The iPod "for windows"
I got my windows-compatible iPod last week. I'm refering to it as the FAT32 iPod because the difference between the windows and mac verisons are:
- The hard drive on the windows iPod is formatted with FAT32, while the mac iPod is formatted with HFS+.
- The windows version comes with third-party windows software (Musicmatch JukeBox) to sync playlists.
It's not as if the FAT32 iPod
ran windows or anything. It runs the same little
iPod-OS that the
HFS iPod uses.
I strongly hate Musicmatch JukeBox. It crashes every time I sync with my iPod. It is the worst windows program I've used in a long time. Of course, I only boot windows to play games. (I'm usually a linux man.)
The other reason I call it a FAT32 iPod is that I hope to get it to work with linux as soon as possible. I'd prefer a nice command-line utility. (Yes, I know about sumipod.)
As far as I can tell, the FAT32 iPod has most of the features of the mac version.
It also works as an external firewire hard drive.
Update (Ocotber 2002): using the default kernel that shipped with RedHat 8.0, I was able to mount the iPod as an external hard drive under linux.
Xenex says re FAT32 iPod:
There are actually official utilties that can convert (well, format) an iPod from Win/FAT32 version to the Mac/HFS+ version. Although, supposedly a Mac can deal with the FAT32 ones fine...
The only feature I know of that is missing in the so-called Windows version of the iPod is keeping track of playcounts. However, you can't actually check that on the iPod anyway, but via iTunes, so it's no great loss.
The iPod "for windows" E2 Writeup, Copyright 2002 Frank Grimes.
This writeup is dedicated to the public domain. Do with it what you will. (For details, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/ )
--Frank Grimes, 2007