More iPod Tips
| Customizing the iPod's Main Menu You can add items to and remove them from the iPod's main menu. For example, if you frequently browse your library by artist, add an Artist menu to the main menu. Go to Settings > Main Menu, then scroll to Artists and press Select. While you're there, check out the other customizing options and tweak your iPod's main menu to contain the commands you use most. Menu customizing is not available on 1G and 2G iPod models. The On-The-Go Playlist You have a sudden hankering to hear some songs from six different albums, but you're on the road and thus can't build a new playlist using iTunes. Solution: the On-The-Go playlist, a special, temporary playlist that lives within the iPod. To add a song to this playlist, scroll to the song and then press and hold the Select button until the song flashes a few times. Repeat for the next song. You can even add entire albums, artists, genres, and playlists to the On-The-Go playlist. Simply scroll to the item you want and hold down Select. To clear the On-The-Go playlist, navigate to it, scroll to the bottom of the song list, and choose Clear Playlist. The playlist is also cleared when you connect the iPod to your Mac, but if you've set up iTunes to automatically update the iPod when you connect it, the On-The-Go playlist will be copied to iTunes so you can use it again. Current iPods (as well as 4G and mini models) provide two more On-The-Go playlist features: the ability to delete a song from the playlist and to save the playlist. To delete a song from the playlist, highlight the song and hold down Select until the highlight flashes. To save the On-The-Go playlist, navigate to it, scroll to the bottom of the song list, and choose Save Playlist. The saved playlist will have the name New Playlist followed by a numeral. When you sync up your iPod, the saved playlist will be transferred to iTunes, where you can rename it. The On-The-Go playlist is not available on the 1G and 2G iPod models. iPod shuffle: Converting to AAC The iPod shuffle can play all formats supported by larger iPods, with two exceptions: Apple Lossless and AIFF. What if you've been ripping your CDs in Apple Lossless format and want to play those tunes with your shuffle? Or what if you've exported some GarageBand songs and want to shuffle around with your music dangling from your neck? As page 99 showed, the iPod shuffle has a preference setting that lets you accomplish both tasks: it's the check box labeled Convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps AAC for this iPod. That's a mouthful, but it's a useful option. When this box is checked, iTunes will create 128 kbps AAC versions of any Apple Lossless or AIFF songs that you try to copy to your iPod shuffle. The song files remain in their original format in your iTunes library; iTunes simply encodes an AAC version on the fly before transferring it to the iPod shuffle. iPod shuffle and the Gray Dot iTunes displays this dot to indicate that the song hasn't yet been copied to the iPod shuffle. When you connect the shuffle and copy the song, the dot disappears. Extracting Photos from an iPod You copied some photos to your iPod, but didn't include the original, high-resolution versions. Now you're at a friend's house and she'd like a copy of the photos. You connect your iPod to her Mac, put it in disk mode, and open up the Photos folder. But instead of seeing individual image files, you see only a couple of files with cryptic names such as F1023_1.ithmb. When iTunes prepares photos for iPod storage, it stashes them in a format that isn't readable by imaging programs such as iPhoto or Photoshop. But that doesn't mean there isn't a way to get to those photos. A free utility named Keith's iPod Photo Reader can open files and reveal the images they contain. You can copy some or all of the images and save them as PICT image files. Keith's iPod Photo Reader is available through download sites such as VersionTracker. Consider stashing it on your iPod for those times when you want to copy photos. Navigating Podcasts When you're listening to an enhanced podcast on your iPod, you can jump between chapters by pressing the iPod's Prev or Next buttons. Getting Lyrical Starting with the 5G and nano models, the iPod has the ability to display song lyrics. If you use the Song Info window to add lyrics to a song (page 28), you can display the lyrics on the iPod as the song plays. Navigate to the Now Playing screen if necessary, then press the Select button until the lyrics appear. You can retrieve song lyrics from innumerable Web sites; search for "song lyrics" using your favorite search engine. Rating Songs You can use the iPod to assign star ratings (page 78) to a song while it's playing. Navigate to the Now Playing screen, then press the Select button until the rating screen appears. Use the click wheel to assign a rating. When you update your iPod, iTunes retrieves the rating and assigns it to the song in your library. Full-Screen Artwork Page 99 described an iPod preference setting named Display album artwork on your iPod. If you check this box, the iPod will display any album artwork associated with the currently playing song. To enlarge the artwork to fill the iPod screen, press the Select button while the song is playing. Note that when album artwork is visible, scrubbing within a song (described on page 100) requires an extra button press. You need to press Select to display the artwork full-screen, then press Select again to get the little scrubber diamond. If you use the scrubbing feature a lot, you might want to uncheck the album artwork preference setting.
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