iPod and iTunes: The Missing Manual

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Even before you extract it from its box, the iPod makes a design statement. Its shrink-wrapped cardboard cube opens like a book, revealing elegantly packaged accessories and software nestled around the iPod itself.

The first part of this book will familiarize you with the hardware portion of this parcel. This particular chapter takes a look at what's inside the box for a full-size iPod or iPod Mini. If you've got your eye on an iPod Shuffle or have just popped one out of its bright green box and want to know what to do next, skip on over to Chapter 3 for a detailed discussion on Apple's flashy little music stick.

In addition to the nicely nestled iPod itself (Figure 1-1), the package's compartments hold all the other stuff that comes with various iPod models: earbud-style headphones and their foam covers, the connection cables for your computer, power adapter, dock, and software CD. Depending on which iPod you have and when you bought it, you may see some variations, like the belt clip that's included with the iPod Mini or the AV cable that comes with the iPod Photo.

But while HP provides a quick-start poster to help its iPodders get rolling, mostly what you get by way of instructions in the standard Apple box is a small square folder, including the short iPod User's Guide. Newer iPods do include some electronic documentation and short tutorials in Web page-and PDF-format (located on the iPod CD), but you have to print it out if you want to read it anywhere besides your computer screen. Good thing you have this book in your hands to fill in the gaps—and it's always ready to flip through without having to boot up your PC.

A few other bits of paper are included in the iPod's info folder. You'll probably blow right past the warranty information (basically, you're covered for one year whether you bought it from Apple or HP) and the software agreement (the usual legalese that makes most people's eyes glaze over like fresh Krispy Kreme dough-nuts). The software agreement includes a small section about making digital copies of music, whose sentiment is echoed right on the iPod's cellophane wrapping:

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In addition to the nicely nestled iPod itself (Figure 1-1), the package's compartments hold all the other stuff that comes with various iPod models: earbud-style headphones and their foam covers, the connection cables for your computer, power adapter, dock, and software CD. Depending on which iPod you have and when you bought it, you may see some variations, like the belt clip that's included with the iPod Mini or the AV cable that comes with the iPod Photo.

But while HP provides a quick-start poster to help its iPodders get rolling, mostly what you get by way of instructions in the standard Apple box is a small square folder, including the short iPod User's Guide. Newer iPods do include some electronic documentation and short tutorials in Web page-and PDF-format (located on the iPod CD), but you have to print it out if you want to read it anywhere besides your computer screen. Good thing you have this book in your hands to fill in the gaps—and it's always ready to flip through without having to boot up your PC.

A few other bits of paper are included in the iPod's info folder. You'll probably blow right past the warranty information (basically, you're covered for one year whether you bought it from Apple or HP) and the software agreement (the usual legalese that makes most people's eyes glaze over like fresh Krispy Kreme dough-nuts). The software agreement includes a small section about making digital copies of music, whose sentiment is echoed right on the iPod's cellophane wrapping: Don't steal music.

Figure 1-1: After the outer sleeve (top) is removed, the artfully designed packaging opens up to reveal the inner iPod. The 2004 iPods and the iPod Minis include both FireWire and USB 2.0 cables, and Hewlett-Packard's edition of the iPod comes with its own set-up poster and Windows-only instructions.
The iPod comes with all the hardware and software you need to get up and running, but the choice of music to put on it is up to you. Apple began to streamline the iPod box contents in 2005, so if your iPod didn't come with all the accessories shown here, you can find them for sale at

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Many a cloud of gadget euphoria dies instantly when the new owner realizes that the device must sit in a battery charger and juice up before any fun can happen.

Out of the box, the iPod may have enough juice to turn itself on and get you hooked on spinning the scroll wheel. But you'll still need to charge the iPod before you use it for the first time.

If your Mac or PC has powered FireWire or USB 2.0 jacks, you can charge up the iPod just by plugging it into your computer. (For FireWire, "powered" usually means the fatter 6-pin FireWire connector, not the little 4-pin connectors found on many Windows machines. For USB 2.0, you need a powered jack like those on the back of the computer, or on a powered USB hub—not, for example, the unpowered jack at the end of a keyboard.) The battery charges as long as the computer is on and not in Sleep mode.

It takes about four hours to fully charge your iPod. Note, however, that it gets about 80 percent charged after 2 hours (Minis only take about an hour to get the 80-percent power rush). If you just can't wait to unplug it and go racing out to show your friends, you can begin to use it after a couple hours. The iPod Photo, however, takes about five hours to fully charge. It hits the 80-percent powered mark after about three hours of charge time.

During the charging process, you may see either the "Do Not Disconnect" message (if the iPod is also sucking down music from your computer), the "OK to Disconnect" message (if it's done with that), or the main menu for a few minutes before the charging battery graphic takes over (if it's a 2003-or-later model). The iPod will also warn you not to disconnect it if you've set it up to work as an external hard drive, but we'll get to that business in Chapter 12.

Some iPods come with a cool accessory: the iPod dock. The dock, shown in Figure 1-4, is a plastic stand with a narrow 30-pin dock connection and stereo lineout jacks built into the back. To charge up the iPod, you can either plug in the flat FireWire or USB 2.0 cable right into the bottom of the player, or plug the cable into the narrow port for it on the back of the dock.

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The iPod comes with a set of white earbud-style headphones (Figure 1-6). These aren't just flimsy freebies tossed in the box, either. They're designed with the iPod's amplifier in mind.

Figure 1-6: You're supposed to wedge the iPod earbuds into your ear canals, preferably after covering each one with one of the included foam covers. (You even get two sets of these covers, so you and a loved one don't have to exchange earwax.) As with any type of headphone, excessively loud music can damage hearing, so use the volume controls sensibly.

With a frequency response of 20 to 20,000 Hertz, the iPod can cover a huge range of sounds—comparable to that of a respectable home stereo. In other words, it lets most people hear all the detailed sonic mayhem on a Pink Floyd album. To reproduce this range of frequencies, the iPod earbuds use 18mm drivers with neodymium transducer magnets. (No, you're not expected to know what that means— but it's fun to say at cocktail parties. See the box below.)

The driver is the moving element in any type of speaker system, from tiny headphones to subwoofers. When an amplifier supplies power, the driver vibrates and produces sound waves.

Neodymium–which, from your cramming for that high school test in the Periodic Table of the Elements, you may recognize as atomic number 60–is a rare-earth metal that's used in magnets, lasers, and purple glass. Its name is derived from the Greek neos didymos, which means "new twin" (an appropriate name for a substance used in a pair of earbuds).

Apple claims that its neodymium driver is five times as powerful as the aluminum or cobalt drivers in other earbuds, capable of delivering accurate sound with minimal distortion.

Sounds good so far.

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Some 2002 and 2003 iPod models included a delicious accessory: a futuristic-looking silver remote control (see Figure 1-7). Complete with a handy jacket clip, the remote replicates most of the main iPod controls including

,

, volume adjustment, and Hold.

Figure 1-7: The iPod remote control, which used to be included with the higher-priced models of each generation (and is optional for other 2003-and-later models like the Mini), has a clip on the back to attach to a lapel or pocket. It's still a popular accessory for the iPodder on the go and you can buy it from Apple and Apple-authorized stores.

With the remote within easy reach, you can pause a song without having to fumble around for the iPod. No longer must you miss out on the beginnings of all those conversations when someone walks up to you and says, "Hey, did you get an iPod?''

The remote does make for a longer earphone cord, though, making cable management more of an issue.

If your iPod model didn't come with a remote, and you're coming down with a serious case of Remote Envy, the remote control and a spare pair of earbuds are available for $39 from Apple's Web site, stores, and retail outlets.

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Apple began including a simple black iPod carrying case with the more expensive iPod models in 2002, and continued the tradition with the 2003 family and the iPod Photo. If you've opened your iPod to discover they're no longer supplying the carrying case, or you're feeling left out in general, you can buy it for $40 from the Apple Web site. The case is basically a slipcover with a belt clip on the back. It holds the iPod snugly and protects it from scratches and fingerprints (Figure 1-8). The iPod Mini's belt clip snaps onto the player. If you want to wear your music on your sleeve on days when you're going beltless (or when you're working out), $30 at Apple's Web site will get you a wide black armband instead.

Figure 1-8: Some people don't like Apple's case because it covers the iPod's screen and makes using the front-panel buttons impossible. When it's on, you must control the iPod from the wired remote instead of the iPod buttons. Chapter 15 describes many alternative cases and where to get them.

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The iPod's menus are as straightforward as its controls. You use the scroll wheel to go down the list of options you see on the screen. Then you press the Select button to pick what you want. Small arrows on the end of each menu item (like this: Settings >) indicate that another menu lurks behind it, so keep pressing Select until you get where you want to go. (If you realize that that is not where you want to go, press the Menu button to retrace your steps.)

The menus and screens described here refer to the ones used in iPod system software 3.0.2 for the 2004 iPods, 2.3 for the 2003 iPods, and 1.3 for the iPod Mini. Version 1.5 system software for 2001 and 2002 iPods is similar but lacks certain advancements like the Solitaire and Parachute games and the Notes feature. If you have an iPod that you haven't updated in a while, you can update your software by downloading the current version from Apple's Web site. Details on page 343.

The main screen (Figure 1-9) says iPod at the top and offers a choice of five areas to go to next: Music, Extras, Settings, Shuffle Songs, and Backlight (2004 iPods) or Playlists, Browse, Extras, Settings, and Backlight (for older versions of the iPod software). Here's more about what's under each menu item.

Figure 1-9: If you don't see this main menu at the moment, press the Menu button repeatedly until you do. From here, you can drill down into any iPod function. The main screen on the 2004 iPods starts with Music (left), while older iPods start their main menu options with Playlists (right).

The Music menu, which arrived with the 2004 iPods, is a big one-stop shopping center for all the iPod's song-related options and is also included in the current iPod software. The Playlists menu (see below) is now under Music, and the items that used to be under the Browse menu (Artists, Albums, Songs, Genres, and Composers) have all relocated to the new Music menu. Read on for more details about these submenus.

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Sleek and smart as the iPod may be, it can't do much by itself until it meets up with a computer. Once connected to a Mac or PC, however, the iPod is ready to accept whatever you want to give it—your whole music library, of course, but also everything from the complete recorded works of Tom Petty to your phone book, from news and calendar information to files too big to fit on a burned CD.

This chapter is dedicated to that concept of iPod as Satellite to Your Computer (and it concerns all iPods except the Shuffle, which has the next chapter all to itself). It explains FireWire and USB 2.0, and how to use these connections to get songs and files off the mother ship and onto the ultraportable, ready-to-go iPod.

Apart from boosting magazine sales, there's never been much value in sitting in front of the computer, waiting for large files to copy onto external drives and other add-ons. In the eternal search for faster data-transfer speeds, Apple developed a new high-speed cable called FireWire in the mid–1990s. It's easy to use, it's hot swappable (you don't have to turn off anything before plugging or unplugging the cable), and—unlike SCSI cables, which came before it—it doesn't force you to go through configuration acrobatics to get multiple devices to all work properly.

Dozens of other companies, including Windows PC makers, eventually picked up FireWire. Some gave it other names along the way: IEEE 1394 (its official moniker from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, an industry standards group) and i.LINK, used primarily by Sony. But whatever the name, it's still the same speedy connection underneath.

With its ability to move 400 megabits of data per second, FireWire was quickly adopted by a product that needs to get an enormous amount of information from point A to point B: the digital camcorder. Other hardware with a need for speed, like external CD burners and hard drives, followed the path to FireWire connectivity.

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Apart from boosting magazine sales, there's never been much value in sitting in front of the computer, waiting for large files to copy onto external drives and other add-ons. In the eternal search for faster data-transfer speeds, Apple developed a new high-speed cable called FireWire in the mid–1990s. It's easy to use, it's hot swappable (you don't have to turn off anything before plugging or unplugging the cable), and—unlike SCSI cables, which came before it—it doesn't force you to go through configuration acrobatics to get multiple devices to all work properly.

Dozens of other companies, including Windows PC makers, eventually picked up FireWire. Some gave it other names along the way: IEEE 1394 (its official moniker from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, an industry standards group) and i.LINK, used primarily by Sony. But whatever the name, it's still the same speedy connection underneath.

With its ability to move 400 megabits of data per second, FireWire was quickly adopted by a product that needs to get an enormous amount of information from point A to point B: the digital camcorder. Other hardware with a need for speed, like external CD burners and hard drives, followed the path to FireWire connectivity.

FireWire's speed makes possible one of the iPod's best tricks: slurping in an entire CD's worth of music from your computer in 10 seconds. It's one way the iPod gets its battery charge. That's great if you have a Macintosh, because every Macintosh made since about 1998 has a FireWire connector built right in (see Figure 2-1).

Figure 2-1: The FireWire cable (left) has a thicker plug compared to the USB 2.0 cable (right) that also comes in the box with newer iPods and Minis. Another way to tell the cables apart is to look at the gray symbols on each connector—FireWire has a Y-shaped icon and the USB 2.0 looks like a groovier version of Neptune's trident. If the USB 2.0 plug looks familiar, it's because it's the same type of connector as its pokier ancestor, USB 1.1.

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Most computer stores, both retail and online, sell FireWire/1394 expansion cards (Figure 2-3); they're available for both desktop and laptop computers. FireWire cards designed for desktop machines fit into one of the computer's spare PCI slots on the motherboard, making the new FireWire ports available on the back of the case along with all the other port connectors.

Figure 2-3: FireWire cards come in all shapes and sizes and can add two, three, or four FireWire ports to a computer. The cards snap into an empty PCI slot on the computer's motherboard. Adding a FireWire card will allow you to use FireWire-enabled devices like digital camcorders, CD burners, and iPods.

There are expansion cards for FireWire, USB 2.0, and even combo cards that let you add ports for FireWire and USB 2.0 if you really want to go whole-hog toward faster data-transfer speeds. A basic FireWire card generally sells for less than $60, a relatively small price to pay to give your computer the gift of FireWire.

FireWire cards for laptops, which are generally more expensive than the PCI cards, snap into the CardBus slot on the laptop. (CardBus is a ramped-up version of the PC cards used with laptops.) Most laptops manufactured after 1999 can handle CardBus cards, in either FireWire or USB 2.0 flavors.

Before you buy a FireWire card, make sure it's compatible with your operating system and hardware configuration. If you're pressed for time, you can go straight to proven, Apple-approved goods by buying a Belkin PCI expansion card and a PC-ready CardBus FireWire 400 card from the Apple Web site.

Your package will have instructions on how to install the FireWire card, but the general process is straightforward.

First, turn off the computer and unplug it. Depending on the design of your computer, you may need to unplug all of the cables and cords coming out of the back in order to get to get the outer case off. You may also need a screwdriver.

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These days, you don't have to use FireWire as the iPod-to-computer connection. If you own a 2003-or-later iPod model, another option awaits you: USB 2.0.

If you have a Windows PC, or a Mac with Mac OS X 10.3.4 or later, you can use a USB 2.0 cable for any 2003-or-later iPod, including the iPod Mini (which only comes with a USB cable now).

Make sure you connect the USB cable directly to a high-powered port on the PC or a powered USB hub. Low-or unpowered USB jacks, like those on the side of a keyboard, don't have enough mojo for your Mini.

Before USB 2.0 hit the streets, a FireWire connection was the fastest way to transfer big chunks of data onto a computer from devices like digital camcorders, external hard drives, and CD burners. FireWire, which transfers data at 400 megabits per second, whips the plastic off a USB 1.1 connection (about 12 megabits per second).

When USB 2.0 products began to crowd store shelves around 2002, FireWire was left in the dust, speed-wise. USB 2.0 (also known as Hi-Speed USB) can whisk data from device to device at 480 megabits per second. USB 2.0 is also backward compatible, so people with a box full of USB 1.1 mice, scanners, and other peripherals can still plug in and use their old devices in USB 2.0 ports, even if they don't get the 2.0 speed boost.

Those are megabits, not megabytes. Data transfer speeds are traditionally measured in megabits or kilobits per second; disk and file sizes are measured in megabytes (MB).

There are eight bits in a byte. To put USB and FireWire into more familiar terms, then, USB can transfer files at up to 1.5 MB per second. FireWire can move 50 MB of data per second, and USB 2.0 can shuttle to 60 MB per second.

(FireWire isn't standing still, of course; there's now FireWire 800, which, as you can probably guess, moves data at 800 megabits per second. To add to the confusion, the original FireWire standard is now sometimes called FireWire 400. FireWire 800 is available on high-end Macintosh computers and peripherals, but it has not made the leap to the iPod yet.)

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The CD that comes with the iPod contains all the software you need to get up and iPodding in no time (see Figure 2-5). (There's only one CD in the box of the latest iPod models. The iPod CD installer program is smart enough to figure out what kind of computer you're using and show you only the Mac or Windows installer on the disc.)

Early versions of the iPod CD included software for both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X. But beginning with the 2003 iPods, Apple expects you to use Mac OS X 10.1.5 or later. Recent versions of the iPod CD come with iTunes 4.7.1; if that's not the version you have, download the latest version of iTunes at www.apple.com/itunes.

To install the software, insert the iPod CD into the Mac. If necessary, install the iTunes jukebox software from the CD or download the latest version from Apple's Web site.

The iPod has an operating system of its own, too (see page 17), but you don't need to install it; it's already on your iPod. However, double-clicking the installer in the iPod Installer folder puts a copy of the iPod installer program on your Mac, so you'll have it handy if you ever need to reinstall the iPod's system software.

Along the way, you'll be asked for your iPod's serial number and your registration number.

When the software installer finishes, put the CD in a safe place. You'll need it if you ever need to reinstall your programs after a hard drive crash.

The first time you connect the iPod to the Mac, iTunes starts right up to greet it.

If you're a stalwart Mac OS 9 fan or still lingering in your Windows 98SE glory, there's still hope for using an iPod with these older operating systems, although you might have to make some software concessions and do some fiddling. See the box on page 60 for details.

If you want to use a new iPod in all its glory—with the iTunes Music Store, iSync for the Mac, and other goodies described in this book—it's best to do it with the operating system Apple recommends.

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For most people, the goal with any new electronics purchase is to get the new toy working right away so the fun can begin. For new iPod owners, getting to The Fun can be a very short wait. After unpacking the iPod and all its accessories, charging it up as described in Chapter 1, and installing the software, you're ready to dive in.

You may already have Apple's free iTunes program and plenty of songs stored in its music library. If so, the first synchronization between iPod and computer can be astoundingly simple. As soon as you connect the new iPod to the Mac or PC, iTunes opens automatically and begins copying your entire music library to the player (see Figure 2-7).

If you don't want iTunes to appear automatically every time the iPod is connected, you can turn off this option in the iPod Preferences dialog box (see Figure 2-8).

Figure 2-6: It's not quite as dramatic a moment as watching a butterfly emerge, but the transformation of a brand-new iPod into a Windows iPod is beautiful in its own right.
Top: The installer asks whether you want to "configure" the iPod–that is, reformat it with the Windows FAT32 disk-formatting scheme.
Bottom: Once the program installs iTunes for Windows on the PC, it offers to sniff around for existing music files, including any songs in the Windows Media Audio format. Although the iPod can't play WMA files, iTunes will convert them to the AAC format for use on the iPod–if you choose to let it.

If you don't have iTunes or any MP3 files on your hard drive already, you'll have to install iTunes and snag some music files from your music CDs (Chapter 5) or download some songs from the Web (Chapter 4). Once you have a library of music built up that you'd like to transfer to the iPod, just plug it in, let iTunes open, and watch the two machines talk music together.

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The beauty of the iTunes/iPod system is that whatever music you add to your Mac or PC gets added to the iPod automatically, effortlessly, quickly. You've always got your entire music collection with you. Just plugging in the iPod inspires iTunes to open up and begin syncing.

Figure 2-7: The Source list (left side) displays an icon for the iPod whenever it's connected and a handy Eject button right next to it, as well as your music library, list of playlists, songs from the iTunes Music Store, and Internet radio stations. The bottom of the window shows the amount of space left on the iPod, the number of songs, and the consecutive days the iPod can play music without repeating songs.

It's conceivable, however, that you won't always want complete and automatic syncing to take place whenever you connect the 'Pod. Maybe you use the iPod primarily as an external hard drive (Chapter 12), so you don't especially care to have iTunes jumping up like a West Highland terrier every time you plug in the iPod. Maybe you want to synchronize only some of your music, not all of it.

Fortunately, you're in complete control of the situation.

If you like, you can command your jukebox software to open only when you want it to, rather than every time the iPod is plugged in. Just open iTunes, plug in the iPod, and, in the Source list, click its icon.

Then click the iPod-shaped icon in the bottom right part of the iTunes window (identified in Figure 2-8). The iPod's Preferences box appears. Click the General tab in the box to turn off the "Open iTunes when this iPod is attached" checkbox. (Older versions of iTunes keep all these preferences in one box, so yours may look a little different if you haven't updated lately.)

The auto-sync option pretty much removes any thought process required to move music to the iPod. But if you'd rather take control of the process, or you just want to transfer

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The iPod was designed to be the destination of a one-way trip for your tunes: music slides down the cable to the iPod, but songs on the player never make the trip back to the Mac or PC.

This design was perfectly intentional on the part of its creators. As noted earlier, Apple's position appears on a sticker on every iPod: "Don't steal music." If the iPod let you copy music both ways, people might be tempted to turn the device into a pocket music-sharing service, capable of copying free copyrighted songs from computer to computer.

The truth is, though, that not everyone who wants to upload songs from the iPod to a computer is stealing music. You may have perfectly legitimate reasons for wanting to be able to do so.

For example, say your computer's hard drive self-destructs, vaporizing the 945 MP3 files that you've made from your paid-for CD collection. You legally own those copies. Shouldn't you have the right to retrieve them from your own iPod?

Most people would answer "yes." Some might even thump their fists on the table for emphasis.

And then they would clear their throats and ask, "Well, how can I do it—should I ever need to copy files off my iPod?"

Once again, the following methods are printed here not to encourage you to steal music, but instead to help you back up and manage the songs that you already own.

Turning the iPod into a FireWire hard drive (Chapter 12) lets you copy everyday computer files back and forth from your Mac or PC. But when it comes to your music files, you won't even be able to find them. The iPod and its music management programs use a special database for storing and organizing the music files—and it's invisible.

The name of the super-secret invisible iPod music folder is called iPod_Control. You can find it yourself with a little poking around on Windows and Mac OS X. If you don't fancy yourself an intrepid explorer of your computer's software secrets, there are several software utilities for both the Mac and the PC that can also make it visible. Here are a few of the easiest and most reliable ways to catch the music.

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Apple Computer! You've just sold 10 million iPods in less than 4 years and turned something as basic as a digital music jukebox into an object of geek obsession and a fashion statement. What do you do now?

Create an iPod offspring that weighs less than an ounce, could get mistaken for a stick of Wrigley's Spearmint gum, and totally shakes up the way you listen to your iTunes music. That's what.

This chapter takes a look at the world of the iPod Shuffle—Apple's newest, lightest, and least expensive member of Clan iPod.

Just by looking at Figure 3-1, it's pretty obvious that the iPod Shuffle is much different from the regular iPods and iPod Minis described previously. For starters, it's barely over three inches tall, there's no display screen, and the click wheel looks like it shrank in the dryer. And you don't even need FireWire to do the Shuffle—the minuscule music machine plugs right into your computer's USB port.

A regular iPod has a miniature hard drive to store 4 to 60 gigabytes of music and data, but the iPod Shuffle uses a small chip of flash memory to store its contents. This is the same type of memory in the ubiquitous USB flash drive (snapped on the end of a keychain or tucked in a shirt pocket) that has replaced floppy disks as a way to carry around files from computer to computer.

Unlike hard drives, which are moving, spinning things that can skip if bumped and break if dropped, flash memory can take a lickin' and keep on rockin' because there are no moving parts in there. Flash memory does have its limits, though, as it's pricier and currently capable of much smaller capacities than miniature hard drives.

Figure 3-1: Small but mighty, the iPod Shuffle stands ready to supply music to your ears. The gray ring gives you volume control along with the buttons you need to play, pause, or pop around your playlists.

Yet the iPod Shuffle has room enough on the inside to hold about 125 to 240 songs, depending on which one of the two models you buy—the 512-megabyte baby or the roomier version that affords you a full gigabyte for your tunes. And because there are no moving parts and no LCD screen to worry about smashing, you can use the iPod Shuffle for more high-impact audio adventures, like your aerobics workout at the gym, your morning run over rough terrain, or to loan your kids for an hour.

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Just by looking at Figure 3-1, it's pretty obvious that the iPod Shuffle is much different from the regular iPods and iPod Minis described previously. For starters, it's barely over three inches tall, there's no display screen, and the click wheel looks like it shrank in the dryer. And you don't even need FireWire to do the Shuffle—the minuscule music machine plugs right into your computer's USB port.

A regular iPod has a miniature hard drive to store 4 to 60 gigabytes of music and data, but the iPod Shuffle uses a small chip of flash memory to store its contents. This is the same type of memory in the ubiquitous USB flash drive (snapped on the end of a keychain or tucked in a shirt pocket) that has replaced floppy disks as a way to carry around files from computer to computer.

Unlike hard drives, which are moving, spinning things that can skip if bumped and break if dropped, flash memory can take a lickin' and keep on rockin' because there are no moving parts in there. Flash memory does have its limits, though, as it's pricier and currently capable of much smaller capacities than miniature hard drives.

Figure 3-1: Small but mighty, the iPod Shuffle stands ready to supply music to your ears. The gray ring gives you volume control along with the buttons you need to play, pause, or pop around your playlists.

Yet the iPod Shuffle has room enough on the inside to hold about 125 to 240 songs, depending on which one of the two models you buy—the 512-megabyte baby or the roomier version that affords you a full gigabyte for your tunes. And because there are no moving parts and no LCD screen to worry about smashing, you can use the iPod Shuffle for more high-impact audio adventures, like your aerobics workout at the gym, your morning run over rough terrain, or to loan your kids for an hour.

Even though it can't haul your entire collection around, the iPod Shuffle can still get you through a day of music. You can conveniently load up the Shuffle with songs from your existing (or future) iTunes library with the click of a button.

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Through a simple interface of colored lights, buttons, and a switch on the back, your iPod Shuffle responds to your commands and tells you what it's up to. The circular control ring on the front of the Shuffle (Figure 3-1) has the familiar

and

buttons on the left and right sides that let you go backward or forward through the songs stored on the player. At the top and bottom of the ring are the volume controls: a plus sign (+) for louder and a minus sign (−) for softer.

The all-important Play/Pause button is right in the center of the control ring. Push the button to play a song and push it again to pause the track. Tapping any of the controls on the front of the Shuffle causes the little green light within the case to flicker in acknowledgement that you're pushing its buttons.

Full-size iPods have a separate switch that temporarily deactivates all the buttons, keeping the iPod on or off and at the same volume even if the player's controls get bumped accidentally. There's no separate Hold switch on the Shuffle, but you can put it in Hold mode just the same by pressing the

button for three seconds. Turn off the Hold mode by pressing

again for another three seconds.

As shown in Figure 3-5, on the back of the iPod Shuffle is a wide plastic switch that can be adjusted to three positions.

Off. To turn off the iPod Shuffle and conserve your battery charge, slide the switch up so that none of the green color underneath is showing.
Play in Order.

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Moving music to the iPod Shuffle is just as easy as moving it onto a regular iPod (Chapter 2), and depending on your level of fussiness about what exactly goes onto your iPod Shuffle, the music transfer can be even easier.

Like all iPods before it, the Shuffle was designed to work with Apple's iTunes software. If you're unfamiliar with iTunes or need a refresher course in ripping songs into the digital tracks that iPods love, skip ahead to Chapter 5 to read all about it. Tracks you've purchased from Audible.com (Chapter 6) or the iTunes Music Store (Chapter 7) also work on the Shuffle.

The iPod Shuffle wasn't designed to be a complete repository for all your digital music. Because you can only store either 512 megabytes or 1 gigabyte of music at a time on the Shuffle, it's more like a short-range player that's there to provide you with a several-hours-of-life soundtrack between computer breaks.

But just as you can choose to let the iPod automatically mix up your songs or play them in the order you arranged them, you can also let the Shuffle pick a random sampling of tunes from your iTunes library—or you can manually transfer precisely the tracks you want to take with you.

You can't autosync your entire multi-gigabyte music library to your Shuffle, but you can Autofill your iStick with iTunes 4.7.1 (or later). Once you plug your player into the computer and iTunes recognizes it, a small panel appears at the bottom of the iTunes window (see Figure 3-6) and invites you to fill your iPod to capacity with the click of a button.

Figure 3-6: The Autofill box appears at the bottom of the iTunes window when you plug in an iPod Shuffle. With Autofill, you tell iTunes where to collect the music–from the whole library or just a certain playlist. You can also tell it to grab songs in random order instead of the way they appear in iTunes and to concentrate on your most highly rated tracks (page 119).

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When you've tired of the Shuffle's current contents, you can easily take off the old music and put on some new stuff.

If you're driving an automatic Shuffle, you can do this by clicking the Autofill button again with the "Replace all songs when Autofilling" checkbox turned on (Figure 3-7).

If you're taking the manual approach to Shuffledom, connect it and click the Shuffle's icon in the Source list to call up its contents in the main iTunes window. Click the song titles you want to remove and hit the Delete key.

Now you have room for fresh hot tunes.

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You know those cute little USB flash drives that fit in your pocket and let you haul around documents and files that are too fat to fit on a floppy? Your iPod Shuffle can do that too—and still bring along dozens of songs to boot. It's two widgets in one!

To set up the Shuffle for its part-time job as a USB drive, connect it to the computer and open its preferences box as described in Figure 3-13. Turn on the checkbox next to "Enable disk use." (You do the same thing to set up a regular iPod as an external hard drive, as explained in Chapter 12.)

Figure 3-13: You can make a number of adjustments to your Shuffle's behavior in the iPod preferences box. To get there, plug in your player, select it in the Source list, and then, in the bottom right corner of the iTunes window, click the iPod-shaped icon to call up this box.
Here, you can set the Shuffle to always show in iTunes, compress big tracks into small ones, and even turn the Shuffle into an everyday USB flash drive for storing files and folders.

On the Shuffle, you have to decide here how much space to allow for data files and how much space you want to preserve for music. Adjust the slider, as shown in Figure 3-14, to fit your needs and divide up the Shuffle's real estate between work and play. Click OK, and you're off to the rat races.

Figure 3-14: With the slider at the bottom of the iPod preferences box, you can decide which is more important to your iPod Shuffle–room for music or room for documents, files, and other stuff to carry along from computer to computer.

There may come a time when you need more room for music or vice versa, and when that time comes, go back to the iPod preferences box and readjust the slider.

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The iPod Shuffle comes with the basics to get you up and grooving: headphones, a neck strap, and a cover for the USB connector. This standard package may be enough for many people, but if you're feeling the need for new options to add on to your Shuffle, you're in luck.

Chapter 15 is loaded with tons of iPod accessories, and although most companies are making products to fit full-size iPods, goodies for the Shuffle won't be too far behind. Some items, like FM transmitters to play the iPod through the car radio, will work with all iPod models, including the Shuffle. Serious shoppers can find several Shuffle-happy add-ons available at www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/accessories.html, including:

The iPod Shuffle Sport Case. The iPod Shuffle isn't waterproof, so if you plan to go running with it in the morning mist or lounge around in the salt spray of the beach, this $30 protective cover, complete with neck strap, is a good idea.
The iPod Shuffle Arm Band. Runners and gym hounds probably don't want their music player flying all over the place during a workout, The $30 white Arm Band securely straps the Shuffle to your bicep where it rides along as you jog or pump iron.
The iPod Shuffle External Battery Pack. You get about 12 hours of playtime between charges with the Shuffle, but you can add on to that with this $30 snap-on attachment that adds the juice from two AA batteries as well. Although it adds some weight to the Shuffle, you can squeeze about 20 hours of music out of the player and make that long flight to New Zealand a little more entertaining.
The iPod Shuffle Dock. This $30 combination stand and USB extension cord lets your Shuffle stand at attention while you have it hooked to the Mac or PC. The Dock can be helpful for people with computers that have USB ports in hard to reach places or jacks that are too close together to fit a Shuffle in alongside another USB device.

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Recorded music has appeared in a variety of shapes and sizes over the decades, including fragile discs spinning at 78 rpm, vinyl records in colorful sleeves that were artworks in themselves, pocket-size cassette tapes, and futuristic-looking compact discs. But no music format ever exploded into the public consciousness as quickly and widely as the bits of computer code known as MP3 files.

The MP3 format makes it possible to compress a song into a file small enough to be uploaded, downloaded, emailed, and stored on a hard drive. That feat of smallness set off a sonic boom in the late 1990s that continues to reverberate across the music world today.

This chapter tells all about MP3 and other music formats, including the main iPod–approved format: AAC (Advanced Audio Coding), a copy-protected file type that makes Apple's iTunes Music Store possible.

The era of modern digital audio began in the early 1980s. A new, small, shiny format called the audio compact disc, developed by Sony and Philips, began to appear in music stores alongside albums on tapes and vinyl records. Unlike analog tapes and LPs, audio CDs stored music in digital form, and produced a bright, clean sound with pristine clarity. (Some audiophiles still prefer the "warmer" sound of vinyl, not to mention the expansive canvas that records provided for detailed album artwork, but many have accepted the CD.)

1985 was a pivotal year for the CD. The format's popularity got a huge boost from its first big seller, Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits, and a variation on the audio CD technology called CD-ROM (Compact Disc, Read-Only Memory) edged into the computer market as a way to play multimedia files and interactive programs.

Over the years, a CD drive became a standard component of a computer. On most audio CDs, songs are stored in a format called CD-DA (Compact Disc, Digital Audio), which is essentially the same thing as AIFF format.

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The era of modern digital audio began in the early 1980s. A new, small, shiny format called the audio compact disc, developed by Sony and Philips, began to appear in music stores alongside albums on tapes and vinyl records. Unlike analog tapes and LPs, audio CDs stored music in digital form, and produced a bright, clean sound with pristine clarity. (Some audiophiles still prefer the "warmer" sound of vinyl, not to mention the expansive canvas that records provided for detailed album artwork, but many have accepted the CD.)

1985 was a pivotal year for the CD. The format's popularity got a huge boost from its first big seller, Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits, and a variation on the audio CD technology called CD-ROM (Compact Disc, Read-Only Memory) edged into the computer market as a way to play multimedia files and interactive programs.

Over the years, a CD drive became a standard component of a computer. On most audio CDs, songs are stored in a format called CD-DA (Compact Disc, Digital Audio), which is essentially the same thing as AIFF format.

On a Windows PC, if you inspect the contents of a music CD, you see a screenful of names like "Track01.cda." These turn out to be nothing but 1 KB files that point to the hidden audio tracks, as shown in Figure 4-1. Mac OS X displays the audio tracks in all their hefty glory as AIFF files, right in the Finder window.

Figure 4-1: Left: Here's what a desktop window looks like for a music CD inserted into a Mac. It looks just like an MP3 playlist, except that these AIFF files are much larger. Your computer can play these high-quality files, but they eat up a lot of hard drive space.
Right: Audio files are more bashful when a disc is inserted into a Windows drive. The tracks on this Prince CD remain hidden behind tiny pointer files, and you can lure them out only with CD-extraction software.

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The iPod was designed to handle AAC and MP3 formats the most efficiently, but it's not limited to them. Here are the other types of music files you can play on an iPod.

WAV is a standard Windows sound format, going all the way back to Windows 95. (Most Macs can play WAV files, too.) Windows fans download WAV recordings for everything from TV-show snippets to start-up sounds and other system alert noises. A WAV song usually sounds better than the same song in MP3—but it takes up more room on the iPod.

If you've spent years ripping hundreds of audio tracks onto your PC using Windows Media Player, you must have had quite an emotional crash when you discovered they wouldn't work with iTunes or play on your iPod.

Fortunately, iTunes 4.5 and later can convert them into AAC, MP3, or whatever iTunes format you specify (see page 102). The fine print: they must be unprotected WMA tracks (that is, not songs you bought from other online stores like Napster 2.0, MusicMatch, or Wal-Mart—and not files for which you deliberately turned on, for some reason, Media Player's copy-protection option). And the conversion doesn't work unless your PC has Windows Media Player Series 9 or later installed. (If not, amble over to www.microsoft.com/windowsmedia to download the software.)

When you install iTunes 4.5 or later on your Windows PC, the iTunes Setup Assistant automatically offers to add your WMA files to your iTunes library (see Figure 2-6 back yonder in Chapter 2). If you didn't grab the chance at that moment, you can convert the WMA tracks at any time by dragging a folder full of them onto the Library icon in the iTunes Source list, or by choosing File → Add to Library and selecting the songs from your My Music folder. A dialog box appears, offering you the option to skip out if you suddenly change your mind.

Once the tracks are in iTunes-happy formats, you can not only play them on your desktop computer, but also download them to your iPod or iPod Mini to go.

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Bit rate may sound like one of those unbelievably geeky computer terms (which it is), but it plays a big role in how your music sounds when you snag a song from a CD and convert it to MP3 or AAC format. When it comes to sound quality, all digital audio files are not created equal.

The bit rate has to do with the number of bits (binary digits—tiny bits of computer data) used by one second of audio. The higher the number of bits listed, the greater the amount of data contained in the file, and the better the sound quality.

Eight bits make a byte. So why are audio files measured in kilobits (thousands of bits) and not the more familiar kilobytes?

Force of habit. Geeks measure size and storage capacity in bytes, but network speeds and data-transfer speeds have always been measured in bits. When you encode an MP3 file, the transfer and compression of the audio data into the new format is measured in kilobits.

Files encoded with lower bit rate settings—like 64 kilobits per second—don't include as much audio information from the original sound file. They sound thin and tinny compared to a file encoded at, say, 160 Kbps.

Just as you can't compare megahertz ratings across different chip families (like Pentium III vs. Pentium 4), you can't compare bit rates between AAC and MP3 files. A 128 Kbps AAC file generally sounds much better than a 128 Kbps MP3 file. In fact, tests by the group that developed the AAC standard found that a 96 Kbps AAC file generally sounds better than a 128 Kbps MP3 file. (Your ears may differ.) As a bonus, the AAC version takes up much less space on your hard disk and iPod. You probably don't want to encode AAC files lower than 128 Kbps, though, as the sound quality will begin to suffer noticeably.

For both formats, the higher the bit rate, the larger the file size. For example, an MP3 file encoded at 160 Kbps sounds a heck of a lot better than one recorded at 96—but it takes up over twice as much disk space (1.5 MB vs. 700 KB).

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MP3 files don't have copy restrictions built into them (as AAC and WMA files often do), which is why MP3 is the format of choice for trading and sharing. Thousands of Web sites offer MP3 files to download, as a quick trip to Google.com will tell you. Some sites offer music posted by bands and musicians who want to make their songs free to anyone who wants to listen. Other sites stockpile copyrighted works and bombard you with pop-up windows for all manner of services (including adult material).

Here are a few sites that offer free and legal MP3 files:

Music.download.com. The venerable MP3.com site was bought and sold, but a free download site from its sister company CNET has arrived. The site provides a place for independent artists to share their music freely with once and future fans (http://music.download.com).
PasteMusic. For the mere act of signing up for the Paste mailing list, you can download free full-length songs by the site's featured artists. Why are the songs free? The bands hope you'll get hooked enough to purchase the whole CD, which you can also buy here (www.pastemusic.com).
FreeSoloPiano. If you think the sound of ivories being tickled is just the thing for your iPod, the free solo piano works available here could be a gold mine (www.freesolopiano.com).
Vitaminic. One of Europe's major sites for new music and musicians using the Internet to promote themselves, Vitaminic hosts thousands of free MP3 files that span both the globe and the genre list (www.vitaminic.com).
Internet Underground Music Archive.

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Apple's iTunes software—the ultimate jukebox program for Macintosh and Windows—supplies the software yin to the hardware yang of the iPod. It plays and organizes your music, copies music from your CD collection onto your hard drive, and burns new CDs with music in a s

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