iPhone does not support manually managing songs and videos

[jeg815]

Just got off the phone with Apple iPhone tech support. They told me that the iPhone does not support manually managing songs and videos. That's insane.

I was told to create an "iphone" playlist and select that playlist and sync to it.

[iMagic]

I noticed this in the screenshots and I also read the manual online and it bore no mention of manual management. That's the way I do my iPod. ####ing bull!!!!!!!!

[yacht]

I've been trying to manually update songs and videos and came to this conclusion!

WHAT A BUMMER!

They really want to make sure you're exclusively using iTunes for all your content. I understand wanting to make it simple, but come on! What's simpler than dragging and dropping a song on an icon? This doesn't work now!?

[jeg815]

I was told by the Apple tech that customers are complaining, and there will likely be an itunes update. I can't even play any music or video while my iphone is docked to my imac, it's all greyed out. They think there's "bugs" that will be fixed soon.

[Skwidspawn]

hmm, there is a really simple way to sovle this problem: Simply make a manual playlist and drop the songs you want into it. Then simply tell the iPhone to sync to that playlist(s). If you want to add tv shows you can drag them into the same playlist and tell the iPhone to sync tv shows from that list.
In my opinion, which no one asked for, smart playlists are a much better way to handle the iPhone, but then again my library is pretty well tended and creating smart playlists is really easy.

[jhollington]

The reality is that there are only two specific situations in which you would ever need to use manual mode.

The first is if you have limited space on your computer and you don't want to keep your music in your iTunes library. Manual mode allows you to transfer your music to your iPod or iPhone and delete it from the iTunes library. However, this is a bad idea for a whole lot of reasons, especially if you're relying on the iPod to be your only backup of music. Disk space is dirt cheap these days, especially compared to an 8GB iPhone, so there's really no reason anybody should want to do this.

The second reason is if you plan to use your iPod on multiple computers. However, the iPhone itself is not intended to be used on multiple computers because of all of the other information that syncs with it. Trying to use the iPhone on more than one computer therefore has the potential to really complicate your synchronization. While it's not impossible to deal with this for somebody who is paying attention, the reality is that there is a huge potential for people to hurt themselves if they plug their iPhone into more than one computer, since there's so much data that now syncs back from the iPhone.

In any other case, there's is absolutely no benefit to using manual mode, and in fact there are a number of disadvantages, such as ratings and playcounts not being properly preserved, the risk of duplicates on the device itself (since manual mode doesn't very effectively track what's already been added), an inability to quickly rebuild your artwork database, and so forth.

As Skwidspawn suggests above, you can get all of the benefits of automatic synchronization and maintain a "manual-style" approach simply by syncing a single selected playlist.

[two2die477]

I have three computers.... this creates a huge problem for me...

[Surf Monkey]

Originally Posted by jhollington

The reality is that there are only two specific situations in which you would ever need to use manual mode.

I think you make a lot of un-warranted assumptions. There's nothing illegitimate about wanting to manage songs manually on the iPhone or the iPod and there are certainly more than two reasons why someone might want to do that.

[jhollington]

There's only two reasons why somebody needs to do that. People may want to do this, but the fact is that the disadvantages of using manual mode far outweigh any other advantages, particularly since syncing a selected playlist is virtually the same thing for any other possible purpose.

Even with multiple computers at home (I have five in the house), it's far more efficient to keep the entire iTunes library on a single computer and automatically sync it than it is to try to manage manually adding music from multiple computers and manually managing the content. Of course, people may have reasons for not wanting to do that, so I'm not saying any other method is wrong, but it's easier in most cases.

Multiple computers in different locations are another story, of course (such as home and work or at home and the cottage).

Other than not keeping your music on your computer or using your device on multiple computers (including for playback purposes, to be fair), I can't think of anything else that most people would need to do in manual mode that can't be addressed by simply auto-syncing a single playlist instead, especially for a device like the iPhone that has no disk mode nor any interoperability with any software other than iTunes at this point (and quite possibly never will).

[Surf Monkey]

There you go with the distinctions between need and want again. Obviously we're not going to get anywhere if we go down that road again.

Suffice it to say... there are more than two reasons that people might want to use manual mode. Apple should have included it. They also should have allowed you to use your own songs as ring and alarm tones.

[jhollington]

Yes, I'm certainly not defending Apple, nor denying that they should have included both of these features, and I do think that it's an issue that they haven't included at least drag-and-drop (ie, manual mode). (Disk mode itself is far less of an issue for what is essentially a media player IMHO).

What I'm trying to suggest, however, is that other than for the two very specific reasons mentioned above (insufficient hard drive space or multiple computer use), there are some very reasonable ways of working around this limitation.

I also do think that many people use manual mode because they don't fully understand automatic synchronization, or they don't have a "comfort factor" with it. Many of the people who do use manual mode could just as easily automatically sync a specified playlist (or set of playlists) and get the same effect with additional advantages, such as the ability to sync back ratings and playcounts, and the ability to queue up tracks for synchronization while the iPod is not connected.

This is a clearer line than our previous discussions, since there really are two clear, specific and valid scenarios where you pretty much need to use manual management (ie, automatic synchronization won't work in these cases). For most other purposes, there are methods of using automatic sync that will actually work better than manual mode in many ways.

[Pete_L_P]

Originally Posted by Skwidspawn

hmm, there is a really simple way to solve this problem: Simply make a manual playlist and drop the songs you want into it. Then simply tell the iPhone to sync to that playlist(s). If you want to add tv shows you can drag them into the same playlist and tell the iPhone to sync tv shows from that list.
In my opinion, which no one asked for, smart playlists are a much better way to handle the iPhone, but then again my library is pretty well tended and creating smart playlists is really easy.

Skwidspawn is completely right on this. What most folks don't realize is that after setting up this playlist for iPhone sync (and perhaps calling the playlist "iPhone"), the process of dragging things onto and off of that playlist is exactly the same as dragging it onto and off of your iPhone.

You can drag entire playlists or a group of selected tracks right onto a playlist name (in this case the "iPhone" playlist) just as you might drag them onto the iPhone's icon. You can delete any tracks from that playlist whenever you want. In fact, all of these actions can be taken when your iphone is NOT hooked up to your computer. And you'll get exactly what you want whenever you hook up your iphone.

There's absolutely no downside to this. What am I missing here?

Pete

[wolfpackfan]

This might be a dumb question, but you can sync multiple playlists with the iPhone, can't you? I would have no problem with not being able to manually manage songs as I already have all my albums organized into playlists.

[jhollington]

Yes, of course you can sync as many playlists as you like, or all of them for that matter.

Only the Shuffle doesn't support multiple playlist sync, simply because there'd be no practical way to choose between different playlists.

In fact, all of the automatic sync settings for the iPhone are virtually identical to those used for the iPod, with the only real differences being that Movies and TV Shows have been combined into a "Videos" tab, and of course there is an additional "Info" tab for synchronization of contact/calendar/bookmark/mail-account data.

However, Video, Music and Podcast synchronization work much the same way as they do for the 5G iPod.

[wkearney99]

What about creating playlists on the phone itself? Can it do this? It's always been annoying not to be able to create playlists on the iPhone itself. One would hope that with the text entry capabilities they'd make this possible on the iPhone.