A Brief History


SyncTunes was developed because I have a Palm Tungsten T3 PDA and a 1GB SD card with plenty of spare space. I always have it with me, so there is no need to buy an iPod and I'm not travelling enough to need 100 CDs of music with me.

Update: After spending the better part of two months travelling I couldn't resist it any longer, I've now got an iPod with Video 30GB and JBL On-Stage dock speaker system. Having seen the reports on scratches, I've used a Palm screen-protector on the iPod's screen: it took me 5 attempts to get the protector on but it seems to be working well.I still use my Palm T3 for audio for day to day stuff. I have lower bit rate versions of tracks (64kbps) for the Palm, which is why an equaliser is sometimes needed on the Palm player, and the higher bit rates for the iPod. Using smart playlists in iTunes helps to separate the two sets of files.

My setup is an iTunes smart playlist that randomly selects 512MB of music. I also have a selection of iTunes podcast subscriptions. Using SyncTunes I can get a new randomised collection of music and pick up any new podcasts, while ensuring that I only transfer those shows that I want.

Most audio players on the Palm support m3u playlists (notably the RealOne player in my T3's ROM doesn't) and I think most will find the tracks on the card (RealOne player does). I personally use Normsoft's Pocket Tunes Deluxe and Core Codec's TCPMP (though Aeroplayer is a good choice too) and either will shuffle the playback: so SyncTunes and it's music playlist makes an iPod Shuffle substitute.

I usually use a USB2 card reader (available for about £10 to £15 in the UK) as the USB1 connection with MarkSpace's Missing Sync or Softick's Card Export II card mounter is very slow for larger transfers (but they still work fine).

Acknowledgements


Starting points were ...
  • Macscripter.net for the PlaylistSyncer.scpt script
  • Nicholas Dunham, www.acetylene.net/podcast_management_for_itunes, for the ExpirePodcasts2.0.scpt

Origin of the images used in SyncTunes ...
  • All images are taken from iTunes, iSync, and the www.apple.com website, and are owned by Apple Computer. The developer of SyncTunes recognises Apple's rights to and ownership of these images. The images are used within SyncTunes to aid visual recognition of the different steps to transfer tracks and podcasts to a memory card