MP3 Players

[Michael MacLeod]

With regards to the iPod, it appears as a regular firewire or usb external
drive (newer iPod models don't have firewire, they're usb 2.0 only). You can
copy files to the iPod just like any other external media, however, you
can't just play them on the iPod. When you copy music to an iPod from
iTunes, it updates an xml file on the iPod, which is where the play count
and star ratings and stuff are also stored for each track, and how iTunes
syncs this information up between your main library and your iPod.
I believe Rhythmbox can read and write this xml file. At least it could when
I was doing this research a little under two years ago. I ended up
purchasing a powerbook g4 as well as a ipod, so the whole issue became moot
for me :)
But either way, iPod's should be supported well enough under linux.

On 2/28/06, John Vetterli <jvetterli-zC6tqtfhjqE at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 28 Feb 2006, Colin McGregor wrote:
> > The VAST majority of USB MP3 players are seen as USB
> > external drives to Linux. The magic question to ask
> > the sales munchkins is "Do I need a driver program to
> > make this work with Windows 2000?". There was
> > strangeness with Windows 98 and external USB drives,
> > so if there is a Windows 98 driver disk, no problem.
> > If no driver is required for Windows 2000 you know the
> > device will look/act just like an external memory key
> > or external hard drive. The reverse is obvious, if a
> > driver disk is required for use with Windows 2000 (and
> > there are a small number of such devices out there),
> > run, don't walk away.
>
> Microsoft has come out with their own "Media Transfer Protocol".
> Since I suspect that a) many Mp3 players manufactured nowadays
> will use this protocol instead of USB mass storage, and
> b) Windows 2000 supports this protocol out of the box, I'm not
> so sure that the lack of a win2000 driver means that the player
> is linux-friendly.
>
> Wikipedia entry for Media Transfer Protocol:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Transfer_Protocol
>
> JV
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