Comments on: Amazon MP3 App and Palm Pre Media Sync: Not Quite Perfect

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:03:36 +0000

I use the following site for tracking amazon’s mp3 daily deal of the day. You can either track (and preview) the deal on that page or put their gadget on your own page, like igoogle (you can also preview the music with the gadget):

http://www.frugalgadgets.com/amazon-mp3-daily-deal.php

On their homepage, they also have a gadget for tracking amazon’s free mp3 song of the day.

By: DaVo

DaVo — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:32:55 +0000

This is all about Apple trying to control how you access and share media files. By not allowing you to access files in ftp on ipods, iphones, iEtc… you can’t load files on to a number of computers and locks you into their sync program and store. Just like it will only allow you to sync to one computer. It’s why I’ve stuck with windows all these years, the freedom to do things your own way instead of the way apple wishes you to do so.

By: turn.self.off

turn.self.off — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 18:29:24 +0000

Iirc, ipod is based around a database, no?

That is, itunes expects to modify a database on the ipod side rather then a whole bunch of files.

I think what apple has a system set up that if itunes finds a database thats more recently modified then it knows of, it will check the individual modifications and cross check with your itms account history. And if anything odd shows up, it may well decide to just overrule the database on the device…

So to avoid all that, palm just stays away from the database and leaves it to the user to sort out…

By: Kevin C. Tofel

Kevin C. Tofel — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:58:16 +0000

Harry, I hadn’t heard of the Palm Music Assistant yet, so thanks! :) I’ll have to try it with my next purchase. It looks like it simply automates the USB Drive manual transfer process though. I imagine it will prevent the “double file” issue I pointed out above, but I don’t like how my music from iTunes & Amazon are in two places on the same phone.

By: Harry

Harry — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:16:05 +0000

Palm Music Assistant – The Palm Music Assistant gives you an easy way to move music files you bought from the Amazon MP3 app on your phone into your iTunes library on your computer. You can do the transfer yourself using the USB Drive on your phone but the Palm Music Assistant automates the process for you.
http://kb.palm.com/wps/portal/kb/common/article/39373_en.html

By: HSK

HSK — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:15:58 +0000

Funny – I think it worked correctly with v 1.02 – I bought an album during the first week I had the Pre and it sync’ed when I connected to iTunes. But it did not do it today. Maybe I was wrong??

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:14:21 +0000

The problem is you use itunes in the first place. itunes will never show you the directories. That is not how apple works you should know this by now.

By: Palm Pre Apps

Palm Pre Apps — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:11:20 +0000

I know this is not a great workaround, but since you do know the directory structure that iTunes uses on OS X, combined with judicious use of Spotlight you could use only the USB Drive to go back and forth between the Pre and OS X. Of course, you’ll lose any iTunes specific stuff like playlists – but at least it’s one single way of doing things.

You could also use Missing Sync for OS X to transfer music and playlists:
http://www.markspace.com/products/pre/mac/palm-pre-sync-overview.html