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iPod Mini Hits The 'Sweet Spot'?
Tooky writes "The BBC is reporting on a survey carried out by Jupiter Research which found that most consumers were only storing about 1000 songs on their portable MP3 players, claiming that ' The finding seems to be borne out by the demand for Apple's Mini iPod'." According to the piece: "Jupiter said digital music players with capacities of 5,000 songs will provide too much space for most people. It added that consumers rate other features as highly as the ability to store all the songs held on their PC."
Set up a few automatic playlists:
One with all your highly rated songs.
One with all your unplayed songs, in random order, limited to fit on your iPod.
One with your least recently played songs, in random order, limited to fit on your ipod.
Then throw some albums you want to listen to on a fourth playlist.
Consider the "my rating" to be the "I want to hear this again" marker. If you're listening to a new song, and it's rad and you don't want it to leave your iPod, mark it, and it'll go to your highly rated songs playlist.
Do the "these playlists only" synch. Now, everytime you synch, you get fresh songs. Just keep those less-listened to songs in iTunes. If someone ever wants to hear them (happens whenever I have a party) it's still on your computer.
I've got a 40 GB iPod, and I still need to do this, just so I have some way of managing the 25 _days_ of music on my iPod.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
You're out of your damn mind. I do this. It does work.
When I plug my iPod into my Mac, it updates the rating on the relevant song. The highly-rated playlist on the mac then grows to accommodate the song. The Mac then synchronizes that longer playlist to the iPod.
Similarly, if my random unplayed playlist is limited to 2GB, when I plug in my ipod, it marks those songs as played, which takes them out of the unplayed playlist, which means they are replaced with other songs so that the playlist remains 2GB. The modified playlist is then synched with my iPod, which includes the new unplayed songs.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
I've had my mini for three weeks now. Not, a super hard-core runner, but I average 25-30 miles a week, pace no slower than 7:30. I've found it to be absolutely amazing. The longest run I've used it on is about 45min and had absolutely no problems. Battery life is very good, the interface is absolutely perfect. Recommend buying the neoprene armband--very inobtrusive.