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.

Comments

Re:Far simpler way (on a Mac)

[Jeffrey Baker]

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.

Re:Far simpler way (on a Mac)

[austad]

You are partially incorrect. It's true that the files are put in random directories, but the filenames remain the same.

$ cd /Volumes/iPod
$ find ./ -iname *portishead*

If you wanna get fancy, you can import them by checking the "copy imported music to iTunes" and do:
for i in `find ./ -iname *portishead*`; do open $i; done

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.

Re:Story = Engadget Plug

[ptorrone]

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

Re:Why is this useful?

[dalutong]

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.