Shortlisting songs on the move with an iPod

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Haydn
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Joined: Tue Nov 09, 2004 5:36 am
Location: London

Shortlisting songs on the move with an iPod

#1 Post by Haydn » Thu Sep 25, 2008 8:30 am

(Several months ago, I started a thread about this, which seems to have mysteriously vanished ... anyway, I'll start another one ...)

I love using my iPod and use it all the time to listen to songs. It's a great tool for discovering what music might work at dances, because you can listen to songs while actually doing something else. So, while your attention is on what you are doing, if a song suddenly grabs you, you know it might be a good choice for DJing. And there's a feature called the 'on-the-go playlist' which lets you make a playlist of songs on your iPod. Until recently, adding random songs to the on-the-go playlist was hard work (I'm talking about songs chosen randomly using the 'Shuffle' feature).. You had to look to see what the song playing was, then go and find it on one of the menu lists or by using the search function, and then highlight it and hold down the centre button.

I've just played with the latest iPod Nano in the AppleStore, and they've made this much easier. Now, to add the song playing to the on-the-go playlist, you just hold down the centre button, and a menu comes up asking if you want to add the song to the on-the-go playlist, and you hold down the centre button again. Much easier. Unfortunately, the Apple guy I spoke to said this feature can't be added to my old iPod Nano, it's a new feature on the latest ones. Together with the doubled capacity (to 16Gb), and other features, this makes the new iPod Nano quite enticing.

Surreal
Posts: 402
Joined: Fri Aug 25, 2006 3:31 pm
Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Re: Shortlisting songs on the move with an iPod

#2 Post by Surreal » Thu Sep 25, 2008 10:43 am

Haydn wrote:Unfortunately, the Apple guy I spoke to said this feature can't be added to my old iPod Nano, it's a new feature on the latest ones.
Doesn't apple do firmware updates? I know other companies will release updates for the mp3 players to improve their functionality/etc.

lipi
Posts: 789
Joined: Mon Jan 10, 2005 3:26 pm
Location: menlo park

Re: Shortlisting songs on the move with an iPod

#3 Post by lipi » Thu Sep 25, 2008 2:13 pm

Surreal wrote:
Haydn wrote:Unfortunately, the Apple guy I spoke to said this feature can't be added to my old iPod Nano, it's a new feature on the latest ones.
Doesn't apple do firmware updates? I know other companies will release updates for the mp3 players to improve their functionality/etc.
of course it does, but the new ipod nano is different hardware than the old nano, and so uses different firmware.

that's not to say that firmware can't be released for the old one to add this feature, but it by no means is a given.

PhilShapiro
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Joined: Wed Nov 20, 2002 3:06 pm
Location: Cambridge, MA

#4 Post by PhilShapiro » Fri Sep 26, 2008 11:32 am

I had the same reaction; I have a 3G iPod Nano and would really like to have the new on-the-fly features. But it looks like Apple is going to force us to buy another iPod to get this. And I doubt that there's any technical reason why they couldn't do this on the current gen ipods.

Apple has updated the iPod firmware many times in the past, especially when they add new across the board features to the iPod, such as when they added movie rental support. On the other hand, they've also added some features, such as radio tuner support, only for the newest products. I guess it's time to send more money to mr Jobs. :(

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