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iPod & iTunes: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition
For example, if you ask someone (like an Apple store employee) how to get MP3s off of an iPod and onto a computer, they'll tell you that the transfer is only supposed to go the other way. The idea is that you're not supposed to be able to just collect the entire music libraries of anyone who happens to drop by your home with his or her iPod. Of course, it turns out that there are plenty of legitimate scenarios in which you might want to be able to get your own music off of your MP3 player. (I certainly intend to rescue my music from my iPod should the external drive that's currently holding my files ever give up the ghost.) The Missing Manual, on the other hand, devotes several pages to detailing the various ways you can go about accomplishing the unspeakable act of iPod-to-computer copying.
And additional content isn't the only thing you'll find in this book -- there's also a significant difference in the depth and helpfulness of the respective texts. I'll compare their coverage of a common question among new iPod owners: what's going on when the iPod screen always says "Do not disconnect"? Here's the answer as given by the iPod User Guide:
Important: If it is not safe to disconnect iPod, a message on the iPod screen says "Do not disconnect." Don't disconnect iPod if you see this message. You could damage files on iPod. If you see the "Do not disconnect" message, you must eject iPod (see page 22) before disconnecting it.
Apple's apparent fear of possessives and articles aside, this is pretty much as bare-bones as you can get. It tells you one thing you can do if you're seeing this message, but not why it's happening, or what to do if ejecting the iPod doesn't make it go away. Here's an answer to the same question in the Missing Manual:
If you've turned on the "Enable disk use" box in iTunes' iPod Preferences panel, the "Do Not Disconnect" message appears on the iPod at all times. You have to unmount the iPod from the computer manually to make it go away (see page 215).
Even if you haven't set up the iPod to work as a FireWire disk, its hard drive may not have spun down properly. If it's stuck in a loop, the "Do Not Disconnect" message may also appear. Try clicking the Eject iPod button in iTunes, or dragging the iPod icon on the desktop to the Mac's Trash, to see if you get the "OK to Disconnect" message. If that doesn't work, try resetting the iPod as described on page 46 and then try ejecting it.
Note: If you live in a cross-platform household and have both Macintosh- and Windows-flavor iPods lying around, make sure you're plugging the WinPod into the PC. Macs are generally friendly towards PC-formatted 'Pods, but not vice versa. Mixing them up can lead to several error messages, including the "Do Not Disconnect" message (even as the computer won't mount or recognize the iPod) and the "This iPod is linked to another Music Library" message.
(Note that I plucked that answer from the iTunes troubleshooting section - there's also a similar response in the MusicMatch section.) I don't know about you, but this strikes me as infinitely more useful and enlightening than the User Guide's response (no offense to Apple's technical writers intended). And of course there are questions answered in the book that aren't addressed at all in the User Guide, nor on Apple's site.
There are plenty of other things that you'll find in this book that you might not already know, and that you certainly won't find in the included booklet - like information about the iPod on Linux Project, or descriptions of a number of different shareware and freeware programs you can grab to enhance your iPod. You'll find tricks to extend your battery life, ways to make the 'Pod behave even more like a PDA than it does by default, and how to boot off of your iPod should the need arise. Of course, it's true that you can find a lot of this on the web by yourself without having to pay for a book, so part of your decision about buying it will depend on whether you care more about spending $24.95 or saving yourself some time.
If you're wondering whether it's worth buying if you don't use Mac OS or if you have an older iPod, rest assured - coverage of all the different iPods is included, and there's material on both versions of iTunes, as well as MusicMatch for Windows. There's not a whole lot about using an iPod with a *nix box, although the topic isn't completely ignored (as you might expect). There's enough about the iPod itself that Linux users wouldn't be making a mistake to pick it up. On the other hand, it's probably not worth buying if you don't have an iPod and are just curious about iTunes. But iTunes is covered in almost every general Mac book out there, so you're not totally out of luck if that's the case. For most iPod owners, though, this book is a great and inexpensive way to get the most out of your new best friend (as long as your new best friend happens to be an iPod).
You can purchase iPod & iTunes: The Missing Manual, Second Edition from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
My iPod is one of my few toys that I actually would like to know more about and might be willing to pay for an added manual for... provided I learn useful things from it.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Just rebuild the desktop.
Of course, it's true that you can find a lot of this on the web by yourself without having to pay for a book, so part of your decision about buying it will depend on whether you care more about spending $24.95 or saving yourself some time.
Pretty much sums it up for me....
Maybe I can get it in audio-book format? Then I'll just load it up on my iPod...
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
That's what I want to know :-)
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
I've heard of two design flaws now -- both of which they seem less than inclined to fix beyond a short period of ownership -- and have noticed that PDAs in a similar price range can do MP3, video, and even word processing. If it was reliable I'd buy one tomorrow, but are they yet?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
DeDRMS
hymn
information on the: "apple screen of death" "two-finger suicide" Rant on.
"Everyone knows Lenin had to setup a police state," Chomsky
I thought this was impossible for a while, until I mounted the iPod as a disk in Windows and used the command line to poke around the iPod. It's very simple: All the MP3 files are stored in hidden directories, and you can copy them to your heart's content with regular DOS commands such as copy.
The only downside is that the files are stored with cryptic names in directories with meaningless names. But if your files have correct ID3 tagging, the organization of the files won't matter much.
Someone asks you how use an Apple product - just tell them to RTFMM!
Religious arguments aside, how do you copy from iPod to disk? Never had one of these. I'm guessing it should just show up in a folder on the drive.
-I am an elective eunuch.
Ahhhh, how I yearn for the day when hardware came with code snippets, bound manuals, 3d-glasses, etc... If I recall, my first system (c64) came with the computer's schematics!
-m
#
# Modus Ponens
#
It will tell me how to play my .ogg files with it. >
I want to know how to run a gnutella server on my iPod.
Have you read my blog lately?
Any book that exposes "hidden" features or ease-of-use, IMO, makes the toys more enjoyable. Like the hidden API call/DB function that saves development and run times.
that's all i care about
The latest version of Hymn also works with iTunes 4.6, and still maintains the AppleID in the file.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Are they really so complicated that I have to buy an extra manual from a 3rd party? Normally Apple's products have a reputation of being easy to use.
I suppose most of the "missing manuals" are worthless, except maybe winxp considering the lack of a useful manual. But if you have to read a book to figure out a system or device that is supposedly the easiest to figure out... then you aren't the steriotypical slashdot reader. I guess it would be hypocritical, if Apple was the publisher of the missing manuals. But they aren't. The more functional a device is the more difficult it is going to be to learn how to use all of its functions( hey did i just make that up? I haven't heard that before, maybe i need to get out more. Or just maybe i have discovered newton's law of functionality! ALL HAIL my obvious statement put into law form!!).
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Is it just me, or did whoever formatted the article forget to close an iTag?
There is, in fact, a little CD-sized booklet that comes with the iPod
This booklet is the size of CD? What? Are they being deliberately ironic, or something?
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
... for pricing their books according to their worth and utility, rather than weight. This one, according to B&N, is a full 350 pages - a decent sized book. Despite that, it's a (comparitively?) reasonable $25. I can't count the number of books I've sat in Borders with a cup of coffee and read rather than purchased because it wasn't worth $40 for the chapter that I really needed.
Bad management trumps ideology - Show the world you want better leadership. http://www.timefornewmanagement.com
Ok, time for some shameless self promotion.
:)
If you have iTunes check out Musicmobs. You can upload your XML file or sync your iTunes stats via an open source Cocoa application called Mobster.
It will give you a profile of what you listen to, suggest new music, show you people that have similar tastes as you, and show you related artists for all of your bands.
It's growing fast so get in now to get a low userid
A Beowulf Cluster of Arrogant Insensitive Clods!
... will will have maybe 512MB of storage, and that's at the high end. So they're useful for the plug-the-mp3-player-into-your-computer-and-grab-so me-tunes-before-going-for-a-jog style of portable music, but not for the here's-my-music-collection-plus-my-home-directory style a hard-disk based player gives you.
And now for the obligatory question, "Does it tell you how to put Linux on your iPod?"
iPod & iTunes: The Missing Linux Version ?
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Play songs == Browse and then push the 1 button when it's over the song/album/playlist you want
Adjust volume == spin the little wheel around clockwise or counterclockwise (I'll let you figure out which is which).
May no camel spit in your yogurt soup.
Slashdotters don't even RTFA. And you expect us to RTFB? Egads!
This is an odd position to be in. We all want the most out of our toys. Most of us generally play with our toys to figure them out. And we also search online or ask our geeky friends how we can get around this and that. Then again, a book that tells us all...hmmm...
Do we RTFB or not? Hm.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
I'd really like to see what's on page 46. Sometimes my iPod freezes and I've tried every button and button combo that I can think of to reset it but nothing works and I have to wait for the battery to run down.
I even tried looking at the sample chapter on O'Reilly's website which includes page 46, but didn't have anything about reseting it.
If anyone happens to know the secret handshake that reboots the iPod, I'd love to know.
For example, their compendium of software includes:
A workaround for EU volume limitation
Ripping, encoding and tagging recommendations.
A utility to mass export Outlook contacts
News and Weather syndication downloaders.
By far the best way to retrieve your MP3s (a utility that sits on your iPod itself and is executable over a network!)
The fantastic iPod Agent, which creates beautiful XML music lists as well as performing loads of useful functions
Every other area of the lounge is equally as exhaustive - from iTunes configuration (you can do amazing things with smart playlists!) to headphones and case reviews. Visit the site instead of buying a book.
(Oh, and I'm in no way involved with the Lounge other than being a fan.)
I've been wondering this for a while, and this article seemed like a good place to pose the question. Is there any way to program plugins for iPod's interface? I've done a fair amount of research through google and iPod message boards, and have found precisely zilch about how to code programs for iPod. Is it possible?
I like the Neuros Audio player interface much better. It has five programmable function buttons that you can use as shortcuts to common tasks/items. Now that is cool.
I'll take a powerful interface that is still easy to use over one that is simply easy to use any day.
The packaging has to be at least the dimensions of a CDROM, since the windows side needs software. Thanks to the music industry there are a ton of printers who know very well how to make low-page-count, CD-sized booklets.
Please help metamoderate.
Oh well, the dog had a good run.
I resent that, you teabag-loving fudge-packing felcher! Off with your dick!
Why is this modded funny?
1. They are upset that Apple is offering music from the major record labels. They think Apple should have basically started a completely new label.
2. They think it is too expense, because ripping a CD from a friend and sending a buck to the artist directly is cheaper.
3. They don't like lossy compression. They don't explain anywhere what this has to do with ripping off artists.
4. Kazaa is cheaper. How this gets money to the artists is not covered.
The one sentence summary: iTunes doesn't give enough to the artists, so it is better to use methods that give nothing at all to them.
Yeah!
Umm.. 'Real Men Use Gramophones!' (or something)
I gave an iPod as a gift to my mother and it took me almost an hour to explain to her how it worked and how she could use iTunes to manage her songs. She would never have bought a book like this simply because she would not want to waste her time reading it. How many users actually RTFM?
On the other hand, most of the geek population would never purchase such book because either the information is easily available on the Internet or we figured it out after playing with the iPod for 10 minutes.
This account has been seized by the GNAA. That is all.
If you're not using it for jogging, you could also look into getting an inexpensive MP3 CD player. Bring along 6 CD-R's of your favorite tunes and you've got quite a bit of storage. A $50 one I got works great in the car and never skips. Runs quite a while on the 2 AA batteries too (and it's pretty easy to throw an extra pair in wherever I'm going). Don't think it would work well for jogging, though. After a year of that, I finally broke down and got a car MP3 player, but I still use the portable player to take to parties, etc, along with a cable to patch it into friends' audio systems.
"Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased. Thus we refute entropy" - Spider Robinson
...it's always in the last place you look!
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
1. They've already ticked off Apple Records (a label started by the Beatles and owned by EMI) a few times by simply calling themselves Apple Computers. There's currently a lawsuit over the trademark infringment over the existance of iTunes and the iPod. 2. How do they possibly think they could send a buck directly to the artists? And the artist isn't the only person involved in the production of a CD. You've got the studio, the producer, and a bunch of technicians that work on the recording as well. They've got families to feed as well. 3. It's either having lossy compression and getting the files in decent time on a high-speed connection and take up as little space on your hard drive as possible, or having non-lossy compression that takes up more space and takes forever to download. 4. Of course Kazaa is cheaper, but can you consistently get high-quality encoding of the songs you want on it? What about the aforementioned personel in number 2?
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Ephod has to be installed for you to retrieve mp3s and while that may not be a big deal on your home computer you may want to try sharepod which allows you to copy songs from your ipod to your computer without any installation. Useful when dealing with someone else's computer. Here's a link: :)
There are several programs out there which do these things and more, but are required to be installed on each computer first, or require large supporting files to be downloaded, which is a pain when round at a friends house.
VB source code is also available"
Sharepod.
Here's a quote from the page:
" wrote this program because none of my friends have an iPod, so of course don't have Ephpod/iTunes or similar installed on their computers. With SharePod, nothing needs to be installed, the program is stored and run from your iPod. All you need to do is plug your iPod into a computer and run SharePod.exe SharePod reads your iPod database and allows you to extract music files to your hard drive, either individually or by playlist. You can also create Winamp playlists from the music on your iPod so you can listen to it without needing to copy the mp3 files to your computer. If you are on a network, (e.g. at work/university) and you share the iPod drive on the network, other users can run your copy of SharePod from their own computers, and download music directly from your iPod! This allows P2P type music sharing just by plugging in your iPod
http://nyamenation.org/
There really is no need more than what the instruction booklet that comes with the iPod and a google/Apple KB search for everything else.
If all of that confuses you, you probably should stick to a discman, sans MP3 support.
I have problems justifying books anymore when a search online yields information faster and usually more accurate than a book ever could. So if some kind of information dark age ever did come about, and there was no Internet, I ask that someone put me out of my misery...
is iPodSoft mentioned? yes i am part of it and no i dont have the money/time to get the book myself.... :-( Working 2 jobs and school sucks.
Should I mention that there are equivalent players out there made by other companies that do pretty much what the iPod does, but hold more and cost less?
Nah. Wouldn't wanna upset the fanboys.
... to move a 17 MB file from one folder to another?
hmmm? http://www.audioscrobbler.com/
The book also covers iTunes. This simple fact seems to have eluded 99% of Slashdoughters. The title begins with "iPod & iTunes: The Missing Manual"
Has the glitter of hardware so completely overwhelmed us that the software and the shopping concept is lost in the dust? The cute iPod is only the tangible aspect of a concept that is revolutionizing the entertainment industry. A small aspect at that.
The software and the link to the store are important to be sure, but I'd like to mention a small insidious part of the iTunes grab for world domination.
In its friendly way, iTunes offers to organize your music for you. It places the music on your disk or iPod and provides you convenient access to it. You can rearrange your playlist in many useful ways.
But suppose that some day in the future you decide that you like another music player better. Suppose you decide to move your gigabytes of music to the new player and leave iTunes behind.
You are in for a sad surprise. Your files are nested into subfolders so deep that it may take months to bring them out into daylight where you and other software can see them. Those MP3s or AACs or whatever are buried where only iTunes can find them. The convenient indexing features are dependent upon data stored in files that other software doesn't understand- don't expect your new software to be able to use them.
Apple will encourage you to use iPhoto and other programs which use proprietary file systems to order their files too. The name of the game is control. You want convenience, you give up control, you become dependent and the manufacturer has you right where they want you.
Many manufacturers offer proprietary methods of managing your documents which seem very convenient until you consider a move away from their product. Try moving your financial data from one mfgr's product to a competitor's product as an example.
There is a pressing need for new methods of organizing data on media, but reliance upon these proprietary systems is probably not in your best interest.
...omphaloskepsis often...
While the iPos looks nice, and admittedly has the best interface of all the MP3 players (owing to the simple design Macintosh has become a master of),
I wouldn't take this on faith; go play around with some other MP3 players at a big electronics store (one that keeps them running) and see for yourself. The software part of the iPod seems OK, but I like the actual hardware controls on other devices better. And other devices are often cheaper.
Another problem with the iPod is that you can't recharge it through USB (at least last I looked at it)--when you travel, you need to travel with a power supply and other stuff. With other MP3 players, all you need is the player and a standard USB cable (and if you forget that, you can buy it anywhere). You can recharge the iPod through a thick FireWire connector, but most laptops don't have those, and even many desktops don't.
He's right. iPods look nice, but there are better, more functional MP3 players out there.
But, of course, the vocal and zealous Apple fan base wouldn't allow you to hear about this: that's why they mod down anything critical of Apple instead of responding.
Came with a quick setup guide, but no manual *cires* It's criminal, though I did manage to work out though the pictures they had included of the accessories that the ethernet adapter was just a parrell-port dongle, shame.
Apple will encourage you to use iPhoto and other programs which use proprietary file systems
.MP3 or .AAC files for that CD
.xml file too that you could parse if you actually did want to get some of the itunes info out. Actually the information in your MP3s is stored in ID3 tags, which are understood by just about every other music player.
err, I hate to deflate your paranoia, but in fact iTunes stores the music neatly in folders at
Music > Artist > Album1 >
So all the music is neatly ordered on your hard disk. If you don't like AAC you can easily choose . MP3 to encode the files with instead in the preferences. Other programs can play AAC files through quicktime (though not the copy protected ones you might have bought from the music store). This is on a mac, I don't have a PC to see what they do there. There's a neat little
As for iphoto, all the photos are stored as jpegs (last I heard that was an open standard), and exporting them is as simple as dragging and dropping out of the program. If you want the captions there are several export plugins for iphoto I believe, for going to HTML etc. The folder structure is a complete mess (incompetence or malice, you decide), but they have now added aliases to all your photo albums so you could easily write a script to extract those images if you choose to do it without a plugin. There is also an xml file with all the Album data.
Much as I agree that proprietary/closed file formats are evil, the two programs you cite just don't use them, and are in fact good examples of extending open formats (MP3, XML) to add value without locking in customers.
So why abbreviate it? I don't understand!
The files are stored in $musicdirectory/artist/album, so if you open up a terminal window, navigate to your music directory, and type "mv */*/* .", everything will end up in a vile mess in a single directory. If you change the iTunes preferences for encoding, select everything in the library and choose "Convert to $format" from the menus, your pooter will chug for a while and reproduce everything in the new format. You may have to leave your iBook plugged in for a decent collection, tho.
They think Apple should have basically started a completely new label.
Apple could have.
It's quite reasonable for a computer and consumer electronics company to want to remain that, but Apple is big enough and has built the distribution channel (iTunes + iPod) to start another label. They are doing "exclusive" content at ITMS, so someone's realized that content can drive iPod sales.
CDs for sale at Starbucks are from Hear Music which only sell there and at one of the five company-owned stores. They do license tracks from Big 5 record labels, but in the past, they signed their own artists. They seem to have shifted to "Artist's Choice" and other compilations exclusively, but this model is still open for exploitation. How 'bout a label that sells burned-on-site CD-Rs at independent coffeeshops?
why is it that this always gets left out.
this is my fav ipod app by far
http://www.redchairsoftware.com/anapod/