LWN.net Logo

ipod :)

ipod :)

Posted Nov 28, 2005 23:35 UTC (Mon) by jmorris42 (subscriber, #2203)
In reply to: ipod :) by astrophoenix
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's guide to music managers

Sorry, almost every other player wins in the most important category. They are normal USB drives that you can copy files to and have them play. So long as the iPod is just an accessory for iTunes I'll never consider one.

And yes iPod fanboy (and there is ALWAYS one when one speaks of an Apple product in a less than adoring way) who would otherwise have to reply, I do know an iPod will appear as a drive and that you can use them to transport random data files. They just can't be music that you intend to play, which kinda defeats the number onw reason for copying files to an iPod.


(Log in to post comments)

Yep, "almost"

Posted Nov 29, 2005 2:23 UTC (Tue) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]

My sis bought a Creative Zen Micro, which I like rather well on every other front... except that while you *can* see it as a USB drive, *you can't put music on it that way*.

All you can do is use some of it as mobile storage.

<sigh>

ipod :)

Posted Nov 29, 2005 5:21 UTC (Tue) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link]

the only reason you need extra software to copy songs to your ipod (or any other player) is to rewrite the songlist database so your player knows about the music.

this would be the same with any player.

once again, there is open source code to write this data to the ipod.

ipod :)

Posted Nov 29, 2005 7:26 UTC (Tue) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link]

No, many (most at this point?) players are smart enough to scan the files themselves and just need the files copied over. No special software required.

ipod :)

Posted Nov 29, 2005 23:53 UTC (Tue) by omez (subscriber, #6904) [Link]

> this would be the same with any player.

The Neuros machines will rebuild automatically if it can't find the song database on startup. Simply deleting the database after copying songs over is enough to get it squared away.

That said, reading the vorbis comments and reindexing tens of thousands of songs is best left to a beefier CPU/memory/disk arrangement. The positron utility for updating the device, allows you to listen to the fresh tunes the same day.

Copyright © 2008, Eklektix, Inc.
Comments and public postings are copyrighted by their creators.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds