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Using iPad 2 to listen to Amazon Cloud overseas?

K

kkm9

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 12, 2010
31
1
Is it possible beyond an essentially one-song-at-a-time process? [I've seen a site describing options, but it's a bit old, so I'm trying here.]

I'm taking a trip to Europe (France, Prague & Barcelona) later this year and want to be able to listen to music at places I'm staying which have WiFi; and, in a car which has Bluetooth.

I'll have an older MacBook Pro (10.6.8) and iPad 2 with me. I'd prefer not to have to buy a new iPod. Had an iPod on last trip 7 years ago, with cord. Since then, I've backed up my grown music library (180 GB, lives on an external HD, not on the MacBook Pro I will also be taking along with iPad2) on Amazon Cloud before Apple cloud came out.

What I want is to have some way to listen to music from my library in both my leased car (which will have Bluetooth), and a Logitech Mini Boombox in my room at places which have WiFi.

What's possible short of spending on a current iPod?

Thanks,
Karen
 
Miles, this is a three month trip. A few songs ain't going to do it. But I get your drift.
 
Is Amazon's cloud service available in Europe? I don't know, but if it's not you might have to subscribe to a VPN service with servers in the US. I would check that first.

As a fallback, since you're taking your laptop too, you could get a cheap external hard drive and load your music. The last one I bought was $79 for 500 gigs. It's about the size of a pack of cigarettes. Not much added weight and could double for storage for any pic or videos you take and you could switch out you music however you want.
 
Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions. I'm looking into each thing you mentioned, but have guests coming for a couple of days so will have to get back to this later.

The portable HD sounds good, considering I already needed to get one to store RAW photos while traveling, so that should work.

Dumb question, but do things which are 'wireless' like iPhones, speakers, whatever, also still come with jack wires so they can be plugged into the computer? I don't even have a cell phone so am quite a dweeb about current tech.
 
kkm9, if you really want your entire music collection with you I'd recommend you take a look at the Seagate GoFlex Satellite. It's a 500gb hard drive that has built in wifi and will allow you to stream all of the content to your iPad. I have one and have my entire 300GB iTunes library on it.
 
You could try Google Music. Upload your songs to Google, then use gMusic or GoMusic.

Amazon doesn't have a streaming app for iOS. Probably because selling music is more important to Amazon's core business than it is to Google. And they're prefer not supporting their competition in Apple iTunes/Match.
 
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So far, I'm leaning towards getting an external HD which can hold both RAW photos (lots of them) and be partitioned to hold a chunk of my music. No I don't want or need access to all 180 GB for 3 months, just some. Because I'll need to transfer the photos to the camera and then on to the HD, it needs to be one with a USB cord.

I also don't get how the Seagate one above would work in a car in the countryside of Normandy.

But it gets complicated: plug the HD into my open laptop, and then into a port of some sort in the car...?

Anyone know if there's a way to connect a newer iPod to the external HD?

I'm starting to think I may as well just break down and buy an iPod. This is driving me nuts.
 
The point of an external hard drive would be to switch out the music you want to listen to every once in a while. Most generic external HDs come with a USB (micro or mini) and you plug that into your laptop. You would sync the music from iTunes whenever you want a change. It would also do double duty for your pics.

1). Get an external HD and realize that you still need your laptop and will spend a bit of time moving pics and syncing music.

2). Get an iPod and enough storage for pics.

Also, you may find that your music selection is not as important as you think. There will be a lot to see and do. Don't over think it and just enjoy your trip.
 
Donna, what a nice message. Clean and crisp! I wasn't thinking about the idea I could also use the iPod for photo storage.

I want to save RAW photos (much bigger files) because I want to work on them post-trip for some time using Photoshop Lightroom, which is best taken advantage of with RAW files. I haven't done the math re: numbers of photos storage per GB I'll get.

Music and book files are tiny compared.

Thanks for your thoughts. I'll continue to ponder a bit before deciding. It's in my nature to 'over-do', ie: buying an external 1 TB for the photos and an iPod for books & music. But this is ridiculous.
 
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