I have been given a brand new Itouch (?) as a gift. There are no instructions with it!!! and no charger.. just a little pair of headphones and a usb cable.

I use Windows media player on my pc for my mp3 and can just about manage that although I've only ever uploaded my cds onto it.. never downloaded anything from the internet.

However I do have a macbook now but it's not connected to the internet yet

So how do Ipods work? What is Itunes? Can I upload my cds onto an Itouch? What's this about buying stuff/tunes online and does that apply to classical music?

.. and why on earth isn't there an instruction book.. it seems that 'everybody' is now expected to know how to work these things so they don't need instructions? Is there a universal secret to ipods that nobody has told me?!

Help! (again)(thanks)

Itunes is similar to media player having essentially the same role.


You can charge the Itouch by pluging it into the computer with the USB cable

Getting CDs onto an Itouch (you shouldn't need the mac connected to the internet for this):
MacBooks come loaded with Itunes, if you open it up and put in a cd, down the bottom is a button you click which copies the tracks off the cd and stores them onto the macbook as mp3s. As the Itouch is made by apple I'm guessing you should then be able to put songs onto the itouch from Itunes.

You can download (from Itunes) music as mp3, and then put it onto the Itouch to listen to instead of buying CDs. There is some classical music available - indeed Janine Jansen has been doing very well in the download charts!

Blimey a Macbook and an iTouch. How lucky can you get?

Firstly, iTunes is already on your Macbook. If you go to http://www.apple.com/uk/itunes/ and scroll to the bottom you will find links to an overview and tutorials.

You can copy your CDs into iTunes (that's where most of my content comes from) - just insert a an audio CD and iTunes should start automatically. You can then drag and drop tracks from the CD into your library. Note that if you haven't got an internet connection when you do this you probably won't get a track listing (an online database called Gracenotes is used to get that info along with album artwork).

If you plug your iTouch into the macbook, that will be recognised and appear in iTunes too. Generally it is set up to synchronise automatically from your iTunes library but that can be varied. Don't try to get the hang of everything at once, it's too much to take in. Note also that your iTouch will also synchronise (if you want it too) with your address book contacts, iCal calendar and iPhoto.

iTunes also handles movies now and once you get on line you can (if you wish) purchase tracks or albums from the iTunes shop. You can also find free podcasts to download.

It is a bit idiosyncratic in some areas (isn't all software?), but generally pretty intuitive.

How does iTunes work? I'm tempted to say that it doesn't

I've just gone back to a Mac after about 20 years, only to find that the basic software is hardly improved. Oh, but now there's iTunes ...

It's a bit clunky in my experience, not nearly as good as WMP, and won't play anything except mp3 files (well, it won't play WMA files, which is a drag). And of course it tries to sell you iTunes store product all the time. No doubt fine if you want to go the all-Apple route.

So, not impressed! Apple didn't get where they are today by listening to customers (and if you don't believe me, check out Steve Job's famous quotes!)

EDIT: OK, so I'm disappointed ... one thing ITunes does well is rip CDs. Very fast. Just a pity that you can't organise the results terribly efficiently.

Lucky you! An iTouch is a very generous gift

On iTunes you just put in your credit/debit card details etc and just search for music in the 'shop' and select 'buy' and it will download it. It's a very effective way of spending lots of money without realising it!

If you search online I expect there are lots on instructions and/or tutorials and FAQs on iTouches and iTunes if you get stuck.

Oh, there is plenty of classical music on iTunes! I get pretty much all my classical music recordings off iTunes, you can get all the classicfm range off there, and some orchestras like the LSO have their own range of recordings. Searches of most music will bring up plenty of results, you just have to choose which orchestra/soloist you want to listen to!

I don't understand that one Nick. What with playlists, columns and views there are many more ways of organising stuff in iTunes than organising my CDs on the shelf.

I don't know why you're disappointed either, Nick. I find WMP to be cumbersome and difficult to manipulate. Sometimes it takes up to 20 seconnds (!) to start playing a track and that's on a year old 2.8Ghz machine!

iTunes, however, does not. Admittedly I used to think that it was ###### when I ran it on a PC, yet I wouldn't use anything else (at the moment) for my Mac. It does exactly what it says on the tin - well.

Ahh there is a tiny leaflet that says the instructions are available online

Is it my fault, am I missing a bit of my brain, because so much technology seems so complicated these days.. what's wrong with wanting simple gadgets?

We bought a DVD player at Christmas because our last one packed up. It's now March and we still can't record things from the television despite discs and hard-drives and neither OH or I are thick.. we're just not used to dealing with technology on a daily basis. But we must be missing some kind of aerial or cable because it plays films but won't record (yet it says on the box that it does).

Anyway, thanks for all your replies... I think my credit card might be smoking by the time I've got all this sorted out!!!

(off to search itunes for "viola" )

To be fair to the manufacturers, modern gadgets change so quickly that it's much easier, cheaper and more environmentally friendly to put the (sometimes copious) documentation on line.

Nothing wrong with you at all - these damned recorders are specially designed to be confusing - and I use computers every day.

Hmm. I find the iTunes store frankly disappointing for classical music. I still buy CDs.

I'm forever downlaoding stuff on itunes. My problem is that I like songs not albums. It's rare that I would actually want to sit down and listen to an album

What would the geeks and nerds do then?

This will shed more light on what iTunes is.....


What is iTunes?

The current version is iTunes 8 and it is free to download. I've been using it for a while now, you will need to download it first then visit the iTunes shop and that's where you can download songs and albums!

You can also put CD's that you already have onto iTunes then it will upload them on to your iPod.

I rarely go for individual tracks - I much prefer to listen to something in a context, rather than skipping from one artist/style/genre etc. Having said that I do quite often listen on shuffle when I'm not sure what I want to listen to. The nice thing about iTunes (or other music sites, I use emusic too - has anyone tried the new Amazon service yet?) is that whether you go for a single track, an album or several albums by the same artist (a particular weakness of mine) is up to you.

Oh, and I use iTunes on a PC with a combination of music imported from CDs and bought online and I love it.

I tend to only use the iTunes shop to identify recordings.

Mr CJB has developed a habit when he hears music he likes on TV running upstairs to the computer searching until he's found out what it is then inviting me upstairs to hear snippets either of different recordings of the same piece or of different tracks from an album to decide which/whether to buy the CD. We both like to have the CDs rather than purely PC based copies of music we like.

As well as ripping music from CDs the other main use I make of iTunes is for podcasts.......oh and synchronising my ipod of course.

You can buy a mains charger for all ipods (works with the shuffle as well but you need to change the cable) which I find really useful as to charge anything from my laptop's USB sockets requires the laptop to be powered up and the whirring can be annoying.

Like TSax I tend not to listen to single tracks as most of my collection is multi movement works.

I do keep my shuffle on random though as I only use it in the gym and it only contains upbeat rock/pop/whatever Mr CJB decided to dump on it...........though finding out that the 1st track was 'Fat Bottomed Girls' did make me wonder what sort of point he was making!

The Touch is a lovely little beast! I also use mine to store all my photos (5000 and counting) - the display is brilliant (love the way it rotates the picture depending on which way up you hold the device) and it means you can bore show your friends your photos any time...

Just plug it into your pc and it will tell you what to do.
They never come wih a charger- it will charge from the pc though this is a bit of a pain- you can get the charging adaptor for an ambitious £20 or so. Cheaper adaptors are available from A****n but I wouldn't risk it.

I use an ipod charger I got for a fiver in HMV.

I love itunes, in my eyes it far outstrips WMP or Winamp. However recently the treble on the right channel keeps cutting out - only in itunes, so its not my amp. I can't find any reports of this problem online... anyone have the same issue? Sorry, fairly off topic..

I have problems with itunes too! I have ripped my CDs onto it but a lot of the tracks are in the wrong order! Really annoying for operas.

Yes, there is an answer to this one. I just have to remember it. What you could do initially is for a given CD check that "Artist" and "Album Artist" are the same (or delete "Album Artist" altogether).

Another thing to consider is whether the CD track titles were imported when you ripped the CD (or did you have to manually edit them?). If the latter, the track numbering might also be wrong. Have a look in track info (right click on a track) and check it is numbered correctly (e.g. 2 of 21).

I'll have a poke around and try to remember how I fixed this when it happened to me (only once).

EDIT - Just a thought - try sorting by Album.

Fair enough - I was perhaps particularly irritated when I posted! It may also be that I don't yet know how to use it properly (Apple not noted for providing instructions...). I have to say that I haven't noticed either iTunes or WMP being faster than the other. My main grouches re iTunes:

1) It plays nothing but MP3s and won't convert other formats. This means that I have to re-rip (?) all my music (since using Switch would take even longer) ... I've just remembered that Apple claim that iTunes 'plays all your digital music and video'. In my experience this is simply untrue
2) There is no alternative format option when ripping CDs - MP3 or nothing
3) The 'store' tie-in means that it is basically a device for selling you stuff from Apple.
4) It doesn't always recognise album title, track title or artist's names on CDs. I suspect that these may be CDs that the iTunes store doesn't sell ... result: stuff gets muddled up, or has to be laboriously (and I mean laboriously) labelled by hand. There may be a way of doing this faster via the 'finder' (just like you can relabel Windows files fast via Explorer) but I haven't yet found it.
5) As far as I can tell, no folder structure - so no way of choosing album by album how you want things grouped - by artist (useful for keeping all works by one person together) or by album (useful is all other cases). Also, therefore, no way of seeing all your albums at a glance.

Now, there may well be ways of doing all these things much better than I am currently doing - if so, please tell me how!

My other grouch is Apple's unbearable smugness - the 'we know best' syndrome that means that on many features (the traffic lights, the ridiculously small screen fonts, the need on a macbook to remember a load of key combinations to do simple things). One company makes decisions, regardless of customer preferences, and prices everything at a premium (THAT is why Apple have a small share of the market, not because their machines only appeal to the cogniscenti). And the software isn't really very flexible, and ltd freeware is available, so you're limited in how you can set things up.

Apple had an 'insanely great' machine when it first introduced the Macintosh in - when? - 1986? I just don't see much improvement.

Nick

I think if you go to options you can encode as wav mp3 and some others. I'm sure by default Itunes actually encoded all my CDs to mp4a, and as I don't use an Ipod I had to change a setting to save as mp3.

Nick, to be honest, when I first read that iTunes won't play your WMAs I thought that you were talking n'importe quoi However, I have since realised that the very first thing I did when I bought my Mac was download a little utility called Flip4Mac. This works right across the platform (iTunes, Quicktime inclusive) and you don't notice it. I'll see if I can find you a link

Edit: Here you go, just click on the red 'Télécharger gratuitement' button.

The default Apple file is AAC (whatever that is), but that only plays on iPods. It will also play wav files and possibly others


and AAC, AIFF, "Apple Lossless"(?) and wav


Fair enough, I find it reasonably easy to avoid that though unless I'm specifically after something.


Of the 400+ CDs I've imported there were only a handful that didn't get labelled up properly (including Jamey Aebersold playalong CDs so I doubt it's to do with the iTunes store). A fair few of the CDs were bought directly from the artist and aren't readily available in the shops. You need to be connected to the internet at the time so it can access the Gracenotes database.


I find that the filter columns at the top make it really easy to select by genre, artist or album. I haven't really used folders at all but it will only take me seconds to find the tracks I want out of the 5,500 or so I have loaded.

I agree with TSax on these points

Just because there is an iTunes store doesn't mean you have to use it. I go there VERY rarely.

As TSax says the listings come from the Gracenotes database - which definitely has gaps and errors in it. Renaming a file in explorer doesn't edit the tags in the audio file correctly and is only a very superficial modification. "Info" within iTunes allows editting of many attributes (Album, Composer, Track Name, track number, etc. etc.).

Use Playlists to group tracks or albums (e.g. into Rock, Pop, Folk, Classical, Performer, etc.) Or Smart Playlists which automatically put your newly imported into playlists based on previously set up parameters. Items can belong to multiple playlists. iPOD synchronisation can be based on the whole library, selected playlists or manual selection.

There is loads of online documentation plus tutorials, tips and forums on the Apple website.

You really don't know how macs work do you? Font sizes are much more adjustable than in Windows, navigation can be done by mouse not just keystrokes (and yes you can use a right button these days), the bundled software is superb and there is a huge selection of shareware and freeware.

Whereas Microsoft are continually having to improve Windows to match something which "hasn't improved much" in 20 years.

I can't help thinking your sig is particularly relevant on this thread Nick.

Thanks for the helpful suggestions - I do now remember Flip4Mac.

Roy - at present to use 'end' 'home' or 'forward delete' commands (all pretty well essential to written work) on a Macbook I have to remember various unintuitive key combinations, and I can't see how using a mouse would alter that. If you can tell me, I'd be glad to know.

Chacun a son gout, as Freda might say.

Forward delete: you press the 'fn' key then the 'delete' key at the same time, you can remember it as there is an 'f' in forward delete and an 'f' in 'fn'. Also if you hold down the 'alt' key with either forward delete keys or delete then it will delete a whole word.

It is a bit annoying having to learn the key commands but once you know them they save you a lot of time compared to doing the same thing with the mouse. As I'm used to using emacs and vi text editors I have got used to remembering them!

I agree with you on the Forward Delete - it's a silly thing to leave off. As for Home and End they are Command-arrow, right or left. But you probably know that. I tend to be more of a mouse user - even in Windows.

Oui.

Haha I certainly would! It actually took me a good 10 seconds to work out the English equivalent! It's been a verrrry long day