iPod & iTunes: The Missing Manual

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Even before you extract it from its box, the iPod makes a design statement. Its shrink-wrapped cardboard square opens like a book, revealing elegantly packaged accessories and software nestled around the iPod itself.

The first part of this book will familiarize you with the hardware portion of this parcel. This particular chapter takes a look at what's inside the box for a full-size iPod or iPod Nano. If you've got your eye on an iPod Shuffle or have just popped one out of its bright green box and want to know what to do next, skip on over to Chapter 3 for a detailed discussion of Apple's flashy little music stick.

In addition to the nicely nestled iPod itself, the package's compartments hold all the other stuff that comes with various iPod models these days: earbud-style headphones and their foam covers, the connection cable for your computer, and a software CD. You also get a pocket protector-style slipcover and chunk of white plastic called the iPod Dock Adapter, which works as a booster seat for your iPod to fit into many of the dock-based accessories out there.

What you get by way of instructions in the standard Apple box is a small square envelope that includes a Quick Start pamphlet and a couple of Apple-logo stickers. Newer iPods include some electronic documentation and short tutorials in Web page-and PDF-format (located on the iPod CD), but you have to print it out if you want to read it anywhere besides your computer screen. Good thing you have this book in your hands to fill in the gaps—and it's always ready to flip through without having to boot up your PC.

A few other bits of paper are included in the iPod's info packet. You'll probably blow right past the warranty information (basically, you're covered for one year) and the software agreement (the usual legalese that makes most people's eyes glaze over like fresh Krispy Kreme doughnuts). The software agreement includes a small section about making digital copies of music, whose sentiment is echoed right on the iPod's cellophane wrapping: Don't steal music.

The LCD screen is your window into the iPod's world. You can use it to navigate the menus, see how much of a charge the battery has left, and view the name of the current playlist or song. The display on the video-enabled iPods, whose resolution is 320 x 240 pixels (176 x 132 for the Nano), also comes with a white LED backlight, so you can use your iPod in movies, concerts, and as a flashlight to find your front door lock at night.

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In addition to the nicely nestled iPod itself, the package's compartments hold all the other stuff that comes with various iPod models these days: earbud-style headphones and their foam covers, the connection cable for your computer, and a software CD. You also get a pocket protector-style slipcover and chunk of white plastic called the iPod Dock Adapter, which works as a booster seat for your iPod to fit into many of the dock-based accessories out there.

What you get by way of instructions in the standard Apple box is a small square envelope that includes a Quick Start pamphlet and a couple of Apple-logo stickers. Newer iPods include some electronic documentation and short tutorials in Web page-and PDF-format (located on the iPod CD), but you have to print it out if you want to read it anywhere besides your computer screen. Good thing you have this book in your hands to fill in the gaps—and it's always ready to flip through without having to boot up your PC.

A few other bits of paper are included in the iPod's info packet. You'll probably blow right past the warranty information (basically, you're covered for one year) and the software agreement (the usual legalese that makes most people's eyes glaze over like fresh Krispy Kreme doughnuts). The software agreement includes a small section about making digital copies of music, whose sentiment is echoed right on the iPod's cellophane wrapping: Don't steal music.

The LCD screen is your window into the iPod's world. You can use it to navigate the menus, see how much of a charge the battery has left, and view the name of the current playlist or song. The display on the video-enabled iPods, whose resolution is 320 x 240 pixels (176 x 132 for the Nano), also comes with a white LED backlight, so you can use your iPod in movies, concerts, and as a flashlight to find your front door lock at night.

The iPods of yore, the ones with monochrome displays, have screen resolutions of 160 x 128 pixels for full-size models and 138 x 110 pixels for the iPod Mini.

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Many a cloud of gadget euphoria dies instantly when the new owner realizes that the device must sit in a battery charger and juice up before any fun can happen.

Out of the box, the iPod may have enough juice to turn itself on and get you hooked on spinning the wheel. But you'll still need to charge the iPod before you use it for the first time.

Figure 1-2: The iPod's data and power jack, usually called the dock connector port, has lived on the bottom of the player since 2003. Here, from top to bottom, the iPod Nano, a video iPod, and an iPod Photo; note that the Nano also has its headphone port on the bottom of the player. All three iPods have the Hold switch on top.

You can charge your iPod over a FireWire or USB 2.0 connection, but new iPods don't even come with FireWire cables anymore, so USB 2.0 is the only way to get a charge unless you have an old FireWire cable from a previous Pod. If your Mac or PC has powered FireWire or USB 2.0 jacks, you can charge up the iPod just by plugging it into your computer. (For FireWire, "powered" usually means the fatter 6-pin FireWire connector, not the little 4-pin connectors found on many Windows machines. For USB 2.0, you need a powered jack like those on the back of the computer, or on a powered USB hub—not, for example, the unpowered jack at the end of a keyboard.) The battery charges as long as the computer is on and not in Sleep mode.

It takes about 4 hours to fully charge your iPod. Note, however, that it gets about 80 percent charged after 2 hours (Nanos only take about 90 minutes to get the 80 percent power rush). If you just can't wait to unplug it and go racing out to show your friends, you can begin to use it after a couple of hours.

During the charging process, you may see either the Do Not Disconnect message (if the iPod is also sucking down music from your computer), the "OK to Disconnect" message (if it's done with that), or the main menu for a few minutes before the charging battery graphic takes over. The iPod will also warn you not to disconnect it if you've set it up to work as an external hard drive, but we'll get to that business in Chapter 9.

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The iPod comes with a set of white earbud-style headphones (Figure 1-4). These aren't just flimsy freebies tossed in the box, either. They're designed with the iPod's amplifier in mind.

Figure 1-4: You're supposed to wedge the iPod earbuds into your ear canals, preferably after covering each one with one of the included foam covers. As with any headphone, really loud music can damage hearing, so use the volume controls sensibly.

With a frequency response of 20 to 20,000 hertz, the iPod can cover a huge range of sounds—comparable to that of a respectable home stereo. In other words, it lets most people hear all the detailed sonic mayhem on a Pink Floyd album. To reproduce this range of frequencies, the iPod earbuds use 18 mm drivers with neodymium transducer magnets. (No, you're not expected to know what that means—but it's fun to say at cocktail parties. See the box on Section 1.4.)

The driver is the moving element in any type of speaker system, from tiny headphones to subwoofers. When an amplifier supplies power, the driver vibrates and produces sound waves.

Neodymium—which, from your cramming for that high school test in the periodic table, you may recognize as atomic number 60—is a rare-earth metal that's used in magnets, lasers, and purple glass. Its name is derived from the Greek neos didymos, which means "new twin" (an appropriate name for a substance used in a pair of earbuds).

Apple claims that its neodymium driver is five times as powerful as the aluminum or cobalt drivers in other earbuds, capable of delivering accurate sound with minimal distortion.

Sounds good so far.

While the iPod earbuds are quite robust, they're not for everyone. Some people absolutely hate the sound quality. Some people don't care for the sensation of oversized chunks of foam jammed into their auditory canals. Others lack the wedge of cartilage that keeps earbud-style headphones in place, and so they can't use the iPod buds without duct tape.

Fortunately, the 3.5 mm jack on the iPod's headphone port makes it possible to use just about any type of Walkman-style headphones. If you have truly hard-to-fit ears, for example, Apple also sells a set of in-ear headphones with three different earhole cap sizes that you gently plug into your head for maximum comfort. These in-ear buddies cost $40 at

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The iPod's menus are as straightforward as its controls. You use the scroll wheel to go down the list of options you see on the screen. Then you press the Select button to pick what you want. Small arrows on the end of each menu item (like this: Settings >) indicate that another menu lurks behind it, so keep pressing Select until you get to where you want to go. (If you realize that's not where you want to go, press the Menu button to retrace your steps.)

The menus and screens described here refer to the ones used in iPod system software 1.0 for the video-enabled iPods first released in 2005, and the mighty-mite iPod Nano.

The main screen (Figure 1-5) says iPod at the top and offers a choice of six areas to go to next: Music, Photos, Videos, Extras, Settings, and Shuffle Songs. The iPod Nano has the same set of menus except for the Videos item because it can't play video. Here's more about what's under each menu item.

Figure 1-5: If you don't see this main menu (shown on the left) at the moment, press the Menu button repeatedly until you do. From here, you can drill down into any iPod function. Use the scroll wheel to slide the highlight bar down the menu, and press the round Select button to jump into the chosen menu, in this case, the Music menu.

The Music menu is a big one-stop shopping center for all of the iPod's audio-related options, including tunes, audiobooks, and podcasts.

A playlist is a customized list of songs that you create from the tracks in your music library. It's your own personal music mix that you can save, store, and play over and over again on your iPod or computer.

Except for On-The-Go playlists (described next), you make playlists on your Mac or PC using the iTunes software. For example, you can make a playlist called "Go For Baroque" and add all of your favorite Bach and Handel songs from your music library, in the order you want to hear them. You can also get the computer to create playlists for you with the iTunes Smart Playlists feature.

Once you save a playlist and synchronize your computer with the iPod, the file is transferred to the iPod.

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Sleek and smart as the iPod may be, it can't do much by itself until it meets up with a computer. Once connected to a Mac or PC, however, the iPod is ready to accept whatever you want to give it—your whole music library, of course, but also everything from the complete recorded works of Tom Petty to your phone book, from news and calendar information to files too big to fit on a burned CD.

This chapter is dedicated to that concept of iPod as Satellite to Your Computer (and it concerns all iPods except the Shuffle, which has the next chapter all to itself). It explains USB 2.0 and FireWire, and how to use these connections to get songs and files off the mother ship and onto the ultraportable, ready-to-go iPod.

The CD that comes with the iPod contains all the software you need to get up and iPodding in no time (see Figure 2-1). When you pull the disc out of the iPod's box, you see a sticker that commands you to:

"Install software before connecting iPod."

Unless you have multiple iPods and keep iTunes and all of your iPod software scrupulously up to date, you should listen to the sticker. (After you install the software, it's a good idea to check for any updates that may have occurred since that CD was made. On the Mac, choose

→ Software Update; in Windows, open iTunes and then choose Help → Check for iTunes Updates.)

Insert the CD and run the installer programs. Yes, there's only one CD in the box. The iPod CD installer program is smart enough to figure out what kind of computer you're using and show you only the Mac or Windows installer on the disc.

Figure 2-1: The typical iPod CD (for Mac, top, and Windows, bottom) contains the iPod installer software, a copy of iTunes, and an electronic copy of the iPod instruction booklet in its various folders. Web-based tutorials for using the iPod are a recent addition to the iPod CD and can be quite helpful. (Installation CDs are constantly evolving creatures, so don't be alarmed if your screen looks different from those pictured here.)

To install the software, insert the iPod CD into your Mac. If you've never used iTunes before, or you have a version you haven't updated in at least a couple of months, install the iTunes jukebox software from the CD or download the latest version from Apple's Web site (

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The CD that comes with the iPod contains all the software you need to get up and iPodding in no time (see Figure 2-1). When you pull the disc out of the iPod's box, you see a sticker that commands you to:

"Install software before connecting iPod."

Unless you have multiple iPods and keep iTunes and all of your iPod software scrupulously up to date, you should listen to the sticker. (After you install the software, it's a good idea to check for any updates that may have occurred since that CD was made. On the Mac, choose

→ Software Update; in Windows, open iTunes and then choose Help → Check for iTunes Updates.)

Insert the CD and run the installer programs. Yes, there's only one CD in the box. The iPod CD installer program is smart enough to figure out what kind of computer you're using and show you only the Mac or Windows installer on the disc.

Figure 2-1: The typical iPod CD (for Mac, top, and Windows, bottom) contains the iPod installer software, a copy of iTunes, and an electronic copy of the iPod instruction booklet in its various folders. Web-based tutorials for using the iPod are a recent addition to the iPod CD and can be quite helpful. (Installation CDs are constantly evolving creatures, so don't be alarmed if your screen looks different from those pictured here.)

To install the software, insert the iPod CD into your Mac. If you've never used iTunes before, or you have a version you haven't updated in at least a couple of months, install the iTunes jukebox software from the CD or download the latest version from Apple's Web site (www.apple.com/itunes/download/).

The iPod has an operating system of its own, too (see Section 1.4), but you don't need to install it; it's already on your iPod. However, double-clicking the installer in the iPod Installer folder puts a copy of the iPod installer program on your Mac so that you'll have it handy if you ever need to reinstall the iPod's system software.

Along the way, you'll be asked for your iPod's serial number and your registration number. When the software installer finishes, put the CD in a safe place. You'll need it if you ever need to reinstall your programs after a hard drive crash.

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Way back in 2001, when the first Macintosh-only iPods first spun their scroll wheels, the only way you could connect an iPod to the computer was with a FireWire cable. This was not a bad thing, as FireWire could move 400 megabits of data per second, whipping the plastic off those pokey old USB 1.1 connections, which limped along at 12 megabits per second. With FireWire, you could transfer a CD's worth of songs to your iPod in 10 or 15 seconds and be out the door in no time.

Fast-forward to the end of 2005. FireWire is now a thing of the past on iPods, as Apple has opted to go with another technology, USB 2.0, for connecting iPods to computers. This means all iPod Shuffles, iPod Nanos, and video-enabled iPods now use USB 2.0 and only USB 2.0 to transfer songs and other files to the iPod.

A FireWire cable with the flat, 30-pin dock connector plug from an older iPod or iPod Mini will still fit one of the newer iPods, but you can only use a FireWire connection to charge the Nano or iPod battery. You can't transfer data over a FireWire connection with a video iPod or iPod Nano.

Figure 2-2: It's not quite as dramatic a moment as watching a butterfly emerge, but the transformation of a brand-new iPod into a Windows iPod is beautiful in its own right.
Top: The installer asks whether you want to "configure" the iPod—that is, reformat it with the Windows FAT32 disk-formatting scheme.
Bottom: Once the program installs iTunes for Windows on the PC, it offers to sniff around for existing music files, including any songs in the Windows Media Audio format. Although the iPod can't play WMA files, iTunes will convert them to the AAC format for use on the iPod—if you choose to let it.

USB 2.0 can transfer data at zippy speeds of up to 480 megabits per second, which means that all those songs, photos, home movies, film trailers from the Web, and episodes of The Office purchased from the iTunes Music Store (Chapter 7) whistle down the wire at high speed to your connected iPod.

Those are megabits, not megabytes. Data transfer speeds are traditionally measured in

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If you purchased your iPod before late 2005, you probably got a USB 2.0 and a FireWire cable in the box. (Figure 2-4 shows the two types of cables.) If your iPod came with a FireWire cable and your computer has a FireWire port (also called an IEEE 1394 or, if you have a Sony computer, an i.LINK port), then you can use this cable to sync songs and charge the battery.

If you've purchased an older iPod on eBay or have been the recipient of a technological hand-me-down, connecting by FireWire goes like this: On a Mac, just plug in the FireWire cable to the FireWire port. Due to the fact that there are a couple of different types of FireWire ports on a PC, Windows owners may have more variables to deal with:

FireWire connector, 6-pin. If the white FireWire cable that came with your fullsize iPod fits a socket on your PC's FireWire card, great! Connect the fat end to the iPod, and you're ready to rock. (As a bonus, your iPod may even get its power charge from the same cable, depending on which brand of FireWire card you have.)

Figure 2-3: Just because your computer didn't come with USB 2.0 doesn't mean you have to put up with agonizingly long waits to copy music, photos, and videos over to your iPod. With inexpensive expansion hardware—like this USB 2.0 card from Sonnet Technologies (top) for a desktop computer's internal PCI slot, or DLink's USB 2.0 Cardbus card for laptops (bottom)—you can give your older computer a taste of the newer USB technology for less than $50.
FireWire connector, 4-pin. The FireWire cable that comes with the full-size iPod has a fattish 6-pin connector at one end. It doesn't fit the smaller 4-pin connectors common on Windows FireWire cards.
Apple used to include a small white 4-pin adapter in the iPod box for some models. It fit over the end of the included 6-pin cable. With the surging popularity of USB 2.0, however, newer iPods just come with a single USB cable and no adapter. If you still prefer FireWire, though, you can get a 6-to-4 pin cable adapter at most computer stores. If you do get an adapter, just snap it onto one end of the cable and plug it into the PC's port. Then plug the other end into the iPod (or its dock, if you have one).

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For most people, the goal with any new electronics purchase is to get the new toy working right away so the fun can begin. For new iPod owners, getting to The Fun can be a very short wait. After unpacking the iPod and all its accessories, charging it up as described in Chapter 1, and installing the software, you're ready to dive in.

You may already have Apple's free iTunes program and plenty of songs stored in its music library. If so, the first synchronization between iPod and computer can be astoundingly simple. As soon as you connect the new iPod to the Mac or PC, iTunes will ask whether you'd like it to copy all the music it finds on your computer. If you say yes, the program takes care of business and begins copying your entire music library to the player. Once iTunes has finished its search-and-copy mission, it displays a screen full of your songs, all neatly compiled in its Library, as Figure 2-5 proudly displays.

Figure 2-4: The FireWire cable (left) has a thicker plug than the USB 2.0 cable (right) that comes in the box with newer iPods and Minis. Another way to tell the cables apart: Look at the gray symbols on each connector—FireWire has a Y-shaped icon; USB 2.0's icon looks like Neptune's trident.

Figure 2-5: The Source list (left side) displays an icon for the iPod whenever it's connected and a handy Eject button next to it, as well as your music library, playlists, songs from the Music Store, videos, podcasts, and Internet radio stations. The bottom of the window shows the number of songs and other files in the Library, and the consecutive days iTunes can play music without repeating songs.

You can set iTunes to also synchronize your videos, photos, podcasts, contacts, and calendars. Since you're probably just getting started here and want to get some tunes out of iTunes and onto your iPod, non-music syncing is covered a little later in the book. Check out Chapter 6 for info on moving your other digital entertainment (videos, photos, podcasts) to the iPod, and see the online appendix, "iPod As Organizer," available on the "Missing CD" page at

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The beauty of the iTunes/iPod system is that whatever music you add to your Mac or PC gets added to the iPod automatically, effortlessly, and quickly. You've always got your entire music collection with you. Just plugging in the iPod inspires iTunes to open up and begin syncing.

It's conceivable, however, that you won't always want complete and automatic syncing to take place whenever you connect the Pod. Maybe you use the iPod primarily as an external hard drive (Chapter 9), so you don't especially care to have iTunes jumping up like a West Highland terrier every time you plug in the iPod. Maybe you want to synchronize only some of your music, not all of it.

Fortunately, you're in complete control of the situation.

If you like, you can command your jukebox software to open only when you want it to, rather than every time the iPod is plugged in. Just open iTunes, plug in the iPod, and, in the Source list, click its icon.

Then, click the iPod-shaped icon in the bottom-right part of the iTunes window (circled in Figure 2-6, left). The iPod Preferences box appears. Click the Music tab in the box to turn off the "Open iTunes when this iPod is attached" checkbox. (Older versions of iTunes keep all these preferences in one box, so yours may look a little different if you haven't updated lately.)

Figure 2-6: Left: Click the circled button to call up the iPod Preferences dialog box. (The second button takes you to equalizer settings; the third controls screen displays. The last button dismounts the iPod from the computer.)
Right: On the Music tab of the iPod Preferences box you can choose to have the iPod update everything automatically, or just certain playlists. "Manually manage songs and playlists" lets you move just the songs you want to the iPod.

The auto-sync option pretty much removes any thought process required to move music to the iPod. But if you'd rather take control of the process, or you just want to transfer some songs or playlists, you can change the synchronization settings. If you just got done turning off iTunes from opening every time you plug in your iPod, you already know how to get to the iPod Preferences box. If you skipped that section, here's how.

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The iPod was designed to be the destination of a one-way trip for your tunes: Music slides down the cable to the iPod, but songs on the player never make the trip back to the Mac or PC.

This design was perfectly intentional on the part of its creators. As noted earlier, Apple's position appears on a sticker on every iPod: "Don't steal music." If the iPod let you copy music both ways, people might be tempted to turn the device into a pocket music-sharing service, capable of copying free copyrighted songs from computer to computer.

The truth is, though, that not everyone who wants to upload songs from the iPod to a computer is stealing music. You may have perfectly legitimate reasons for wanting to be able to do so.

For example, say your computer's hard drive self-destructs, vaporizing the 2,945 MP3 files that you've made from your paid-for CD collection. You legally own those copies. Shouldn't you have the right to retrieve them from your own iPod?

Most people would answer "yes." Some might even thump their fists on the table for emphasis. And then they would clear their throats and ask, "Well, how can I do it—should I ever need to copy files off my iPod?"

Once again, the following methods are printed here not to encourage you to steal music, but instead to help you back up and manage the songs that you already own.

Turning the iPod into an external hard drive (Chapter 9) lets you copy everyday computer files back and forth from your Mac or PC. But when it comes to your music files, you won't even be able to find them. The iPod and its music management programs use a special database for storing and organizing the music files—and it's invisible.

The name of the super-secret invisible iPod music folder is called iPod_Control. You can find it yourself with a little poking around on Windows and Mac OS X. If you don't fancy yourself an intrepid explorer of your computer's software secrets, there are several software utilities for both the Mac and PC that can also make it visible.

If you're using a new iPod and a relatively recent edition of iTunes, though, there's one more caveat to be concerned with: Most of the actual song titles look like license-plate numbers, like AOWC.m4a or PGDP.mp3. (Previous versions of the iPod's software simply displayed the song title as it was stored in your iTunes Music folder, like Come Fly With Me.m4a.) As shown in Figure 2-12, Windows itself can display artist and album information for each song, but that's still not much help when you're looking for a specific song.

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It may not have all the colorful bells and whistles of its big siblings, but the screen-free iPod Shuffle is just right for many people. The Shuffle, Apple's lightest and least expensive member of the modern iPod family, is a no-nonsense portable jukebox that puts the focus squarely on the sound.

You can store up to one gigabyte of your favorite songs, podcasts, audiobooks, or data files on an iPod Shuffle, and with its minimum of fragile, scratchable parts, you don't have to worry about cracking its screen or busting its hard drive if you accidentally drop it. The iPod Shuffle has a lot to offer, and this chapter shows you how to tap into its full potential.

Just by looking at Figure 3-1, it's pretty obvious that the iPod Shuffle is much different from the bigger iPods and iPod Nanos described previously. For starters, it's barely over three inches tall, there's no display screen, and the click wheel looks like it shrank in the dryer. And you don't even need a cable to do the Shuffle—this tiny music machine plugs directly into your computer's USB port.

A regular iPod has a miniature hard drive to store 30 to 60 gigabytes of music and data, but like the iPod Nano, the iPod Shuffle uses a small chip of flash memory to store its contents. This is the same type of memory used in the ubiquitous USB flash drive (snapped on the end of a keychain or tucked in a shirt pocket) that has replaced floppy disks as a way to carry around files from computer to computer.

Unlike hard drives, which are moving, spinning things that can skip if bumped and break if dropped, flash memory can take a lickin' and keep on rockin' because there are no moving parts in there. Flash memory does have its limits, though, as it's still pricier and currently capable of much smaller capacities than miniature hard drives.

Figure 3-1: Small but mighty, the iPod Shuffle stands ready to supply music to your ears. The gray ring gives you volume control along with the buttons you need to play, pause, or pop around your playlists.

Yet the iPod Shuffle has room enough on the inside to hold about 125 to 240 songs, depending on which one of the two models you buy—the 512-megabyte baby or the roomier version that affords you a full gigabyte for your tunes. And because there are no moving parts and no LCD screen to worry about smashing, you can use the iPod Shuffle for more high-impact audio adventures, like your aerobics workout at the gym, your morning run over rough terrain, or to loan your kids for an hour.

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Just by looking at Figure 3-1, it's pretty obvious that the iPod Shuffle is much different from the bigger iPods and iPod Nanos described previously. For starters, it's barely over three inches tall, there's no display screen, and the click wheel looks like it shrank in the dryer. And you don't even need a cable to do the Shuffle—this tiny music machine plugs directly into your computer's USB port.

A regular iPod has a miniature hard drive to store 30 to 60 gigabytes of music and data, but like the iPod Nano, the iPod Shuffle uses a small chip of flash memory to store its contents. This is the same type of memory used in the ubiquitous USB flash drive (snapped on the end of a keychain or tucked in a shirt pocket) that has replaced floppy disks as a way to carry around files from computer to computer.

Unlike hard drives, which are moving, spinning things that can skip if bumped and break if dropped, flash memory can take a lickin' and keep on rockin' because there are no moving parts in there. Flash memory does have its limits, though, as it's still pricier and currently capable of much smaller capacities than miniature hard drives.

Figure 3-1: Small but mighty, the iPod Shuffle stands ready to supply music to your ears. The gray ring gives you volume control along with the buttons you need to play, pause, or pop around your playlists.

Yet the iPod Shuffle has room enough on the inside to hold about 125 to 240 songs, depending on which one of the two models you buy—the 512-megabyte baby or the roomier version that affords you a full gigabyte for your tunes. And because there are no moving parts and no LCD screen to worry about smashing, you can use the iPod Shuffle for more high-impact audio adventures, like your aerobics workout at the gym, your morning run over rough terrain, or to loan your kids for an hour.

Even though it can't haul your entire collection around, the iPod Shuffle can still get you through a day of music. You can conveniently load up the Shuffle with songs from your existing (or future) iTunes library with the click of a button.

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Through a simple interface of colored lights, buttons, and a switch on the back, your iPod Shuffle responds to your commands and tells you what it's up to. The circular control ring on the front of the Shuffle (Figure 3-1) has the familiar

and

buttons on the left and right sides that let you go backward or forward through the songs stored on the player. At the top and bottom of the ring are the volume controls: a plus sign (+) for louder and a minus sign (−) for softer.

The all-important

button is right in the center of the control ring. Push the button to play a song and push it again to pause the track. Tapping any of the controls on the front of the Shuffle causes the little green light within the case to flicker in acknowledgement that you're pushing its buttons.

Full-size iPods have a separate switch that deactivates all the buttons temporarily, keeping the iPod on or off and at the same volume even if the player's controls get bumped accidentally. There's no separate Hold switch on the Shuffle, but you can put it in Hold mode just the same by pressing the

button for 3 seconds. Turn off the Hold mode by pressing

again for another 3 seconds.

As shown in Figure 3-3, on the back of the iPod Shuffle is a wide plastic switch that can be adjusted to three positions:

Off. To turn off the iPod Shuffle and conserve your battery charge, slide the switch up so that none of the green color underneath is showing.
Play in order. To set the Shuffle to not shuffle your songs, slide the switch one notch to the middle icon, which looks like two arrows chasing each other in a circle. This setting plays your songs or audio book chapters in the order you arranged them on the playlist you loaded on the iPodlet.
Shuffle. Slide the switch all the way down to let the iPod Shuffle do what it was named for: play your songs in random order.

Figure 3-3: The slippery switch on the back of the Shuffle tells the player how you want to listen to your music. You can choose to Shuffle, play in order, or turn the Shuffle off. Pressing the Battery Status light gives you an inkling of how much of a charge is left in your Shuffle's battery.

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When you've tired of the Shuffle's current contents, you can easily take off the old music and put on some new stuff.

If you're driving an automatic Shuffle, you can do this by clicking the Autofill button again (just make sure the "Replace all songs when Autofilling" checkbox is turned on; see Figure 3-5).

If you're taking the manual approach to Shuffledom, connect the Shuffle and then click its icon in the Source list to call up its contents in the main iTunes window. Click the song titles you want to remove and hit the Delete key.

Now you have room for fresh hot tunes.

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You know those cute little USB flash drives that fit in your pocket and let you haul around documents and files that are too fat to fit on a floppy? Your iPod Shuffle can do that, too—and still bring along dozens of songs to boot. It's two Widgets in one!

To set up the Shuffle for its part-time job as a USB drive, connect it to the computer and open its Preferences box, as described in Figure 3-10. Turn on the checkbox next to "Enable disk use." (You do the same thing to set up a regular iPod as an external hard drive, as explained in Chapter 9.)

On the Shuffle, you have to decide here how much space to allow for data files and how much space you want to preserve for music. Adjust the slider, as shown in Figure 3-12, to fit your needs and divide up the Shuffle's real estate between work and play. Click OK, and you're off to the rat races.

Figure 3-12: With the slider at the bottom of the iPod preferences box, you can decide which is more important to your iPod Shuffle—room for music or room for documents, files, and other stuff to carry along from computer to computer.

There may come a time when you need more room for music or vice versa; when that time comes, go back to the iPod Preferences box and readjust the slider.

Once your Shuffle has been configured to work as a USB drive, it shows up on the computer as another external drive, either in the My Computer area in Windows or on the Mac's desktop (Figure 3-13). Once you see the Shuffle's icon, you can drag and drop files to your heart's content, just like the music player was any old flash drive, floppy disk, external drive, or other form of portable media.

Because the computer now considers the Shuffle to be an external drive, you must treat it respectfully and properly eject the player before unplugging it. Blithely yanking the Shuffle out of the USB port will annoy the computer enough to flash an alert box at the drive correctly. Worse yet, you could damage the files on the Shuffle.

When you have the Shuffle connected to the computer and see the amber light blinking gently on the front of the player, it's in use as an external drive. Don't unplug the Shuffle when the amber light is blinking.

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Recorded music has appeared in a variety of shapes and sizes over the decades, including fragile discs spinning at 78 rpm, vinyl records in colorful sleeves that were artworks in themselves, pocket-size cassette tapes, and futuristic-looking compact discs. But no music format ever exploded into the public consciousness as quickly and widely as the bits of computer code known as MP3 files.

The MP3 format makes it possible to compress a song into a file small enough to be uploaded, downloaded, emailed, and stored on a hard drive. That feat of smallness set off a sonic boom in the late 1990s that continues to reverberate across the music world today.

This chapter tells all about MP3 and other music formats, including the main iPod-approved format: AAC (Advanced Audio Coding), a copy-protected file type that makes Apple's iTunes Music Store possible.

The era of modern digital audio began in the early 1980s. A new, small, shiny format called the audio compact disc, developed by Sony and Philips, began to appear in music stores alongside tapes and vinyl records. Unlike analog tapes and LPs, audio CDs stored music in digital form, and produced a bright, clean sound with pristine clarity. (Some audiophiles still prefer the "warmer" sound of vinyl, not to mention the expansive canvas that records provided for detailed album artwork, but many have accepted the CD.)

1985 was a pivotal year for the CD. The format's popularity got a huge boost from its first big seller, Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits, and a variation on the audio CD technology called CD-ROM (Compact Disc, Read-Only Memory) edged into the computer market as a way to play multimedia files and interactive programs.

Over the years, a CD drive became

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