Posted by Kent Smith on 08/10/06 12:49

"Don M." <newsreader@nospam4fineartsnospam.com> wrote in message
news:kqSdnQPqnO1QNkXZRVnyhg@giganews.com...
>
> "Kent Smith" <kent@smithnz.deletethisbit.com> wrote in message
> news:eb9pkp$2d98$1@si05.rsvl.unisys.com...
>> We have one ipod and my wife and I both use it. She doesn't like my
>> music
>> and I don't like hers. Hasn't been a problem until ipod started to run
>> out
>> of space. I thought - no problem, we'll both set up itunes under
>> different
>> local user accounts on the PC, point it to a music repository that we can
>> both see and have our own playlists - and auto-updating only our own
>> playlist to the ipod. This, in theory means, if we want to use the ipod,
>> we
>> log into our own user account and connect the ipod. Easy.
>>
>> ...well almost. When I choose my playlist 'A' to update in my version of
>> itunes, it gets deselected as a playlist to 'automatic update' the next
>> time
>> I log in after my wife has synchronised her 'B' playlist. And vice
>> versa.
>> It's like, when it synchronises, itunes decides the other playlist
>> doesn't
>> exist anymore so will unmark it as an 'automatic update playlist'. But
>> then
>> that user logs in, it now does exist and becomes an option again but is
>> unchecked.
>>
>> Any ideas?
>
> With Apple products, you're not to "think different" from what they think
> is good for you.
> Dump the wife.
>
Well here's what I found....

I found the playlist settings (an possibly a bunch of other itunes config)
are surprisingly stored on the ipod itself - as opposed to the current user
registry keys where it would make sense. This means you can only have one
version of settings per ipod. When the other user logs in, itunes doesn't
know what to do because the playlist required to update doesn't exist.

Here's what I did...
I logged in as user A and set ipod to sync to Playlist A
I made copies of two files from the ipod and stored them on my local drive:
iPod_Control\iTunes\iTunesPlaylists
iPod_Control\iTunes\iTunesPrefs
(one fixes the problem with playlist selection and the other stops the
message that comes up and says something like "the ipod is currently sync'd
to another library" and asks something like "discard the files on the ipod
and sync to this one instead".)

I then logged in as User B and set ipod to sync to Playlist B and did the
same. I use these file as the 'master copies'.

I then wrote a script to copy the corresponding files back to the ipod and
set it to run in both users startup folders.

This works if ipod is plugged in before the user logs in and I stuck a
shortcut to it on the desktop so you can run it manually if you plug it in
when you're already logged in.

So now if I want to sync my songs, I just connect it, log in, wait 10 mins
and take it away. My wife does the same.

Hope someone else can use this info - would be easy to write a little
utility to sync these files into a user profile and update the files when
they change, etc, instead of just overwriting them. Essentially enabling
itunes to support multiple users properly. As it is, I expect if I make
certain changes in the itunes options, they'll get overwritten unless I
update the 'master copies' again.


-KENT

[Back to original message]