40 iPod Techniques

Pros: The book is small in size (approximately 7 1/2" by 7 1/4"), making it easily transportable. Content of author's chapters are concise and well laid out with easily understood explanations and directions. Graphics are excellent, although some a tad bit small. However, in keeping with the size of the book it makes perfectly good sense to have the graphics fit proportionately! Cons: None. Moose Rating 5 The authors combine the 40 techniques into 9 chapters with a beginning introduction to the iPod and ITunes. Since the latest iTunes is now up to 7.0.2 there are some differences. However, the opening Introduction covers both the Mac and Windows side of installation. Chapter 1 is Getting Started and covers the basics of the iPod and goes into iTunes. There is opening page to each Chapter which describes what you will find in the chapter. They give good suggestions about the use of your iPod as far as battery usage and what to not use to conserve battery life. This first chapter is 55 pages and covers 10 techniques including Technique 11. Transcoding Audio which becomes a little more technical, but still useful especially when one wants to convert an audio file from one format to another. Expanding Your Audio Collection which deals with the iTunes Music Store, Podcasts and even free music which is Technique 15. While the iTunes store is great it is nice to know and find that you can download music for free and do so legitimately. A chapter is devoted to the iPod Nano (not including the latest IPod Nanos recently released from Apple. There is a Chapter for the IPod Shuffle [p.108 DO THE SHUFFLE. - older models obviously, however there are good suggestions and uses for using your Shuffle as a flash drive. A chapter is devoted to accessories (Chapter 7). This shows just a small amount of accessories and even then a book unto itself would be needed at this juncture to reflect all of the various add ons and what not which have come about with the introduction of the iPod. Chapter 8 covers the Maintenance and Troubleshooting, which also includes the Windows information for those folks who haven't or do not own a Mac. I was reading the book at my part time job and an individual stopped and asked me a question about an iPod. I went to the chapter, read him the solution and he walked away, a very grateful individual. I suggested he acquire this book to help him and his friend for future answers. All in all I would say this is a great little book and I enjoyed reading this and applying the suggestions offered by the authors. Another aspect of the book was the way it included those items for the PC, not that I have any desire to own one, however I thought it was fair to cover both I will probably go and acquire some of the other books which are displayed in the inside back cover.