Hi Jacob, Chris, and Others,
So, yes, you can manually update your iPod Nano 4G using VoiceOver's
Drag and Drop, and the menus will speak! Actually, looking back at
notes, I made my tests after the 1.0.2 firmware update (September 16),
but before iTunes version 8.0.1 (October 2). (I had hooked up the Nano
to LineIn and switched sound over to my MacBook speakers when I
applied the firmware update -- and could actually listen to the
download.) Interesting. This is an 8GB Nano. Just goes to show that
there can be something new in every update. The thing I most noticed
about 8.0.1 is that they hadn't fixed the problem of allowing your to
select individual radio streams in each category -- you still had to
select whole categories or multiple whole categories and use Command-
Option-N (new playlist from selection) and then delete the streams you
didn't want.
I wonder how iTunes does its bookeeping? For example, when I add by
doing drag and drop, a check of the smart playlist "Recently Added"
doesn't include anything that has been dragged and dropped. It seems
as though sound samples are generated for everything if you have
Universal Access turned on. And does the Nano do a correct accounting
of available space in its display?
Cheers,
Esther
On Nov 4, 2008, at 1:51 PM, Esther wrote:
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
