Well, the decision I was wrangling over has finally been made for me. My gf gave me an early birthday present so I could take it on vacation with us next week.
I now have a shiny, new 30gb iPod Photo. This thing is awesome. :icon32:
As much as I love the iPod (and parts of iTunes), I'm still having trouble fitting iTunes into the way I already manage my music, so maybe some of you guys who have been using it can help me out with a couple of things...
First, I decided not to let iTunes manage my music folders for me. From what I've heard, it has caused no end of headaches for a lot of people who have allowed it to, and I like the way I have them arranged already.
But, with the way iTunes works, I've started to wonder if I should go ahead and allow it to do that anyway.
I've got a lot of mp3's that don't have the correct id3 tag information in them. I've started going through my library in iTunes and editing the Artist/Album/Song information, and getting things a little more organized. But I just started realize that, even though I'm editing all this info in iTunes, none of it is going to transfer over to the id3 info in my mp3/music files. I knew this already (since I told it not to manage my files for me), but I just didn't make the connection until just now that - if I want to edit my id3 information - I'm going to have to do all this twice. And - even if I decided to let iTunes manage my files - I'm not sure that the file info in iTunes is even stored in id3 tag format. Isn't it just stored in iTunes/proprietary format that won't carry over to other mediums?
What would you iTunes users recommend I do about file and file info management for my music?
Also, both my gf and myself now have iPods. We're hoping that we can both share all of our music, and sync our collections so we both have all the same music. Is that possible at all with iTunes/iPod? She's purchased a lot of songs from the iTunes Store, and from what I've read those can only be played/used on the computer that is authorized to have them. Is there an easy/manageable way to share all our music?
And my last question -- if the things I'm wanting to do are not possible with iTunes, are there any third-party/open-source applications out there that can work with the iPod and do the things that iTunes does, or similar?
I know that's a lot to ask for, but I'll be happy with any information any of you guys can give me on any of those questions.
I'm just starting to really dig into using the iPod and software, but iTunes just doesn't really live up to the standards I'm used to with other software - as far as ease of use, and tools/options for advanced users who don't worry as much about a pretty interface and single-click, drag/drop management. For instance, it's a pain in the ass just to change song info for songs. There are columns you can display for every info category, but in order to edit it, you have to switch back and forth from mouse to keyboard to mouse to keyboard a lot to get anything done, and it's very cumbersome.
You have to click the song you want, then press CTRL-I for the information window, then click or tab down to the field you want to edit and make the changes you want. After you edit it and hit enter, the song moves to its corresponding place in the library, so using the keyboard to go to the next song will take you all the way up there, instead of where you were working, so you have to go back to the mouse to select the next song you want to edit. This doesn't sound like much of a hassle, but when you have a hundred or two songs that need information changed, it gets to be quite tedious.
It would be much easier if I could just use the keyboard and tab between the fields that are displayed in the main window, and edit them right there on the screen. But the tab and arrow keys don't tab between song fields, and none of the help files have shortcuts for this type of thing.
So again, any suggestions/info you guys can give to help me out will be greatly appreciated. :icon25:
-mac fag tho.
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