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And allow an iPod to sync with other media players, like Media Center...

You mean like THIS?

I'm in the same boat. For years I've been looking for a file system can hold files larger than 2GB and can be mounted from Windows and Mac OS X (and maybe Linux). That would allow me to store all my work on one partition, and access it from Mac OS X, from Windows via Boot Camp, or from Windows inside Parallels or VMware Fusion. It would also allow me to transfer large files back and forth between my Mac and other Windows computers. I was hoping ZFS would be that file system.

The last time I checked (the middle of 2008), the only way to do this was via NTFS, and the only read-write support for NTFS on OSX was the MacFUSE NTFS driver, which was pretty slow.

I just saw that MacDrive 7.2 now allows Windows Vista x64 (my Boot Camp OS) to read HFS disks, so maybe I'll give that a try. There are also rumors that Snow Leopard's Boot Camp utility will include drivers for Windows to read HFS disks, so maybe that will help too.

Apple does allow third-party programs to build the indexes. XPlay http://www.mediafour.com/products/xplay/ is one such third-party program. Interestingly, while it supports moving music, photos and playlists on and off the iPod using Windows Explorer's folders interface movies seem glaringly missing.

Perhaps Apple wants only licensed third-party programs to be able to update the iPod's indexes so that they can contractually prevent the third-party products from moving rented movies off the iPods in contravention of Apple's own license with the movie companies for the same reason that Apple changed the iPod's video out to require a licensed authentication chip in all video out cables http://www.tuaw.com/2007/09/08/tv-out-locked-in-new-ipod-classic-and-nano/

?? dude it's hfs in mac disk mode, no kidding it won't work on your PC. You need a 3rd party utility, like http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive6 or maybe there's an HFS FUSE driver that will work. It's not locked in, though, Mac disks have been that way forever.

You can format the drive using HFS (Mac file system) and the 360 will read files from it perfectly. I use a program called Mac Drive http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/ to transfer data from my Windows PC to my USB "Mac" hard drive. I then plug the USB HD into my 360 and play media off of there. It's a bit of a pain in the ass but for me it's the best option.

Having purchased a similar drive in the past, I researched this topic extensively, and ultimately, even the best of the recommended formats here (and anything else I've seen) fail in one crucial regard: if you want to be able to boot using firewire (or any interface as far as I know) from the drive on OS X, it must be in HFS/+ format. As such, I use HFS+, and the (not free) windows program MacDrive, which, though far from perfect, allows windows to interact fairly normally with HFS+. The NTFS 3g site implies one can load the drive during boot, but I haven't heard of anyone successfully booting off it.

While it's not free or open source, you can format it HFS+ and use it under Mac/Linux natively, and get excellent HFS+ support under Windows by purchasing MacDrive ($50). I've used it for a while now, and has worked flawlessly.

Are you referring to right now, or if/when OS X switches to ZFS? With the state of play as it is today: Windows doesn't have access to anything but itself natively, but you can use MacDrive for Windows from Mediafour to give Windows the ability to read/write from HFS volumes: http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/

Or you could use XPlay from MediaFour (the folks that brought you MacDrive forever and three days ago) to do the same thing three years ago when the 2G was hot shit. Seriously, did you ever even bother to look? Did you know MacDrive or MacOpener existed? I kid you not, sir, you can read and write Mac formatted disks on your PC TODAY, right this very instant in fact. I have done these magiks myself. This would not be new technology, just a possibly free incarnation of it.

Or you could use XPlay from MediaFour (the folks that brought you MacDrive forever and three days ago) to do the same thing three years ago when the 2G was hot shit. Seriously, did you ever even bother to look? Did you know MacDrive or MacOpener existed? I kid you not, sir, you can read and write Mac formatted disks on your PC TODAY, right this very instant in fact. I have done these magiks myself. This would not be new technology, just a possibly free incarnation of it.

But FAT is shit and can't handle large files such as DVD images, but you can install Macdrive and then Windows will be able to use HFS+ (Mac OS X filesystem), and this filesystem is conveniently enough supported by Linux aswell so there you have it. Filesharing between Windows and Linux (And OS X if you want to) without using FAT.

Another good alternative is to use a fileserver using NFS or whatever, preferably running Solaris and ZFS.

During installation, the Windows XP installer asks me to format the Windows partition using NTFS or FAT. Which should I use?

If the partition is 32 GB or smaller, you can use either FAT or NTFS. If it's larger than 32 GB, then you can only format it using NTFS. Mac OS X can read and write FAT volumes, but only read NTFS volumes. Refer to the Windows XP documentation if you are not sure which best suits your needs.

The FastFAT driver can mount and support volumes larger than 32 GB that use the FAT32 file system, such as those created locally by Windows 98 or ME in dual boot configuration, (subject to other limits listed here for Windows 98, ME and 2000 and here for Windows XP), but you cannot CREATE one using the Format tool from within either Windows 2000 Professional or XP Professional. If you attempt to format a FAT32 partition larger than 32 GB, the format fails near the end of the process with the following error message: Logical Disk Manager: Volume size too big.

During installation, the Windows XP installer asks me to format the Windows partition using NTFS or FAT. Which should I use?

If the partition is 32 GB or smaller, you can use either FAT or NTFS. If it's larger than 32 GB, then you can only format it using NTFS. Mac OS X can read and write FAT volumes, but only read NTFS volumes. Refer to the Windows XP documentation if you are not sure which best suits your needs.

The FastFAT driver can mount and support volumes larger than 32 GB that use the FAT32 file system, such as those created locally by Windows 98 or ME in dual boot configuration, (subject to other limits listed here for Windows 98, ME and 2000 and here for Windows XP), but you cannot CREATE one using the Format tool from within either Windows 2000 Professional or XP Professional. If you attempt to format a FAT32 partition larger than 32 GB, the format fails near the end of the process with the following error message: Logical Disk Manager: Volume size too big.

Now have you got an XP driver for me that will read/write HFS+ extended (jourmaled) and HFS+ extended (case-sensitive, journaled)? Or an OSX driver that will let me read/write NTFS?

The closest I can get to any of that is the read-only NTFS support that's supposed to be in Tiger, but I've never tested that because none of my USB or FireWire drives are NTFS-formatted.

Going the other way, some quick googling turned up MacDrive. It says it supports HFS+ read/write on Windows and it looks like the disk would just show up as another drive letter, but there was nothing I could find that says it supports journaled HFS+. That's something you'd want to ask them. It's not free, either (as in beer, let alone as in speech).

Actually HFS+ support for Windows does exist, it just isn't free. Mediafour http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive6/bootca mp.asp and Dataviz both have products that do it (although I am pretty sure they are actually the same code).

I believe there is some kind of HFS driver for windows?
http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive6/

Making it so that the iPod will ONLY play music loaded onto it via iTunes frustrates me and makes me feel restricted, like they want me to ONLY use it the way they want me to.

There are a number of utilities that allow you to transfer music to your iPod from Windows without iTunes. One opensource application is vPod. You can also try XPlay from MediaFour.

What's your point with the question, "All I have ever known is that to download music to your iPod or purchase music for your iPod you had to use iTunes - no execptions. Even books bought through audible.com needs iTunes to dowload the books to the iPod last time I looked"

Is it Apple's problem then that no one else writes programs to load music onto an iPod? How about Yamipod? I mean, what else are they going to do? Rely on Microsoft to write a program to upload music to their MP3 player? Does it bother you then that Sony uses SonicStage, Dell uses MusicMatch, and Creative uses Creative Media Source?

What's the problem with iTunes? Because it's free? Because it's crappy? Does that mean you don't use IE, either? Apple bought iTunes when it was called SoundJam, then released it as iTunes; and when it was first released, it was compatible with Rio, Creative, and Sony MP3 players; it was a generic MP3 jukebox written for Mac users because no one else would provide a decent one (sound familiar? Developers tend to forget about the Mac, so Apple usually takes it upon themselves to provide decent programs to their user base). Even as far back as last year, iTunes was compatible with OTHER mp3 players. I'm not sure if they still are, but I don't see why Apple would remove that functionality.

So why do we have to use iTunes? Because no one else (Microsoft, Creative, Sony, Dell, etc) is willing to write iPod compatible software. Only third parties who don't make MP3 players do.

So maybe I'll try again. You're asking, "Do I have to use iTunes to use an iPod?"

The answer is, "No you don't have to use iTunes to use an iPod". There are even WinAMP plugins for the iPod and people have also written tools to allow Windows Media Player to synch with the iPod. Why are you blaming Apple for the lack of iPod support from Microsoft and others? The iPod doesn't use secret sauce: All it does is create a database of all the songs to enable quick ID3 tag browsing without spinning up the harddrive, and it stores all the songs in a hash-table on the iPod to maximize efficiency and minimize tree depth.

More info on iTunes with other players.

http://www.mediafour.com/products/xplay/

Allows you to use the journaled file format on the PC, and run your ipod on PC and Mac. Works well especially if you run both OS. Also can make moving files back and forth easier. Think there is a trial period.

Doesn't do anything for the shuffle though.

First, you need to extract the .sit file: I got the demo of stuffit expander

Then you need something that can burn the .dmg file, or something to convert it to an .iso: I used dmg2iso (the perl script seems to work better).

Then I burned the .iso, but it's a mac file system, so you need something that can read mac filesystems. I grabbed the demo of macdrive.

With that I can grab all the .aif files from the "The Hand That Feeds 1.0.band\Media" directory and import them into my audio program of choice! I couldn't find anything to convert the garageband "projectData" file into another format (it's xml, but with a weird encoded data block), but the .aif files are a good enough place to start playing with the sounds.

I'm sure there's equivalent utilities for linux, as well, but I don't know about them.

Regarding software for the iPod... although iTunes is the only software officially supported by Apple, there are several other programs (free/shareware) like Anapod Explorer, Ephpod, XPlay, and even RealPlayer that will transfer and manage your iPod's music collection.

As another poster points out, the iPod WILL play any MP3 you put on there. It will also play MPEG-4/AAC, which IS a standard format, licensed from Dolby. It will even play plain-old WAV files, too. The iPod doesn't support Windows Media files, but if you're using iTunes, WMA files will automatically be converted to MP3 or AAC when you import them to your library.

Maybe you're not familiar with Audible, which is an online store for Audiobooks. Audible has its own DRM-protected format which only a few portable players support, one of which is the iPod.

As far as pricing is concerned, the iPod is probably the most expensive in terms of $$/gigabyte, but not by much. Last time I checked, other 20GB players were in the $250-300 range, too. (A 20GB iPod sells for $299 or less)

Hey, it's great you like your big old Archos jukebox. But, I wanted a portable music player that was small and light enough to strap to my arm while I go out bicycling and to the gym. And I wanted one that would play Audible's audiobooks, too. The iPod was my only choice.

I'll admit, my biggest frustration with my iPod is with the software; I wish I could just plug it in and drag-and-drop my music via Windows Explorer. But it's a pretty minor complaint; Aside from being a memory hog, iTunes really is a great media player and organizer. And I still feel that the iPod is the best MP3 player for me.

*** iTunes 4.1.x, Firmware 2.1 [Updated 10-31-2003] ***

Mac iPod with XPlay + iTunes for Windows

*** iTunes 4.1.x, Firmware 2.1 [Updated 10-31-2003] ***

Mac iPod with XPlay + iTunes for Windows

If you're using XPlay to operate your iPod in a manner that Apple says it doesn't support in the first place, why are you griping about/to Apple?

Have you tried XPlay? I've found it very easy to use compared to EphPod. Even though it costs some money, its worth it.

No one's forcing you to use MusicMatch with the iPod, there are a number of superior solutions available, one being free.

- Ephpod
The free one, designed for transferring to the iPod and nothing more. A lot of people use it and love it, it has a simple interface, and allows you to download the weather and other fun things to your iPod.

- XPlay
Another product designed specifically for iPod management. It integrates with Windows Explorer and allows you to drag-and-drop your music into a special virtual folder on your iPod's hard drive in order to transfer music, a feature that a lot of people love. Optionally, you can choose to use Windows Media Player to synchronize by using a plug-in included by Mediafour, the developers.

- Media Center
My personal favorite solution, Media Center. It costs $40, but it's a fantastic media management program, featuring smart playlists, video playing, and a whole bunch of other features that are too many in number to attempt to mention here. Check out the 30-day trial that they have and see if you like it. It's also the fastest program on the Windows platform when it comes to synchronizing with the iPod.

By the by, Audible files could be transferred to a 1st or 2nd generation WinniePod by using Ephpod or Media Center, and now Audible has made a program available to transfer audiobooks as well.

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

EphPod, free IRC
XPlay, not free.

Enjoy.

I decided to do my own evaluation between MP3, OGG Vorbis, and AAC. I don't have a Mac so I used my Windows machine and the PsyTEL MPEG-4 AAC Encoder. I used the latest LAME encoder for MP3 and the latest Ogg Vorbis command line tools.

I used INXS "Need you tonight" for my source WAV file since it has some good dynamics and great highs. I encoded each format as a 160K VBR file. Each file resulted in nearly the same size, about 3.5MB. I was not concerned with how long it took to encode or with spectrum analysis (though I did do analysis just to see the differences). I found the AAC file to be almost identical sounding to the WAV. The high frequencies were so clear and vivid (symbal crashes at the :58 second mark especially). The lows did not sound muddled. The OGG file sounded only slightly worse than AAC and only at higher frequencies. The MP3 sounded horrible in comparison to the others.

My Rankings:
1. WAV (of course)
2. AAC
3. OGG Vorbis
4. MP3

I've got an iPod and I love it. It's probably the best electronic device I've bought. I use it always (snowboarding, mountain biking, gym, home, car, getting car washed, jury duty, etc...). I was quite happy to hear of AAC support. I applied the 1.3 firmware but have not been able to get an AAC file on there (don't think Xplay supports that yet).

In a perfect world I'd love to see OGG Vorbis as the standard music file type. It's free to use by anyone and sounds amazing. Apple would make my day if they added support for it on the iPod. MP3 is horrible, unless you have tons of disk space to encode at the highest possible bitrate. Likely AAC will end up replacing MP3 eventually, and that is fine by me since it sounded best IMO, however I am worried about the effects of DRM. I feel that if I buy a CD, DVD-Audio or whatever, then I should be able to do whatever I want with it as long as I'm not giving it away to others (encode in any format, use on any of my devices, and make as many backup copies as I want!).

Considering that Apple, uh, "requested" that MediaFour rename the XPod software (now XPlay), and that the developers rename the xtunes jukebox (now "sumi")... I don't think "gnuPod" will be long for this world.

• Apple overnights me a box
• I stick ipod in box
• I call to have the shipping company pick up box
• Apple sends me a brand new ipod, arrives 2 days later

True, neither have I. However, I know people who are now extremely interested in the Mac platform whereas before they wouldn't realy have thought about it. So the iPod produced positive press if nothing else, and I suspect it did lead to a few sales although I have no proof of that.

Face it, the iPod isn't that much better than its competition.

Ah well, here we must disagree. For my usage pattern, which isn't that unusual, the iPod has no competitors. The form factor is key, not the storage. These Nomad thingies that everyone brings up are far too large to be used on the move. I use the iPod on the Tube (London underground railway), so the ability to fit into a pocket is a primary concern.

The FAT versus HFS decision was made by engineers, not marketeers.

Yes, I'd agree with that. I'd also agree they didn't start on FAT before finishing HFS+. Where I disagree is that the implications of this weren't understood. Bear in mind that these are physical units depending on a component (the HD) in fairly limited supply - Apple didn't have enough units to satisfy everyone, so they chose to produce for their own customers first.

working on both versions in tandem would have meant hiring more people

Here I again we must disagree. The FAT filesystem is a well understood thing, and their core OS is BSD anyway now which means they must have an implementation of FAT lying around. I run my iPod under Windows, and followed the XPlay beta program to get things working. On there, there were plenty of people who accidently formatted their iPod as FAT and yet still reported that it worked fine. I don't see the filesystem change as a major departure. In fact, I think it would probably make more sense for them to go 100% FAT.

Anyway, to sum up I take your point about the increased sales, though I would counter by pointing to increased interest. The othe two points, that the iPod is not much better than competitors and that moving to FAT was major development work I'm afraid we must respectively disagree on.

Cheers,
Ian

I agree, but in the beginning they didn't have more units to sell. Production was soaked up entirely by demand from Mac users. Well, Mac users and me that is - I went the XPlay beta route in order to use it on Windows.

When demand slackened a little, they introduced the Windows compatibility to expand the number of people they could sell to.

Cheers,
Ian

You most likely can use the same iPod on windows without using the Apple/MusicMatch software. Remember, you can't use the same iPod on 2 Macs, really, either.

If you access the iPod on the PC, you should be able to use XPlay, for much less than a new iPod.

Matthew

I can't believe it took them this long to stick it to M$. Here Apple has this great product, almost universally rated the best of the HD mp3 players, and they waited this long to move into the windows user base?
And what about those vendors who just spent the last few months producing software to make the iPod work on Windows. If they really are partners with Apple, why didn't they know they were wasting their time, or at least won't be getting as much out of their software as they had hoped?

Why the heck didn't Apple come out with a Windows version in the first place?

Why bother dealing with the hassle of Windows software support issues when a version of XPlay was available within weeks? At the Apple retail stores I visited while thinking about an iPod, the staff knew of XPlay and mentioned it to people who asked about "Windows versions."

I think they had the right idea. Sell the iPods and let someone else deal with the Windows issues.

Given that Apple politely asked Mediafour, the makers of XPlay (the Windows "iTunes" equivalent to interface w/ iPod), to change their name from XPod to something else, I think you've got a point.

Given that Apple politely asked Mediafour, the makers of XPlay (the Windows "iTunes" equivalent to interface w/ iPod), to change their name from XPod to something else, I think you've got a point.

The iPod is just a portable hard drive. The difficulty was getting Windows to be able to read the HFS+ filesystem, and the only thing that had to be reverse engineered was the iTunes File format.

If it helps Apple sell more iPods without having to pay for support, Apple wins.

Childish of me, but I have to revive a discussion that occurred back when the iPod was released. I posted here wondering why Apple insisted on depriving the iPod of 90% of the potential market by using a proprietary file system. Got a lot of flames in response, the gist of was, "Because, stupid, the purpose of iPods is to sell Macs. You don't think they can sell that thing for $400 and make a profit do you?!!!"

It allows you to hook your iPod up to your PC's FireWire card and use it like a hard drive. You just "Drag And Drop"(TM) the .mp3 files that you want to use, and the iPod's on-board software takes care of playback.

I haven't figured out a way to order the songs, though. With a Mac running iTunes, you just change the way the songs are sorted, and the changes are saved on the iPod. Or, you could create new playlists for the iPod and customize the playback order. Or, you could just turn the shuffle feature on the iPod if you don't have a preference. Regardless, I got a copy of XPlay, and I was mostly pleased with it. It lets me take files from home to the office and vice-versa, so it's manageable for what I need. I prefer using iTunes to "Hot-Sync"(TM) my iPod because of the extra features, but XPlay is certainly manageable.

We've already had a discussion thread about XPlay before, so you may find some helpful info there.

As far as the iPod is concerned, I couldn't be more pleased. I have the 10gig version, and it stores all 90+ of my CD's. I've spent weeks sorting through songs and getting things organized. It's a lot of fun, and the interface is super-intuitive. If you're interested in getting the iPod, note that the 10gig version ships with the latest version of iPod software, where the 5 gig does not. You can download a free update from Apple, but I'm not entirely sure how a PC user without Mac access would install the update. I'm sure your local Apple dealer would accommodate you if you were nice to them, especially if you lived close to an Apple Store.

You can use an iPod on a PC. There are actually 2 programs that allow you to do it. I can only remember the one my girlfriend uses which is XPlay. The other program is also supposed to be pretty good.

Apple should put more concetration on open standards then making hardware that is incompatible for the reason "just because"

Apple's iPod hardware is entirely compatible. It's just a hard drive, with MP3 data stored in a particular sort of file tree. It's the software that Windows and Linux need to access it, and Apple hasn't bothered making that for the simple reason that they're not in the business of making PC products.

XPlay and EphPod both work, separately or together, to bridge the iPod/PC gap just as iTunes already does for Macs. And they do so with Apple's blessing, because Apple already knows that being able to sell iPods to PC users would be a good business decision -- but using iPods to help sell iBooks and iMacs is, from their end, an even better one.

Sure, there are other products that have a large capacity, but they don't have the complete iPod package. IMHO, size, weight,transfer speed, ease of use, rechargeable battery which is charged via Firewire all make the iPod a more complete package.

The iPod software I'm using is Mediafour's XPlay.

XPlay

Currently listening to James LaBrie's Mullmuzzler on my iPod.

I just purchased a iPod to replace my Minidisc player. Xplay works pretty well and allows me to manage the music files from a Windows box.

The Minidisc's big advantage is the small size of the players (man, those things are TINY!) and relatively high storage capacity (2.5 hours of pretty good quality with MDLP capable models). However, you're still stuck with recording music in real-time and that was becoming a bit of a pain because I change playlists pretty often.

The 5GB iPod stores somewhere between 40 and 80 hours of music and although you can't create new playllists on the fly (you must create the playlist on your PC/Mac instead) music uploading/downloading is far faster than the Minidisc and it has a great user interface. The battery life isn't too great (6 hours maybe?) but it charges whenever you plug it in and only takes an hour or so to get to full charge from 0%, so how bad can that be?

If you want to use your iPod on a windows based machine, just grab xplay

Works like a charm!

The current crop of Windows-based iPod software is just NOT up to the job. XPlay will lock up your iPod regularly and corrupt its table-of-contents, forcing you to do a full reset and lose everything on the disk. I was unable to get EphPod to work at all on my Windows 2000 box. I got a setup screen to configure it, and the application appeared in the taskbar when I started it, but no user interface ever showed up. I had to kill it with the Task Manager to get rid of it.

The only realistic option is using a Macintosh for managing your MP3 collection, and if you have your files stored on a network server as I do, this can be problematic as well.

Under MacOS X, you can mount SMB servers and browse them in the finder as you'd expect. You can even drag an MP3 folder from a network drive directly into iTunes or into your iPod. Oops, that doesn't work!. You get a mysterious error -39 when you try this.

All of your MP3s need to live locally on your Mac's filesystems before iTunes will let you add them to your Collection or copy them to your iPod. Couple this with the woeful SMB performance under OSX, and feeding your iPod becomes a painful experience of copying and syncing.

Once you have the music (or audiobooks, or contacts or whatever) on the unit, though, its a true joy to use. I love the iPod, I just detest the software surrounding it.

From Mediafour website:

" What happened to the "XPod" name? Why did it change?

Apple Computer, a company with which Mediafour has always had an amicable relationship, expressed concern over our use of the name "XPod", due to its similarity to the "iPod" name. We chose to change the name to XPlay early on in the project."
read more, click here!

Yes Apple is aware of this, and I believe that Apple will benefit from XPlay.

From Mediafour website:

" What happened to the "XPod" name? Why did it change?

Apple Computer, a company with which Mediafour has always had an amicable relationship, expressed concern over our use of the name "XPod", due to its similarity to the "iPod" name. We chose to change the name to XPlay early on in the project."
read more, click here!

Yes Apple is aware of this, and I believe that Apple will benefit from XPlay.

What happened to the "XPod" name? Why did it change?
Apple Computer, a company with which Mediafour has always had an amicable relationship, expressed concern over our use of the name "XPod", due to its similarity to the "iPod" name. We chose to change the name to XPlay early on in the project.

While I'm not sure if their was a lawsuit, they changed the name of xplay, it used to be called xpod. Mediafour's FAQ mentions this.

• iPoding.com
• iPodlounge.com