Tech question

[Paul Mather]

(Sorry, coming late to this thread...)

On 18 Nov 2007, at 9:32 PM, E F wrote:

> Hi Pam,
>
> I believe (my wife tells me) that you can drag and drop mp3 files  
> into the iPod without needing iTunes or any other software.  I think  
> that the problem you may have though is that w98 doesn't support  
> USB.  W98SE does.


Although you can use an iPod to drag and drop files for storage (you  
can even make bootable backups of your Mac using the old firewire  
ones), the problem, as I understand it, is that if you want to play  
music using the iPod interface you need appropriate software (like  
iTunes) to put things in the correct place (wrt. song data and  
playlist information), otherwise the iPod will not recognise the music  
as being "there."  In that sense, iPod is quite tightly coupled to  
iTunes for its collection management.

You can get non-iTunes software to manage your iPod (e.g., GtkPod,  
gnupod, and I recall Amarok has built-in iPod support), but usually  
these are for people running unix-like systems, not Windows or Mac...

Cheers,

Paul.

e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production
  deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
         --- Frank Vincent Zappa