Tag Archives: iPod

iTalk

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But you knew that…

I was down at the Biltmore Apple Store today. I did a presentation about Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger in the theater there. It was a small crowd, but half the people there bought books — even though I swear I wasn’t pushing very hard — so I consider it a success. Too bad there hadn’t been 50 people.

Anyway, while I was there, I went through the “fire sale” bin. Evidently, Apple marks down reconditioned merchandise for quick sale. There’s nothing wrong with the stuff and it’s still covered under warranty. So it was worth a look.

About 75% of the stuff in the bins were iPod related. There were reconditioned iPods, including iPod Photos, iPod Shuffles, and iPod Minis. There were all kinds of headphones and earbuds, including a Sony noise canceling set and a Bang and Olufsen pair. There were wetsuits and leather jackets and sweaters for iPods. (Well, not really, but they’re so like those items that they may as well call them that.) Some speakers, too. But the thing that suckered me in was the iTalk. This is a recording device, from Griffin Technology, that attaches to the top of a 3rd or 4th Generation iPod or iPod Photo. (I have the iPod Photo.) You can then use it to record voice notes right on your iPod.

iTalkThe darn thing, which is smaller than a ChapStick, retails for $39.95. It was in the bin marked down to $29.95. So I bought it.

Remember, there is a considerable amount of geek in me and it’s nearly impossible for me to pass up a good deal on a new geeky toy, especially one that can fit in my purse.

I didn’t bring my iPod down to the Biltmore store with me, so I had to wait to get home to try it. It worked just as I expected. You plug it in and your iPod automatically realizes that a recording device is attached. (Apple products are so damn smart.) It brings up a menu that enables you to record a note or cancel. If you record a note, the menu changes so you can pause or save it. If you save it, it’s saved with the current date and time.

What I didn’t realize is that the iTalk is also a speaker. Okay, so it’s tiny and the sound quality pretty much stinks, but it’s certainly good enough to listen to those notes without plugging in your earbuds. And it’ll play music, too, but you’re probably better off listening to an old AM radio with a weak battery. Still, it’s a feature I didn’t know I’d bought.

Evidently, notes I record will automatically be copied from the iPod to iTunes when I Sync. This is A GOOD THING. It would be a pain to be stuck with notes in just one place. I haven’t tried this feature yet because although my PowerBook is home with me (I’m typing on it right now), I don’t sync that iPod with the PowerBook. I sync with my G5 back at the office. So I’ll have to wait until Tuesday to try that out.

In the meantime, I’ll see if I can get Alex the Bird to talk into this thing. I’d like to turn him into a geek, too.

AirPort Express with AirTunes

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I buy yet another gadget for my Macs.

I’d just finished writing the Networking chapter of my Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger: Visual QuickStart Guide when my editor, Cliff, called me into an iChat chat. Cliff and I often use iChat during the day to ask each other quick questions.

“Why didn’t you include AirPort Express in the book?” he wanted to know.

“I don’t have one of those,” I told him. Or at least I typed at his icon, which was a orange globe that day. “I can’t be expected to buy every piece of Apple hardware,” I added.

This was true. Every year, I invested hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars buying the Apple hardware I needed to write my Mac OS X book. A new desktop Mac every two years. A new laptop every three years. AirPort base stations and cards. iPods. Digital cameras, scanners, color printers. The list went on and on. It was very costly and I had a huge collection of old hardware that I just didn’t have time to put on eBay. Apple might help legitimate authors out with software, but it seldom coughed up hardware for the cause.

“But we should mention it,” he insisted.

“Do people buy it?”

“I’m sure they do.”

I switched over to Safari and surfed on over to the Apple store where I read a description of AirPort Express. Among other things, it enabled you to send iTunes data from an AirPort-equiped Mac to compatible stereo speakers. I thought about Mike and his desire to buy a new receiver. I looked at the price. Oh hell. What was another $129?

So I bought one.

It’s actually a pretty cool little device. It plugs into a wall socket and has three ports: USB, Ethernet, and Audio Out. You plug the Ethernet into a Mac, cable modem or DSL connection, or hub. (Mine isn’t plugged into anything.) You plug the USB into a printer, so the printer is accessible to users on the network. (Mine isn’t plugged into anything.) And you plug the audio out into a pair of stereo speakers or, in our case, a stereo receiver with speakers attached.

Then you configure the whole thing with the AirPort Setup Assistant. You have two options: configure it just so it sends iTunes to the speakers or configure it so it extends an existing AirPort network. I chose the second option. I mean, why not? And the iTunes to stereo thing still works.

It’s kind of cool to control the stereo upstairs with my PowerBook in the kitchen.

I’m impressed. I added a tiny bit of info to the book about it. But I’m also going to write an article about it for InformIt.com. That’s how I pay for this stuff, after all.

Speaking of iPods

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I’m glad I didn’t sell my old iPod; here’s why.

My new helicopter has an audio-in jack so you can plug in a portable tape player, CD player, or MP3 Player. My old helicopter also had a jack like that, but it was an aftermarket installation and didn’t play in stereo. I know that sounds like I’m being pretty picky, but it also had a tendency to drop out one of the channels on some stereo music so you didn’t hear all the instruments/vocals, even in mono. Better than nothing, I guess, but not nearly as good as real stereo.

The headsets in the helicopter’s front seats are Bose Generation X. They cost a small fortune (which is why I didn’t get four of them) and I don’t think they’re worth what they cost, but they are the best. And they are stereo.

So I have a stereo line-in jack and stereo speakers.

And a very new iPod Photo with over 2,000 songs on it.

It makes sense to use the iPod in the helicopter, right? Well, unfortunately, the iPod Photo doesn’t seem to like the helicopter. I’ll plug it in and get it playing. 5 or 7 or 11 songs later, the iPod freezes up, right in the middle of a song. Dead in the water. Won’t shut off, won’t reset, won’t work at all. The only way to bring it back to life is to plug it in at home and use one of the reset procedures. I’ve wiped it clean and reloaded the songs and music several times. The problem persists.

I think I know the reason for the problem. The iPod seems to be able to sense when something is connected to it. When I plug in that RCA jack, the iPod turns itself on. So something’s coming down the cable to the iPod, saying, “Hey, wake up!” The iPod obliges.

One of the features of the helicopter’s audio system is that it automatically cuts out audio when the radio goes on. Say I’m flying along, listening to Pink Floyd while my communications radio is tuned into the Wickenburg Unicom frequency. When someone else talks on that frequency, Pink Floyd is shut off until he’s done talking. My other helicopter worked this way, too. It’s the way I want it to work: after all, isn’t it more important to hear what’s going on around me than some music?

I always assumed that it cut out the music by just tripping some circuit. I don’t know electronics. For all I know, what I just said might be pure nonsense. The point is, I was pretty sure it didn’t cut out the music by telling the iPod to shut up.

Evidently, however, some kind of signal must be coming down that wire to the iPod. And the iPod is getting confused by it. And when it gets really confused, it just freezes up.

I gave this some thought. I realized that my old, original, 5GB iPod never seemed to know when you plugged something into it. Perhaps it would work without getting confused and freezing up.

So I charged it back up — its battery doesn’t last long off the charger these days — updated the songs, and took it for a flight. And guess what? It worked fine.

I’m glad. On long cross-country flights, it’s nice to have music. And it’s nice to not to have to resuscitate an iPod after every flight.

Clash of the Technologies

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I teach an old computer new tricks.

I have a 20th Anniversary Mac. I bought it about six months after they were released and got a pretty good deal on it. It sits on a table in my living room, a piece of functional art. It runs System 7.6 — if anyone can remember that. The cool thing about this computer — other than the fact that both a floppy disk drive and CD ROM drive are built into the monitor — is that it has a Bose sound system. It also has a stereo receiver and, somehow, my cleaning lady has learned how to tune in Mexican music while she works.

Anyway, I bought an iPod Photo a few months back so I could write about it. I really don’t need an iPod Photo, but once you have something like that, you try to come up with ways to make it useful. I thought, wouldn’t it be nice if I could attach the iPod to the Mac, play music through those Bose speakers, and show photos onscreen?

Remember, the 20th Anniversary Mac is old technology. It dates back to ADB, Serial, and SCSI ports. There wasn’t any USB or Firewire in those days. But it does have an S-Video port and a microphone-in port. So I started experimenting.

The iPod Photo’s dock includes both an S-Video port and an audio line-out port. I didn’t have an S-video cable with the multi-pin connectors on both sides. But I did remember someone saying that an ADB cable’s pins are the same configuration as an S-video cable. So I took an old keyboard cable from the office, brought it home, and used it to connect the Mac to the dock. Then I took a standard RCA-type stereo cable and connected it from the line-out port on the top of the iPod to the Mac. (When I connected that cable from the dock to the Mac, I had no volume control and I still can’t figure out why.)

I fired up the two devices and set up a slide show. The iPod’s music immediately played through the Mac’s Bose speakers. It sounded really good at any volume. But to get the video to show up, I had to fire up an application that comes with the 20th Anniversary Mac. I think it’s called Apple Video Player. It enables me to use the built-in TV tuner (which doesn’t work here on the edge of nowhere) or to take video from an external source. It recognized the iPod Photo’s signal and displayed the images onscreen as a slide show. The only drawback: I had to set monitor resolution to 640 x 480 to get it to work right.

So now, when I have company, I can entertain them with music and a slide show, playing in the background while we chat.

Needless to say, I use the 20th Anniversary Mac a bit more often now.

I Bought an iPod Photo

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I didn’t want to do it, but I had to.

The biggest problem I have as the author of computer books and articles is that in order to write about hardware and software, I have to own it. Or at least have it in my possession for enough time to learn and write about it.

That’s why I bought an iPod years ago. I had to write about using iTunes with an iPod for my Mac OS X book. I couldn’t get a loaner from Apple and I didn’t know anyone who had one. So I had to buy one. I still have it and still use it. It’s the original iPod, which held 1,000 songs on its whopping 5 GB hard drive. At the time, it was an incredible breakthrough in MP3 technology. But today, it’s a dinosaur, almost embarrassing to admit owning. (I own a Newton, too. But let’s not go there today, huh?) But it works, so I don’t care.

Want to know where I spent the most time listening to my ancient iPod? In my old helicopter, Three-Niner-Lima. I had Paul, my old mechanic, install an audio patch into the intercom system and put an RCA jack on the side of the instrument panel. I bought a nice leather case for the iPod with a mounting do-dad so I could hang it beside that jack. Then I used a standard Radio Shack cable (not bought locally; those guys don’t have anything you need when you need it) to patch the iPod into the helicopter’s intercom system. I could listen to tunes while I flew. Best of all, when there was a radio transmission, the music would automatically cut out so I could hear the radio. Ditto when I talked on the radio. A great arrangement. It made some of those long cross-country flights over Arizona and California and Nevada deserts a bit more pleasant.

The iPod Photo came out about a month or so ago. Probably less. I can’t remember. Anyway, Apple took the next logical step and made it possible to put photos on an iPod. So they’re worth looking at, they changed the screen to color. And since 10 or 20 GB isn’t enough to hold all your music and photos, they come with either 40 GB or 60 GB worth of storage.

I tried to get one from Apple as a loaner. They have an editorial loan program that is extremely difficult to get hardware from. I succeeded twice times in the past — I got an iBook loaner once and an iMac (ET style) loaner another time. But this time I wasn’t as lucky. I was told the waiting list was “a mile long.” Wow. So I bought one.

It came yesterday. I had company so I couldn’t tear open the box and immediately play with it. So I took it to work this morning. I’d just finished work on [yet] another Word book and was waiting for the index to come from the indexer so I could lay it out. I’d promised articles to two publishers. But I could spare a few hours to configure and learn about my new toy — I mean, vital piece of hardware.

It’s cool. No doubt about it. The dock it comes with sure beats that FireWire cable I left on my desk for syncing and recharging the old iPod. And the color screen is beautiful.

I stuck it in the dock and immediately started putting songs on it. I was able to fit my entire iTunes music library, which really isn’t much — only about 1,600 songs. (No reason for me to copy all my CDs to my computer’s hard drive when they weren’t going to fit on my iPod anyway.) Then I copied my iPhoto photo library to the iPod. All 2,600 photos. When I was done, I’d used less than half of the iPod’s 40 GB. Sheesh.

I got an e-mail from one of the editors waiting for articles and wrote back to her, mentioning that I’d just gotten an iPod Photo. How about an article that explains how to create a custom slide show with music on the iPod? She wrote back saying that they’d been talking about iPod photo in a meeting that morning. Write the article! So I did. And I submitted it this afternoon.

So I guess it must be an important piece of hardware, necessary for my work. After all, I’d owned it for less than 24 hours when I wrote an article about it that earned me $300. Another article and it’ll be paid for.

And yes, the new helicopter will be iPod-compatible. It has a built-in audio jack. But I think I’ll stick the old iPod in there, just for old time’s sake. After all, 1,000 songs really is enough.