2010 iPod + iPhone Buyers' Guide

Article

Ask iLounge 9-12-08

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By Jesse David Hollington

Contributing Editor
Published: Friday, September 12, 2008
Category: Ask iLounge

Ask iLounge offers readers the opportunity to get answers to their iPod-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.

The most asked question at iLounge.com:

How do I copy music from my iPod onto my computer?

Click here for the answer.

The second most asked question at iLounge.com:

How do I put DVDs on my iPod?


For converting DVDs, web video, TV shows and home movies to your iPod, iPhone or Apple TV, we have a three-part series outlining the best formats, settings, and various tools to use for converting all types of video content for use on these devices.

The Complete Guide to iPod, Apple TV and iPhone Video Formats

The Complete Guide to iPod, iPhone and Apple TV Video Conversion (Mac)

The Complete Guide to iPod, iPhone and Apple TV Video Conversion (Windows)

Top five questions most recently asked by iLounge readers:

Q: What are the best speakers to use with my iPod? (15, 76-79, and 90-92)

Q: What are the best headphones to use with my iPod? (10, 72-75, and 90-92)

Q: I really want to get a nice case for my iPod. Do you have any suggestions? (36-37, 54-67, and 90-92)

Q: How can I connect my iPod to my car stereo? (14, 32-35, 68-71, and 90-92)

Q: Are there any batteries that I can use to extend my iPod's battery life? (82-83 and 90-92)

A: Answers to these and many other questions can be found in two places. Our Free iPod Book 3.3 provides a complete report card to all of the iPod accessories we've reviewed as of summer 2007, as well as over 125 iTunes and iPod tips & tricks. Further, our new 2008 iPod & iPhone Buyers' Guide has accessory tutorials at the page numbers listed in parentheses above. These and other publications in our Library are free downloads, developed by the editors of iLounge!

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

Q:

I have a bunch of applications on my iPhone 3G. My iPhone backup folder on my computer is now 3.4 GB. It has 8 files ranging from about 350 to 700 megs created over the last month since I got the phone. Is there anyway to reduce this file size or can the older files be deleted? I use a Macbook Air with the SSD, which has a rather small hard drive.

- Joe

A:

In this case it would appear that you have additional backups for your iPhone that iTunes is still keeping around. As of iTunes 7.7, an additional backup of your iPhone is retained each time you do a full restore or update the firmware on your iPhone. With four firmware versions released since the original iPhone 3G release, this means that you likely have at least four backups lying around that you may no longer require.

You can see the list of backups that iTunes is storing by selecting the Devices tab in your iTunes 8 preferences (this tab called Syncing in iTunes 7.x):

The date and time each backup was taken is shown, and the backup with the same name as your device is the most current one. Other backups will have the date and time that they were saved appended to the end of the device name.

If your iPhone has been working fine and these backups are more than a couple of days old, you most likely do not require them. You can remove them simply by highlighting the backup in question and clicking the “Delete Backup” button (iTunes 8) or “Remove Backup” button (iTunes 7). The backup folder and files for any backups you remove will be deleted from your computer as soon as you hit the OK button.

You should also consider upgrading to the latest iPhone v2.1 OS, as this now backs up only data from your iPhone, and does not store redundant copies of the applications themselves. This should resulting in significantly smaller backups—in our testing our largest backups shrunk from 565 MB down to 32 MB after applying the iPhone v2.1 firmware, and ran significantly faster as well. Be sure to check out our Instant Expert: Secrets and Features of iPhone 2.1 for more information.

Q:

I’ve been using my iPod as a hard drive to take files to and from work and college. I’m done with the files and went to remove them from the iPod. The OS X Finder shows that they are no longer there, but the free space didn’t change. I tested to see if it works properly in iTunes when I delete a song, and it works fine.

- Sam

A:

The most likely issue here is simply that you have not yet emptied the Trash. When storing files on your iPod, it literally works just like any other portable hard drive, and will therefore have its own trash folder. As with your normal System drive in OS X, files continue to consume disk space until they are actually emptied from the trash.

Ensure your iPod is connected to your computer and showing in your Finder window or on your Desktop, and choose Empty Trash from the Finder menu. The files on your iPod’s file system trash should be removed and the disk space should again be available for use.

Q:

My 5G 30 GB iPod doesn’t seem to recognize multiple tracks ripped from a CD when info is entered manually and therefore won’t play tracks sequentially for these albums. I imported some language lessons from a book CD into iTunes and the files all imported as M4A files. iTunes couldn’t find track information during import so I filled in the information manually for all 18 tracks: album, album artist, song title, track number and disc number. iTunes recognizes the track info but my iPod only shows “1 of 1” for every track when I play the album on the iPod and I can’t get the tracks to play sequentially. I would like to be able to set my iPod to play through the album sequentially and to be able to repeat the entire album.

- John

A:

This is not necessarily a question of the iPod not recognizing that the album has multiple tracks, since presumably all tracks do appear under the main album heading on the iPod.

Although you entered the information manually, it is possible that these tracks have been set to have the Skip When Shuffling feature enabled, and the iPod simply has Shuffle mode turned on. In this case, the simplest option would be to simply leave Shuffle OFF on the iPod when listening to this album, in which case the tracks will play in sequence. However, if you actually would like to listen to them in random order, you can go back to iTunes’ “Get Info” window and UNcheck the Skip when Shuffling option on the “Options” tab:

You can also change this for multiple tracks at once by selecting all of the tracks in question before choosing the Get Info option.

Once this option is disabled, ensure that the tracks are updated on the iPod as well. If you are using automatic sync, you will simply need to connect the iPod and allow it to synchronize with your iTunes library. If you are managing your iPod content manually, however, you will need to specifically re-transfer the affected tracks so that this setting is updated on the iPod as well.

Q:

Do you guys know of any apps or anyone that has made a T9 predictive text program for the iPhone, and if so, when can i get it?

- Kyle

A:

Since the iPhone has a full QWERTY on-screen keyboard, there is little demand for a T9 predictive text application. T9 predictive text was designed to handle typing on traditional cell phone keypads where a full keyboard was not available, and very few smart phone devices with full keyboards have any T9 predictive text options available, except in those cases where the phone also has a numeric keypad, such as on the Nokia E90 Communicator.

That having been said, it is unlikely that we will see a T9 program for the iPhone through traditional channels even if a developer had the desire to create one. The current iPhone SDK does not allow background applications or applications that enhance basic system functionality, so with these restrictions in place, such an application would be impossible to design. It might be more feasible for such an app to be developed unofficially and run on jailbroken iPhones, but at this point there does not appear to have been sufficient incentive to develop such an application.

Q:

My computer crashed and, fortunately, I had all my music files backed up. After rebooting my computer and reinstalling iTunes, I added all my music files back into it. My Ipod has retained all my ratings and playlists, but I am afraid if I click sync, they will be wiped forever. Is there a way to transfer these ratings and playlists back over to the computer side of things? I hope so….it took countless hours going through 45GB of music…

- Scott

A:

There are some iPod recovery applications available that can be used to transfer only information such as ratings and play counts from your iPod back to your computer, but you may find that you have more luck simply leaving your backups aside for now and using your iPod as the source to rebuild your iTunes library. Most of the third-party iPod applications work much better when you’re doing a full recovery with them, and not merely trying to transfer only song information.

The biggest problem with transferring only the information is matching it up to the existing tracks, whereas if you simply do the entire recovery from the iPod, then obviously the application will know which tracks belong to which rating and play count information.

See our iPod 201 article, Copying Content from your iPod to your Computer for more information on some of the options available. The chart on page 3 of this article summarizes which applications can be used to recover which information from your iPod.

Q:

I have an iMac and am importing my older CDs into iTunes. Unfortunately, I have to type in all the information for each CD individually. Is there a easier way to add this information and a picture of the album cover?

- Richard

A:

Normally when you insert a CD into your computer, iTunes should attempt to look up information for that CD using the Gracenote CD Database (CDDB). However, this does require an Internet connection, and that iTunes itself not be blocked from accessing CDDB by a firewall application on your computer. Further, since CDDB looks at the entire CD to get its lookup information, it does not usually work with home-burned CDs unless they are exact copies a commercial CD.

If you are connected to the Internet and this is not working for you, ensure that you have the option Automatically retrieve CD track names from Internet enabled in your iTunes preferences. In iTunes 8, this can be found on the General tab:

In iTunes 7 and prior, this is found on the Advanced, Importing tab.

You can also force iTunes to retrieve CD track names on an individual basis by selecting Get CD Track Names from the iTunes “Advanced” menu.

Note that CDDB only includes track information, and not actual album artwork. This can be obtained separately from the iTunes Store, however, at no cost, although you will need to set up an iTunes Store account to use this feature. This normally occurs automatically as long as you are signed in to the iTunes Store. This feature is automatically enabled in iTunes 8, and in iTunes 7 there is a setting for it which can be found on the “General” tab in your iTunes preferences.

To retrieve the artwork for an individual track manually, simply select Get Album Artwork from the iTunes “Advanced” menu. iTunes will prompt you to enter your iTunes Store user id and password if you are not already signed in, and will then attempt to look up the album artwork on the iTunes Store. Note that artwork can only be located for tracks that are sold on the iTunes Store, and in some cases matches may not be found simply due to differences in artist and album names.

If your album artwork cannot be found automatically by iTunes, you can still add the artwork manually, of course. Third-party applications such as iArt are available which scan other Internet sources for album artwork, and you can simply look up the album artwork yourself on sites like Amazon and add it to your tracks manually by dragging and dropping it into the “Artwork” panel which appears in the lower-left corner of your iTunes window.

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Ask iLounge Archives:

10-30-09: Authorization problems with iPod touch, Changing Grid View background in iTunes, iTunes library and Music Folder are different sizes, Older iPods and firmware updates, Reconciling two different iTunes libraries, Syncing multiple devices to one iTunes library

10-23-09: Using a laptop with an iTunes library on an external hard drive, Transferring YouTube videos to iPod, iPod touch accessibility settings, Disabling Shake to Shuffle on iPod nano, Purchased songs fail to download from iTunes Store, Charging and powering off iPhone

10-16-09: Moving iTunes to a new computer, Transferring contacts from Blackberry to an iPhone, Disabling iPhone Backups, Using AV cables for audio only, Problems syncing photos to iPod touch, Memorex iFlip and iPhone compatibility

10-9-09: iPhone OS and external keyboards, Adjusting ratings in a remote iTunes library, Excluding tracks from Genius Mixes, Moving iTunes library out of My Documents, Playlist folders on iPod touch, Refreshing random Smart Playlists

9-25-09: iTunes 9 and Shopping Cart, Restoring iTunes to an external hard drive, Using an HTTP Proxy over 3G, Problems transferring movies from iTunes to IPhone, iPod touch shuffle mode, Using an iPhone without a SIM card

See the rest of the Archives...

Next: Reviewing the Complete Evolution of Nike + iPod

Previous: Instant Expert: Secrets & Features of iPhone 2.1

Comments

1

So my 30g iPod video that i’ve had since the original video’s came out finally crashed. I cannot get pass the black screen and silver apple and it’s making a bunch of noises. It’s been having a few problems lately with it freezing up when i try to change the song, i tried resetting it hoping it would work, but now it won’t even go to the normal screen. My laptop, a MacBook, isn’t even recognizing it. I know it’s charging but that’s about as far as it goes. I’ve tried everything from system checks to restarts and I have no idea what else to do. Any kind of help would be greatly appreciated.

Posted by Cassandra on September 17, 2008 at 7:39 PM (PDT)

2

If I look through my song menu or have headphones in my ipod only plays whats on the ipod. If I plug it into the computer at work or my car stereo it has every song I’ve ever put on it which is a pain as I let a friend put a load of songs on and I can’t stand them. How do I completely erase everything so I can just add my most current playlist?

Posted by Amy on October 10, 2008 at 3:55 AM (PDT)

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