considering an ipod if...

[cfleck]

so i want an ipod. but i have needs man!

i buy music with itms. i like it. i don't particularly like the 3 computer limit, as i have 2 at home 1 at work, and use one at school too. what i would love to be able to do is put them on my ipod, take the ipod to work, school, whatever, and play them directly off the ipod. is this possible?

second, i see software floating about to take songs off the ipod and put them on your mac. last night i was at the apple store and i could to that by default. i just opened up the ipod and dragged the appropriate folder onto the desktop. it worked fine. am i missing something here?

another thing, is there a line out on the ipod for things like stereos and such or would i just use the headphone jack? i'm not an audiophile but i do like my songs dangit!

i think that does it. if anyone can answer these questions i'd greatly appreciate it.

[Dlatu1983]

I'm pretty sure that if you mount the iPod as a firewire hard drive, you can browse it in iTunes, and play the songs straight from the iPod. If you can't do it natively, there are plenty of apps that let you do just this. Try ipodhacks.com, iPodlounge.com

[mr. k]

And in the dock there is a full blown line out, otherwise there is just a headphone jack.

[Ifrit]

last night i was at the apple store and i could to that by default. i just opened up the ipod and dragged the appropriate folder onto the desktop. it worked fine. am i missing something here?

No you can't, you can only drag songs which are stored on a hard disk from the play list, or music library in itunes to the desktop (or another folder). You made me curious and I tried it, but dragging songs (in itunes) which are stored on the ipod, to the desktop doesn't do anything.

i buy music with itms. i like it. i don't particularly like the 3 computer limit, as i have 2 at home 1 at work, and use one at school too. what i would love to be able to do is put them on my ipod, take the ipod to work, school, whatever, and play them directly off the ipod. is this possible?

Make absolutly sure that you disable autosync for the ipod in itunes. Otherwise your ipod playlist could be deleted and overwritten by the playlist of your main comp (horrible if there are already songs on the ipod and the music library on the computer consists of 'nothing') or the music library of another computer.
The sync setting is stored on your ipod so you have to set it to "manually manage playlist and songs" once. After that you don't have to care about it. If you manually manage your songs you can also delete your original song files off the HD.

second, i see software floating about to take songs off the ipod and put them on your mac.

There is a itunes script (on versiontracker) which lets you take songs of the ipod within itunes, so you don't have to rely on a 3rd party app.
After installing it in the itunes script folder, a new menu apears. Select various songs, klick on the new "script menu" and choose "ipod tracks > Desktop". Its really simple.

[voice-]

About the iPod, there are "invisible" folders that the iPod software uses which is needed to play the music on the go. This is where iTunes put the music, and the hacks let you see these folders (and all have weird ways of showing the folders to you).

The iPod also has a FireWire harddisk function, allowing you to use the remaining space as any external harddisk. Doing this you can drag any files, including mp3/acc files, to the harddisk of any Mac, however, without a nearby computer you can't get to that music (play it on the iPod).

When you dragged it fine by default at the Apple Store, that was the harddisk function. To use both this any be able to play the music on the bus, you'll have to have duplicate files, one for iTunes and one for the Macs. The hacks let you use just one.

Now, for what's probably the easiest question, will you be able to play the music straight off the iPod without copying anything? Yes. When you've added music to the iPod via iTunes (the way it was made to be used), and plug the iPod into another Mac, iTunes on that Mac will let you play, but not copy, all the music on your iPod.

[Cat]

Can't you access those hidden folders via the terminal? The iPod when mounted, should show up in Volumes ... and with a simple ls -al you can see what's on it and navigate to the hidden folders and move things around. Or not? I don't have one, but before trying haxies 'n scripts, I'd try my trusty old terminal ...

[spitty27]

or just type in this in the finder:

hit [command] + [g]

Volumes/[name of iPod]/.Music

i am PRETTY sure thats how..correct me if i'm wrong, but tell me if im right as well!

[Randman]

Some simple shareware programs available that allow you to copy from the iPod back to the hard drive.
As mentioned, you can play the iPod off any number of Macs, but not copy. But you can always deactivate the one computer you use the least and you're fine, especially if you use the manual sync because you won't need copies of each song on each hard drive, using the iPod for that and saving HD space.
And aside from the lineout, there are other options such as the range of FM transmitters and portable speakers (getting better and chaper) such as the Creative TravelSound.