Comments about oreilly iPod: The Missing Manual:

I've owned about every other iPod model, now with an iPod Touch 2nd gen. A one point, I worked for Apple, so I'm an ardent consumer of most things Apple. I found this book a quick read (2 days), lighthearted, and full of good info. I've known most of the iPod features as well as iTunes. For me, this book was about the Touch.

I thought the quality of the paper and images were going to be poor, for the cover is sort of cheesy. I was wrong. The paper is a high quality matte that holds the sharp graphic images. The writing style is mostly straightforward with a little dry wit, consistent with Pogue's podcasts, which I also enjoy.

The first few chapters start a little slow, but I came into this book with an iPod-savvy background. Chapter 5, iTunes Power Moves, started sparking my interest. After so many years, a refresher is, well, refreshing, brushing up on my knowledge and seeing if there's anything new I may have overlooked as being useful for the way I presently using my tools/toys. For instance, there's a page about changing the song's file format. The iPod Touch doesn't support mp2 format, the encoding in which I found one of my music files to be.

Then there are the myriad of tricks and tips pertaining to the Touch, my primary interest. LOTS of valuable info. It really re-energized my interest in the device. He shows how to view lyrics as the music plays - something not possible in iTunes. It's a feature I really like and now use most of the time.

Other interesting chapters were 8 and 11. Chapter 8 is about getting video onto the device, video settings on iTunes and the Touch. Chapter 11, Surfing the Web, may have had the most new information for me. For instance, I learned that touching the top of the browser window brings you to the top (insta-scroll). And the keyboard - wow! I didn't know there were so many gestures to rapidly enter characters. For instance, I found numeric entry awkward, flipping to the numeric keyboard. The book showed me another, quicker way to enter numbers and never leave the alpha soft keyboard. What a time saver. Where did he find this stuff was the question that often came to mind. I even got inspired to sync bookmarks with the Touch Safari. I hope some day URL Manager - my preferred URL manager - will sync with the Touch. Last, this chapter shows references for mobile-aware websites.

There's also a chapter on additional devices like power adapters and car chargers, if you don't have your own already! Overall, this book was well worth it, if for nothing more than to get the full value out of the Touch. Good job.

Comments about oreilly iPod: The Missing Manual:

Very pleasant to read. The MobileMe connectivity of the iPod Touch is missing.