Thinking of Ipod Touch, couple of questions...

nodle

[H]ard|Gawd
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Apr 9, 2001
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I was wondering if someone could answer a couple of questions. I was thinking of getting a 4g 32gig touch. I really don't want to use Itunes. Can you buy apps directly off the touch and download them over wireless to itself? What I would really like to do is use Foobar to transfer music to it, then just buy apps and download directly to it. This will get me away from Itunes. Is this possible? Also say you buy an app and then later delete it off your touch, do you have to re-purchase it or can you sign back in and re-download it since you already bought it?
 
I don't think that's possible, unless you jailbreak it. You can un-jailbreak it if you need warranty or anything, but you need iTunes to purchase stuff off the iTunes store, from what I know.
 
The iPod touch just like the iPhone has "iTunes" and the App Store directly on the device itself - as long as you have an iTunes account (I believe you can create one on the device but it's easier on an actual PC or Mac running iTunes, takes a minute or two at best), you can make purchases directly on the device itself.

The main reason for having iTunes on a PC or Mac and using it is because when you make a purchase the song/video/app/whatever is downloaded and stored on that machine, then synced with the device you're using. If the device gets lost, stolen, damaged, etc, you've got those songs/videos/apps/whatever backed up ready to go when you replace the device or have it repaired.

Basically it becomes your backup - yes once you purchase something on iTunes you can download it again if needed but that takes time to do and can sometimes be a hassle, especially if you're talking about a lot of materials.

Personally when I owned an iPod touch I just installed iTunes only for syncing/managing it, I didn't "use" iTunes for anything else, it was never a problem for me but I know some folks just abhor it completely.

Makes me wonder why some people even bother giving Apple money or owning Apple hardware at all (just in case they got it free or something). :D
 
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Ok thanks Joe Average. I would like to try to stay away from using Itunes at all if possible. It wouldn't be bad if they would add background monitoring to their music folder "I still can't believe they don't use this feature" I know you can browse the app store directly from the touch and I was hoping that you could just sign in from there and purchase and download directly to it. For transferring of music I plan on using Foobar. This was I can have the best of bother worlds. I didn't want to jailbreak it either. Just pay for my apps etc.
 
Yah, I know. After all these years I just had to come to a point where I thought "Fuck it, the hassles and bothers of NOT using iTunes at least in some way for such a device isn't worth it" because there isn't anything out there that works with the iPod touch/iPhone like iTunes does.

I don't own an iPod touch anymore but I've still left iTunes installed, it just sits there and doesn't bother me anymore. If I was on a Pentium 3 machine with 256MB of RAM it might but, I'm not so it doesn't. :D

But I do use foobar2000 as my primary music app, of course.
 
If I'm correct, you will have to use iTunes to delete any apps you don't want any more. You can't directly delete them from your iPod. I just got my iPod touch a couple weeks ago so I could be wrong. If someone knows how to do that I'd really like that info. :D
 
You will lose any apps you buy if you dont transfer them to your iTunes library, its just a limitation. Yes its a stupid one and they could just remember you bought it but no, guess not. BTW just because you jailbreak doesn't mean your gonna get free apps from the app store. It allows you to customize your device however you see fit. Also you CAN delete apps directly from your touch. Just hold an icon till they wiggle then hit the X and it will ask if you want to remove it.
 
If I'm correct, you will have to use iTunes to delete any apps you don't want any more. You can't directly delete them from your iPod. I just got my iPod touch a couple weeks ago so I could be wrong. If someone knows how to do that I'd really like that info. :D

Once an app is installed on an iPhone or iPod touch, if you'd like to get rid of it, just tap and hold your finger on the screen for a few moments. When you see all the icons shake, pick the one you'd like to delete and then tap the X off the corner of the icon, confirm the delete, done. Basically the same method for rearranging the apps by icons too, just drag 'em to whatever screen you like when they do that shake.
 
Once an app is installed on an iPhone or iPod touch, if you'd like to get rid of it, just tap and hold your finger on the screen for a few moments. When you see all the icons shake, pick the one you'd like to delete and then tap the X off the corner of the icon, confirm the delete, done. Basically the same method for rearranging the apps by icons too, just drag 'em to whatever screen you like when they do that shake.
Sweet. Thanks for that info. Still learning the ins and outs of it.
 
You don't have to store the apps anywhere.

Once you purchase them on your iPod, you can re-download them as many times as you want. Just click purchase again, and it will say you have already purchased this item and it will download for free.

I never back-up any of my apps and just re-download them when I format my iPhone or move to a newer model.

Also, it would be possible to use the iPod without iTunes. There are other apps in the app store that allow you to load music onto the device in other ways and then play it directly on the device. However, you will have to use that program to play the media and not the integrated player so I wouldn't say it's worth it.

I can't imagine what is so bad about iTunes that you wont install it to load media on your iPod.

What is so bad about dragging your music folder into iTunes and then pressing sync, and then closing iTunes until you get a new CD. Then open it, drag in that new CD and press sync again.

Same steps for movies and other video files.
 
You don't have to store the apps anywhere.

Once you purchase them on your iPod, you can re-download them as many times as you want. Just click purchase again, and it will say you have already purchased this item and it will download for free.

I never back-up any of my apps and just re-download them when I format my iPhone or move to a newer model.

Also, it would be possible to use the iPod without iTunes. There are other apps in the app store that allow you to load music onto the device in other ways and then play it directly on the device. However, you will have to use that program to play the media and not the integrated player so I wouldn't say it's worth it.

I can't imagine what is so bad about iTunes that you wont install it to load media on your iPod.

What is so bad about dragging your music folder into iTunes and then pressing sync, and then closing iTunes until you get a new CD. Then open it, drag in that new CD and press sync again.

Same steps for movies and other video files.

I would love to use it, but I have a large music library and for some reason Itunes won't add a basic feature like "monitor music folder in background". So when I add new music to it, then I have to have it re-scan my music folder again. Why can't they add this feature? Zune has it and about every other music management system.
 
I would love to use it, but I have a large music library and for some reason Itunes won't add a basic feature like "monitor music folder in background". So when I add new music to it, then I have to have it re-scan my music folder again. Why can't they add this feature? Zune has it and about every other music management system.

I suppose I agree they should have a feature like that.

Though then you would have to have it running all the time. And to see changes your library, doesn't it actually have to completely re-scan the folders too? How else would it know you had some new files burred deep in the folder structure. How would it know if you changed a tag on some file. If it's smart i guess it could look at the file date.

The maximum iPod touch is 64GB, it shouldn't take long to just drop your libraries parent folder in there. I've got about 30GB of music on mine and it takes less than 3 minutes to add my entire library even streaming off my NAS.
 
Windows allows applications to be notified whenever a specified folder changes. As for why iTunes doesn't support this, I don't know.
 
You don't have to "rescan" the whole folder, just Import the music and it's added to the iTunes database automagically. I've never ever just pointed iTunes at a huge folder full of music, I always do it manually an album at at time, that way I know for certain it actually does add the content correctly, and it's reading the tags appropriately and picking up the album art - and when it doesn't I add that manually too.

As for the automagic folder importing with iTunes... Apple isn't going to add any functionality to make iTunes work any better on PCs than it does on Macs so, forget it, that "feature" will probably never exist for the Windows version of iTunes. Would just give more people more reasons to stick with Windows instead of buying a Mac, I suppose. No, it doesn't do it on Macs either but, they expect people that own Macs to buy a lot of music from iTunes or do manual encoding of their own CDs which imports the content automagically anyway.

165GB of music I've got in hand-encoded LAME mp3 format from my own 2200+ CD collection (in storage), tagged by hand album by album using Tag&Rename, artwork embedded into the files manually with Tag&Rename as well. I ain't doin' all that shit again... :p

But yeah, I haven't owned an iPod touch in 2+ years, probably won't ever get another one at this point, the Archos 43 is my next PMP I'm pretty sure. But I'm getting the Wife a NOOKColor for Christmas and so far it's basically turning into a proper Android tablet in almost every respect possible - B&N just announced Android 2.2 in January so it's coming along nicely. Might just use that and be done with it...
 
They can be pretty much stand alone devices, i rarely connect mine to itunes except for updates...
 
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