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Author Topic: How to use iPod shuffle without iTunes  (Read 6641 times)

davidnix71

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How to use iPod shuffle without iTunes
« on: 19 December 2010, 20:33 »
I own a MacBook Pro, but delete iTunes, the dvd player and Time Machine because they interfere with my use of the laptop.
I use VLC and Carbon Copy Cloner to replace them.

I got an 4GB iPod Shuffle at work as a prize/gift and am now discovering why it was given away. The Apple model number is A1271
or MC 164LL/B.

It's an overpriced piece of crippleware shit. The data/charging usb cable is proprietary as is the headphone with the volume control.

Since I don't have iTunes I have no way to add music in such a way that the iPod will play it. None of the solutions I see online will work with this model. Worse yet, if I did plug this into another computer set to sync an iPod it would wipe out my files and replace them with the host computer's file.

Is there any decent use for this thing? I will have to explain what I did with this thing beginning Monday. I intend to warn my boss about this because the gift was public. Everyone saw me get this at the company party Friday. That will cause trouble unless I just lie to everyone and I don't want that kind of relationship with my coworkers.

Everyone got a Coby MP550-1G as a gift. As inexpensive as the Coby is, it's a much better device, I still don't like the mini mini usb port both devices have or the inability to use a replaceable battery, but at least I can just drop and drag mp3's to the Coby at it will play them.
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Refalm

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Re: How to use iPod shuffle without iTunes
« Reply #1 on: 19 December 2010, 23:33 »
Have you tried Banshee or gnupod (might work on OSX)?

Anyway, you can always sell your iPod Shuffle on eBay, and tell your coworkers you gave it to your nephew as a Christmas present, since you already got a better mp3 player.

Or if you don't like that, just install Paralells and add a virtual machine with Windows and iTunes, just for the purpose of using your iPod.
I know that sounds kind of ironic, but you were the one deleting iTunes on a Mac.
« Last Edit: 19 December 2010, 23:36 by Refalm »
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davidnix71

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Re: How to use iPod shuffle without iTunes
« Reply #2 on: 21 December 2010, 00:29 »
I can reinstall iTunes, but I won't. It's a nasty program. There are a few programs that cannot be disabled by moving them to the trash and iTunes is one. If I insert an audio cd it will not ignore it even if the pref pane for music cd's says to.

Rockbox doesn't support this model. That was the last thing I tried. Foola comes close to working. It will convert and place the music in the hidden folders on the drive. You can see the hidden folders if you change the Finder prefs to allow for that. I used TinkerTool to toggle that pref. It's dangerous to mess with the stuff that's normally hidden, so I don't like leaving it that way.

I also deleted the pref pane for Time Machine because it's executable. Even after deleting the app itself, when I plugged in an external drive it tried to start making backups. That's brain dead stupid. It doesn't know where the drive came from and who owns it but it wants to modify it's contents.

That's the same crap with iPods. iTunes has no business messing with a guest usb thumb drive like that. The 9.x iTunes was also infamous for trashing people's music collection for no apparent reason on a minor ungrade.

I'm probably going to give it to a professional musician I know. He seemed genuinely interested. I've had more than one coworker ask to buy it, but that would eventually get back to the person who gave it to me. He's #2 in the company. I don't know exactly what he would think but it would look ungrateful. People believe the marketing hype from Apple. When I explained the hardware and software limits and the cost of this thing to Stefanie she kind of understood why I wouldn't sell it to her. She has a shared pc at home that has been trashed by viruses before. Windows is difficult to manage by itself without adding the risk of losing something you paid money for just because it was on the computer when Windows decided to take a sh!t.

I mentioned the device to our head IT guy who only does pc's and his first comment was about being forced to use iTunes and that yeah a regular mp3 player was so much easier.

I don't hate Jobs for this. He has to kiss the ass that allows him to sell music. But I won't kiss their ass.

Edit: Banshee has no device support yet in OSX and GnuPod is out of date for the current iPod shuffle.
« Last Edit: 21 December 2010, 00:40 by davidnix71 »
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piratePenguin

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Re: How to use iPod shuffle without iTunes
« Reply #3 on: 23 December 2010, 22:10 »
Does it work in Ubuntu? hint :p

Apple like their 'customers' to play by their rules.
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davidnix71

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Re: How to use iPod shuffle without iTunes
« Reply #4 on: 30 December 2010, 04:41 »
I can't get VBox to mount any usb devices. OS X gets them first. I have Ubuntu 9.10 in VBox to run another program that has never been compiled for OSX. Oddly enough for this program there are Windows and Ubuntu versions, but no MacIntel version, only an old unsupported PPC version.
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Lead Head

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Re: How to use iPod shuffle without iTunes
« Reply #5 on: 30 December 2010, 17:09 »
I believe on some of the other iPods it was possible to flash the firmware so it appeared as a normal USB storage device. Not sure if this is possible with the shuffle.
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bedouin

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Re: How to use iPod shuffle without iTunes
« Reply #6 on: 3 January 2011, 07:44 »
Quote from: davidnix71 on 19 December 2010, 20:33
I own a MacBook Pro, but delete iTunes, the dvd player and Time Machine because they interfere with my use of the laptop.
I use VLC and Carbon Copy Cloner to replace them

Ehh.  Right.

Anyway, this is an alternative that can sync to iPods:

http://getsongbird.com/system-requirements.php
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