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How to Get Music Off Your iPod
ptorrone writes "Never did we think we'd need to do a How-To on something which should be part of the basic functionality of a portable music player, but once you put your tunes on an iPod unfortunately it's a one-way sync unless you know the tricks for getting them off. Here's how to get your stuff off for free on a Mac or PC and how to re-enable a useful tool with a Hex editor." Cory Doctorow has been writing about this on boingboing recently; he discusses Apple's message to iPod owners.
This is exactly why I go with Archos.
Video, Pictures, and you don't have to do anything illegal to be able to keep your own music.
I don't know when we started being so collectively condescending to the average computer user, but there was a time when you might tell a user to copy a file on their computer and reasonably believe they could do it. These days, most people approach the user like you might approach your retarded cousin who was raised by ferrets on a remote island: don't tell them anything, you might frighten or confuse them (unfrozen-caveman-lawyer style).
Personally, I have faith in people, and when someone asks me how to copy files off their iPod, I show them how to do it with the normal shell commands or file manager interfaces. The belief that people need a WYSIWYG GUI application to move files between storage devices is, I think, a result of the incorrect and insulting attitude that developers are so much smarter than their users.
Yeah, I've read about this on the pop culture sites, but its simply fucking amazing that its even an issue with Slashdotters.
This is the simplest fucking thing to do...at least if you understand unix commands such as cd, ls and cp.
Moving files to the iPod is a little harder (as it requires knowledge of the xml to do so), but fucking shit...I was told how to do this by a senior apple developer just before I picked up my 1G iPod and his response was that the idea was to make it a hinderance to folks that were willing to trade files, but it was well known that if someone wanted to do this, they would.
I think this is perfectly legitimate -- they don't stop anyone from publishing how to do this, they do stop folks from making tools that are entirely designed around ripping content.
You can do it just fine on a PC as well.
I don't know, maybe i'm just completely missing something here, but this article seems incredibly stupid to me. I just don't understand why you'd have to do any of this at all. Why would you not be able to get them off the iPod? In Windows you can press F3 and type *.mp3 in the stupid search box and it will list every MP3 on your iPod and you're free to copy them where-ever you like. You don't need EphPod or a hex editor or any of that, and you never did. -_-
But it doesn't matter so much for a few reasons. One is that the files still have id3 tags in them.
Another is that if you are backing up the iPod, all it takes is a recursive copy and you are done. Still very useful.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Having just done this myself when I bought a Powerbook overseas when I had my iPod with me and not the laptop that had my music collection I can add my two cents on how to do this fairly easily.
First you can't see the directory the music is stored in by using Finder as Apple disables it but if you open a terminal you can copy all the files across from the mount point.
Yes as you stated this contains a big mess of numerical directories with crappy filenames but all the files are still properly tagged (you do tag your mp3's right?) so iTunes still works perfectly okay if you add these to your library.
After doing that though I consolidated my library and it brought everything back into a sane state with an Artist / Album / song hierarchy automagically then I just deleted what I copied off the iPod.
Quite simple really and with no third party tools or hex editing of anything.
In the drops - An Aussie's musings on all things cycling
You are partially incorrect. It's true that the files are put in random directories, but the filenames remain the same.
/Volumes/iPod ./ -iname *portishead*
./ -iname *portishead*`; do open $i; done
$ cd
$ find
If you wanna get fancy, you can import them by checking the "copy imported music to iTunes" and do:
for i in `find
This will reimport all of your portishead songs. I should know, I just did it because my hard drive died a couple of weeks ago and my backup was bad. This was the only way I could get some of my music back.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
It's like everyone was just waiting around for Apple to do something like this, and now that they've done it, no matter how minisculy important it is, OMFG APPLE IS FORCE-FEEDING US FECES.
There's dozens of programs out there that let you download from an iPod (so many have been linked already that I won't even bother) the one difference between all those and iPod Download? iPod Download is an iTunes plug-in. Is it really a stretch to imagine the RIAA pulling their music from the iTMS (or even suing Apple) when they see iTunes being used for "illegal file sharing"?
Adam
keep in mind, 99.999% of the time when i submit a story on /. someone edits it before it goes live. this post about getting content off your ipod isn't exactly what i submitted either. usually it's edited, links added or removed and then posted. you can of course think whatever you want and suspect anything, i'm honestly not trolling for hits, i'm trying to write cool stuff i think people will like and find useful. that said, i realize some people are up to no good, so it causes any reasonable person to be skeptical about any post.
cheers,
pt
what do /.ers think is the most hackable portable music player? I have a few things that I would love to do with my player, such as making audio "flash cards" for the languages I am learning, along wiht the word printed on the screen(I'm learning Chinese and Japanese, so it would be nice if I could take advantage of the fact that the iPod can render all those characters).
It's pretty obvious it's possible to do this on the iPod, but Apple won't release SDKs for it. Are there any players that will let you program them to achieve such a thing?
Monstar L
From what I remember with a friend's iPod this was definately possible, but the filenames are all garbage, I'm guessing hash values. If you've got good tags on all your mp3's renaming them would be pretty simple, but still it's far from a straight copy.
I've never had a problem getting the songs off of my iPod, especially since I use iTunes to organize my music. The music is just stored in a hidden directory on the iPod, so all you have to do is copy that directory, and then tell iTunes (or any other good jukebox) to import a directory. Tada! Music transferred. It's not like Apple made it really difficult to remove it.
Don't count your messages before they ACK.
Rip. Mix. Burn. (Newly added: And then never touch those files again, you pinko commie pirate scum!)
Sheesh. I'm glad I got an iRiver instead. It just shows up like a USB mass storage device, no questions asked. In fact I've already used it to transfer large files without making coasters.
I can give you a real-world example.
My girlfriend (the most honest person I know) has just moved out of her house and off to college. Her iPod, which she has owned for a couple of years, was synced with her mom's Mac. For whatever reason her mom's HD fried.
My girlfriend was SOL. She had downloaded a good amount of music legitimately but now couldn't get any more because if she sync'd with her iTunes and the new music she'd gotten it would wipe her iPod clean.
What did we do? We restored her music to her PC using a tool similar to these.
So that's one legit reason. Some quick ones I can come up with off the top of my head include:
-getting a new computer
-using two computers (i.e. laptop and desktop) and wanting be able to use both for adding music to the library
-computer (hardware or software) is messed up in some way
and, as another poster said, it is YOUR iPod and YOUR music. why can't do with it as you please? What if I got the thing to be both my music player and a good sized portable HD for me to take with me as i travel the world? It's my iPod, after all.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
The tense of your comment seems to indicate that you kept Windows ME, but got rid of your iPod. Are you sure you're posting on the right website?
--Dan
The other day a coworker on the 10th floor wanted a copy of some of my mp3s. I thought, hey, my iPod is sitting on the dock of my Mac back in my office. Let's see if I can just SSH in and copy the files off.
/Volumes/iPod. I did "ls". Whoa, there were a shitload of directories with all my MP3s in them! I tarballed the lot of them and scped them to my buddy's machine. He dragged them into iTunes. Whoa! there were all the MP3s, playlists, album covers, everything.
And I did.
I SSHed in. I went to
If you own an iPod, all the files are just sitting in directories on the iPod. No weird encryption, the files are all "songname.mp3."
You can just drag them off the iPod onto your desktop.
I can't believe some idiot wrote a piece of software because he thought this was too hard. I can't believe some other idiot spent all day writing a review of this software. I can't belive Slashdot linked to it.
Under Mac OS X Apple includes a free way to back up the music on your iPod. Just run Terminal.app and enter this line:Folders named like "F00", "F01", "F02" will be placed on your Desktop, drag them into iTunes and you are all set.
I'm sure that you can do the same thing under Windows and Linux. Hell, knock together a quick script and automate it. That's all these 3rd-party tools are doing.
Sapere aude!
Haha whoa whoa..easy there, fellah. I never professed that I was holier than thou or a superior user.. I'm just saying that you have to start off assuming that people know nothing about computers because they generally don't know anything. If anyone wants to come in and talk at a higher level, I am always available. But take it from someone who works retail: most people (AKA Joe User) know nothing, if not very little, about computers. Also, there's no need to insult my job. I realize it is shitty and I never claimed it to be great. I'm only 21 and I'm still in college. At least I'm working and not doing drugs like half of the population my age.