And She Knits Too!

Not completely seamless

Remember I asked a few posts ago about transferring my tunes from my ipod to a computer since my laptop died and I didn't backup everything--just my itunes purchases.

Well, I looked into your suggestions and it all looks pretty good, except that I just bought a snazzy new Macbook so the plot thickens...

First, I love the new computer.  New computers are not only slicker and faster, they're clean; no bookmarks in the browser, no mail, no files, no little bits of leftover who-knows-what on the hard drive.  Being a Mac I also have the clean lines of the designs and the cleanliness of a non-microsoft OS too and while I feel a bit stupid because I'm not familiar with the world of Mac, and because the move isn't quite as seamless as the Apple hype proclaims, I'm quite happy with my purchase.

However, when it comes to moving my ipod stuff to the Mac, there is a little ripple.  The act of plugging in the ipod to the Mac will cause it to reformat and wipe everything off.  So, I still need to back up everything to a PC, find a way to transfer said back up to the Mac and then reformat the ipod.  So I'll end up spending money for a program to move stuff to my old, old PC (which is really our server and computer for the kids to wreck) and then burn them all to disk to load them onto the Mac.  Since I have 99% of my tunes on CD anyway, it'll probably just be faster to load it all back in manually while I'm watching TV.

Which means that I have no product reviews for ipod to computer software--sorry. 

The way I see it, I have a small ipod (Mini) and was getting tired of listening to the same old stuff, so I can treat my ipod like a new computer and start fresh.   I did consider upgrading the ipod  but there's nothing wrong with it except that it doesn't look as cool as the new nanos.  And it still works so why bother?

Putting the Genie Back In the Bottle

Actually, putting my ipod back into my computer...

I backed up all my iTunes purchases before my laptop died, but didn't realize that it wasn't backing up everything else on my ipod--all my cd's, the playlists etc.  What I want to do is put the contents of my ipod back into iTunes and not load everything back in manually.

I notice that iTunes doesn't have this feature (well not if your computer is dead), but there are lots of programs out there that will.  I also notice that the free versions limit the number of songs one can do without paying, and before I shell out the cash I would welcome any recommendations on what works well for a PC or Mac. 

Don't tell me that iPods and iTunes are evil because in my mind they are what they are and there is no great injustice in their configuration, just a lot of inconvenience.  I've decided that the road to hell is paved with attempts to understand why big companies do what they do when the short answer is: Because they can.  People buy their stuff and their complaints aren't enough to hurt sales.  I'm not feeling duped, just put out in terms of time.

Though looking at my little iPod mini, it seems so out of date.  That is something evil about the whole thing--my coveting of new gadgets.