Jasonified.

As promised I ran my Twiveaway campaign and today I hit the button to generate a Winner and the name that came up was Twitter user @markpick.

Mark, you’re the winner of the competition and a new iPod Nano 8gb will be on it’s way to you as soon as you let me know your delivery details AND your colour choice. I’ll order it and let you know when it’s on it’s way.

It’s been a long time coming but we can finally buy and rent Movies through the UK iTunes store. with rentals at £3.49 and purchases at £6.99 it’s still cheaper to buy from the US (if you can bothered to register your credit card to a US address) but at least we *can* rent and buy if we want to from the UK.

I installed Leopard a few days ago on my iMac at home and tonight I tried to Sync my iPod Touch for the first time since the upgrade (which went smoothly).

The iPod charged but iTunes just wasn’t picking it up. I tried different cables, different iPods and quitting iTunes/restarting the machine to no avail.

Quick search on Google and was told to re-install iTunes which I did and now it’s all fine.

Apple ain’t all that perfect!

Got back tonight to find our Apple TVs telling us about an update. Seems like Apple are pushing the updates to existing devices. Around 5 minutes later and I can now:-

- Buy Music, TV Shows and Videos
- Rent Movies and HD Movies
- Download outstanding purchases
- Use Apple TVs as AirTunes speakers

The first three are significant and expected as this was all announced at MacWorld however the last option was a bit of a surprise. It seems the new software update has turned Apple TVs into remote speakers via AirTunes - nice!

This is actually a really significant feature because with the release of the official SDK we could end up seeing apps for iPhone/iPod Touch devices that would let you see and control what music is playing on your iTunes enabled computers/Apple TVs.

Sonos here we come (maybe) ;)

My new 32gb iPod Touch arrived today and the upgrade couldn’t have gone smoother. I had already synced my “old” 16gb model yesterday before wiping it to give to it’s new owner today.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I turned on the new unit, was pictorially told to connect to iTunes and on doing so it told me it was a previously unconnected iPod and would I like to restore from my last backup! Nice “touch” (groan)

So a quick zap and restarted and my favourites were back on the home page and seconds later iTunes picked it up as if it was the old unit and is now syncing. Very good.

Available disk space was 29gb which is acceptable I guess and I should have plenty more space for Unwatched Movies and TV Shows now ;)

Well it had to happen and it has. Apple have upgraded the iPhone to 16gb to match the iPod Touch and also surprised us all by upping the iPod Touch to 32gb at the same time. This is great news and means a 64gb model is probably around 12 months away.

The iPod Touch is a great device despite the space restrictions and I use mine all the time. A 32gb model will definitely make it easier to load up more Videos and purchasing Music from iTunes. The new version also comes with an additional 5 apps over the 16gb model.

Anyone want to buy a 16gb iPod Touch? ;)

OK so I’m a walkover and paid the $20 to get the new apps (paid through my US account to save on the 12 quid the UK store wanted).

Interestingly there was no major download or activity activate them after installing 1.1.3 firmware (which deactivated my jailbroken 1.1.1 of course).

This means (and it makes sense) that the 1.1.3 firmware update contained all 5 applications in full and all that happened when I hit purchase was I downloaded “something” that activated them.

So, I’m sure some bright spark out there will find out a way to switch them on once the 1.1.3 firmware is broken….

If you are like me then you have your iTunes library on an external drive and from time to time this can cause problems when you’re running other external drives OR have re-configured your hard disk as your drive letter can change and this means iTunes can’t find your music.

There is probably a more permanent way around this via some file hacking or 3rd party tool but since I only sync occasionally I tend to use an old and sometimes forgotten feature of DOS to fix the problem. It’s called the subst command.

My current external drive letter is H: for my iTunes library but my library still has files for an I: drive (named after iPod and used sometime ago) and so the other day I hit this problem whilst synching some movies to my Touch. I could of rebuilt the whole library and reimported but I chose to use this simple fix.

Basically you run a dos prompt and in my case type

SUBST I: H:\

and this creates a new duplicate drive under my computer which is the same as the original drive. Now all you do is quite iTunes and restart it and all your music and videos will be found again.

One of the big issues with the iPhone and iPod Touch is how Apple have locked it down from 3rd party application development. Sure you can run 3rd party applications via Safari but that means you have to be connected and they are essentially just web apps.

This is great for Apple as it means they don’t have to release an SDK and they make money from connection costs through deals with AT&T in the US, O2 in the UK etc.

Now though “Jailbreaking” your iPhone or iPod Touch is as simple as surfing to a web site. Just point Safari at http://jailbreakme.com and follow the instructions. Within 30 seconds your iPhone or Touch has a new Installer Icon which when run lets you access hundreds of 3rd party applications you can download immediately.

It really couldn’t be simplier. Also if you do this to your 1.1.1 firmware model you can still upgrade to 1.1.2 which is out and once you run a few update apps your iPod Touch is still unlocked. Mind you, unless you are really keen to have add calendar entries (the 1.1.2 update) then why not wait and have a one click hassle free unlock and access to hundreds of apps!

So far I’ve found that Apples own Radio remote isn’t supported on the Touch. It works fine on the iPod Classic 160gb though.

The Blueye Bluetooth headset sort of works with the Classic and Touch - you get Radio and calling works but you don’t get the on screen information e.g. incoming number and radio channel.

I’ve tried my iTheatre specs with the iPod Classic and they don’t work - this is down to Apple changing the TV out on the Classic and Nano to use a special lead with a chip in it to activate the TV out.

Despite this I’m told that if you use the Apple Dock TV Out still works on the Nano and Classic but NOT the touch.