3. Setting Up

Setting up the iPod was quite easy. Take it out of the box; connect one end of the firewire cable to the iPod and connect the other end to a Mac and you're off and running. By itself, the included firewire cable can be used to charge the iPod provided you either plug the firewire cable into the AC adapter or to a Mac. When you're on the road, the AC adapter and firewire cable is all you need to keep your iPod happy and charged. When you're home and uploading songs, the firewire cable provides juice from the Mac to charge the iPod. Note that you can also charge the iPod by connecting the firewire cable to a PC firewire port. (6pin port)

Settings Menu

Connecting the firewire cable to the back of the iMac	Connecting the other end to the iPod - try not to disconnect at this point

3.1 iTunes

Upon connecting to the Mac, iTunes get executed and you're asked to identify your iPod. After making a connection, the iPod looks basically like a mounted drive under OS X. iTunes displays an icon for the player on the left hand side and you can drag and drop music to the player from your iTunes library. I won't go into too much detail on iTunes but it's intuitive enough for most people to use easily. You can configure iTunes to synchronize mp3's from the desktop to the iPod and back or you can manually move files yourself.

Using iTunes	Browsing the songs on the iPod

For my own setup - my mp3 files are actually located on a Windows file server in my local LAN. Using OS X, I can connect to the Windows shared directory and then drag and drop the songs I want to store on my iPod. I actually don't like using iTunes to browse through my collection of MP3 files but again that's a matter of personal taste. However using the Mac to manage the iPod is just so easy. You'll see a screen shot of this later on.

3.2 Windows users

If you're a windows user, you can use a number of software applications to communicate with the iPod. Though there are some problems with firewire communications between the iPod and Windows on some firewire chipsets, it is still a very good alternative to using iTunes and the Mac. Some of the software applications out there that can facilitate this include MediaFour XPlay and EphPod which uses MacOpener. If you do not want to go this route, you can always get the Windows version of the iPod which includes the MusicMatch software. Though there's no cost difference in going this route, I prefer the Mac iPod and then using the XPlay software. I just can't stand MusicMatch personally.

3.3 Batteries

The iPod's Lithium Polymer batteries are great. I can easily get nearly 10 hours out of playback with the iPod under ideal conditions. What are ideal conditions? Don't use the equalizer; don't turn on the backlighting; don't seek through songs a great deal. Basically start your playlist and leave it alone from there on end. Of course most people don't work this way so you can still get well over 6-8 hours of playback under different usage scenarios. The battery charges very quickly though unfortunately I don't have any numbers here for you. The AC Adapter has folding prongs which makes it an easy carry item for travellers. The best part of the iPod is the ability to charge via a firewire connection to a system (whether Mac or PC) as long as it is the 6 pin connector.

AC Adapter and FireWire cable

Ready to disconnect

[Home] [Previous Page] [Next Page]