(no subject)

[shinytoaster]

O.M.G.

iTunes knows when I've played stuff on my iPod ...

It adds the stuff I've played on the iPod to the Play Count column.

How does it know?

Comments

[tartpants.livejournal.com]

It's psychic?

[titanic-days.livejournal.com]

That's scary. I have enough on my plate without a psychic iPod.

[pinguthegreek.livejournal.com]

Looking at that icon, you could change profession and be a model.

As for Ipod and Itunes, yeah it's odd. I need to sort mine out - you just reminded me.

[titanic-days.livejournal.com]

I prefer this photo. Of course, I Photoshopped both of them a little ... much like most models, to be honest.

[benjj.livejournal.com]

the sleepyhead one is more model like... But in this style you just need to angle your head down a little. And a little photoshopping.

Like windowshopping...?

[freya]

Magic. But it wouldn't be too hard for it to remember these things, now would it? Mebbe there's a little pixie inside keeping a tally?

[titanic-days.livejournal.com]

A pencil-thin pixie!

[freya]

Aren't they all?

[benjj.livejournal.com]

it sits there going "oh my god, he's listening to McFly again...."

[jaimelesmaths.livejournal.com]

It does?!?!? *mind splodes*

Must have been in the latest update of the updater. But wow. That is a great feature.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

This is a long standing feature. If you mount your iPod as an external hardrive, you can root around the library metadata and find details about how often you've played tracks.

When you sync the iPod with iTunes, it updates the library metadata in iTunes to reflect any changes on the iPod. It can do this because an iPod is bound to a given installation of iTunes (presumably as a lame way of stopping people from naughtily sharing music via sneakernet), so iTunes can recognise 'its' iPod when connected, and knows that no other iTunes will have monkeyed around with it.

It does this with things other than the play count as well; if you rate a track on the iPod, the rating will be copied over to iTunes when you sync, similarly with on-the-go playlists.

Since the HD in our desktop died about six years ago, and I lost the iTunes installation, I've effectively only got one copy of all my metadata, that on the iPod. If I sync the iPod with the new installation of iTunes, it'll assume that I want to wipe the iPod and start over again, and I'll lose all of the playcounts and ratings that I've built up over the past few years. Teh suck indeed.