we’re going to be buying an ipod for our daughter this christmas but i (being the man of teh house), have some technical questions i was hoping someone could answer
i am after the nano, it’s small, compact (and pink, gah); i hear they play MP3s OK but what about AVI and MPG files?
I also believe that you have to use iTunes to transfer the music to the nano; is this correct or does it just appear as a new device you can drag/drop content onto?
that’s all for now (seeing as it’s 23:45 and i should be in bed lol!)
Amarok handles iPods fine, you don’t have to use iTunes. But it’s not like the other players that appear as a USB storage device. Sure an iPod appears as a storage device too, but the playlist has to be written to the iPod in a particular format, or the clips won’t play. When the Classics came out, it took a while to reverse engineer the format, but that’s been done now.
I’ve only ever put MP3s on iPods don’t know about the other formats. I believe the video playing iPods will handle MPEG4.
I’ve only got a Shuffle, but isn’t the Nano flash memory based whereas the Classics have a tiny HD? Anyway if I mislead you it’s your own fault, you can easily check up Apple’s pages. lol!
lol, thanks again ken
to be honest, i think she will be happy if she can play mp3s and learn how to transfer the music from suse to the nano herself - what’s inside the 'pod won’t really matter i suppose
well, i guess i’d also be getting back to work
those spreadsheets aren’t going to colour themselves in …
I have a shuffle too, and I love it. It does handle an MPEG4 or something (don’t remember the exact file extension) but when I last tried to listen to a CD I ripped in that format my system could not and I haven’t tried it since.
Heh, MPEG4 is a video format. Maybe you meant MP3. The Shuffle doesn’t have a screen so there’s no way it will play MPEG4. But it will play MP3 and Apple’s format, AAC or something like that (I don’t know because I never use iTunes).
I couldn’t find anything that works well with my Nano. The closest is an iTunes clone called Songbird. It’s ok, but its not as smooth functioning as iTunes. I ended up running iTunes in XP on my dual boot. Running it in wine is worse than native linux apps. I have run iTunes in VirtualBox (in XP) and that works ok too.
Well… for info on what formats are playable for audio and video just check out the tech specs page
And avi does not work… btw
As for linux software that works with the new Nano I wouldn’t count on anything working for a few months since Apple changed the software on the Nano yet again (which I can’t tell if it is just an interface overhaul or if it is actually running mobile OS X like the iPhone/iPod Touch).
I do know that I couldn’t get my Classic to work with anything in Linux when I first got it… however I haven’t tried in a few months so maybe that has changed. :\
Well… good luck anyway Maybe there will be a solution by the time Christmas comes around (which is a few months away :))
The Classic works with amarok and gtkpod now, with the updated libgtkpod. The developers cracked the new format within a week IIRC, but it took a while for the new libraries to become available. My friend has a Classic, that’s how I know. Haven’t heard about the Nano format change, but you should be able find out what the developers are up to with a search.
Cuz while the 1st and 2nd generations were almost identical… the 3rd generation changed some stuff and it looks like the new (4th) generation has changed some stuff again.
And while we are on this topic… outta curiosity, does the iPhone work on Linux??
