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Tunequest Topic: Topic: ipod

iPod: Sort Your Albums by Year of Release

April 17th, 2008

The iPod's default behavior is to sort alphabetically. Here's Daft Punk's albums: Discovery (2001), Homework (1997) and Human After All (2005). Not that long ago, I was asked by a commenter if among other things, I had any suggestions for getting the iPod to sort albums chronologically. By default, the iPod's behavior is to sort albums alphabetically by title. In iTunes, there's the option to sort "Album By Year" but ...

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5G iPod Problems with Audiobooks, revisited

March 14th, 2008

Lately I've been on a tear with audiobooks, managing to cram a number of books in between my regular music and podcast listening. The sudden upswing in interest has prompted me to renew my investigation of the problems the 5G (fifth generation) model iPod has with long-playing books. As I noted last summer, the 5G has troubles with homemade m4b files (bookmarkable AAC) longer than a certain play time. The ...

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Thoughts on an iPod Shuffle

October 27th, 2007

Birthday season is in effect around the tunequest compound and themodernista kicked off the festivities by presenting me with my long-desired orange iPod Shuffle (2G) (which I have dubbed "Shuffleupagus"). I had been struck by the orange model since they were announced this past January, but despite its relative inexpensiveness, I could never justify purchasing one; I'm a fairly austere guy when it comes to material goods and all ...

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Managing a Two iPod workflow is just too difficult

September 5th, 2007

(or, Initial Thoughts on the iPod Touch) Weeeee... new toys from Apple! iPods iPods iPods, including shuffles in drab new colors (gimme orange), a new iPod NanoVideo (aka iPod Squat), an all-metal iPod Classic (the form we all know and love––now up to 160GB!) and a phoneless iPhone (aka iPod Touch). Upon the availing of the line up this afternoon, I was immediately torn. In my mind, the iPod brand is ...

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iTunes 7.3 Sorting Problems: Fallout Central

August 29th, 2007

Apple has really screwed up with the new sorting behaviors introduced in iTunes 7.3 and it's making a lot of people seriously unhappy. And, honestly, I've NEVER been mad at Apple for anything in my 25+ years of history with the company (annoyed at times, but never mad), but the more I think about this the more pissed I get. For those just joining the story, Apple released version ...

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iTunes’ totally effed up sorting

August 24th, 2007

...and managed to sully my iPod too. And the more I think about it, the more pissed off I get. What Apple has done defies all standard convention, is completely arbitrary and makes ab-so-lute-ly zero sense whatsoever. Allow me to go on. I had put off updating my iTunes to 7.3.2 until a couple days ago. With all the time and energy I invest into pruning and perfecting my library ...

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So, the 5G iPod has a problem with Audiobooks…

August 21st, 2007

Not all audiobooks, mind you, just homemade ones; downloads from the iTunes Store and Audible seem to work fine. The story goes like this... My carpool ended a couple weeks ago, as my riding buddy resigned to take another job. I'm going to miss the amity, conversation and, of course, the gas and mileage savings, but my solo commute will now give me the opportunity to invest more time into ...

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8 Ways to Improve the iPod (and could be done with a firmware update)

May 11th, 2007

The iPod is supposed to be "iTunes to go" but as the little music player has advanced over the years, it still lags behind in some relatively basic features, features that have been a part of the desktop program for some time. iTunes' capabilities seem to be constantly improved and refined; its portable counterpart's behavior has remained relative unchanged, even as it has gained photo and video support. Forget touchscreens ...

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Tagging Remix and DJ Albums for iTunes and iPod

May 3rd, 2007

Remix albums and DJ albums have always proved a challenge to tag in a useful and logical manner because of how they differ from the traditional song-artist-album tagging model. Like compilations, remix albums typically include songs by a variety of artists and musicians. But they are released under the banner of a single artist and it is that artist that I associate that album with. For example, the album ...

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