IPhone gurus needed

[moparguy]

Well, last week I retired my 3 yearold phone and made the move to a 16G Iphone. Mainly I was shamed into the move by coworkers and the client I'm routing pipelines for.



Since I'm an analog guy in a digital world, I could use some tutoring,,,, as in how do I download music, how do I make it play over my old truck radio? I have downloaded a few nice apps, one has 100k books on line, another turns the phone into a recorder, another is a weather site, and a gps app. Found a nice ballistic app, haven't bought it yet. However backto the point, I've never had a ipod or anything similar and am lost concerning music.



If you've read this far you likely know I had to open an Itunes account to download my free apps, however at . 99 per song, it'd add up quick if I start building a music collection using Itunes.



Thanks for any help.



RR

 

[bheiting]

MacWorld I believe has a book available. They at least have articles.

Amazon has a training DVD. There's always Google for searches.

 

[Spooled-up]

As far as bootleg music, you can try limewire. It's illegal as far as I know, but I just buy a song every couple of weeks over iTunes nowadays.



To connect the iPhone to your truck, you may be stuck with an adapter that will transmit a signal over an FM station like this one:

Griffin Technology - iTrip Auto FM Transmitter for Apple® iPod® and iPhone - 9501-TRIPC



If you have a newer stereo with an iPhone/iPod jack built in, you just need a cable I think, and you can avoid using the FM transmitter route.



There are tons of free apps out there. You could spend hours in the App. store as I'm sure you know.

 

[Dieselnut59]

I had a friend tell me there is a "jailbreak" program for the I Phone. I have Verizon and do not want to change providers. He said the "jailbreak" program lets the I Phone run on other networks. Any of yall heard about that?



As for Limewire, I have used it a few times to get copies of songs from albums i have already purchased, but I do not believe in "stealing" music. I also do not want to BUY a MP3 version of a song I already have purchased on CD, record or cassette... . the artist/producer got their money from me.



Can anyone "unlock" or "jailbreak" the I Phone to make it run on the Verizon network? If so, I want one!

 

[Mike Ellis]

If you have a CD of your favorite tunes you can import them into a playlist - easier than typing out this sentence. Basically once you have iTunes installed, there is a button you click for "importing".

Once your music is in iTunes, you can easily sync it up with your iPhone. You plug in the phone, and the software does the rest. You can easily carry a huge library of every tune you have on your iPhone.

Once you have the tunes in the phone, you can play them on an old truck radio with the previously mentioned FM adapter, or if you have a cassette deck you can get one of those cheap "tape adapters" like I use. They look like a cassette tape with a wire poking out, you just plug it into the earphone jack on your phone and whatever you would hear in your earphones will now play through the truck speakers. It isn't an "audiophile" solution, but for my purposes it works just fine - sounds great and easy to use.

If you want a better stereo, you can still get them for the older trucks through Crutchfield.com, they have the correct adapter plates and harnesses to make install a breeze. I'm planning to update mine this summer.

Some tips on iTunes:
- When you buy a song, it used to be "protected" and iTunes would not let you burn CDs with just MP3 files; you had to make actual CDs. Now they have the option for another 30 cents or so to make your file unprotected, and you can then make an MP3 CD. The advantage to doing this is that you can put a hundred or more songs on a CD in MP3 format, whereas with a full-quality CD you can only squeeze in 12 to 15 or so. Nowadays a lot of the songs that were formerly protected can be upgraded to "unprotected" on iTunes, very easy and pretty cheap for the extra convenience it offers.

- For those who want to burn CDs instead of using their iPhone or other MP3 player, and want to use the old truck radios, the cassette tape adapter mentioned above works great with the standard little Sony Walkman CD player. My daughter gave me her old one, and it is a very handy little player - will read CDs made on your computer including ones with just MP3 files. The batteries on the Walkman last a ridiculously long time when using it with the adapter; I've had them last for literally months while using it every day.

- If you use your iPhone, you can have thousands of tunes and just let the "shuffle" function randomly step through them, or you can select individual play lists. On mine I can easily pull up Bob Wills or Van Halen depending on my driving mood. :-laf If you don't have a reasonably compact playlist, finding the song you want can be a chore and you don't need to be driving around pawing at your iPhone's little screen while you should be paying attention to the road.

Good luck! And please buy the songs you want, or get them from your own CDs etc. Piracy screws us all...

 

[moparguy]

Man, I love the ability to share information we have today. DieselNut59, I've read that you can request a key or code from the Iphone service provider, (ATT locally) that allows the phone to be unlocked. You take the key to your local provider and they can then put the non-traditional phone in service. The company can't request the key, the phone owner has to do it.



Again, I don't have first hand experience with this, I did some research prior to buying my Iphone as I sorted thought options looking for a phone that'd let me utilize Google Earth Pro functions in my work. The Iphone isn't all I'd hoped for, but not bad. It's really just a shirtpocket computer that happens to have a phone function tacked on.



Good luck, RR