iPod iTouch

[[AK]Clay]

Anyone have one? One thing I don't like about it is you have to go through iTunes to transfer music to it. Is there a way you can treat it like a hard drive and just transfer your mp3's direct to it?

[[AK]Squidly]

No, you'll need to use iTunes. In my experience that's a huge benefit rather than a negative. Spend a month using iTunes and you probably will wonder why you ever resisted.

I own an iPhone, and my father-in-law owns an iPod "Touch". While we both are very happy, the best is yet to come. The SDK is in beta now, and in June developers will be coming out with a boatload of applications (downloadable directly to the devices via wireless.) You won't be disappointed with the purchase.

[[AK]StitchJones]

Clay, while the I-Touch is plugged into your PC, it will show as a mounted drive where you can use that free space to store various files, if you so need too. This of course also holds true while plugged into a Mac. However these files will not show while using the Itunes application. Other then the status bar at the bottom saying 'Other Data' So for Movies/TV/Music/Photos/Podcasts, you'll need to use the Itunes to manage and deal with that data. From windows explorer you can toss your documents, spreadsheets, onto the device.

Enjoy!

to one-off since we are on the subject. To convert your own movies to be played on the I-Touch is as easy as downloading "Handbrake". There is a Win32 and OS X version. The conversion quality and performance is awesome for a freeware program.

[[AK]Squidly]

While you may be able to transfer the mp3 files to the iTouch, you'll need to load them through iTunes to play them.

[[AK]StitchJones]

Double files! What better way to eat up space!

[[AK]Brorlis]

Clay I finally gave in a few weeks ago and got me one of these. I hate to say it but Squids right. After a few days of playing around with Itunes its become my new favorite tool in the shed. Give it a whirl, you WONT be disappointed!

[[AK]Bribo]

I switched to iTunes from WinAMP about three years ago and never looked back.

[[AK]Squidly]

As I was telling Bribo earlier on the phone, you need to get used to the "Apple Paradigm" for dealing with organizing your music. On the PC many of us have intricate playlist and hugely complicated folder structures. All of that goes away.

People panic when they're told that iTunes lumps everything in one folder by default. Thing is, the software lifts the load of organization from your shoulders. It doesn't MATTER where it is on the disk, so long as you can find it in a flash. And that's what iTunes does so well.

[[AK]Brorlis]

It did take a little time to organize the new play lists and such but nowhere near the time I've invested over the years doing it on my PC. I've always been anti apple but I tell ya the more and more I look their stuff the more and more I love it. Microsoft has catered to the PC illiterate too long and took the fun out out using my PC for anything but gaming. My Ipod is the best investment I've made this year by far.

[[AK]Nuts]

okay, this thread has peaked my interest. So let me understand correctly (I'm a Winamp User and run it on my media PC to stream music from an external 1tb drive to my stereo).

I can install ITunes to organize my music, handle things like cover-art and ID4 tags. It won't convert any of my mp3 (I don't have an IPod, I like my Nomad)? But I will have to create new playlists, right?

Also, will it handle syncing to non Ipod mp3 players or will I have to use my own client?

edit:
Some bloatware comes FREE with Itunes, eh? AppleMobileDeviceService.exe, gee, maybe you should ask before you install a service for devices that I don't have.
ITuneHelper.exe. 15mb of RAM is being used before I even launch the application. Good so far.

[[AK]StitchJones]

I started to read Nuts post,,, then all of a sudden I went into a Beavis and Butthead coma...."Words......words.....words....." lol


Nuts, Itunes is for playing music and such locallly or with Ipod hardware. Non Ipod devices will not be recognized by the program.

ITunes will allow you to convert CD's into a few different formats. Including MP3's. It will download album art and bind it to the songs/album. As far as .PLS or .M3U playlists, it does not create those. But inside of Itunes you can create your own in program playlists. After you mess around with it a little it's amazing how well integrated everything is. And the Bloatware or Apple's version of self plug and play can be disabled to make your life easier if your paranoid about how many running services you have on your machine. It's not like it's the first time you've typed Service.msc from the run line ;-)

[[AK]Nuts]

I've got it running here on my work PC. Where the hell is my Right-Click options?? Ya, Ya... it's Apple, I know.

Seems okay so far and rather simple to use. Hence, this may work out better for the wife on our media PC downstairs on the big screen.

It's a shame that they don't integrate well with other mp3 devices like my Nomad, but oh well.

I've turned off some of the services that are wastefull and it was rather quick at indexing my 18gb of music and collecting cover art.

[[AK]Clay]

Nuts, could you post which specific services you turned off that are unnecessary but were forced upon you by iTunes?

I note iTunes installed Quicktime media player. My last experience with Quicktime was a few years ago, and I found it was an intrusive and horrid little program. I use the codec in windows media player to play quicktime files instead. I want it Quicktime gone - can I remove it without removing iTunes?

[[AK]Squidly]

Yes, you can remove quicktime, but I question that decision.

Give the new version a shot. Why remove it if it's working fine now?

[[AK]Nuts]

I keep my PC's running pretty bare so I already had most of the quicktime things turned off.

I disabled the service: "Ipod Service"

In the program I disabled:
"Look for remote speakers connect with AirTunes"
"Show iTunes icon in system tray"
Podcasts / "Check for new episodes=Manually"
"Check for updates automatically"
"Look for Apple TV's"
"Disable automatic syncing for all iPhones and iPods"

I had to kill the process "AppleMobileDeviceService.exe" but I couldn't find the .exe anywhere so I'll have to play with that one.

I hate software that wants to automate connectivity and synchronization. These usually result in process, services and TCP connection (either to localhost or to external sites)