
Little known iTunes 10 benefit - Setsuna
http://www.9to5mac.com/24861/little-known-itunes-10-benefit
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SandB0x
Gee, now I feel like an idiot for buying a portable media player that just
mounts as a USB drive.

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jrockway
Don't worry, you still can't copy music from a device back into iTunes. I
mean, obviously the bits representing the music flow from the iDevice into the
computer, but the computer doesn't belong to you anymore, so you don't get
access to them. Silly user.

USB devices fail in that they rely on the user to make his own decisions about
whether or not to copy his friend's music collection. Apple devices let some
music execs representing bands I've never heard of make them for you instead.

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jsz0
USB mass storage players also fail nicely at being usable for most normal
people. Plug it in, get an Explorer window, now what? Open another Explorer
window -- reposition windows so you can see both. Navigate to your music
collection. Find the first thing you want to copy -- hopefully your music
folder is well organized by filename. Copy (don't move!) files. Make sure
there are no incompatible filenames. FAT32 isn't very forgiving about this.
When you're done make sure you safely unmount the volume by right clicking on
the green arrow in your system tray (the thing by the clock). If you have
multiple green arrows just try right clicking on them all until you find the
right one. Now enjoy your music and start preparing to repeat the process
tomorrow when you want to add a song.

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elblanco
I guess you've explained why usb thumb drives have failed to take the market.

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htsh
Is it just me, or did this used to work before? I thought you could always
play the music off someone else's iPod without being able to copy it.

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kgermino
It worked before, the only change is that now you don't have to set the iPod
to Manual Sync. It's not a huge deal but it is much more convenient because
after enabling manual sync on one computer the iPod would default to manual
sync on all computers and you would have to individually reset it to sync
music, movies, tv shows, podcasts, and pictures. It can get to be a pain,
especially if it's somthing your doing every day.

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statictype
I'm surprised that people who wanted this feature haven't already enabled
manual-sync. Is there really some benefit in having it automatically sync your
device to be worth the pain of not being able to plug it in somewhere else?

I went a step further and edited the iTunes DB file's device ids so that they
are the same across all 3 of my systems. So my iPhone now recognizes each as
the same system allowing me to sync my music with one of my laptops and my
videos with my desktop.

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mitjak
The downsides which are quite irritating depending on your listening habits
are:

1\. Having to manually manage all songs, which gets tiring if you constantly
add new music to the library

2\. None of the listening history and ratings are synced over when connecting
a manually managed device. This ties in with #1: when listening to a bunch of
new albums, it's helpful to preserve the ratings to make knowing what albums
and tracks to trash easier later on.

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swombat
That's a pretty big feature change... is that a mistake or did they somehow
slip that past the record labels?

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Setsuna
>"slip that past the record labels"

What does this feature has to do with that?

/curious

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eli
There's no technical reason to prevent people from getting music back off
their devices. So the assumption is it was part of the DRM requirements that
Steve Jobs claims the record labels forced him to accept.

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mitjak
Note: most bizarrely, it doesn't let you enable shuffling when listening to
music this way. Pink Floyd and Sgt. Pepper are delighted and partying but what
about all the 80s one-hit wanders?

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aphistic
Wow, I guess they listened and I need to eat my hat... Or something.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1653584>

This is good news!

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KingOfB
Really? The feature's been in iTunes 9, and well, I'm a mac guy but #1 on HN?

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mitjak
No, it hasn't.

