
chapter 2: the ipod sync connection 35
chapter
2
Sleek and smart as the iPod may be, it can’t do much by itself until it meets up
with a computer. Once connected to a Mac or PC, however, the iPod is ready
to accept whatever you want to give it—your whole music library, of course,
but also everything from the complete recorded works of Tom Petty to your phone
book, from news and calendar information to files too big to fit on a burned CD.
This chapter is dedicated to that concept of iPod as Satellite to Your Computer. It
explains FireWire and USB 2.0, and how to use these connections to get songs and
files off the mother ship and onto the ultraportable, ready-to-go iPod.
FireWire
Apart from boosting magazine sales, there’s never been much value in sitting in
front of the computer, waiting for large files to copy onto external drives and other
add-ons. In the eternal search for faster data-transfer speeds, Apple developed a new
high-speed cable called FireWire in the mid-1990s. It’s easy to use, it’s hot-swappable
(you don’t have to turn off anything before plugging or unplugging the cable), and—
unlike SCSI cables, which came before it—it doesn’t force you to go through
configuration acrobatics to get multiple devices to all work properly.
Dozens of other companies, including Windows PC makers, eventually picked up
FireWire. Some gave it other names along the way: IEEE 1394 (its official moniker
from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, an industry standards
group) and i.LINK, used primarily by Sony. But whatever the name, it’s still the
same speedy connection underneath.
The iPod
Sync Connection