iPod Touch

[gmanacsa]

iTunes unfortunately doesn't seem to sync PDFs to the iPhone, just as it ignores them for the iPod. The workarounds seem to be to email the file, serve the file over the Web, or include it in a Safari bookmark (the FileMark Maker method I talked about in my earlier post). Does anyone know of any other method?

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by andym

A quick search on Google pdfs on iPhone threw up some interesting links.

There's a link here from David Pogue about reading books on the iPhone:

http://www.oreillynet.com/mmgadgets/..._iphone_1.html

Seems to be that there's an inbuilt pdf reader that is used by Safari as well.

I found a lot of interesting material about pdfs in iTunes (of all things) it looks like you can download pfs in the same way as you download a track - or subscribe to one in the same way as you subscribe to a podcast. Presumably you can then get them onto your iPod touch simply by syncing.

I'd love to see FeedBooks on there!

Here's theComplete guide to pdfs on ITunes. If you're curious you can also try searching for '.pdf' ino the itunes store search ending.

Of course good old basic html is still very much an option as well.

The dilemma for me is whether to get one now or wait for the HD version. the lack of the HD version is a bit of a disappointment. I'm sure Apple will produce one - there would be a hell of a market among photographers especially if they build in RAW support.

Hmm ok... so the easiest way to get PDF on an iPhone/iTouch would be through a RSS feed ? I guess I could do that...
We already output our search results in XML, for example if you're looking for the keyword "war": http://www.feedbooks.com/newsstand/search/war

Too bad I don't have an iPhone (I live in Paris) or could borrow one, it would be much easier to find the right solution for these devices.

[sea2stars]

Heh. Why would you want 120GB in an iPod? Are you really going to watch that many movies on a 3.5" screen or listen to that much music? I think the only benefit to the iPod Touch is it's wifi capability.

[flumbo]

Originally Posted by Azayzel

BTW Want to see some goofy figures, check out how you can fit more songs on your 8GB Nano than the 8GB iTouch, but less pictures and two hours more video on a device with a larger screen; i.e., higher resolution! Considering how they expect you to get your songs and videos from the same store, I wonder how they tricked this out? Here's the link

The reason for the difference is that the touch and iphone use a different operating system from the classic and nano ones. The Touch/iphone use a stripped-down OSX kernel that takes up almost a full gig. Makes Windows Mobile look awfully efficient.

I've been going back and forth on the iPod Touch. I ordered one yesterday and then canceled it this morning.

I like the screen, hate the small memory. I rarely use my hard-drive based player and mostly use my 4 gig nano so 16 is probably enough for most purposes. My whole music collection would require an 80+gig ipod, but I rarely listen to most of the older stuff.

I like the interface, but am concerned that it will be too difficult to navigate music without having to look at the screen.

It would be great for reading books, but it looks like it will only last for about five hours with the screen on continuously. That's for video, so it could last longer for text files, but who knows... Enough for most people, but where I live plane flights to anywhere are always five hours or more.

I've never been so confused about whether to buy a gadget before.

[andym]

Originally Posted by gmanacsa

iTunes unfortunately doesn't seem to sync PDFs to the iPhone, just as it ignores them for the iPod. The workarounds seem to be to email the file, serve the file over the Web, or include it in a Safari bookmark (the FileMark Maker method I talked about in my earlier post). Does anyone know of any other method?

I've got iTunes 7.4 (downloaded yesterday). I downloaded a pdf which then appears in a folder in th eplaylists and in turn appears in the window that allows you to choose which playlists you sync to the iPod. So it looks like you can synch it (I haven't tried because my iPPod is registered to my desktop). I expect it would work the same way with iPhone.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by sea2stars

Heh. Why would you want 120GB in an iPod? Are you really going to watch that many movies on a 3.5" screen or listen to that much music?

In my own case it's because I use my iPod almost exclusively to listen to audiobooks. An unabridged audiobook (all I ever buy) of a large novel does not uncommonly exceed 1GB in size. At present I have an 80GB iPod and it's virtually full.

[igorsk]

Originally Posted by flumbo

The Touch/iphone use a stripped-down OSX kernel that takes up almost a full gig. Makes Windows Mobile look awfully efficient.

Actually, the root filesystem with all applications takes around 200MB.

[Azayzel]

Originally Posted by HarryT

In my own case it's because I use my iPod almost exclusively to listen to audiobooks. An unabridged audiobook (all I ever buy) of a large novel does not uncommonly exceed 1GB in size. At present I have an 80GB iPod and it's virtually full.

I definitely like the 5G model's features better than my 4G iPod. The 30GB iPod Video I picked up recently surprised me when it remembered where I left off of with multiple tracks; i.e., I can be listening to one audiobook, switch to regular music, and come back to the audiobook without having to remember where I was at. In my 20GB 4G model, if I swapped out from listening to an audiobook I'd have to remember which track and the position if I wanted to continue. What a PITA!

BTW I totally agree about listening to unabridged versions, who are they to tell me what I don't need to hear from a book? That's always bothered me, esp. with all the Star Wars audiobooks I picked up (unfortunately, the originals are all on cassette).

The iTouch is gorgeous, just glad I can't get a hold of one right now or I'd be sorely tempted to get rid of both my older models and upgrade!

[andym]

Originally Posted by Hadrien

Hmm ok... so the easiest way to get PDF on an iPhone/iTouch would be through a RSS feed ? I guess I could do that...
We already output our search results in XML, for example if you're looking for the keyword "war": http://www.feedbooks.com/newsstand/search/war

Too bad I don't have an iPhone (I live in Paris) or could borrow one, it would be much easier to find the right solution for these devices.

Hopefully the iPod touch will be available in France shortly.

I'm not sure about the exact mechanisms but it looks like one mechanism would be to submit a single book in the same way that you might submit a track. The other would be to enable someone to subscribe to a series - either of books or a news feed - in the same way as you can subscibe to a podcast.

[adinb]

Continuing my search, I found a nice little app on google code that should work nicely for viewing pdf's stored on the iPhone/iPod: MobilePreview. It's also listed (and installable from) modmyiphone. MobileFinder is also available over there.

I agree that 8/16GB isn't as large as I'd like, I don't know of any other wifi PDA that can handle 16GB (and has a decent webbrowser). Besides, most TV shows seem to come in around 300MB and well compressed movies are 1-2GB. So I can have my top 1000 songs, a few TV shows, and a movie, with plenty of storage left over for files & web browsing cache. Sounds a lot better to me than another T|X (mine recently died) with a 2GB SD card. I guess I'm already used to having to choose what's on my iPod, my music library is over 260GB, with another 40GB in TV shows and movies (100% legal!). So the classic is nice, but I'd still have to pick and choose what goes on it.

Here's another question: is there Java support on the touches (from now on I'll use that term to refer to both the ipod & phone)? I wonder if we could hack the java version of mobipocket onto the touches? That would be nice!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by adinb

I agree that 8/16GB isn't as large as I'd like, I don't know of any other wifi PDA that can handle 16GB (and has a decent webbrowser).

Do you really consider an iPod to be a PDA? To me, the primary purpose of a PDA is to manage such things as calendar, contacts, tasks, etc, and although the iPod can do those things it's not at all good at it. My Windows "Smartphone" is a vastly better PDA than my iPod.

I'd consider the iPod Touch to be a rather poor attempt to compete in the rapidly growing "personal media player" market, in which the leading player is Archos, and I think, to be honest, that they've made rather a mess of it in not having a hard-disk based device.

For now, I'll stick with three separate devices: Smartphone as a PDA, Archos 605 as a PMP, and 80GB iPod for music. Each is great at what it does.

I'd rate this as a "must try harder" if it's supposed to be a serious attempt to break into the PMP market and challenge Archos.

[flumbo]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Do you really consider an iPod to be a PDA? To me, the primary purpose of a PDA is to manage such things as calendar, contacts, tasks, etc, and although the iPod can do those things it's not at all good at it. My Windows "Smartphone" is a vastly better PDA than my iPod.

I was in an Apple store today playing with the iPhone in an attempt to make up my mind about purchasing the Touch. One of the Apple salesmen started telling me how much he liked the iPhone and then told me, "The best thing is it's really like having a whole computer in your pocket." I just nodded and smiled at his obvious marketing department script. I like it, but it's more like having a really slick but extremely crippled PDA in your pocket.

My current winmo phone works fine as my pda. If you compared actual features, flexibility and capabilities, the iPhone would lose.

Still, I'm leaning more towards picking up the touch when it comes out. The screen is just beautiful and the interface is impressive. If someone can come out with a convenient book reader for the Touch, it would be perfect for entertainment purposes. The "pda" functions are just icing...

[yvanleterrible]

I have a few questions.

Where does this 'hoarding' tendancy come from? Why do we require to have everything stored on a device but what we actually use?

Why is it that only the best device is what we should use and that any other must be frowned upon?

Nobody drives a Ferrari to work every day with all their possessions onboard!!?!!

There is a use and time of the use for every tool. Selection of one is done according to actual use of, not to 'maybe I'll need some day use'.

Any way the perfect highstoragemediacomputercommunicatorthesizeofadice don't exist yet, should it?

[gmanacsa]

Originally Posted by yvanleterrible

Where does this 'hoarding' tendancy come from? Why do we require to have everything stored on a device but what we actually use?

I prefer the large capacity of my 5G iPod because I want to spend as little time as possible managing files and pre-planning music selections. A simple sync puts everything there, no thinking or extra time required. Plus, if an unanticipated desire to listen to an obscure song comes up, it's there.

On the other hand, the larger size is definitely a compromise. If my primary purpose for an iPod was to listen to music while working out, for example, I'd be willing to make the compromise of having less storage for better portability.

[yvanleterrible]

Originally Posted by gmanacsa

I prefer the large capacity of my 5G iPod because I want to spend as little time as possible managing files and pre-planning music selections. A simple sync puts everything there, no thinking or extra time required. Plus, if an unanticipated desire to listen to an obscure song comes up, it's there.

On the other hand, the larger size is definitely a compromise. If my primary purpose for an iPod was to listen to music while working out, for example, I'd be willing to make the compromise of having less storage for better portability.

Agreed. I have the 8Gb Nano and it's more than enough. I picked the 'No repeat' function so in the four months or so I've used it I haven't been annoyed with repetitions. I have about 1500 jazz and fusion songs on it, compare that with radio top forty and it wins way over. And I have about 3500 pictures to show my clients with good eye sight.

My other player is a 1Gb shuffle and I was very happy with it being able to listen to music 12 hours non stop without repetition but it had no screen. Otherwise it would have been enough.

Okay I admit that a movie needs from 3 to 5 Gb of space.
My son lent me his video iPod so I could try. Fifteen minutes in the movie my eyes were crying tears so much that I couldn't see any more, what's the use?

A mobile device is that... mobile. What it means is that it is small, versatile and easy to configure in no time. It is not a media repository. That task is for its symbiotic computer. If that repository needs to be mobile, a laptop is the better tool for now.