Share an IPOD on a Network

Task #100

Difficulty Level 2

You can share music on an iPod with other Macs on your network. An iPod, after all, is really just a souped-up disk drive. To begin sharing an iPod with others on the network, activate Personal File Sharing in the Sharing pane of System Preferences. Then plug an iPod into your Mac. Now other users on the network can access your drive.

When you share an iPod, other users will see the contents of the drive. They will not, however, see the music that you have uploaded to the iPod with iTunes. This does not mean that the music files are not there; they are simply hidden from view. You just have to know where to look. You can use the Terminal application to view the contents of the hidden music folder — Terminal is good at “seeing” hidden files. You can also use Terminal to perform operations on those files just as you would any other files.

Did You Know?

An iPod has a text file on it that stores important information about the system and its drive. You can find the file in iPodDrive/iPod_Control/Device/SysInfo, where iPodDrive is the name of an iPod when mounted on the desktop. Open the SysInfo file with a text editor such as TextEdit to view its contents. You may recognize the text within the file because the iPod is capable of displaying the same information.

Apply It

To view the SysInfo text on the iPod, press the Menu button repeatedly until you locate the main menu. From there, scroll the wheel until you find About in the list of choices. Click the center button on the iPod to view the About window for the iPod. The About window displays the text found in the SysInfo file.