IN THIS CHAPTER:
There's nothing much stopping the iPod from being a whole lot more than just a music player. It's got gigabytes of internal data storage and a large, high-contrast color screen; it synchronizes with your computer through an easy-to-use Dock or cable; and it's small enough to fit unobtrusively on your belt. All these characteristics fit the description of any of the popular, full-function Portable Digital Assistants (PDAs) on the market today. The iPod doesn't have an on-board method for feeding data into it (such as a keyboard or a stylus and touch-sensitive screen). It doesn't have a built-in camera or cell phone. But other than that, it's perfectly serviceable as a PDA, for some of the most popular reasons that you would carry one: viewing photos, carrying your address book full of people's contact information with you, reading text documents, and even playing games. The iPod also makes a dandy portable hard disk that you can use to back up important files from your computer. After you've been in a predicament in which your iPod came to the rescue by providing you an important phone number or resurrecting a backup copy of a critical file, you'll never think of it as a simple "music player" againand you might never have to carry a traditional PDA as long as you have your iPod. Note All the tasks in this chapter require the use of the iPod's screen and thus do not apply to the iPod shuffleexcept for Use Your iPod as an External Hard Disk, which describes external hard disk use for both standard iPods and the iPod shuffle. |