make life a little easier.

EphPod, free IRC
XPlay, not free.

Enjoy.

Apparently the site is already /.'ed. Here's a way to get it working with a nice GUI.

I'm using the latest stable kernel (2.4.20). 1394/ohci/sbp2 are all working great. Be sure to check "prompt for development drivers", then add the 1394 module and be sure to add OHCI and sbp2 (these also help if you're into dv ;). Be sure to have SCSI compiled in or as a module!! Also be sure to inlude the HFS (if you've got the mac version) or msdos/vfat (for windows ipod) if you don't want to reformat your ipod. Reboot with you new kernel.

modprobe the 1394 and ohci modules. Do a tail -f on /var/log/messages and plug in your ipod and wait for the magic :) You should see Apple iPod being added as a (5/10/20)GB SCSI disk. Add a mount point for the drive in /etc/fstab using vfat if you've got windows or hfs if you've got a mac. You should now be able to access the iPod as a removable SCSI drive! modprobe -r sbp2 to safely remove the ipod (you have to unmount it first, too).

Now, for the GUI. Download ephpod. Install it using wine (wine ephpod.exe). Change your wine config (probably ~/.wine/config) to use wherever you mounted your ipod as a drive. Startup ephpod. Be sure you've added some nice fonts to your wine install.

Enjoy!

The DRM mess has collided with another well-known mess - horribly bad software.

This Christmas, amongst other things, my daughter got an iPod and my son got one of the new, USB-driven, Sony NetMD minidisc players, and the Shakira album on "CD".

Well, 'tis the Night After Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature is stirring except.... me. Now, after a few false starts, the Shakira album is going to .WAV files thanks to a well-placed sticker rather than a sharpie. For the iPod, I installed the recommended MusicMatch Jukebox, which is simply the worst piece of commercial software I have ever seen. So I deleted that and have since installed and happily used ephpod.

Sadly, for the minidisc player I am stuck with another dire piece of software, Sony's OpenMG. Incredibly cluttered UI, bizarre colours, incomprehensible DRM-inspired nomenclature ("check in", "check out").

I'm not cruel enough to leave my son to try to figure out how to transfer his brand new (Sony-sourced) Shakira album to his brand-new (Sony-sourced) minidisc player. Hence I'm staying up late to do it all myself.

I'm a geek dad. I moved RAMTOP on my Sinclair as a kid. I remember the syntax to PIP. I have known the obscure pleasure of deeply nested emulation. My kids used to mock me by chanting "SCSI BIOS! SPOOLER! SCSI BIOS! SPOOLER!" at the tops of their voices. If I'm finding it tiresome and laborious, then quite a lot of unhappy customers out there are finding it impossible.

Yeah, and if you have a Apple based Ipod (to work on apple systems, not a ... oh never mind) or a windows based one, then you can use either on a Windows PC with Ephpod, a brilliant bit of freeware that just works. It also has another bit of software that allows you to read apple formated ones, so you have the best of both worlds. And to top it all off, it looks fantastic, jsut like a apple app as well. Its the Application apple should bundle!

I recently bought a ipod (windows 20gb version) after years of using minidiscs. All i can say is they rule. 1 hour charge time to 80%, firewire connectivity, ability to jsut use it as a external harddisk, the interface rocks. And above all they look sweet as well.

Any competitor is going to have to do a lot to beat Apples domination of the market.

If they do bring the ipods price down, it wont be a bad thing. Yes ill probably feel resentful cause i paid more, but what the hell. The morepeople that have iPods the better.

Oh and if you have a Windows Ipod, dont use the enclosed software, use Ephpod, a fantastic bit of free software which is so much better than Apples bundled Music Match Jukebox.

Check out this HOWTO for using a Win-iPod under linux:

http://www.cs.duke.edu/~geha/ipod/

Executive summary:

1. Build a kernel to support IEEE1394
2. Mount the iPod as a vfat filesystem
3. Use Wine to run EphPod.

This is how I update my iPod, and it works, but it has some problems:

* The linux ieee1394 drives sometimes don't recognize the iPod, and sometimes generate kernel Oopsies.

* Some functions of EphPod don't work, must notably the "Add Directory" function. This is probably a Wine limitation, but it's still irritating. EphPod doesn't check the id3v2 Composer tags, so your iPod's Browse->Composer menu is empty. EphPod has the feel of an app with a lot of maturing left to do -- but it's better than nothing.

* In general, the process is pretty klunky and needs lots of by-hand coaxing and prodding. I expect this to improve as the ieee1394 drives and Wine both improve.

That said, it's really cool to see that someone's making native linux support for the iPod. If you check around, you can find that there are several efforts to do this underway, some more half-assed than others... a guy here who's written a perl script to dump the database, a guy there who's got a python script for the same. But it's pretty obvious that there's a lot of interest in seeing real linux support for the iPod, so I expect to see those disparate efforts coalesce pretty quickly. It'll be nice to have.

By the way, I just love my 20GB iPod. 150 albums downloaded so far, and still 8.5GB left. You've just gotta get one of these things!

--Jim

Buying a WinPod (or getting a MacPod and using the WinniePod Updater to make it a WinPod) allows you to use it on both Mac's and Wintel machines.
It's well documented at Ipoding, IpodHacks, IpodLounge, and the EphPod Forums that a Mac can read a WinPod. Thus, it works on both, and utilities are available to get your calendars and contacts on.
The only thing you give up with this arrangement is the ability to use "smart playlists"- at this time, the EphPod folks are trying to figure out why a FAT32 Ipod doesn't seem to write back how many times you played a specific song.

With all due respect, the iPod takes the cake as far as MP3 players go. It's small, lightweight, got a huge capacity, looks cool (yeah, stupid reason), and now, it's reasonably priced.

I've owned Rios of all flavors, Nomad I and Nomad II. My biggest complaint with any MP3 player that uses Smartmedia, CompactFlash, or any other type of flash card memory is that it's just NOT ENOUGH storage. The most I've had was 128megs in my Nomad II (and a couple years ago, 128megs cost a lot more than it does now). 128megs is just enough to hold your average cd at 192k/sec. Yes, yes, you can downsample. But at 128k/sec you maybe able to squeeze in two albums.

Whereas with the iPod, with the 5gig minimum, you have plenty of room to breathe. I don't have to worry about downsampling my collection just to fit an album or two on a Rio or Nomad.

All in all, I just don't think flash card based MP3 players are worthwhile. Personally, I found it easier to use my Sony Discman (and that's why I eventually sold my Nomad II; my last flash card based player).

I bought a 10gig a few months after it was released and when the new 20s were announced, I sold my 10 and ordered the 20.

I have an Aiwa CD/MP3 deck in my car (the first generation) and ever since I bought my iPod, I've been using that in the car via the mini-in, instead of CDs with MP3s burned on them.

I've also been using the iPod as a portable HD. A great tool for backing mail files and transporting large movie files from the office to home.

Overall, I'm a big iPod fan and I recommend them to PC and Mac users alike.

Unfortunately, I don't think there's *nix tools to use the iPod in a *nix environment. There are a couple of sites on the web by people who want to use the iPod in Linux, but it doesn't look like they're going to get it working anytime soon.

I'm strictly a PC user (Windows 9x/NT/2K/XP, Linux, FreeBSD; more FreeBSD than Linux). I own a newer iBook and have become an OS X fan. But I use my iPod in Windows using Ephpod and MacDrive. I found that iTunes just wasn't for me, especially since Ephpod will import Winamp playlists.

Good luck in your quest for an MP3 player.

refurbed ipods seem to run about $250 and look to run in linux via
xpod
and windows via ephpod with macopener
i guess this is until there is some kernel driver for HFS+ or someone finds a way to convert a mac ipod to a windows ipod with the fat32 format...

Check out ephpod. It can download news and weather.

you can't backup mp3s to your hard drive, a BIG downside. Personally i prefer ephpod, it seems to offer much more control.

Glad someone else noticed this ... it should be old news: software exists to use an iPod with Windows. End of story. XPlay costs money, Ephpod is free. I'm sort of surprised that the pay software is getting more press on /. than the free one.

Another option is EphPod.

"EphPod is named after my alma mater, Williams College. Our mascot is the Eph, pronounced EEF, after the school's founder, Ephraim Williams."

~Source

I thought Firewire transfered much, much faster than that (like ~30MB/s). If this is slower, is it just because it's such a hassle to deal with the iPod on a PC?

His Web site (http://www.ephpod.com) has received over 37,000 visits to date

I bet that changes really quick