Finally bit The Apple

Well, we have finally bit 'The Apple'. Yes, it is THE Apple, because it does not stand for the source of Adam and Eve's (and consequently all human beings') miseries. Rather, here it refers to our family's finally hopping onto the Steve Job Apple Corp bandwagon. Bacchi, it seems had decided to gift me a portable MP3 player on my b'day and on our recent visit to the mall, we all of a sudden decided to go for an iPOD. After considering all the factors - form factor, cost, storage capacity etc., we settled down for an iPOD Nano Gen 2 player with a storage capacity of 2 GB (differs from the I generation Nanos as per the features listed at - http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/sep/12nano.html).
I must admit, though, that the iPOD Nano met with some tough competition from its hard drive based 30 GB cousin - iPOD Video. However, cost considerations, battery life and the very improbability of ever actually using the iPOD to watch videos, won the day for Nano.

Now, let me talk about what went wrong in our first attempt to get our new toy to work...

1. Since, we had used the player with a Macintosh at the shop we had purchased it from, the player got formatted with the Macintosh's HFS Plus file system. So, no matter how hard we tried, the player would not get detected by our home PC. Fortunately, there is an article at apple.com which actually talks about how to get the player to again work with Window.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61672

An excerpt from the article -

You cannot use an iPod whose disk is configured for Macintosh on a Windows-compatible computer. However, you can restore the iPod disk to use it with a Windows-compatible computer. To do this, see "Restoring iPod to factory settings." While a Windows formatted iPod may work on a Mac, Apple supports this configuration only with iPod shuffle.

2. In our eager attempts to get the iPOD functional as soon as possible, we bypassed downloading the latest version of iTUNE software, iTUNE version 7.0. A BIG mistake! as it later turned out to be... The old iTUNE software that I had loaded from a CHIP DVD, failed to recognize the player. Also, running quite true to the adage - "A little knowledge can be dangerous", I ended up corrupting the entire software present on the player. Finally, this apple article helped me restore the player to its factory condition -

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60983

It is important to understand the difference between "update" and "restore". Update simply installs the software that controls iPod and does not affect the songs and files stored on iPod's disk. Restore erases the iPod's disk and restores iPod to its original factory condition.

3. New iPOD users may also note that Apple claims that a 5 Rs troubleshooting methodology will fix most of the issues with the iPOD players. You can read about these 5 Rs

Reset, Retry, Restart, Reinstall, Restore.

at - http://www.apple.com/support/ipod/five_rs/

4. Well once we had the iPOD detected by our PC, it was time to actually start transferring music to it. The tutorials available at this link were a great assistance in helping us harness the full potential of our iPOD -

http://www.apple.com/support/ipod/tutorial/index.html

5. Also, if you like me, are interested in using your iPOD as a USB storage device as well, do make sure that you go through the article at this link -

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61131

Select "Enable disk use" or "Manually manage songs and playlists". Either one will allow you to use iPod as a drive. If you select "Manually manage songs and playlists", iTunes won't automatically update iPod with the iTunes library. If you want iTunes to automatically update your iPod, select "Enable disk use" instead.

6. And finally something I stumbled across in course of my research. According to the apple article at this link -

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61131

you cannot access the songs transferred to the iPOD using the iTUNES software (a means to control illegal music sharing, I suppose).

When you use your iPod as a hard disk, you can't see the media iTunes copies to your iPod in the Finder or My Computer. This is normal. Using the Finder or My Computer, you can't copy these media files from your iPod back to iTunes or to any other computer. The synchronization between your iPod and your computer is one way: from iTunes to iPod.

However, the steps given in the article at this link, easily enabled us to accomplish this seemingly 'impossible' task -

http://www.cnet.com/4520-7899_1-6477981-1.html

I must admit that once we had the initial migration blues sorted out, we really started to enjoy our latest acquisition. I think, one thing that makes the iPOD such a cool gadget is the very design of the device - the soft aluminium body, subtle shades, sharp fonts and a high resolution (although small) screen. No wonder, we are hooked for good.