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Three Books On The iPod

Posted by timothy on Wed Dec 01, 2004 01:45 PM
from the subliminal-please-send-tim-an-ipod-subliminal dept.
Books Media Media (Apple) Businesses Book Reviews Apple
honestpuck (Tony Williams) writes "With Apple's iPods sitting under many Christmas trees come the morning of December 25th, the question arises as to what might sit well next to it. I'm suggesting one of these three books might be just the ticket." Read on for Williams' reviews of three iPod books.

The iPod Fan Book

iPod Fan Book
author Yasukuni Notumi
pages 90
publisher O'Reilly Media
rating 6
ISBN 0 596 00776 0

The first impression you get of O'Reillys iPod Fan Book is of the packaging. A small volume (about the same height as the iPod and twice the width) it comes with a half-height wrap that has the title and author on the front and the bar code, price and a short contents on the back. Take this off and you have a full-size cover with all the simple elegance of the white iPod itself. The front features the wheel of a 4G iPod and the back has just the Apple logo and "iPod" in Apple's distinctive typeface below it. Remove this second cover and you have a book with a simple design of grey with a white border, the back is blank and the front has the title and the subtitle "Go everywhere with iPod" in small type.

This concentration on design flows through the rest of the book. It is visually stunning; at the same time, effort has been made to make the design useful. The pages are visually tabbed to make it easy to navigate the seven chapters. Each chapter is tabbed in a different color reflected through use of that color within the chapter. Full color pictures and screen dumps add to the legibility and usability of the book.

This book is also full of useful information for the newcomer to the iPod. A small amount is covered in the documentation you get with the iPod, but a great deal is not. Apart from a useful chapter on accessories, the book focuses on methods of getting the best from an iPod and how to organise your music.

To sum up this book: it is a little more style than substance and falls short of being the ideal book for all newcomers to the iPod (and even less for experienced users). On the other hand, the style makes the information that is provided readily accessible for all. I'd say this is the perfect companion to an iPod for a teen-age girl and if my 12-year-old daughter was getting the mini she has been hinting for, a copy of this would be included. (I expect that anyone who spent more than ten minutes deciding on the colour of their mini would probably love the elegance and style of this thin volume.) The price of $14.95 retail makes it a great impulse buy or stocking stuffer.

Hacking iPod + iTunes and iPod & iTunes Hacks

The other two volumes I looked at might seem like two peas in a pod. Scott Knaster's Hacking iPod + iTunes and Hadley Stern's iPod & iTunes Hacks certainly have a similarity in their titles and have almost identical cover prices of a fraction less than $25. The content of about half of each of these volumes covers the same territory, too. There are, however, differences in both the style and content between them. So, how to decide?

Hacking iPod + iTunes
author Scott Knaster
pages 259
publisher Wiley Publishing
rating 8
ISBN 0764569845

For one thing, it seems that Knaster concentrates more on iTunes than the iPod, while Stern seems a closer balance between the two but once again this is only a slight difference.

Both volumes are clearly, and both cover a range of information for users all the way from a relative newcomer (someone who has read the supplied documentation and played around with their iPod and iTunes for a few days) to users who want to push the envelope by installing Linux, hacking iTunes with AppleScript, or finding cheap ways to stream music, to name just a few of the more adventurous topics covered.

The first real difference between the two volumes I found was that Stern has a few more hardware hacks, including some of the surreal sort of hack that often makes these books so much fun -- who would have thought of making your own iPod case out of cardboard, for example? Stern's book is also much more a Macintosh user's book: fully twenty of the one hundred hacks, for example, are devoted to AppleScript. (Not that Knaster ignores AppleScript - he has a chapter almost entirely devoted to it.) Knaster goes into more detail about such "hacks" as podcasting, RSS feeds, email and the iTunes Music Store.

iPod & iTunes Hacks
author Hadley Stern
pages 417
publisher O'Reilly Media
rating 8
ISBN 0596007787

The books also differ in their layout and style. Stern, like all of O'Reilly's "Hacks" book authors, has a slightly dry, informative style with a large number of references to other hacks in the book in the instructions. Knaster's style is a little more tongue-in-cheek, with far fewer references to other parts of the book. Somehow Knaster's style appealed to me a little more, though he seems at times to take a little longer to give you all the information you needed.

Stern's examples are also a little more self-contained, while Knaster tends to give you a start, point you in the right direction and tell you where to go to get all that you needed. The two different ways they approach running Linux on the iPod is typical: Stern uses the uClinux kernel and gives you detailed instructions on how to get that into your iPod using dd, while Knaster uses the Linux on iPod project and gives less detailed instructions. Stern also tells you about Podzilla and a small pointer on developing applications for the iPod while Knaster just leaves you with Linux installed.

Deciding between these two volumes comes down to personal taste, and happily both authors provide samples for you online. For Knaster's book you can go to the Wiley site for Hacking iPod + iTunes , where you can get a table of contents, the index and the first chapter. You can also visit Knaster's site for Hacking iPod + iTunes , where he has a blog on the iPod and pointers to more hacks from the book and some other cool and useful stuff.

For Stern's book you can go to O'Reilly's page for iPod & iTunes Hacks for the usual table of contents and index. It also has a link to a page with ten example hacks, there is also an article on O'Reilly's "Digital Media" website with a further five example hacks.

I'm not going to attempt to decide between these two volumes for you. If you think either might be useful, then have a look at the examples and decide which style suits you best.

You can purchase iPod Fan Book , iPod & iTunes Hacks and Hacking iPod + iTunes from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

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  • you don't deserve an ipod... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 01 2004, @01:46PM (#10965279)
    if you need a book to operate it.

  • didn't know I needed a book... (Score:3, Funny)

    by boomerny (670029) on Wednesday December 01 2004, @01:50PM (#10965318)
    seems like a simple enough device to me, but apparently I was mistaken.

    • Re:didn't know I needed a book... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PMJ2kx (828679) on Wednesday December 01 2004, @01:53PM (#10965378) Journal
      It IS a simple device, but as these books point out, it can do a whole lot more that the normal iPod user WOULD NOT know about. It's not that people are stupid and need a book to run it. These are just ways to increase the functionality of your iPod.
      • There are a lot of things that are documented in the booklet which most users don't know about such as manually shutting off the iPod and resetting it. I have dropped my 2G iPod several times and had to reset it. It appeared to be broken before I reset it.

        On a side note, apparently, the newest iPods can't take much of a drop without the LCD breaking. I was going to trade my 10GB in for a larger one but I think I'll hold off until they put sturdier models out.

  • A music player so easy to use... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Michalson (638911) on Wednesday December 01 2004, @01:50PM (#10965320)
    You only need a 128 page book to teach you how.

    What is this with Apple releasing products with documentation verging on leaflet size (i.e. the original iMac "manual"). Just how much money does Jobs get from all the "missing manual" publications?

    • Re:A music player so easy to use... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by CrankyFool (680025) on Wednesday December 01 2004, @02:14PM (#10965567)
      Yeah yeah, a ton of people all saying "but you shouldn't need to buy a book!"

      I'm on my second iPod now, having just upgraded from a 1st gen 5Gb to a 4th gen 40Gb. I've never even opened the manuals to operate the iPod, nor would I expect my non-tech-versed sister to, once I give her my 1G-5Gb iPod. Why are these books useful?

      Well, for one thing, because it'd have been nice to figure out how to hack iTunes this weekend when I had to change a whole bunch of song titles from "Artist - Album - Song title" to "Song title", and being able to do this programmatically would have saved me a bunch of time;

      Because I could have fixed a bunch of other ID3 information on my iTunes DB if I could access it easily (and could easily find the info on how);

      Because I'd love to see if I could, in fact, hack the iPod to have a stopwatch on it (for exercising. They give you a calendar and a clock but no stopwatch? WHY?).

      For the people who just want to do their simple stuff, these books aren't useful, but then ... I don't think that's the intended audience for these books.

  • Mis-understood the headline (Score:5, Interesting)

    by shrikel (535309) <hlagfarj AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday December 01 2004, @01:50PM (#10965321)
    For a minute I was thinking "Oh, so they've got eBooks on the iPod now, have they?"
    • My first reaction was similar to yours...except I thought that it was a little odd they could only fit 3 books onto the iPod.

    • For a minute I was thinking "Oh, so they've got eBooks on the iPod now, have they?"

      Sure they do [fridgemagnet.org.uk]. Gutenpod takes text files and splits them up (it also links them) so they work with iPod's "notes" system. Extra points for using perl ;-)
        • Is there a chance that there is already a place for "Audiobooks" on the iPod? And that you can buy them on iTunes?
          • Yes on both counts. Audiobooks on iTMS are the same ones offered through Audible.com and the iTunes/iPod player software is designed to handle bookmarking your audiobooks. I only bought one for $8 (Benjamin Franklin, Citizen)...most of the other good ones are terribly expensive IMO.
        • http://audible.com/ [audible.com] will kindly sell you audiobooks already playable by the iPod and incredibly space-efficient to boot.

          There is also a hack out there to make the iPod treat any AAC file like an audiobook file. I think it involves renaming the extension or something. This makes the iPod use persistent bookmarks on a file, and enables the speed up / slow down options for playback. I forget where I saw it though. Use Google to find it; I'm lazy.

          • You can also designate any AAC file as an iPod audiobook by changing the file extension to m4b instead of m4a. Useful for if you rip your own audiobook CDs.
          • I purchased Jon Stewart's America (the book) (the audiobook) from iTMS but it's the same as you'd get from audible.com (I assume that anyway as it starts with a brief audible.com msg).

  • I was about to make a joke (Score:4, Funny)

    by Prince Vegeta SSJ4 (718736) on Wednesday December 01 2004, @01:51PM (#10965338)
    but then I thought 'Well maybe, just maybe, this is actually a real book about the iPod'.

    What am I babbling about, you ask?

    Low and behold, it is REAL [amazon.com]

  • Who can clue me in? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tibor the Hun (143056) on Wednesday December 01 2004, @01:52PM (#10965344)
    Don't you just plug it in, synch it, and take around with you, so you can listen to music, and carry data around (data/calendar)?

    Wouldn't it make more sense to buy some tunes instead of the book?

    • Some people might need the book to figure out how to make a cardboard case for their iPod. Of course, anyone who's going to pay for this book and an iPod can probably afford a real case.
    • Don't you just plug it in, synch it, and take around with you, so you can listen to music, and carry data around (data/calendar)?

      Hacking iTunes, using it as a firewire device, converting to different formats, applescript interface for iTunes, podcasting, running cLinux on the iPod. If you RTFA you would of seen that.

  • I'm still waiting for these reviews (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The Sylvania DVD/VHS-combo Kama Sutra
    8-Track: The Return of the King
    HP 35: Mein RPN Kampf
    Hacking desklamps for dummies

  • iPod Fan Book (Score:5, Funny)

    by demonbug (309515) on Wednesday December 01 2004, @01:53PM (#10965364) Journal
    So is this what I need to cool my 1337 overclocked iPod?

    I think mauve has the most RAM
    -- PHB

  • Strange. (Score:3, Funny)

    by rackhamh (217889) on Wednesday December 01 2004, @01:55PM (#10965392)
    I would think you could fit a lot more than 3 books on iPod.
  • A book like "Hacking the Xbox" could be handy as there's some potential for alteration. With an iPod though, what *real* modifications can be made? I mean, with a little work, sure - I could take the casing off and paint it, I guess. Still, there just doesn't seem to be enough there to warrant sitting down for several hours to figure out how to get to a menu quicker, etc.

    The device is simple. If you still don't get it after turning it on, try RTFM? If you're still having trouble with it and need *anot
  • With Apple's iPods sitting under many Christmas trees come the morning of December 25th, the question arises as to what might sit well next to it. I'm suggesting one of these three books might be just the ticket.

    That makes 4 things under the Christmas tree....apples, ipods, ipod book and tickets.

    Thanks Slashdot for making my shopping easier this holiday season.

  • Misnomer? (Score:5, Informative)

    by kyouteki (835576) <kyouteki AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday December 01 2004, @02:01PM (#10965451) Homepage
    Most of the "hacks" listed are iTunes hacks, so if anything, these books are just misnamed. Because of the restrictive firmware, there is next to nothing the end user can do to modify their iPod, other than adding songs/contacts/calendars/notes. No, you can't add games (unless you count the Notes-driven choose your own adventure-style games.)

  • As an iPod owner... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by holden caufield (111364) on Wednesday December 01 2004, @02:01PM (#10965452)
    I can definitely say, you don't need a *book* to learn how to use this thing. You probably won't even need the tiny manual that comes with it.

    Even my less-technical friends and family can use it without being told anything more than "this button chooses items, and the rest should be self-explanatory"
  • Other than the trendy fashion thing, or the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses thing, I don't understand the big deal behind the iPod. A simple Walkman does almost the same thing for a fraction of the price.

    Instead, I just bought myself one of these thingies [laserpodusa.com]. This kind of gadget is not the kind of thing that can be very easily duplicated (unlike the iPod).

  • Amazon recommends (Score:5, Funny)

    by oexeo (816786) on Wednesday December 01 2004, @02:14PM (#10965562)
    Amazon: If you liked this book, we also recommend:

    - You and your mouse: Learn all the tricks, and move your mouse in ways you've never imagined

    - Hacking your kettle: 101 hacks and mods for your electric kettle
  • C'mon, these books are idiotic. These authors are clearly trying to ride the wave of iPod's popularity and make money in the process. If you want to read a book on the iPod, read the friggin' manual, not some half-assed "book" about an MP3 player.

    • Agreed... how in the hell did this make the front page of Slashdot? Surely anyone reading this site can figure how all the h4X0rZ that these books surely contain.

      Ah, right -- it's about the iPod. That explains it.

  • please, mom, don't, please... (Score:3, Funny)

    by l3v1 (787564) on Wednesday December 01 2004, @02:20PM (#10965624)
    ...please don't allow Santa to bring me worthless junk this year, please, we already got failry cheap toilet paper stocked up

    if you do, I will write a book about having received a book about iPods, I swear I will

    hey, maybe then I'll get loads of cash 'cause stupid folks are going to buy it

    hell, there really are people out there who are so damn bored that they start to write books about their music players

  • Perhaps it's because I have the 20Gig iPod, but I can fit far more than 3 books on it!

    CB
  • I was thinking of mounting an IPod or a mini-IPod in my car as a quickie MP3 solution.

    However, one essential piece of the puzzle would be to power the device externally.

    Since neither of the devices seems to have a power jack on it (which seems odd to me), does anyone have any suggestions on accomplishing my goal?

    Having never seen an IPod charger (yes I live in a cave on Mars), is it a cradle or does it just charge over a USB trickle or what?
    • There are lots of car chargers available of the iPod. Here's a few:

      http://www.xtrememac.com/adapters/car_charger.sh tm l

      http://www.macally.com/new/new_podcig.html

      There are quite a few car mounting solutions available as well.

  • These books are not for the iPod recipients (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Morris Thorpe (762715) on Wednesday December 01 2004, @02:30PM (#10965728)
    I think they're targeting the people buying the iPods: parents and grandparents who don't know much and think the "kids" will appreciate a book on how to use this crazy device.

  • Not a good present (Score:3, Funny)

    by oexeo (816786) on Wednesday December 01 2004, @02:35PM (#10965794)
    This and an iPod combined, is a bad idea for presents:

    "Awesome, got me a iPod! You know what's great about these, they are idiot proof, you don't even need the manual they're so easy to use, I think only a complete moron would need to read instructions on how to use these things, in fact I'm almost offended it includes a instruction manual. [...] So, what else did you get me? looks like a some kind of book .."
  • I mean, hacker-types who might want to do out-there stuff would probably already be familiar with the concept of "find it online." Is there a person can not figure out iTunes and an iPod but *buy* a book and *read* it?

    The leaflet that comes with an iPod is pretty good, and iTunes, by default, is pretty much set to "do everything for me." All the people I work with who don't take the Apple URL shortcut out of their dock do *not* want to get the most out of iTunes (or their computer, for that matter.) They w

    • Re:Yeah but... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by roche (135922) on Wednesday December 01 2004, @01:52PM (#10965353) Homepage
      Apple has been dying since Steve Jobbs founded it? That must be why they have been in buisness for almost 30 years now. Lasting 30 years in the technology sector is quite a feat.
      • "Apple has been dying since Steve Jobbs founded it? That must be why they have been in buisness for almost 30 years now."

        Apple - Proudly Going Out Of Business For Over 30 Years

        Think Chapter 11

    • The receipt and the price difference for an iRiver

      I know you're a troll... because the price difference you allege doesn't exist [cnet.com].

      I'm happy to check out a link that shows otherwise, and bad-mouth the moderators for calling you a troll as a result, but... until you do, everyone has the link above, showing clearly that, if anything, the 40GB iPod can be had cheaper than the 40GB iRiver.

      There are some other 40GB players that are actually a bit cheaper than the iPod, if you weren't just a troll you might have m

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