iPod touch 32Gb Inquiries & Buying

[ThirteenXIII]

So I'm in the market for a second iPod. I currently use a 5th Gen but would like as more of a back up music player.

Which leads me with the following questions regarding the 32gb iPod Touch

1) I always manually manage my Songs and Videos (theyre all stored on a back up drive that isnt synced or otherwise associated with iTunes)...and I wanted to just "Drag N Drop" my MP3's into the new iPod Touch from OSX10.4 10.5 and XP......is that possible?
It seems to work fine for my 30Gb iPod Video 5th gen, its formatted for Windows/Fat32 and I can add songs in any OS Platform using iTunes and my Backup drive by dragging and dropping tracks without restoring the iPod each time.



2) Is it a good time to buy now or wait until WWDC to see if theres an announcement?
The fee really isnt that big of a deal; as I'm more concerned will it be auto-installed when I restore my iPod Touch if need be? etc etc


any suggestions or tips are appreciated. thank you!

 

[andybno1]

1) I always manually manage my Songs and Videos (theyre all stored on a back up drive that isnt synced or otherwise associated with iTunes)...and I wanted to just "Drag N Drop" my MP3's into the new iPod Touch from OSX10.4 10.5 and XP......is that possible?
It seems to work fine for my 30Gb iPod Video 5th gen, its formatted for Windows/Fat32 and I can add songs in any OS Platform using iTunes and my Backup drive by dragging and dropping tracks without restoring the iPod each time.

the ipod touch uses ram disks so you cant view the touch as a hard drive like you would an ipod video as theres no physical hard rive inside.

2) Is it a good time to buy now or wait until WWDC to see if theres an announcement?
The fee really isnt that big of a deal; as I'm more concerned will it be auto-installed when I restore my iPod Touch if need be? etc etc

as for the second question its really upto you, the only major announcement I could see from WWDC would be the final new featuers for the 2.0 firmware upgrade and the cost

 

[razorianfly]

Hey ThirteenXIII,

1) Yes it is possible to manually manage your music between two systems with iPod touch. The method which you would use, I would think, would be to dock your device with iTunes and continue to drag music from your library, manually, into the device on the left pane of iTunes, seen as though as stated above iPod touch is not available as a hard disk to either of the mentioned OS's. For this, re-formatting of the iPod is not needed for an iPod which was originally formatted with Windows, to transfer to Mac, although I'm unsure whether if you are using an iPod originally formatted with Mac, whether this would be compatible for song transfer with a Windows system, I'm sure someone else can answer that for you ...

2) This is a hard one to judge to be honest. I am expecting, because WWDC is development focused, there won't be any major design changes to iPod touch. With the current price of SSD drives it is highly unlikely Apple will take the jump to 64Gb with the iPod touch just yet (possibly September). If your not bothered about the release of firmware 2.0 and the charge which will accompany it, I suggest you buy now (waiting until after the announcement of v2.0 may save you the fee which Apple will attach to v2.0, but that is it ..). Once the firmware is officially released by Apple, you will have the option to pay, download and install it, or if you feel it's not worth it, remain with the current features of the model you buy. Apple do not force software updates upon it's consumers, you always have a choice.

At a guess and judging the functionality included with the January Software Update, I'd expect a fee of between $25-30 for the iPhone/iPod touch v2.0 Software Update expected late June. I also expect that devices manufactured after the initial public announcement of v2.0 will come pre-installed with v2.0 software (therefore saving you the cost of v2.0), as Apple did with the January Software Update.

Cheers,
R-Fly

 

[ThirteenXIII]

thanks to both of you! "5-stars" each for your quick response.


Yeah i use Tiger/Leopard & XP here & there...depending on what App and if need to use the full OS instead of a VM.

and since my secondary drive is always on/connected to the back of my Mac and im always adding more to the cataloge ; itd be easy to just drag-n-drop

I will probably set-up my iPod with XP first, since it doesnt particularly format to specific hdd format im assuming it will be readible/writable across Leo/Tiger and XP.



thanks again! looking forward to this purchase