iLounge iPad 2 Buyers' Guide

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Ask iLounge 6-4-10

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By Jesse Hollington

Applications Editor, iLounge
Published: Friday, June 4, 2010
Category: Ask iLounge

Ask iLounge offers readers the opportunity to get answers to their iPod-, iPhone-, iPad-, iTunes-, or Apple TV-related questions from a member of the iLounge editorial team. We'll answer several questions here each week, and of course, you can always get help with more immediate concerns from the iLounge Discussion Forums. Submit your questions for consideration using our Ask iLounge Submit Form. We reserve the right to edit questions for grammar, spelling, and length.

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And now, for this week's Ask iLounge column:

Q:

I am moving to London this summer. Do I need to wait to purchase an iPad there to use the 3G connection?

- Bob

A:

Technically, an iPad 3G purchased in any country will work fine in any other country that offers iPad 3G service, since the iPad is sold “unlocked” and can therefore be used with any SIM card.

That said, however, the power adapter included with the iPad will be specific to the country in which it is sold. This means that if you purchase an iPad in the U.S. you will receive a North American power adapter in the box. Although the actual power adapter itself is capable of working with the different voltages in various countries, the actual plug that connects to the wall will be different, and you would therefore need to change the plug module or use an international travel adapter.

Q:

My iTunes account says that I have 4 devices, when I really just have one. How do I delete the other 3 so that I only have one registered for my account?

- Michael

A:

The three other devices may represent a computer or computers that you previously owned, or it may simply be that you have reinstalled your operating system or performed a significant hardware upgrade on your computer without deauthorizing it first. iTunes uses aspects of your computer’s hardware configuration and operating system to uniquely identify your computer, so any significant changes to either will cause iTunes to assume that you are authorizing a different computer. For this reason, you should always deauthorize your computer before reinstalling the operating system, performing major hardware upgrades, or sending it in for service.

There is no way to remove a specific authorization if the computer or configuration that it is assigned to is no longer accessible. iTunes does allow you to reset ALL of your authorizations once per year, but only once you have reached the five computer limit—at that point a “Deauthorize All” button will appear on your iTunes Store account page beside the number of authorizations. Until then, however, you still have an empty authorization ‘slot’ remaining, so there’s no need to be particularly concerned about removing the other three phantom authorizations.

Q:

So I thought I had a brilliant idea: share one library between our home computer and my wife’s work laptop using a portable hard drive. We could maintain/add files one time and also have a backup in case the home computer or it’s hard drive died. I set up the library at home on the computer’s large hard drive and then copied the files over using the “sync” feature of the portable hard drive. I then set up my wife’s laptop’s iTunes to point at the portable hard drive’s iTunes Music folder, added all the music and things were working well. This weekend I added a bunch of new music to the home computer and synced the external hard drive, which quickly and automatically added all the new folders and files to itself. When my wife fired up her laptop, she used the “consolidate” feature to find the new music, but it didn’t work because it evidently only looks for music OUTSIDE of the iTunes directory, not INSIDE, for changes. How does one get iTunes to scan it’s OWN library folder for newly added folders and files? “Consolidate” seems to only look outside the iTunes folder and obviously having to manually add every folder or file would take tedious hours. Thanks for any help!

- Dave

A:

Actually, the “Consolidate” function is not used to search for media content at all. Rather, what it does is to take any tracks that are already listed in the iTunes library and copy them into the iTunes Media folder. This is useful in situations where you’ve been importing music from other locations on your hard drive without copying it, or where you want to relocate your iTunes Music folder to another folder or hard drive.

To get iTunes to add new tracks, you need to use the File, Add to Library option in iTunes in much the same manner as you would for any other new tracks. In this case you can simply point iTunes on your wife’s computer to the parent iTunes Music folder on the external hard drive. iTunes will go through the entire folder structure and import any tracks it finds that are not already listed in your iTunes library but will skip over any tracks that have already been imported.

Q:

My friend’s computer is being ordered but they need to upload some music before going out of town—can they connect their iPod to my iTunes and upload and buy their own music of their choice from my library and store?

- Michael

A:

The short answer is yes, although they’ll want to ensure that they create and/or log into their own iTunes Store account before purchasing any music. You can have content from more than one iTunes Store account stored on the same computer and even on a single iPod, so your friend can purchase music and transfer it to their iPod in much the same way as you would.

The best way to handle this is to set the iPod up to be managed manually from iTunes and drag and drop the music onto it from your iTunes library. This ensures that their iPod isn’t automatically associated with your library and they can more easily transfer that music back to their computer once they receive it and get iTunes setup. If they’re dealing exclusively with tracks purchased from the iTunes Store, then iTunes will prompt them to transfer those purchases back to their new computer the first time they connect the iPod to it. If they have other tracks that were loaded from CD or purchased from other sources then they will need to copy those tracks back over manually. Information on how to copy content from an iPod back to a computer can be found in our tutorial on Copying Content from your iPod to your Computer.

Q:

I can listen to CDs that I burn in iTunes, but they don’t play in my car. This only happened recently. I was always able to listen to them before. Your articles say something about a “Burn” tab in preferences, but I don’t have a Burn tab.  There is only a preferences under “Edit” and no burn tab.  Am I missing something?

- Sandi

A:

As of iTunes 8 the “Burn” options have actually been moved out of the preferences and now appear immediately before starting an actual disc burning session.

The first thing to check is to confirm the type of CD that you’re burning. iTunes allows you to burn Audio CDs, MP3 CDs or Data CDs. Audio CDs should play in any standard CD player, including the one in your car. MP3 CDs, however, require a player that is specifically compatible with that type of CD, since all you’re really doing is burning the raw MP3s to the CD as files.  Data CDs are designed for backup and archival of your content, and cannot normally be played back in any type of CD player.

If you’re burning Audio CDs and still having problems playing them back in your car you should double-check the type and brand of CD media that you are using. Most name-brand CD-R media should not be a problem, however CD-RW (rewritable) media does not play back properly in many standard CD audio players. It’s also not uncommon to have problems with cheaper, lower-quality CD-R media. You may also find that reducing the recording speed can sometimes help to improve the reliability of the burn process, which in turn may result in the CD playing back properly in other players.

Lastly, if you’re using decent quality CD-R media and lower burn speeds and still having problems with playing back your recorded CDs in your car then the problem may be the CD-R drive itself or the CD player in your car. Testing the recorded CDs in other CD players should help to isolate which of the two devices is at fault.

Q:

When I plug my iPod into our Mac, it will show on the “Devices” page that my iPod is filled with about 50% music (blue) and 50% “other” (which is orange). I have a 4GB third-generation iPod nano with only music on it—no videos, no podcasts, or photos. I cannot seem to get rid of this “other” that is filling up half the space on my iPod and isn’t even there. I would prefer not to restore it to its factory settings because I’d rather not have to go through our whole library putting all my songs back on. What is this “other” and how do I get rid of something that isn’t on my iPod in the first place?

- Lara

A:

The “Other” category actually does include content stored on your iPod nano, but it represents information that iTunes itself cannot identify.

Basically, when iTunes copies media onto your iPod, it lists that media in a database on the iPod and uses that database to identify what is stored on the iPod. Anything not specifically listed in that database is considered “Other” since iTunes cannot identify it as a specific type of content. While it is normal to have some small amount of “Other” space taken up by some of the iPod’s internal operating files and the artwork that is stored for your music tracks, this should normally represent a very small percentage of your iPod’s total capacity.

In this case, the most likely scenario is that iTunes did in fact copy some music to your iPod nano at some point but was not able to successfully update the iPod’s database index of that content. Since the iPod’s database gets updated after iTunes has finished copying files, this can easily happen if iTunes crashes in the middle of a sync or if you disconnect your iPod before iTunes has finished syncing. In this case, since iTunes doesn’t have any record of what is actually on the iPod, it will potentially re-copy tracks that are already there, taking up extra unnecessary space. The original “orphaned” tracks remain on the iPod, taking up space but otherwise invisible to iTunes or the iPod itself.

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to recover from this without doing a complete Restore of your iPod and reloading everything from scratch. The problem is that iTunes places all of the music on your iPod in the same folder structure and doesn’t organize the files in any way that is meaningful to a human. As a result, there is no easy way to identify which files are actually listed in the iPod database as “Music” and which files are “orphaned” in the “Other” category.

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Ask iLounge Archives:

2-3-12: Deleting pictures from Photo Stream, Transferring Apps to a new iTunes library, Apple Universal Dock and iPhone 4S, Getting Track Names after CD Import, Video Playlists on the iPad

11-25-11: Removing music after activating iTunes Match, Smart Playlists and iTunes Match, Backing up data from an iPhone, Syncing MP3s to an iPod nano, Migrating Playlists to a new Computer

11-11-11: Configure Apple IDs on family iOS devices, Recovering lost audiobooks, Unable to disable passcode lock on iOS devices, Buying an iPod for audio-only use, Preventing deleted tracks from coming back from an iOS device

11-4-11: iPhone 4S storage capacity doesn't match, Transferring HD video from iPhone 4S to a computer, Recovering photos from iPod touch, Notification Center and iMessage in iOS 5

10-21-11: Using iCloud's Find My iPhone on older devices, Batch deleting photos in Camera Roll, Using iTunes Gift Cards internationally, Audiobooks and iCloud, Merging contacts from two devices into iCloud

See the rest of the Archives...

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Comments

1

My iPad says I need adobe reader to open my bank info.  Can this be done and if so what os do I use.    Thank you.

Posted by Carol on June 9, 2010 at 2:24 PM (PDT)

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