Posts Tagged iPod

Installing Rockbox on your iPod Nano 2G

Jun 9

Reading the title, a couple of questions are bound to arise. I’ll tackle them one by one:

What’s Rockbox?

Well, Rockbox is an open-source replacement firmware for your digital audio player (DAP). It basically replaces the default interface and ‘OS’ that the DAP shipped with, and installs itself in its stead.

Why Rockbox?

Rockbox offers more functionality than the default OS ever can. You can install themes, plug-ins. As of now, Rockbox offers support for a total of about eighteen different codecs, depending on how you count them. More importantly, support for formats such as .ogg has been added, a feature that was sorely missed by some (not me). One other reason why many people go for Rockbox is because it allows you to tweak your settings beyond what the default Apple firmware could ever allow.

But perhaps one of the killer reasons why people go for Rockbox is because of the way it can unshackle your iPod from iTunes, thereby allowing you to retain your music player, but ditch the application. I’m a bit equivocal about iTunes, mainly because my opinion of it vacillates violently over a course of a few days at times.

Rockbox is also available for a variety of different DAPs, but the Nano 2G is the first Apple device to be added, which has an encrypted firmware. You can find the list of supported devices here.

Why Now?

Okay, so the iPod Nano 2G may not be the latest thing to come out of Cupertino’s stables, but as it happens, it is the latest iPod to be added to the Rockbox family. The reason for this is very simple. The iPod 2G is unlike most iPod which preceded it: the firmware is encrypted. The Nano has a separate bootloader, which decrypts the firmware and loads it into the RAM. This had made it very difficult for developers ~~to lay their hands~~ analyse the actual code that helps run the Nano 2G. Fortunately, after discovering a loophole of sorts in the Notes application, the Rockbox Crew managed to dump the entire firmware onto a hard drive. After they dissected it, along with the bootloader, they were successfully able to release a version for the Nano 2G with a few modifications. But even so, I agree that the product is nearing the end of its life cycle. I’ve managed to prolong the battery life by carefully managing backlight settings and judicious use of the Hold switch. But even I’ll admit that it’s becoming a less interesting over the times (especially since I got my hands on my 5230). So this is an attempt to try out something new.

Installation

is really quite simple. I was done in about 5 minutes, including download time! First thing, you should click here to download the Rockbox release for iPod Nano 2G. Although an automatic installer is available for most devices, the Nano 2G is still classified as an Unstable Build, which has varied interpretations, from ‘there are a few minor niggles to iron out’ to ‘oh my GOD, the battery is going to explode’. I found no issues after installing it on my iPod.

Make sure that your Nano 2G has Disk Mode enabled i.e. it should turn up like a USB drive when you connect it to your computer. If that’s not the case, you should open iTunes, select your iPod from the left menu once it’s done detecting it, and select the appropriate checkbox.

Once you’re done with the download, extract the files in the ZIP archive to the root folder of the iPod. Don’t disturb the directory structure inside the .rockbox folder, you’ll only make things harder for yourself.

Once that’s done, just download the bootloader patcher. You need to run this once with your iPod connected to fix the default bootloader on your iPod to detect Rockbox as a firmware as well. Don’t worry, you can still access your old Apple firmware. You’ll have to enter i once your iPod is detected.

Once you’ve patched the bootloader, in my case the iPod restarted itself as soon as I disconnected the USB cable. You’ll be presented with the Apple logo, which means that it is hard resetting itself. Remember that when you switch off your iPod, by pressing the Play button for a few seconds, you’re actually only putting it into a sleep mode: the RAM still has the firmware loaded, which enables you to quickly resume playback.

Rockbox is a bit different. It loads itself from the flash disk each time you switch on your iPod, which consequentially takes a little while. But it’s surprisingly quick when compared to how long the default firmware takes to load after a hard reset. One other thing to notice is that when you switch off your iPod in Rockbox, it really does switch off. There’s no sleep mode. Although I haven’t yet been able to benchmark the battery performance, I think there will be a marginal increase in battery life.

More importantly, you can dual-boot your iPod! When your iPod shows the Apple logo while booting, if your Hold switch is on, it will boot into the default firmware. In case it’s not, it loads Rockbox. If you want to switch from Apple to Rockbox, you’ll have to hard reset your iPod, by first switching Hold on, then off, followed by simultaneously pressing Menu and Select till the screen blanks out. It’s much simpler with Rockbox – it reboots each time you switch it on anyways.

There are some things which Rockbox permits me to do, which the default firmware doesn’t. For example:

I can adjust the brightness level on my Nano 2G, a feature which was added only in later iterations of the Nano.
Music transfer can be simplified. Rather than letting iTunes maintain a monopoly over your iPod, and maintaining absurd 4-character filenames instead of simple human-friendly ones, you can use another music player, like Windows Media Player, for example, to sync music to a sane Music folder in your iPod. Nevertheless, Rockbox is perfectly capable of reading the iTunes database on your iPod, and create a library out of that.
There are a couple of nifty features: a voice that can guide you through the menus (I haven’t really tried it yet), a couple of fresh audio settings that the old firmware didn’t allow, like resuming playback after your plug in your earphones. Currently, iPods are capable of pausing playback if the earphones are disconnected.
The plug-ins are fun, ranging from games to oscilloscopes, Rockbox has them all. There are a ton of them preloaded already, with the scope for more to be added, without needing to reinstall the entire firmware. Simply copy the stuff into the appropriate folder and voila!

But it’s not all good news actually:

Firstly, there’s one very important reason why I may not use Rockbox on a day-to-day basis. There is no support for ratings. One of the primary reasons I still use my iPod is because of the rating synchronisation it offers with iTunes. Any changes on the iPod are reflected on my ratings in my library, which is great, because it lets me rate my music on the move, or while reading the newspaper. And these ratings help build auto playlists in iTunes, which further decide what gets synced next. Indeed, by using a utility such as MusicBridge, I can maintain global ratings on my files, instead of in the iTunes database, which lets other media players, such as WMP read them and build its own auto playlists, which I can then sync with my phone. Rockbox does not offer me this functionality, so it’s utility for me is limited.
The plug-ins are great, but still remain a bit disconnected from the music. A few of them allow playback control from within the plug-in, but most require you to navigate back to the Now Playing screen to make changes, which can sometime be annoying, especially because I’ve water-damaged my Menu button.

So it’s really very simple. If you have no desire to maintain ratings for your music, you should switch to Rockbox. End of debate.

Tags: iPod, Nano, Rockbox

Another batch of iPods

Sep 12

Posted by The Nut in Tech | No Comments

This time around, Apple has chosen to update almost it’s entire line-up in one go.

The Shuffle, the screen-less tiny player get’s a range of colours. To be honest, I still haven’t seen the current generation shuffle, but it looks mighty small when you look at how big the hands are in the pic…prices are Rs. 3,700/$59 for the 2GB model and Rs. 4,800/$79 for the 4GB Shuffle.

The Touch, to be honest, has just been retouched, that’s all. No major updates to speak of, as of such. The price starts at Rs. 12,400/$199 for the 8GB model, which ramps up to Rs. 18,400/$299 for the 32GB model and a new 64GB model at Rs. 24,400/$399 (yikes).

But what I’m really interested is, the iPod Nano has undergone some more substantial changes, which could translate into similar changes in the Classic. First and foremost, tho. It also has a feature which was missed sorely in earlier iterations of the iPod – an in-built radio. Agreed, a third party accessory allowed a user to listen to FM radio, but it needed to be in-built to be truly useful. Apart from that, it seems that the Nike+iPod relationship might be coming to an end, because Apple has gone ahead and used the in-built accelerometer in the Nano to create it’s own inbuilt Pedometer and fitness application.

Apart from that iTunes 9 has been released as well. I’m downloading it right now, and its setup is even more massive, weighing in at 88.8MB. I hope that it’s worth it… Will post on that later

e Nano now has a VGA (640×480) camera, which records in H.264 with AAC audi

Tags: Apple, Audio, Hardware, iPod, News

iPod Nano : Déja Vu – Part 2

Aug 16

Posted by The Nut in Tech | 1 Comment

Before I forget, let me also mention that like the old Nano 2G’s battery, which lasted around 30 hours. The Nano 4G has also managed something around that. Here’s a detailed report:

10:00 – Fully charged, on repeat and shuffle.
10:30 – Went to the shops with the iPod. A certain amount of un-Holding and volume changing ensued.
17:00 – About 1/5-1/4 of the battery gone.
21:00 – Stuffed myself at dinner, had to walk it off, took the iPod. Un-holding and song changing followed.
23:00 - Went to sleep – still about half full!
Next day – 8:15 - Still at about 1/3.
10:00 – 24 hours done, about 1/4-1/5 left.
13:00 – Dropped to danger zone.
16:00 – Dead

So that’s about 30 hours of non-stop playback, with some amount of me fiddling about with it. Which is not bad, considering the advertised battery life, like the old iPod is 24 hours.

The Nano 4G also has a nifty feature called Energy Saver. What it does, is that if you leave the iPod untouched, while playing some music, after some time, it’ll turn off the screen to save energy. I haven’t tested video playback battery life, and I don’t intend to any time soon.

P.S. Now this is a post I could’ve copied…

Tags: Apple, Audio, Hardware, iPod, Nano, Reviews

iPod Nano : Déja vu

Aug 15

Posted by The Nut in Music, Tech | 3 Comments

This post is about the 8GB iPod Nano 4G that I won at the Puffin Quiz. The simplest thing for me to do would be just copy-paste my last review of the iPod, with a few changes here and there, but no, this iPod attracts a totally fresh review. So here goes…

iPod Nano 4G

First off, let me tell you that there’s a very different feeling about receiving an iPod, that’s very hard to describe. Apple’s worked very hard to get that sort of mentality into all iPod customers. An iPod leaves is supposed to leave you in awe. You marvel at its simplicity, and at the same time realise that it is one of the best portable media players out there in the market.

Non-iPod owners tend to hold the opinion that it’s an overpriced piece of shit.

Of course, the non-believers are right…Apple does try its best to cash into the iPod-is-next-to-God mentality, by ripping you off big time. But since I’ve won this iPod, I really don’t care very much about the price tag. Incidentally, it was around 10k, according to the price label. I’ve got a blue 8GB model. Apple tends to build a shell around you, once you’re part of the family. Once an Apple fan, always an Apple fan. iTunes is forced upon you, as the only way to manage your iPod, which of course is complete nonsense, there are a number of alternatives like Winamp and Floola, just to name a few. Anyway, back to the iPod.

I’ve always liked the way Apple packages the iPod. They try to be very minimalistic, providing just one piece of paper as a ‘manual’. The idea is, of course, is that the iPod is so user-friendly, that it doesn’t need a manual, which is sort of true. One of the most intuitive interfaces in this technological era. The iPod Nano 4G has gone back to the shape of the Nano 1G and 2G, being longer lengthwise, rather than breadthwise. This, in my opinion is a good move. I considered the first video Nano i.e. the 3G, to be rather fat and ungainly. I always liked the Nano because of the way it would fit into your palm perfectly. I was always a bit iffy about the 3G. Well, the 4G certainly corrects that. The finish is typical anodized-aluminium.

Now, all the iPods I’ve (semi-)owned – a 512 MB Shuffle, a 2GB Nano, a 4GB Nano, have been white/silver. But I have to say, seeing a Nano in deep blue is something altogether different. It just looks so beautiful, especially with the new curved design, with light striking it at different angles. One more thing, the curved and oh-so-thin-I’d-barter-my-kidney design is actually just visual trickery. The shape is like a concave lens, thin at the ends, but bulging towards the middle. The middle thickness is about the same as my old 2G Nano. The screen of course is a 2″ (diagonal) 320×240 LCD. Compared to my 2G Nano, the screen takes up much more space on the iPod, about 3/5th of the front. The clickwheel is almost the same size as my old iPod. The screen has a glass cover, but unlike my old Nano, it isn’t recessed into the body, so if I drag it across a table, which I won’t, it will get badly scratched. Also, it is a mega smudge magnet.

Now, one of the niggles – the ‘Hold’ button. Now, I’ve always identified this as a trouble spot on almost all iPods. This button, on all iPods, feels as if it’s just going to fall apart after some time, and indeed, I have seen this happening on iPods belonging to my friends. On the 4G Nano, it is a very sturdy thing. Apple’s design department has replaced the traditional plastic job with a round metal switch. It does take some amount of struggling to use this button, and this is exactly what worries me. Assuming that I accidentally use too much force, or if my finger is at the wrong angle or something like that, I could render one of the most important controls on the iPod useless. I consider it important because it is very important to save battery life. And saving battery is important because replacing batteries in an iPod is not as simple as it may seem. Theses batteries are not user-serviceable, and Apple Service Centres charge and arm and a leg for that.

Now, let me come to the actual interface of the iPod. The large screen, with the better resolution has made stuff much, much better. You can see more options on the menus. Plus, on the main menu, there’s this new feature called the Preview Panel, which allows you to see album art, among other things. One of the things I noticed was that the clickwheel seemed a bit more clunky, as compared to my old 2G. By clunky, what I mean is that scrolling, changing volume et al, are a bit more digital, less analogue, if you get what I mean. It isn’t a smooth process… Another small niggle…maybe it’s just be taking some time to get used to the new positioning of the clickwheel.

When you play a song, instead of being greeted by a white screen with a small portion of it being taken up by album art, and the rest being info about the song, now the album art is predominant, taking up around 8/10th of the screen space. The only reason Apple could do this is because of the resolution as well as the screen orientation. Anyway, it looks good this way. The song name is displayed in small letters at the bottom. Also, now you can choose the shuffle mode by pressing the center button 3-4, and using an iPhone-style slider, which I think is a very good idea. Lyrics also look much better as compared to my old Nano 2G, with album art and song name accompanying the lyrics.

Genius is also a pretty good feature…just select any song, and let your iPod make a playlist of similar songs. It isn’t always right, but then, nobody’s perfect, right? Just press the center button 2 times and use the slider. Remember that this feature will only work if you have updated Genius for your iTunes library, which you can only do if you have an account on the iTunes store (doesn’t matter if it’s Indian or US).

I think it’s time I mention that this time around, Apple has put an accelerometer in the iPod Nano. Cover flow takes full advantage of this, and if you tilt your iPod 90 degrees, you’ll enter Cover Flow mode, which shows all your albums. I personally don’t use this too much, because it takes up a bit of battery, which I’ll explain later. Another accelerometer funtion is the Shake to Shuffle function – possibly one of the most addictive features. When your Nano is not on Hold, just shake your iPod to shuffle all songs. In fact, I’m so addicted to it, I put my iPod in the pocket of my shorts and just do a little jig! Honestly, it works. Please, just make sure you have strong seams in your pockets, otherwise you’ll have a nasty time trying to explain to an Apple salesman exactly how your iPod smashed itself into itsy bitsy pieces (which it won’t, because it does have some structural strength).

One other niggle I noticed, was to do with the screen. It’s a very nice screen, with the backlight. But I’m a battery freak…I don’t want my iPod to die prematurely. So I like to disable the backlight, and just do with ambient lighting, tilting the iPod in the right direction to see what’s on the screen. Thing is, on the 4G Nano, this simply won’t work. I don’t know if it’s to do with the curved glass on the screen, or if it’s Apple’s new strategy for planned obsolence of iPods, but I simply have to keep the backlight on, albeit for only 2 seconds. But the thing that really winds me up is that in my old Nano, I could enable an option on my Main Menu, from where I could simply turn off or turn on my backlight temporarily (as long as I needed it). Apple seems to have disabled this option, which means that to do anything with the backlight, I have to go into the settings. This has confirmed my suspicions that Apple wants iPods to die young, so that you have to buy another one. This is only real problem I have with the Nano 4G.

Since this is a Nano which plays Videos as well, the Main Menu also contains a Video option (d’oh). In case you didn’t know, you can customise what options are included in the Main Menu in the Settings. Anyway, as always with iPods, converting videos into H.264/MP4 is the only hassle (apart from keeping duplicate versions of files on your PC). The iPod Nano is pretty good with videos, and if you categorise them the right way as Movies, TV Shows or Music Videos, it’ll be even easier. The iPod also allows you to adjust the brightness while playing a video, which I think is a good thing. But one major problem is that the backlight stays at that brightness even after the video stops playing. What’s more, the backlight timer is reset to 10 seconds, which is really annoying.

Before I forget, the iPod has a couple of games as well, of which I found Maze the best, because it uses the accelerometer. Sorta like the little mazes you can find on top of a pencil box!

Audio quality is top notch, as usual. In fact, there’s something extra special about the iPod earphones/audio output. The earphones look visually identical to the ones I got with my last iPod, but they sound much much better…dunno if it’s got to do with the earphones or the iPod, or the fact that I haven’t listened to music on iPod earphones for almost 9 months now, but the music sounds amazing.

In conclusion, I think it’s an iPod, which it is. Period.

Tags: Apple, Audio, Hardware, iPod, Nano

finally

Sep 10

Posted by The Nut in Music, Tech | No Comments

iPod Nano - 4G

Finally, it’s out. The replacement. The repair. The way for Apple to sweep the third generation under the carpet, and let it rot. The next iPod Nano is out.

And by God, isn’t it a beuty…

There are many who think I’m an Apple fanatic, and maybe I am. Anyway, I’m happy Apple has corrected the shape of the Nano. I simply retched whenever I saw that squat little creation they called the Nano 3G. All in the name of video. It simply wasn’t worth it. I always preferred it being much longer than it was broad.

But, have they dropped video, for a longer screen. No way! All they’ve done is put an accelerometer, like the one in the iPhone and iPod Touch. When you’re viewing a video, you can simply rotate the iPod and view it.

Another interesting feature is ‘Shake to Shuffle’. Apparently, if you don’t like a song, just shake your iPod, and it’ll shuffle off to another song. Now, in India, Sony Ericsson released a music phone with a similar feature, so I must say that it’s not completely original. Anyone remember Hritik Roshan dancing with that phone in his hand?

It’s also got a new feature called Genius. Apparently, you can select one song, and the iPod can automatically create a playlist out of songs that go well with it. This is also available in iTunes 8, which’s also been released. I’m yet to try it out.

Back to the iPod. I somehow like the curved design. I think it might be better to hold in the hand, but on the other hand, it might rock about on a table too much. The black clickwheel is an experiment. Stains are less likely to show up on it, but I don’t know how everyone will like it. The iPod also has a revised user interface. The Nano will be coming in 8GB and 16GB models.

In other news, a new iPod Touch is also out. Mainly in the same form factor, but thinner, with a new in-built speaker. According to PCWorld, Apple said that the speaker was meant for casual listening. What I infer from that, is if you try cranking up the volume too much, it’ll just go to pieces. Either that or it has a volume limiter. It’s also possible that Apple has made a good quality loudspeaker, in which case, hats off to them. Anyways, I think that introducing a sub-standard component in a quality product would be a blunder. It would spread like wildfire throught blogs, reviews, word-of-mouth, anything and everything.

The Touch will be available in 8GB, 16GB and 32GB models.

Another thing I’ve noticed from the gallery pictures on Apple’s site, the iPod interface is slowly losing it’s ‘all-white’ clean look. I noticed one pic, where the pod was playing a song, and the top, where ‘Now Playing’ appears, was black, as was the playing bar, with time. And the album art is full screen, instead of a small screen on the left.

One more thing…the iTunes store seems to be available in India now. Because I can reach the iTunes Store screen while making an account. Will investigate that later…

Tags: Apple, Audio, Hardware, iPod, News