# iPod shuffle severely lacking a key feature!



## kloan (Feb 22, 2002)

So I just picked up a 512MB shuffle, for when I go to the gym. And I've discovered something that's got me quite peeved:

Autofill does not work with another iPod!! Leave it to Apple to completely disregard people who already own iPods. I totally thought I'd be able to use the Autofill, or at least manually transfer songs from my iPod photo to my iPod shuffle. But no, not the case. I now have to transfer my whole collection back to my hard drive again to be able to use the shuffle.

I'm not impressed.

Anyone know how to make a little app that could randomly select and transfer songs from the iPod photo to the shuffle? I'll give ya $20!


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## depmode101 (Sep 4, 2002)

i think this falls in line with apple wanting you to have your music on your computer and then transfer it to the appropriate ipod.

they dont want people transferring music from one ipod to the other - 

maybe im missing something here, but i really think your missing the P2P feature you suggest apple is missing.


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## kloan (Feb 22, 2002)

Yeah, I realize it does kinda fall into a similar place with Apple not wanting people to be able to transfer music back to the computer from an iPod, or expecting people to keep their collection on their hard drives.. but I think they should've considered the possibilty of people already owning a full sized iPod, and wanting to be able to select random tracks from their collection. 

It is different to transfer tracks from one iPod to the shuffle, than it is to transfer them back to the HDD.

I sent some feedback to Apple.. who knows, maybe I'll be lucky and they'll agree with me and add it to a software update.

In the meantime, I guess I'm forced to move my collection back to my HDD... I really need an external HDD... would really take the load off my machine..


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## CN (Sep 3, 2004)

Please Apple, don't do the stupid "Song check out" system (where you can only "check out" each song three times without "checking it back in") a la Sony! The horror!

I made the mistake of trying a minidisc player (back in my windows days) and discovered that sony's software sucks, "checking in songs" sucks, and ATRAC REALLY SUCKS!


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

Gang, not going from iPod to iPod is nothing new at all. And, if you're using any iPod as it was intended, your entire _CLONE of your iTunes music collection_ that is on your iPod could POOF away and you shouldn't care, because EVERYTHING _should be_ on your Mac. About all you'd lose is a playlist-on-the-go or two.

I don't understand why you would want to transfer from iPod to iPod when iTunes allows such easy and thorough management of your music -- not to mention FAST transfers. Plus, every iPod you attach to a Mac can be given their own unique preferences as to WHAT gets transferred. So... given one's desire to honour the usage agreements of commercially distributed music that you have either ripped off of your CDs or purchased via iTunes, why would this be a problem??


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## kloan (Feb 22, 2002)

You almost sound as if you're trying to 'catch me' at something. My music is legitimate, I just prefer to keep my music ONLY on my iPod because that's what I bought it for. I don't have enough space on my HDD to keep it all there. It has absolutely nothing to do with Apple's usage agreement, whatever..

I've come to the realization I won't have to transfer ALL of my music to my HDD, since a lot of it isn't appropriate for working out to anyway.

I still maintain there is a big difference from transferring music from an iPod to an iPod and from a regular iPod to an iPod shuffle... maybe not cool with iPod to iPod, but to the shuffle I don't see why it would be an issue.. as far as Apple's concerned, if used 'correctly' music can't be copied back over to a computer anyway..


Btw, on another note.. the transfer speed from the computer to the shuffle is VERY SLOW! I knew it'd be slower than a regular iPod, but definately not nearly as slow as it is.. I've used other flash media before and they were never this slow.


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## used to be jwoodget (Aug 22, 2002)

kloan,

How would you connect the USB2 male connector of the shuffle to an iPod?

The iPods are built around a computer based song collection - the roots of iTunes being a computer jukebox (for a Mac). Since you have to have a song on a computer at some point in time before transfering to an iPod, the whole model revolves around the computer. It's interesting that you've essentially done away with the computer in the equation (except, presumably, to upload new songs). It's also risky since your ipod may need resetting occasionally.

As for AutoFill, there are ways to recreate this for a conventional iPod (transfering a random set of songs from a collection on a computer). Set the "party shuffle" as a playlist to update your iPod (max is 100 songs). Or create a new Smart Playlist. For "match the following condition", select "Artist" "does not contain" then pick the name of an artist not in your collection. Then select "limit to" XXX number (say 500) "songs" selected by "random". Since your HD iPod has a lot of storage capacity, you don't have to worry about fitting in the songs like you do on the shuffle. Set your iPod to update with this playlist. You have to recreate the Smart Playlist every time to get a new randomized sampling of your collection.

There may be other ways.


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## kloan (Feb 22, 2002)

No, you misunderstood me... I don't actually mean physically connecting two iPods, but having both connected to the computer, and through iTunes being able to get songs from the iPod photo...

I tried the playlist method you suggested, but that only works if the music is actually in the iTunes library, and not on the iPod.

As far as just keeping my music on my iPod and not on my computer, I know it's risky, and it used to make me very nervous. But I've had 4 iPod in the past year or so and I haven't had a problem yet. I still do want to keep everything on my computer, but there's just not enough room for it.. I need an external HDD.. but I keep spending my money on other things such as clothes, Inmotion speakers, accessories, iPod shuffle.. hehe... I'll get one eventually, and then this won't be a problem.


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## used to be jwoodget (Aug 22, 2002)

Ahhh - I see, yes, I can understand the attraction of that (using the computer as the hub) if you don't have your collection on the computer. iTunes can do nothing with songs on a connected ipod except detect the list of songs and overwrite them. But since there are progs that allow reverse transfer, it should be possible to do what you want.

Is it possible to use one of your iPods as an external HDD for your song collection? You can certainly use them for data storage. I wonder if its possible to tell iTunes to look for the iTunes library on an iPod (these songs wouldn't be available to the "storage" iPod)?


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

kloan said:



> You almost sound as if you're trying to 'catch me' at something.


Well, I _was_ wondering about that. If it's a matter of your Mac's drive being too small, then I sincerely apologize.

But having done that, I'll ask ya flat-out: How do you get more music onto the iPod without iTunes wiping out what is already on the iPod _uniquely_? Like, say (for easy numbers), you have your hard drive full with *half* your music collection. So half would be for example 100 songs in iTunes with song titles that start from letter A to letter L. You sync them onto your iPod and then delete those A-to-L songs off your computer's drive because your hard drive isn't big enough to accommodate A to Z. You then rip off of CD (or copy over from an external drive or whatever) the remainder of your music library from letter M to letter Z. Now, when you connect your iPod to your computer and iTunes sees that you have deleted songs A to L from your library in iTunes it will AUTOMATICALLY and without option delete those A to L songs from the iPod and then dump the M to Z songs over. iTunes will never allow you to have a unique library on your iPod that is different from iTunes. Maybe you used something 3rd party?



> My music is legitimate, I just prefer to keep my music ONLY on my iPod because that's what I bought it for.


But dude, if you lose your iPod...! :O



> I've come to the realization I won't have to transfer ALL of my music to my HDD, since a lot of it isn't appropriate for working out to anyway.


Playlists?



> I still maintain there is a big difference from transferring music from an iPod to an iPod and from a regular iPod to an iPod shuffle... maybe not cool with iPod to iPod, but to the shuffle I don't see why it would be an issue as far as Apple's concerned, if used 'correctly' music can't be copied back over to a computer anyway..


No, but you could connect YOUR iPod to someone else's Shuffle and they could get those songs from you. That would go against the DRM.

Personally, I like tweaking playlists and everything within iTunes and having the whole kitandkaboodle dumped over to the iPod. Thankfully, my ipod can accommodate my library... for now anyway.



> Btw, on another note.. the transfer speed from the computer to the shuffle is VERY SLOW! I knew it'd be slower than a regular iPod, but definately not nearly as slow as it is.. I've used other flash media before and they were never this slow.


Are you using USB 1.1? Man, I used to use an MP3 player module on my Palm PDA. it was BLOODY SLOW to transfer. When I got my niece a pre-Shuffle (non-Apple) flash player, it transferred over USB faster. Aint nuttin like FW or USB II, though.


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## kloan (Feb 22, 2002)

I think that would work, but then I wouldn't be able to use it as a music player anymore. The only reason I bought the shuffle is for the gym, I still plan on using the photo as my regular iPod.


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

Sorry. Some of my questions were answered during your exchange with UTBJW. It took me a while to write my post


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## kloan (Feb 22, 2002)

hehe.. no worries


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## macsackbut (Dec 15, 2004)

Macaholic said:


> iTunes will never allow you to have a unique library on your iPod that is different from iTunes. Maybe you used something 3rd party?


Macaholic, am I missing something here? I have a bunch of tunes on my iPod that aren't in my iTunes folder for various reasons and have had no trouble with iTunes deleting them from the iPod. I don't have them set to sync because I use my iPod as an external drive, so maybe that's why. 

MacS


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

Were these tunes originally transaferred via iTunes? \Or did you drag-and-drop them onto the iPod as if it was a hard drive in the Finder? If you did the latter, iTunes wouldn't touch them... but you wouldn't be able to play them ON THE iPod... if I understand how the whole things works, that is. Maybe I don't?


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## kloan (Feb 22, 2002)

Macaholic, it's not that my HDD can't fit all of my music, it can.. but I prefer to keep a lot of free space on my HDD, I find that it operates better if it's not bogged down by a bunch of files.. so to answer your question, there is technically enough room for my whole collection, but I just don't like to take up all that space (24GB w/ album covers).

Also, if I were to do what you said, back up A-L, etc.. they would only be deleted if iTunes was set to automatically update, which it's not. Since I don't keep my music on my computer, I keep it set to manual, or else as soon as I plugged my iPod into my computer I'd lose it all!

As you say, yes someone could theoretically give some of their music to someone's shuffle, but if used by Apples rules, they still couldn't transfer those files to their computer, so I really don't see the problem.

Anyway, I have a rev. c 12" Powerbook (as shown in my sig), so it is USB 2.0, which is why I'm surprised it's so slow.


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## kloan (Feb 22, 2002)

I just tried out "iPodRip", and when both iPods are plugged in, the shuffle shows up as a playlist, so I can transfer songs over manually! But after working with it for a little while, I think it would be much better with an Autofill feature. There is a shuffle button/setting in the app, but I clicked it after selecting the albums I'd want to be used and it didn't seem to shuffle the order... so I'm copying some music back to the HDD... it's interesting to see that this app does in fact let me transfer tunes from one iPod to another.. just not as easily as I hoped.

EDIT: I just filled it for the first time, and I guess it's not _that_ slow. It took just under 5 minutes to fill (489.9MB).


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## retrocactus (Jun 17, 2003)

Macaholic said:


> Were these tunes originally transaferred via iTunes? \Or did you drag-and-drop them onto the iPod as if it was a hard drive in the Finder? If you did the latter, iTunes wouldn't touch them... but you wouldn't be able to play them ON THE iPod... if I understand how the whole things works, that is. Maybe I don't?


I think Kloan is just manually adding songs from his hard drive to the ipod...if you turn off the auto sync function, you can fill it up. I used to do this when I had my ibook....I had all my music on a pc share and would manually add it to my ipod via itunes but the songs were stored on my network share and the ipod...nothing in the itunes library on my ibook except the database.

I think Kloan's best bet is to keep a gig or two of music on his powerbook for the shuffle...you can create a smart playlist that would work the same as autofill...you could just setup the shuffle to autosync with only that smart playlist. 

I wouldn't want to have to connect both ipods to my computer just to move music from one to the other on a whim....wouldn't be great for the batteries in either.


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

Duh... OF COURSE!  Turn off the autosync and drag 'em manually! If iTunes isn't reconciling what ison the iPod versus what is in iTunes, then yeah one could add more and more songs onto the iPod and delete them off the drive s you went along.

It's so clear to me now.


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## kloan (Feb 22, 2002)

lol.. 

hey, i'm just listening to it for the first time, and i must say it sounds good! i was a little bit concerned id miss my headamp, but it totally sounds good enough without it for the gym.. im glad i bought this little toy! oh, and i just sewed a little slip cover for it too, i think it needs it.. the glossy finish looks like itd scratch even easier than the regular iPod..


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## overzeetop (Mar 14, 2005)

kloan said:


> EDIT: I just filled it for the first time, and I guess it's not _that_ slow. It took just under 5 minutes to fill (489.9MB).


That would be classified as "dog-slow." 489.9MB/600sec = 800kB/s. That makes USB1.1 (at 1.2Mb/s) seem fast. Considering that the newest line of USB flash keys transfer at 12-14MB/s (write speed), this is a big disappointment. For a 1GB drive, that's ten minutes for a full load of transfer versus 1:15 for a modern flash drive.

I am still considering getting the 1GB version, though, as I need a new USB key _and_ the shuffle seems to be one of the only flash players to be able to bookmark an audiofile.


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