For the Birds

I've decided I totally dislike Apple's method of the simple task of putting music on an mp3 player. I was asked to download, legally, a collection of Southern Africa bird sounds, 922 different birds. Purchasing, downloading and copying onto his laptop was no problem, then he asked me if I could load them onto his iPod, a 160gb Classic. Now he knows less about the iPod than I do, and my knowledge is only just over zilch. How difficult can it be? With my mp3 player and Android phone it's a simple matter of drag and drop, very simple.

I knew you had to go via iTunes so it took a fair while of experimenting and trying to understand the menus to complete that stage. Suddenly, as if by magic, they were all on there. That, apparently, was the easy part. Incidentally did you know there's no stop play button on iTunes, that I could find, so if you select a bird song to listen too it automatically moves onto the next track whether you want it or not.

Feeling a sense of achievement at getting all 922 tracks onto iTunes in an album, that's another thing but for another day, another rant, all I had to do was drag and drop them onto the iPod. Ah no! Try as I could, including following YouTube video instructions, it would not oblige. I saw a sync button but on pressing that had a warning that everything on the device would be wiped, not a good idea when he already had 9000 odd other bird songs on there, no doubt added by someone who knew what they were doing.

Having spent over an hour there unsuccessfully trying to load these tracks I said I'd take it home and have a play with it there. That's when I finally found the check box which says 'Manually manage your music and videos' or words to that effect. This was not ticked. Hmm, I thought, that sounds promising, so tick it I did. Lo and behold the next time I tried to drag the music from iTunes to iPod it suddenly leapt into life and started doing it.

Of course when complete all the new tracks and old tracks were muddled up, but when I checked it on the iPod, after trying to figure out how to eject it other than just pull the USB plug out, I could select albums and the 922 songs were listed alphabetically within the Southern Africa Bird Sounds album. Of course there's still no stop button, only a pause, but then I don't have to use it, thank goodness!