Topic: I'm Nano-iPodded

[Cobra951]

Never thought I'd see the day, but the price was unbeatable (free, follow link in quote below for details).  Getting iTunes installed was a bit of a bitch because of my laziness over getting SP2 in my version of XP, but I solved the issue with version 7.5 from oldapps.com.  It's from November of '97 [edit: er . . . yeah, right--make that '07].

I use iTunes.  While I don't like it overall, I do like the fact that I can set it up to only synchronize songs I put a check mark on.

Plus, if I hear a song I'd rather not have on my iPod for whatever reason, I 1-star it.  Then next time I synchronize with iTunes I sort by 1-stars, uncheck them, and then synchronize again.

You might be able to do this with other software by now but last time I checked, Winamp was basically standard drag-and-drop.

After an abortive attempt to set up a specific playlist for the iPod (would have taken days) I ended up using the rating system too.  I noticed there's a "My Top Rated" auto-playlist in iTunes, so what I did is rate everything I want on the iPod 5 stars.  Then I set the iPod to sync manually with selected playlists, and selected only "My Top Rated".  I don't have the luxury of excluding only crappy tracks, since the Nano is less than 8 GB and I have 30 GB of MP3s and M4As in my main music folder alone.  And since I'm only using iTunes to organize and select for the iPod, I don't care about the rating system per se.

I still have a few answers I'm trying to track down.  Is there a way to turn the iPod off manually?  Does registering the iPod mean letting iTunes phone home?  I've purposely not told the firewall to allow it.  I don't know why the program is so insistent on this registration.  I have to go through that screen every time I connect it to the USB port.  I'm afraid to tell it to go ahead and register, and then find myself in an infinite loop or other terminal error.  I'm also afraid of the possibility of iTunes telling me that I have to update it once it contacts the mother ship.  Minor issue, though.  I'll keep telling it to register later for now.

[Ghandi]

I think that you hold down the play button to shut it off (if this is what you were referring to). And I don't have iTunes installed at the moment, but I never registered when I did. Obviously you have to deal with that message every time, but I usually try to avoid registrations whenever possible.

[Xessive]

In my experience with my sister's Nano I believe there's no "off" switch, unless the battery runs out. It just has two states: sleep mode and awake (when you're using it).

I did figure out how to manually reset it though, in case it crashes or something, just hold the Play and Menu buttons simultaneously for a few secs.

Don't know much about the registration but I figure it's probably like the PS3 and PSP registration, it just lists what devices are registered to your account. Kinda like a record for them to see which devices of their's you own. I don't think it's critical to your iPod experience or anything.

[Cobra951]

I think I just saw a "never register" button for the 1st time, but I skipped out in a hurry, so I missed it.  Next time.

I synched up some photos too.  Fun little device.  I think I have iTunes set up as best as it can be now.  No more store stuff, and no attempts to auto-download anything.  It leaves my music where it is, and I was able to point it away from the very full system drive for its AAC conversions of WMA files.  It's not a bad program.  It just takes a while to learn to navigate.

The wheel thing on the iPod takes a while to get used to as well.  I always try to click on the arrow buttons instead of sliding around with my thumb.  I'll get there.  I'll take it along on my next long walk and see how it does.

Thanks for the replies.

[scottws]

If you block iTunes Internet access, you can't download the album art for the songs.

[Cobra951]

Yeah, I know.  That would be nice, but I'm paranoid about exposing all my music to them (in addition to the other mentioned worries).  One "album" that magically got a cover image was the Aquaria soundtrack.  I think the image must be embedded in the MP3s themselves, because I don't see it anywhere in the folder.

[ren]

That's correct. iTunes doesn't read folder.jpg, each song has to have embedded album art.

I hated iTunes at first but, like you've already found out, once you learn its nuances it becomes pretty intuitive.

[Xessive]

I embed album art and keep the folder.jpg file anyway; mainly for folder browsing purposes especially since my music is shared on my home network it just makes it nice and purty for my siblings. I do the same thing with my TV shows, then I discovered XBMC, which rendered my efforts almost entirely needless.

I've noticed that if you have ever opened a MP3 with WMP it automatically creates a really lo-res, hidden folder.jpg. It got really infuriating because it overwrites any folder.jpg that already exists in the folder. If it were up to me WMP would not exist on my system, or it would just be completely benign and unintrusive like Media Player Classic.

The only thing I use iTunes for is editing ID3 tags, adding album art, and putting stuff on my sister's iPod. Winamp can do all of that now, I'm just more comfortable with iTunes for it, especially with the quick and mass ID3 editing. Winamp is still my primary player though, with all the extensibility it's a heck of a player.

If there's one option that iTunes still lacks it's a recursive media library. For exmaple, in Winamp I have it set so it automatically scans my folders for changes, so when I add a file it gets automatically appended to my library. I haven't been able to do with iTunes yet, I still have to manually add stuff to its library if I want it to list it at all.

[WindAndConfusion]

I hear Apple is using the same SoaC CPU on the iPod Nano that they use on the iPhone 3G, which means your iPod Nano is about as powerful as any desktop computer you could have bought in 1998, but it uses 100-1000 times less power and cost 10-30 times less money to buy.

This doesn't really have anything to do with the conversation, I just think it's cool.

[Xessive]

I hear Apple is using the same SoaC CPU on the iPod Nano that they use on the iPhone 3G, which means your iPod Nano is about as powerful as any desktop computer you could have bought in 1998, but it uses 100-1000 times less power and cost 10-30 times less money to buy.

This doesn't really have anything to do with the conversation, I just think it's cool.

That is quite cool.

[gpw11]

Well isn't this interesting.  I just bought my second Ipod (nano).  I bought an 80GB classic about a year and a half ago and I still use that as a hard drive for my car among other things but I got a free nike+ system through a friend who's a nike rep and Classic isn't supported.  It also kind of sucked for running.  The nano is about 1000x better in that regard. 

Sadly, I just had to upgrade to a smartphone for work and school and I could have cut out the Nano purchase by getting the iPhone3GS rather than the Samsung Omnia.  I suppose the Iphone would have been a better phone as well (windows mobile kind of blows), but it doesn't support office documents, it's email isn't great and windows mobile is miles ahead as far as productivity software is concerned...it's just not all that touch friendly without a gui shell.  Eh, what can you do?

But yeah, to turn it off you hold down the play button, and check online to see how to soft reset should it freeze.  iTunes is still something I find kind of awkward but it's better than when I first started. I've also registered both iPods without a problem. And if you're walking, running a lot, look into Nike+.  I've been enjoying it quite a bit...but I'm kind of a stat whore.

[scottws]

One thing I really hate about iTunes:

I run v7.5.0.20.  This is the last version supported by QtFairUse, which is a program that captures unencrypted AAC streams from encrypted iTunes files in memory and then re-saves them as unencrypted files.

I do occassionally purchase music on iTunes, and Jennie always does.  I wanted to have unencrypted files in case we ever moved away from iPods or iTunes, plus I couldn't play the files on my Linux laptop.  So QtFairUse did the trick until v7.5.0.20 after which they got a cease-and-desist from Apple.

The thing that really bothers me is that even though I set it to never check for updates, every time a new version is released it asks if I want to upgrade.  The worst part is that it asks any user on the PC.  In the past, Jennie said yes to the update and it updated iTunes even though she is not an administrator or power user on the PC.  That drives me nuts.

It seems like there are a lot of unencrypted files on iTunes now though.  The last three songs I bought arrived unencrypted.

[Cobra951]

I had iTunes blocked at the firewall, but I never intended to buy anything from their store.  Now it's all moot.  The iPod is only good as a 7.4 GB thumbdrive, and the iTunes install went bye bye with my hard-drive crash.

During my search for possible cheap solutions to the dead-out-of-the-box battery (there are none) I found a couple of interesting pages.

The Amazing $350 Disposable iPod

How to prolong lithium-based batteries

I found one very interesting line in that last one:

"To prevent failure, never store the battery fully discharged."

Oh, you mean as in a never-used 2-year-old iPod?  I.e., never buy a 2G iPod now, especially if it's still factory-sealed.

[ren]

It seems like there are a lot of unencrypted files on iTunes now though.  The last three songs I bought arrived unencrypted.

iTunes is now entirely DRM-free and 256kbps AAC.

I pretty much buy all my albums through iTunes for a couple of reasons.
-I probably buy 5-10 cd's a month and that creates so much trash. Each cd comes wrapped in plastic which is a huge waste.
-I rip cd's and then never touch them again. A lot of the albums I buy come with digital booklets which I actually far prefer to the physical cd booklet. It makes it easy to make wallpapers out of the artwork in the books.
-Albums are always cheaper on iTunes and there's no tax

[Cobra951]

At least the DRM is out of the picture.  But I would not buy lossy encodes of CD audio.  If they went on to use sources of a much higher quality, it might be something to ponder.

[ren]

I don't really mind paying for lossy audio. At first I was against in principle but I eventually came to the conclusion that I really don't care and the advantages of downloading and smaller file sizes far outweigh physical copies or lossless audio.

I can only tell the difference between 256kbps AAC and a cd if I really, really try to look for imperfections. And even then I only notice if I listen back to back. Lossy sounds good enough to me and this is listening with a fairly high-quality headphone/dac-amp combination too. 

Also, I need to have all my albums on my computer or I'd never listen to them. I've been moving houses once every few months for the last couple of years and will continue to do so for the next couple of years. 1000 albums in FLAC would be over 400gigs which is much larger than the hard drive capacity of my laptop.

The only other hesitation I had was data corruption. That's pretty easy to take care of now that DRM is gone and you can copy to as many computers as you want. So I have one copy on my laptop, another on my iPod, another on an external hard drive back-up and then every few months when I go to my parent's house I copy it to the family computer. The chances of all of those copies getting corrupted is far lower than the house with all of my cd's in it burning down.

but really, it was the environmental reason which put me over the edge but I imagine that nobody here cares about that. For me, slightly lower quality audio is worth not generating lots of trash.

[gpw11]

I had iTunes blocked at the firewall, but I never intended to buy anything from their store.  Now it's all moot.  The iPod is only good as a 7.4 GB thumbdrive, and the iTunes install went bye bye with my hard-drive crash.

During my search for possible cheap solutions to the dead-out-of-the-box battery (there are none) I found a couple of interesting pages.

The Amazing $350 Disposable iPod

How to prolong lithium-based batteries

I found one very interesting line in that last one:

"To prevent failure, never store the battery fully discharged."

Oh, you mean as in a never-used 2-year-old iPod?  I.e., never buy a 2G iPod now, especially if it's still factory-sealed.

Wait, what happened?  Your Nano is dead already?  AND your hard drive crashed?

[Cobra951]

Wait, what happened?  Your Nano is dead already?  AND your hard drive crashed?

Heh.  Yeah.  I had a wonderful night, and following day.  Short story: the iPod was basically dead out of the box.  The battery never held a charge, at all.  As soon as I unplug it, the display fades out in scan-line fashion, and no amount of button presses brings it to life.  The whole time I messed with it, it was hooked up through USB, so it had power.  Never occurred to me that it was possible for the *welded-in* battery to be useless right out of the factory-sealed box.

My PC's system drive became unbootable, perhaps as a result of an accidental sudden power down when something landed on a powerstrip's off switch.  But Windows did decide it needed to do a consistency check the previous time I booted, and I never saw the "everything's fine" text after that check.  It seemed to go right into Windows while it was still checking the file system.  So it's possible that it wasn't ever going to boot again anyway, regardless of how safely I powered down.

All of this unhappiness came to light within a few minutes the other night.  I was fairly homicidal for a while.

[Quemaqua]

This thread fills me with so much hate.

[Cobra951]

I don't really mind paying for lossy audio. At first I was against in principle but I eventually came to the conclusion that I really don't care and the advantages of downloading and smaller file sizes far outweigh physical copies or lossless audio.

I can only tell the difference between 256kbps AAC and a cd if I really, really try to look for imperfections. And even then I only notice if I listen back to back. Lossy sounds good enough to me and this is listening with a fairly high-quality headphone/dac-amp combination too. 

Also, I need to have all my albums on my computer or I'd never listen to them. I've been moving houses once every few months for the last couple of years and will continue to do so for the next couple of years. 1000 albums in FLAC would be over 400gigs which is much larger than the hard drive capacity of my laptop.

The only other hesitation I had was data corruption. That's pretty easy to take care of now that DRM is gone and you can copy to as many computers as you want. So I have one copy on my laptop, another on my iPod, another on an external hard drive back-up and then every few months when I go to my parent's house I copy it to the family computer. The chances of all of those copies getting corrupted is far lower than the house with all of my cd's in it burning down.

but really, it was the environmental reason which put me over the edge but I imagine that nobody here cares about that. For me, slightly lower quality audio is worth not generating lots of trash.

I missed this.

I know what you mean, and I find myself listening to MP3s 90% of the time.  I like them for free stuff and for the convenience of having everything I would ever want to listen to in a single folder.  But I can't bring myself to accept them (or other lossy formats) as the source of purchases.  I've warmed up to FLAC a great deal lately, and I have several albums now encoded that way.  It does take up a lot more space, but hard drives are getting so big that soon it won't be an issue.  (Hell, I can see a time not too far off when keeping music in uncompressed CDA form won't be an issue.)

I'm all for constant backups.  I keep my music in 2 places always.  When I add anything to my main music folder, I also add it to the same folder's backup on another drive.  Both are external.  I do the same with pictures and important documents, and that philosophy just paid off for me the other day.

[WindAndConfusion]

Hey Cobra - according to this website, all models of iPod are still eligible for online battery replacement for $59. If it's a first-gen Nano (which is what I gather*), you can get it repaired or replaced for $79. Oh, and in the fine print, there's a $7 shipping fee.

That said, I'm not sure if it's worth it to you. Compared to some of the well-designed third-party MP3 players out there, the only legitimate attraction of the iPod is that it works with iTunes and various iPod accessories. Clearly you're not a fan of iTunes and I doubt you're interested in the accessories either. (I guess the other reason to buy an iPod is to be fashionable, but then you're not a twelve-year-old girl, so presumably that logic isn't applicable.)

For the same $66 it would cost to get that one fixed, you can probably get a decent non-Apple player that would suit you better.

*Incidentally, the first-gen Nano obviously doesn't have the chip I mentioned earlier.

[scottws]

I think FLAC is the format of the future.  Hard drive size is growing quickly while the price is coming way down.  Lossy compression is only going to be needed for smaller portable players based on flash memory and streaming over networks.  FLAC has pretty widespread support and even some hardware players are capable of playing it.

I kind of wish TAK would take hold.  It's a superior format to FLAC in that it's much better at compression at similar compression speeds and almost as quick to decompress.  These features make it a very good candidate for both archival and playback whereas FLAC's only strength is in playback.  The problem is that developer keeps promising to release the source and then never does.  That and the fact that the encoder and decoder are Windows-only has lost him a lot of Hydrogenaudio.org fans.  As such, FLAC continues to win a lion's share of the support while TAKs once bright spark is beginning to fade.

[ren]

I've never heard of TAK before. What do you mean FLAC's strength is playback but TAK is good for playback and archival purposes? It's like FLAC but with smaller file sizes?

One thing Apple did when they changed from 128kbps DRM to 256kbps DRM-free which was kind of cool was to let users automatically upgrade all of their old tracks to the new standard. I hope they (and others) continue the free upgrade trend if FLAC, or ALAC for iTunes, becomes commonplace.

I read an article in the free Metro newspaper a few days ago about this other format which was called m4something. I don't remember the name but the idea was that instead of having just the one song, instruments would all have their own track so you could listen to only guitar or only drums or however the track is set up. It mentioned a few artists using it, mainly in the DJing world though. I assumed the article was garbage just because tech stuff in mainstream media is almost always garbage.

[scottws]

I've never heard of TAK before. What do you mean FLAC's strength is playback but TAK is good for playback and archival purposes? It's like FLAC but with smaller file sizes?

Basically before TAK, APE and FLAC were sort of the two major competing lossless formats.  APE had very good compression compared to FLAC, making it a better choice for storage where storage space is a concern, but it took longer to decode and this made it less ideal for adoption as a major lossless format for playback due to limited CPU power in portables.  Then TAK came along and approached APE's compression ratios whilst rivaling FLAC's encoding and decoding speed.

At least that is my understanding of it.

[Cobra951]

Hey Cobra - according to this website, all models of iPod are still eligible for online battery replacement for $59. If it's a first-gen Nano (which is what I gather*), you can get it repaired or replaced for $79. Oh, and in the fine print, there's a $7 shipping fee.

That said, I'm not sure if it's worth it to you. Compared to some of the well-designed third-party MP3 players out there, the only legitimate attraction of the iPod is that it works with iTunes and various iPod accessories. Clearly you're not a fan of iTunes and I doubt you're interested in the accessories either. (I guess the other reason to buy an iPod is to be fashionable, but then you're not a twelve-year-old girl, so presumably that logic isn't applicable.)

For the same $66 it would cost to get that one fixed, you can probably get a decent non-Apple player that would suit you better.

*Incidentally, the first-gen Nano obviously doesn't have the chip I mentioned earlier.

Yes, I had seen that.  I didn't think it was worth it, but Sandy wants to do it.  I'm checking 2 other iPods at her place now.  One's a regular 30GB model and then there's another 8GB 2G Nano.  The Nano was still sealed as well, so we'll see if the battery has the same issue.  The 30GB guy is extremely slow to respond after syncing with iTunes, and I hear HDD grinding.  Apple is batting 000 with me so far.

Edit: "iTunes has detected an iPod that appears to be corrupted . . ."  What wonderful hardware.

Edit 2:  Restoring the big iPod seems to have cured the ills.  That's what I get for trying to update its operating software.  Now it seems happy.  The red Nano works as well, battery and all, although it has this black stain in the middle of the screen that got bigger shortly after I got it out of its box.  I have a feeling it's liquid crystal stuff, and may end up all over.  It hasn't gotten bigger since, so we'll see.  At least 2 out of 3 are functional, so no need for torches and pitchforks yet.

[WindAndConfusion]

You mentioned that these are older iPods. Do you know how they were stored? LCDs, lithium batteries, and hard drives* are notoriously sensitive to thermal failures. If you let them get way too hot or way too cold, they'll have weird problems even after you restore them to a normal temperature.

*Actually, Google Labs did a study some time ago, and it turned out that the biggest environmental contributor to their hard drive failures (as determined by Bayesian analysis) was temperature variability.

[Cobra951]

That's good to know.  I'm glad I keep my system on continuously then.  I don't know how well these iPods were stored or if they were dropped sometime.  The 2Gs were produced between late '06 and late '07, so they've been around for a while.  I've only known Sandy for a few months.  The unqualified "iPod" with the 30GB hard drive is probably even older.  I know those are fragile.

[gpw11]

You mentioned that these are older iPods. Do you know how they were stored? LCDs, lithium batteries, and hard drives* are notoriously sensitive to thermal failures. If you let them get way too hot or way too cold, they'll have weird problems even after you restore them to a normal temperature.

*Actually, Google Labs did a study some time ago, and it turned out that the biggest environmental contributor to their hard drive failures (as determined by Bayesian analysis) was temperature variability.

I remember reading some time ago that some people try to extend the lifespan of their laptop batteries by removing them once fully charged and freezing them, only bringing them back out when they knew they needed them.  I take it this is not only retarded, but also not helpful in any way?

[scottws]

It sounds like the best way to store a Lithium Ion battery is at 40% charge at room temperature.

[Ghandi]

I remember reading some time ago that some people try to extend the lifespan of their laptop batteries by removing them once fully charged and freezing them, only bringing them back out when they knew they needed them.  I take it this is not only retarded, but also not helpful in any way?

I read somewhere that urinating on them greatly increased lifespan. NOT A GOOD IDEA.

[Cobra951]

It sounds like the best way to store a Lithium Ion battery is at 40% charge at room temperature.

This red Nano just worked well for about an hour of walking.  Plenty of battery left.  So I'm now guessing the black one is just a dud, rather than age being a fatal issue.  The stain on the red one's screen went away too, completely.  Can liquid crystal accumulate or polarize in one spot and then do what it's supposed to after some use? 

[WindAndConfusion]

I remember reading some time ago that some people try to extend the lifespan of their laptop batteries by removing them once fully charged and freezing them, only bringing them back out when they knew they needed them.  I take it this is not only retarded, but also not helpful in any way?

I'm almost positive that you should never, ever store a lithium-ion battery at full charge for long stretches of time. I don't know where Scott's 40% figure comes from, but it jives with what my physics and chemistry books taught me about batteries.

I don't think putting a lithium battery in the freezer will necessarily damage it, except if there's moisture or ice-wedging or something. (OTOH, I have heard of people burning their cars down by leaving a cell phone or MP3 player on the dashboard in the sun in the summer.)

Oh, and whether or not it works, that idea sounds totally retarded and impractical.

[scottws]

I think I got the 40% number from one of Cobra's links.  If you think about it, most devices and rechargable batteries you buy come without a full charge, but they aren't dead either.

[gpw11]

I always just kind of assumed that they shipped with a full charge and the batteries lose a charge slowly when not in use.

[Cobra951]

Yes, I think that's true.  What I have learned from my research after my snafu is that Lithium-ion batteries need some active circuitry to be safe and stable, and that it is possible for these smarts to be fooled into thinking the battery is dead, thus opening the circuit and truly making it dead.  It's possible to reset the smarts, but not for me.

[WindAndConfusion]

I'm glad we were able to have this thread without anyone being tempted to post this retarded scare story.

Until me, anyway.

[Ghandi]

So far, no serious injuries have been reported to the CPSC, but Tami Mooney of Portland believes it's only a matter of time. “That’s what I’ve been afraid of, is that that could have been a dead child because Apple didn’t care to fix it. I’m horrified to learn it’s still going on.”

OH GOD EXPLODING IPODS ARE GOING TO KILL OUR CHILDRENS

[Cobra951]

Going back once more to what I read on these batteries, the active circuitry regulates the current output.  Without it, they can dump a lot of current (amps) in a short time.  That could easily cause serious heat.  It stands to reason that a very small percentage of the batteries can get such a defect.

[WindAndConfusion]

It would be slightly more accurate to say that a very small percentage of rechargeable Li-Ion batteries were improperly designed, such that they had a risk of self-shorting. The vast majority of Li-Ion batteries should be incapable of setting themselves on fire under normal operating conditions.

What really annoyed me about that article were all the key details it so carefully omitted. It's like the author was going out of her way to paint it as though Apple, and ONLY Apple, doesn't care if they set your children on fire. Of course the risk of battery fires isn't unique to Apple: it applies to every company that uses Li-Ion batteries in their products, but then the article doesn't mention that. Many of the Li-Ion battery fires to date have been caused by counterfeit or grey-market batteries, and there are some easy things you can do to protect yourself from this possibility, but then the article doesn't mention that. Apple is required by law to notify the CPSC of any reported incident of one of their products catching fire, lest they find themselves facing enormous (multibillion) liability, and with the fifteen incidents reported so far (versus the 175 million iPods "in the wild"), the risk of any given iPod catching fire is orders of magnitude less likely than your chance of dying from a lightning strike, but then the article doesn't mention that. At one point in the past, Apple DID identify a risk of battery fires (with the first-gen Nanos), and they voluntarily issued a recall and press releases (and that MOST of the fifteen iPod fires were first-gen Nanos affected by the voluntary recall), but OF COURSE the article doesn't mention that, because it utterly destroys her stupid fucking argument.

I think my favorite part of the article was this, though.

Of all the people interviewed for Clancy’s report, including three consumer safety experts, all of them agree that the public should at least be aware of this potential problem, no matter how rare the cases might be.

So this stupid, stupid, STUPID fucking idiot actually tracked down three people who knew what the fuck they were talking about, interviewed them, and then the only mention she gives of them is some sorry-ass blurb about "consumers need to know." Probably because the only OTHER thing the three of them said to her is that she's a fucking idiot, and that she could make TV news smarter and better simply by not participating in it.

[Xessive]

I came across this little app and I thought you iTuners might find it useful; Clean up your iTunes library with Meta-iPod.