Hello fellow Applers,

I am on the cusp of conversion to Apple. I got an IPAD 2 for my birthday, to be honest I had major issues trying to transfer films from my windows pc to my ipad for my son...Until I found out just how easy it was D'UH !

However, now I have decided that I will make life easier for myself and go fully Apple with an i-Mac after christmas.

In the meantime though, I am wondering if there is an app I can buy or possibly a path to follow to enable me to use create music folders so I can access them like I do on my pc.

I basically want to have my Guns n' Roses albums in seperate folders possibly within a seperate music folder, then have my Metallica albums the same way but again collectively in the same music folder, then extend this to have my entire music collection in seperate folders all in one music folder....If I could have a jpeg of the album cover artwork on the individual album folders I would be a very happy bunny.

Also, which formats of movies work on the ipad using the bundled media player ? I have only found .AVI works so far.

Thank you :-)

Unfortunately, with an Apple device, you cannot manage files in the way you might be used to with another platform. The Apple philosophy is that they know best about how to manage these things and completely remove any such decisions from the user.

So, with a stock device, your only option for managing music is to use iTunes on your PC and synchronise the music you want to have stored on your iPad across to the device using the features of iTunes. You get absolutely no say about how the files are stored under the covers.
But talking of "covers" iTunes also supports full Album Artwork automagically without you needing to think about it. First question I guess is, is there something about iTunes which you particularly don't like which makes you want to organise things manually? If not, then I would recommend you getting to grips with iTunes on the PC and get your music onto the iPad via that...

If you truly want full control over the file system, and your music files in particular, you need to consider jailbreaking the device.

You can then use an app such as PwnTunes which allows you to manage the music on your iPad over the USB connection with your PC as though it was simply a remote hard disk. You drag and drop folders of music (and other media) across to the device completely free of iTunes restrictions.

PwnTunes is currently $6.99 from the Cydia Store (the jailbreak app store), and is used by many members of our site quite successfully from what I understand. In the spirit of full disclosure, I don't use it myself because I committed fully to the iTunes philosophy of music management many years ago and have no reason to change!

If you need more information on jailbreaking (which is perfectly legal, by the way), head over to the Hacking Section of the forum and read the sticky threads in there.

Hope that helps.

Originally Posted by f4780y

Unfortunately, with an Apple device, you cannot manage files in the way you might be used to with another platform. The Apple philosophy is that they know best about how to manage these things and completely remove any such decisions from the user.

So, with a stock device, your only option for managing music is to use iTunes on your PC and synchronise the music you want to have stored on your iPad across to the device using the features of iTunes. You get absolutely no say about how the files are stored under the covers.

Not entirely true, or at least not technically. You do have to use iTunes to sync with Music on the iPad, but it is possible to set iTunes to leave the music in the original folders when you add them to your library on the computer. You can read more about it under iTunes Help from the Help menu.



Now, I don't do this (because I don't want to manually track where I've put my music), and it has absolutely no affect on how the files are synched and stored on the iPad. However, when you sync from iTunes you gain the ability to create playlists. Dumb playlists act like folders where you manually store songs. Smart playlists can use rules that add songs based on pretty much every piece of metadata available. Used together (and with the default sorts) they are a far more powerful solution for keeping your songs organized (for playing purposes) than worrying about what folder they are in.

If you don't want to do this you need to go with f4789y's jaibreak solution(s), or perhaps a third party app like OPlayer which will allow you to load music to your iPad through several methods, and organize them in folder in that app.

Personally I've always found iTunes a good way to sync my music; perhaps because I've been using it so long that I'm used to it and know what it can do, and how. I'm also hoping that the new iTunes due to come out soon will add some under the hood syncing improvements along with the announced playing and store improvements. But I know a lot of people hate it, mostly because the Windows version is less reliable than the OS X (Mac) version that I've used, but also because it's more complicated than it really needs to be for most users.

I recommend that you give iTunes a try when you get the iMac, but keep all your music stored elsewhere as well, until you've decided if it works for you. That way, you can always start over.

Originally Posted by twerppoet

Not entirely true, or at least not technically. You do have to use iTunes to sync with Music on the iPad, but it is possible to set iTunes to leave the music in the original folders when you add them to your library on the computer. You can read more about it under iTunes Help from the Help menu..

Sorry if I wasn't clear, I was talking specifically about device TP, not the PC. It does not matter how you set the PC and iTunes to manage files on the computer, it is not replicated on the device. That's what was trying to get across, which is the same point you make

The OP was talking about managing files on the device in the same way he can on his PC, hence my reply.

Originally Posted by f4780y

Sorry if I wasn't clear, I was talking specifically about device TP, not the PC. It does not matter how you set the PC and iTunes to manage files on the computer, it is not replicated on the device. That's what was trying to get across, which is the same point you make

The OP was talking about managing files on the device in the same way he can on his PC, hence my reply.

Oops. I should have read more carefully. You were clear, and so was the OP.

Originally Posted by twerppoet

Oops. I should have read more carefully. You were clear, and so was the OP.

No bother, it's all good information for the OP