08/01/04
13Playing iPods via iTunes
My ‘working away from home’ kit consists of just 2 things. My worn but trusty G4 Powerbook and my iPod. The iPod means I can play music in the car, as well as backup work to it. I’ve been trying to find a way of playing the music on my iPod through the Powerbook, without losing the link to my G5 where the music library is kept. There are plenty of apps that enable you to copy the iPod library onto your computer (such as PodWorks) – but I just don’t have the HD space for such a task. It also seems a little overboard – why copy everything when I should be able to just playback from the iPod?
I tried an app called iPodRip, but was less than satisfied with its ramshackle, ugly-relative-of-iTunes interface, tendency to crash regularly, and inability to display tracks in the right order. A better solution, was a free little app called Music Publisher which shares your iPods music library, allowing it to be played through iTunes. This also works across networks.
Even better however is an undocumented feature that I found after prompting by Shaun Inman. When you plug in your iPod you’ll be asked whether you want to break the existing link with the other iTunes database, and sync with the powerbook’s. Select no, and click the iPod icon at the bottom of the iTunes window. Click ‘Enable for Firewire use’ if you haven’t already, and change updating to manual (deselecting all automatic options), and lo! The tracks and playlists from your iPod show up in iTunes!
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Shaun Inman said 1705 days ago:
Hey Jon, you should be able to access the music on your iPod through iTunes without a third party app.If you connect your iPod and open iTunes there should be an iPod icon in the bottom right corner of your expanded view. There's a preference in there to "Enable disk use." I think this is what you're looking for. It allows you to listen to music straight off the iPod while still using it as an external FirwWire harddrive.
I remember it took a couple tries to get the preference to stick but I now have it set on both my home and work computer and it works great.
Todd said 1705 days ago:
I second Shaun's suggestion. Just enable disk use and the iPod will show up in your Source column and you can just listen from there. I do this both at work and at home.Jon Hicks said 1705 days ago:
Sheesh. I've got it working now. I'd alreaday enabled the iPod for firewire disk use but no joy. Once I disabled automatic updating, and set it to manual, it showed up!I thought about removing this entry, but I might leave it up here as a lesson to stupidity.
Shaun Inman said 1705 days ago:
Or you revise it to be about the unrelated, possibly undocumented condition required to enable this feature. :DTodd said 1705 days ago:
Hey, it's cool Jon. You wouldn't believe how long it took me to figure it out. It seems pretty obvious now but I felt like saying "D'oh!" when I finally got it!Dris said 1705 days ago:
One question: does Music Publisher allow you to play music over other computers on a LAN (other than the one your iPod is connected to), just like regular shared libraries? If so, that would definitely make the program more useful.Brad Brooks said 1705 days ago:
I soooooo want an iPod. I didn't get one for Christmas or for my birthday (3 days ago, thanks for asking). I wanna join the club. It's just not fair.P.S. Hey, Jon, nifty preview gadget :-)
Jon Hicks said 1705 days ago:
Dris - I haven't tried that, but it should do, It uses the same protocols for sharing other libraries on other macs.Cris said 1701 days ago:
It'd be cool to be able to play my mp3 collection in my car. I'd have no idea how to do that. Actually, I had a friend who would play her CD's in her car (because she doesn't have a CD player), by taking one of the ear pieces and putting it in the casette part. It worked, but could someone do such a thing with their iPod?Jon Hicks said 1701 days ago:
Cris,I use a normal tape adaptor - like those you get for CD players. One end connects to your iPod, the other to a special cassette that goes into your car stereo. Theres also the Griffin iTrip which plays through a radio frequency, although the cassette adaptor has better sound quality.
Also, Alpine (the car stereo makers) have announced that they bringing out a special car stereo for iPods!
http://www.alpine-usa.com/html/D2_n_1_n_n.html
Jeremy said 1689 days ago:
I have the iTrip, and it works wonderfully. If you have a good head deck in your car, you will be totally happy with it. I have yet to have interference.Jon Hicks said 1688 days ago:
Thats good - I'd heard that the sound quality was poor. I like the idea of not having cables.Shame they're illegal in the UK!
Ken ho said 1677 days ago:
Is there a fast way to select or delselect all the tick boxes in itunes it's driving me mad