Category: iPod

A guy at work was having trouble with a 4G iPod that his son didn’t need anymore. He said he couldn’t sync it with his PC because it was formatted for his son’s Mac. I told him to bring it in and I would try to fix it. I didn’t have a problem syncing it (it was already formatted for Windows). I had an old program that was an iPod Updater that I tried to use to restore the iPod (wipe it out and completely reformat it, using the latest iPod software for that model), but that capability has now been built into iTunes. But iTunes wouldn’t download the update for the restore even after I uninstalled the obsolete Updater. I gave him his iPod back and said it should work fine even though I hadn’t restored it.

A few days later I was trying to make my first iTunes purchase since November and they wouldn’t download either. I played around with my firewall settings in McAfee (even turning it off completely), but decided the problem must be with iTunes timing out before a dial-up connection could bring a song over (about 10 minutes for a song). It didn’t help that iTunes was now trying to download three songs at a time instead of one like it used it to do. I tried some different settings in iTunes, but couldn’t fix the problem.

Continue reading “Sick iPod Well Again”

This weekend I downloaded the podcast of Steve Jobs’ iPhone presentation at Macworld. I had never seen one of his speeches, but had always heard great things about them. iLounge said this about it “Despite the fact that it clocks in at a feature film-length 1 hour and 45 minutes, Jobs’ keynote is unquestionably the most engaging public speech iLounge’s editors have ever seen, introducing the company’s new iPhone with a level of oratorical mastery that deserves academic study.”

Having downloaded it (at Susan’s and then loaded onto the SD card I keep in my Palm; over dial-up it would have taken 53 hours) and watched it today, I don’t know if I would agree. But I will say that instead of including instructions, they should just give you a video of his presentation when you buy the phone. Since it really is a small computer, I think they will be able to work out any problems with the software and add all kinds of new capabilities. And the price should come down over time as well (currently $500 for a 4 MB version, $600 for a 8 MB version after signing a 2-year agreement with Cingular). And although Steve had one that appeared to work just fine, it won’t be available until June.

I think they will have a phoneless version that will be a widescreen iPod which will include wifi and browsing capabilities. So rather than get a 5G, I think I will continue waiting for that new thing. In the meantime I am still enjoying the widescreen Palm TX, even though it’s software certainly lags what is loaded on the iPhone.

When I installed iTunes 7.0 I opted not to import artwork for all of music. Songs purchased from iTunes always have artwork incorporated into the file, but CD’s that I have imported into iTunes do not. With a 3G iPod I can’t see the artwork anyway, but newer iPods can display the cover of the CD you are listening to. Also iTunes shows it to you to. Now there is a neat music browser that lets you browse by the cover. That’s kind of neat because it’s like going through your CD collection.

You can add the artwork into iTunes yourself. A few months ago I found a program that was supposed to import the artwork into iTunes, but it took a really, really long time and I wasn’t impressed with what it was importing. But by then I was hooked, so I spent a lot of the rest of the day going to Amazon and getting cover artwork from them and manually pasting it in to iTunes. To save file space, I only pasted it in to the first song of a CD. Still the images were pretty small: 240 pixels square and about 15-30 kb each.

So when the new software came out and Jeb wrote about it, I talked myself into getting the artwork as I was writing my response. Again, it took a really long time. I had about 470 albums that needed artwork and it took a couple of minutes for each. With a dial-up connection, it took about 4 hours to get all of it. And by “all of it” I mean whatever it could get, which was maybe 80%.

Continue reading “Cover Flow”

In one of the first virtual books that iLounge posted, they had a timeline of all the dates where different iPods were introduced. But then they didn’t update it. So I took what they had, plus what I found elsewhere and updated it, current up to the satanic-colored 5G U2 edition iPod introduced Tuesday. I’m trying to analyze the past history to guess when Apple will come out with a new iPod since I will be in the market soon. Looks like I need to wait until September or October.

The price premium for owning an iPod vs. rival MP3 players nearly disappeared in 2006. When I bought the $279 20 GB Archos, all Apple had was a 5 GB 1st generation iPod which was $399 and it only worked with Macs. Two months after I got the Archos, Apple introduced the 10 GB iPod for $499. Still, I had twice the capacity (but none of the cool) for about half the price.

Continue reading “iPod Timeline”

I was at Kroger last night buying some milk and walked through the cereal aisle to see if they had any good deals. For a while now they’ve had Cocoa Pebbles for $2.15 when just about any kind of cereal there is costs more than $3.00. I hadn’t had any of that in a while and I had some healthier cereals at home already so I picked up a box. Further down the aisle I saw that Lucky Charms were 2 for $4.00. But then I saw on the front that every box included a free iTunes purchase on the inside. That was like getting 2 boxes of cereal for $2.02! So I put the Cocoa Pebbles back.

Once I was at home, I tried to be very careful cutting the box without cutting the bag, but I wound up cutting the bag anyway. The box also said that 1 in 10 redemptions also would receive 5 extra free songs. Even with 2 boxes those were long odds. Tonight I entered the web address www.itunes.com/redeem in Mozilla and it started a 3 megabyte download before I gave up and started Internet Explorer which instantly opened iTunes (I guess Mozilla was downloading iTunes, that would have been a wait at 50.6 kbps). Anyway, I entered the code and instantly received 6 free songs!