Hi Jacob,
This is really interesting, since I made all my tests when iTunes 8
first came out so I could understand what was happening with the
Nano. I can understand your sentiment with regard to the Nano!
Thanks for the comment.
Cheers,
Esther
On Nov 4, 2008, at 1:49 PM, Jacob Schmude wrote:
I just got my 4th gen nano yesterday (finally). I can confirm that
with iTunes 8.0.1 and firmware 1.0.2 it is generating spoken entries
whenever something is moved to the iPod, regardless of whether it is
synched or manually dragged. This is with the Mac version of iTunes
of course, no idea about Windows. Also this is the 16gb model,
though I doubt that would matter. I absolutely love my nano!
On Nov 4, 2008, at 18:34, Esther wrote:
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
