What is PodWorks?

PodWorks is an application that helps you use your iPod to synchronize your music collection between computers. Its features include:

• Drag-and-drop song copying from any Mac iPod to your computer.
• Preference settings for file renaming and copies into directory hierarchies to help keep your music library organized.
• Near-instantaneous reads of even very large iPod song lists (compiled from the iPod's internal database rather than by "scanning" file-by-file as other iPod copy utilities do).
• Song list printing and PDF export.
• Support for multiple simultaneous iPods.
• Full multithreading for superior performance.

Copying files

To copy a file from your iPod to your computer, do the following:

1. Connect your iPod to your Mac's FireWire port.
2. Make sure that an icon representing your iPod shows up on your Mac's desktop.

If an iPod icon does not show up on your desktop, you will need to make sure that your iPod is set to operate in FireWire disk mode. To do this: 1. Open iTunes. 2. Click on your iPod in the iTunes window.     3. Click on the iPod settings button at the bottom of the iTunes window.     4. Select "Enable FireWire disk use" in the iPod Preferences window.

3. Once the iPod is mounted as a drive, it should show up in PodWorks. To copy a song, simply drag the row representing that song to any location in the Finder. You can select multiple songs by using the shift key (to select contiguous blocks of songs) or the command key (to select a non-contiguous group of songs).
 

 
4. You can also control how the files are copied to the destination using the preferences panel. If you would like all of the copied files to be renamed according to a uniform naming convention, use the "Rename files using:" option. If you would like the copied files to be placed in a directory hierarchy as they are copied (rather than all lumped into the same directory), use the "Copy into directory hierarchy" option. The "When a file exists:" option controls how PodWorks behaves when, in the course of a copy, it encounters an existing file with the same name as the one it is trying to copy.

Known issues

Yosemite (Blue & White) Power Mac G3s
A number of users of Yosemite G3s have reported that PodWorks freezes during copies (usually after copying about 6 or 7 songs). I have looked into this issue extensively and been unable to duplicate it on any FireWire Mac that I currently have access to (including a Yosemite G3, a late-model G3 iMac, a new-style iBook, a 400 MHz G4 Cube, a PowerBook G4 400 MHz, and a PowerBook G4 1GHz). My best guess at this point is that the issue is related to known issues with either the FireWire controller or the firmware on the first generation of the Yosemite machines. The Yosemite G3s were the first Macs ever to ship with FireWire, and evidently all of the bugs hadn't been worked out yet.

Currently my only recommendation is not to use PodWorks on Yosemite G3s. If anyone has any information about the FireWire problems on these machines, I would very much like to hear about it!

Drag-and-Drop Problems
Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) introduced a Finder bug concerning the interaction between drag-and-drop and spring-loaded folders, and this bug unfortunately affects PodWorks. If you drag a song to a Finder folder, and release it immediately before the folder "springs" open, frequently all of the icons in the folder's parent folder will stop highlighting when clicked. This behaviour will only affect the parent folder, and will cease if the parent folder is closed (although if the parent folder happens to be the desktop, the only way to bring things back to normal will be to restart the Finder). Until this bug in OS X is fixed, there are several options for workarounds:

I have dealt with Apple Developer Tech Support on this issue, and they have assured me that it is their bug, not mine. Hopefully it will be fixed in a subsequent release of Mac OS X.