iPod: The Missing Manual, 10th Edition

Introduction

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A decade makes. When Apple introduced the very first iPod back in October 2001, it was a bulky chunk of white plastic, chrome, and glass that held a mere 5 gigabytes of music. But its concept was simple and enticing: you could carry 1,000 songs around in your pocket. And people did.

Fast-forward 10 years, and the iPod line has blossomed into a quartet of very different models: the Internet-friendly Touch; the fitness-minded Nano; the tiny, no-fuss Shuffle; and the versatile, old-school Classic. From that original ur-Pod, Apple has created a family of iPods with something for just about everybody—as long as you know what features they offer and where to find them.

That’s where this book comes in. iPod: The Missing Manual shows you how to use all the impressive capabilities of the Touch, Nano, Shuffle, and Classic in one convenient volume.

Like that original 2001 model, all of today’s iPods play music. But most of the gadgets in the line have evolved to become full-fledged media players, too. The Touch, Nano, and Classic all show off your photos. The Touch and the Classic let you watch Hollywood movies. The Nano offers an FM radio and a pedometer. The Shuffle, which doubles as a very entertaining lapel pin, can talk back to you with the push of a button. And the Touch, the most popular of all iPods, shoots video, surfs the Web, and can run half a million practical little mini-programs called apps, making it a real pocket computer.

Along with this guide to your device, you’ll get a detailed look at iTunes, Apple’s desktop media manager for all iPods, and learn about the Touch’s new iOS 5 system software and iCloud syncing service.

As the iPod line moves into its second decade, some things hold true: You can still create your own inner world of music and have it right there in your pocket. But on the iPods of 2011 and beyond, you can now fit a big part of the outside world in your pocket, too. Like most 10-year-olds, the iPod keeps on growing.

How to Use This Book

THE TINY PAMPHLET THAT Apple includes with each iPod is enough to get your player up and running, charged, and ready to download music.

But if you want to know more about how your iPod works, all the great things it can do, and where to find its secret features, the official pamphlet is skimpy in the extreme. And the iTunes help files that you have to read on your computer aren’t much better: You can’t mark your place, there aren’t any pictures or jokes, and, quite frankly, help files are a little dull. This book gives you more iPod info than that wee brochure, is available in both eBook and treeware editions, and it has lots of nice color pictures.

About→These→Arrows

Throughout this book, and throughout the Missing Manual series, you’ll find sentences like this: “Go to View→Column Browser→On Top.” That’s shorthand for a longer series of instructions that goes something like this: “Go to the menu bar in iTunes, click the View menu, select the Column Browser submenu, and then slide over to the On Top entry.” Our shorthand system avoids lots of long, drawn-out instructions and helps keep the book snappy.

The Very Basics

To use this book, and indeed to use a computer at all, you need to know a few basics. This book assumes that you’re familiar with these terms and concepts:

Clicking. To click means to point the arrow cursor at something on your screen and then to press and release the clicker button on your mouse (or laptop track-pad). To right-click means the same thing, but you press the right mouse button instead (or the top-right corner of a Mac mouse). Often, right-clicking calls up a menu of commands you select from.

To double-click means to click twice in rapid succession without moving the cursor. To drag means to move the cursor while pressing the button.

When you’re told to Ctrl-click something on a PC, or ⌘-click something on a Mac, you click while pressing the Ctrl or ⌘ key.

Menus. The menus are the words at the top of your screen or window: File, Edit, and so on. Click one to make a list of commands appear, as though they’re written on a window shade you’ve just pulled down.

Keyboard shortcuts. Jumping up to menus in iTunes takes time. That’s why you’ll find keyboard workarounds that perform the same functions sprinkled throughout the book—Windows shortcuts first, followed by Mac shortcuts in parentheses, like this: “To quickly summon the Preferences box, press Ctrl+comma (⌘-comma).”

If you’ve mastered this much information, you have all the technical background you need to enjoy iPod: The Missing Manual.

About the Missing CD

As you read this book, you’ll find references to websites that offer additional resources. To save yourself some typing, you’ll find a clickable list of those sites on this book’s Missing CD page at www.missingmanuals.com/cds/ipodtmm10/.

The Missing CD page also includes corrections and updates to this book. Click the View Errata link to see them. You can submit your own corrections by clicking “Submit your own errata” on the same page. To keep this book as accurate as possible, each time we print more copies, we’ll make any confirmed corrections.

While you’re online, you can register this book at http://tinyurl.com/yo82k3. Registering means we can send you updates about the book, and you’ll be eligible for special offers like discounts on future editions of the iPod Missing Manual.

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