What To Do With Your New iPod

So you’re one of the lucky ones to whom Santa, or a special someone, brought a brand new iPod. You’ve probably already ripped through all the packaging, plugged the iPod into your computer and started ripping CDs, copying them over, and buying tracks from the iTunes Music Store to load on the iPod. What now?

I’m going to spend some time covering some iPod basics for the iPod newbie and discuss how you can get the most out of your new little friend.

First, a few warnings: you need to understand auto-sync. By default, the iPod is set to auto-sync with all the songs in your iTunes Music Library. I’ve had several ecstatically fervent new iPod-owning friends begin to import all their CDs into iTunes and sync the songs with their iPod, then delete all the songs from their computer to free up more room on the hard-drive for importing even more songs to the iPod. Sounds perfectly logical. What’s wrong with that?

Well, quite simply, once you remove the songs from your computer, the next time you auto-sync with the iPod, poof! All those songs you spent all that time importing will be gone from both your computer and your iPod. If you like auto-sync and don’t mind having all the same songs on your computer as on your iPod, then leave the settings at the default. If you would rather cram your 60GB iPod Color full of music, while keeping your 40GB computer hard-drive free for usage, click on the little iPod icon in the bottom right corner of iTunes, which will open up the iPod preferences, and switch to Manual. Now, you are in charge of where all your music goes.

Also, keep in mind that Apple wants you to put music on your iPod, but they’ve not made it easy to take music that is on your iPod and put it back on your computer. Make sure you backup all your songs to CD / DVD or an external hard-drive before removing them from your computer. The magic of having 6,000 songs on your iPod turns into a costly tragedy if you have to fully restore your iPod to factory settings with no backups of all that music. Backing up might not be much of an issue if all of your songs were imported from CDs still sitting in your closet, but if you’ve been purchasing your music from the iTMS, make sure you backup that data. Apple doesn’t allow for later downloads of previously purchased music.

Also, if you do want to get your music off of your iPod, when you mount the iPod as a removable hard-drive on your Mac or PC, it’s all hidden in an invisible folder on the iPod. There are multiple ways to get inside that invisible folder. The easiest is to download a program that will automatically download everything from your iPod to your computer. If you are on a Mac, get either Xpod or Podestal. If you are on a PeeCee, first my condolences, and secondly, get this. Unfortunately, I do not think any of these programs will grab the AAC files off the ‘pod. They will only grab mp3s. To get EVERYTHING off, you’re going to need to browse the invisible files and folders on the iPod. On the OS X side of things, you can use the Terminal program to do this. On the PeeCee, I think you can choose “View invisible files / folders” in Windoze Explorer. Google it.

If your iPod freezes and none of the controls work, don’t panic. First, check to see if the hold switch on top is on. If this isn’t the case, then read this Apple Knowledge base Article. If none of the options discussed there work, you may need to reset your iPod to its factory settings. Doing so will erase all the music from your iPod.

If you just want to know how to turn your iPod off: there is no off switch. You can hold down the Play / Pause button for 5 seconds to put the iPod to sleep. It will also auto power down if left paused for a while.

Finally, remember: nothing makes an iPod better than iPod accessories. Time to spend some of that holiday money from Grandma. Get a nice case for your iPod. If you are an audiophile and you don’t really enjoy the Apple-supplied earphones, splurge on something like some Bose headphones or the Shure e2c, e3c, or e5c earphones. And last, but surely not least, if you want to find out how to do as many different things as possible with your new iPod, grab a copy of iPod & iTunes Hacks by Hadley Stern.