Hi Chris,
Maybe this is a new feature!<smile>
On Nov 4, 2008, at 1:25 PM, Christopher Gilland wrote:
Ester, that is really weird, as I just tried with my Nano doing a
drag and rop, and actually, it spoke perfectly.
Oddness.
Chris.
I'm not sure what is going on with your Nano, but when I tried
dragging and dropping new content that had never been placed on my
iPod before -- in any incarnation of the iTunes data base or player,
whether restored or not --- I didn't get spoken menus. Sounds as
though you managed to trigger something across the boundary of what
syncs and what gets transferred.
Is your iPod still configured for data mode?
Incidentally, I don't think that David's explanations work for what
has been going on with your iPod, but I'm not sure which files keep
track of recognizing the device. That could be in the binary file
that we can't get to directly. Only the "iTunes Music Library.xml"
file is used to communicate with other programs, and that may not be
where the weird things are happening.
Cheers,
Esther
----- Original Message ----- From: "Esther" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "General discussions on all topics relating to the use of Mac OS
X by theblind" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2008 3:24 PM
Subject: Re: Update on Nano issue.
Hi Chris,
On Nov 4, 2008, at 3:22 AM, Christopher Gilland wrote:
Ester, as for your mis-understanding, no, my father is probably
gonna wind up using his laptop which is a Windows machine to
manage his music. The only reason that I synced it with my Mac,
was because it was his bd, and I wanted to open the thing up, and
have it pre-loaded for him with some of his favorite tracks.
Yeah, I know: he only can sync it with one library, which awe
great! means now, he can't sync it with his Inspiron 1000 unless
he first erases the content currently on it. Now, Apple did!
tell me, of a work around. I dono how true it is though. I
don't have another IPod to test it with. Apparently, when it
says it's synced with another library, do I wanna erase and sync
with the new computer, someone told me if you click on cancel,
then go to the settings of the IPod, and switch it to manually
manage in the summary tab, then, I can actually at that point use
the drag drop option, and just manage it that way, yet not delete
anything. I dono how true that is, but anyway, that's what they
told me, at least.
This trick doesn't work for your father, because you formatted the
iPod on a Mac. He's not going to be able to "see" these files on
his PC unless he goes through a third party tool. Traditional
tools, like MacOpener, got discontinued last year. In any case, he
should restore his iPod on the PC.
Yes, the work-around Apple told you about can let him add content
manually to his iPod from other PCs that he isn't sync'd to. When
he connects his iPod (which is now synced to his iTunes account on
his PC) to another Windows iTunes installation (say, your account
on your Windows machine), he'll get prompted with a message that
tells him that his iPod is synced to another machine, and asks him
whether he wants to erase and sync to this new library. (In the
past, this is where knowing about overriding the autosync by
holding down the Command and Option keys on a Mac, or the Control
and Shift keys on a PC, really paid off -- because you didn't used
to get prompted about this!). At this point he can set up the
options to manually manage the iPod in the summary tab, and those
settings will be applied whenever he connects the iPod to that
iTunes account. He (or you) can drag and drop playlists onto that
iPod. The playlists can even contain DRM'd tracks (from iTunes or
Audible) provided that his iPod is authorized to play them (this
gets tricky if you've set him up as a separate account in iTunes;
it's less tricky for Audible since you can have content from up to
two different Audible accounts authorized to play on a single iPod).
For older iPods, you could play them cross-platform provided they
were formatted for Windows. The rule is that Macs can read Windows
FAT formatted files, but Windows can't read Mac file formats. So
if iPods were formatted for Windows, you could add content to them
from both Windows and Macs iTunes installations, provided that you
only used manual file transfers and not auto-sync (which assumes
that you can overwrite the files on the device with files on your
computer). The way to think about this is that you can easily use
USB memory sticks cross-platform, and these are FAT32 format
files. The first generation iPod Shuffle is basically like a USB
memory stick with expanded play capability. These cross-platform
iPod systems start to become unstable when you try to handle
things like videos or extensive album artwork cross-platform.
There are also issues about maximum character length in Window
file names and forbidden characters. Non-English characters
(accents, symbols) don't always get handled correctly under the
Windows format. Still, if you stick to simple music and audiobook
files (and audio podcasts), it's pretty straightforward. I
manually transfer content from my Mac to a first generation iPod
Nano that was formatted for Windows and has never been updated.
(It's associated with someone else's machine, but has always been
left in manual mode). This kind of cross-platform use is probably
not possible with the 4G Nanos -- certainly not if you want
speakable menus, which relies on the "sync" to generate the spoken
bits. In the (distant) past iPods (especially hard-drive iPods)
used to come pre-formatted, and you would run "updates". Now the
original format/install is done automatically through iTunes, so
the way the device is formatted depends on your operating system,
adn this is automatically detected.
The more general trick, of setting iPods to manual mode and
transferring additional content (via VoiceOver drag and drop) when
these iPods are not connected to the accounts they sync with, will
work for both Mac and PC platforms. However, the down side is
that unless they "sync" you won't get spoken menu clips generated
for the content. If I drag and drop additional tracks to a 4G
Nano they will appear on the disk. Sighted users will see their
entries under playlists, artist, etc. on the Nano screen. You
just won't hear any spoken content for these entries. To generate
the spoken clips, you'd have to add these files to your iTunes
library and sync them.
HTH
Cheers,
Esther
