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Comment by DougBTX | Hacker News Reader

<responding to troll> though of course you can copy music off an ipod by copying the mp3 files off it like any other mounted disk, except that they are in a folder with its hidden attribute set.

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And they're renamed with obscure filenames, and you can't do this with iPods touch or iPhones.

FUD... You can.

You don't have to use iTunes, or even an Apple app, to get things on and off an iDevice. For example: http://ecamm.com/mac/phoneview/

Blurb:

Multimedia Is No Longer Trapped on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch

Free your Photos and Movies -- Download camera photos and movies in just a few clicks. You can even use PhoneView to export the iPhone's synced Photo Library if you've lost the originals.

Music Made Easy -- Play any iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch music library through your Mac's speakers. Grab music, videos and podcasts from your device with one click.

However, a simple search can pick up the metadata and find the bands you want. Still not as eay as MTP.

You'll need a different hack to put music or video files from a random computer onto your device too. That's assuming it's even possible, they seem to be in an arms race each new devices having your data further encrypted in some way.

senuti (os x only)

I've got around this in the past by importing the bizarrely named files into iTunes and then telling it to automatically organise my library for me. It then uses the metadata in the mp3s to rename the files back to how they should be. Not sure if it still does that these days.

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