iPod Shuffle + Portable Firefox for OS X?
A bit back I mentioned I wanted an iPod Shuffle, and that lust hasn't really gone away. There's a clear difference here, at least for me, between the Apple iPod Shuffle and the Mac Mini when it comes to lust.
Both inspire lust on the right side of my brain, but in the case of the Mac Mini the left side of my brain has enough fodder that while I want it, some part of me is just unable to commit or really get behind it. Same happened with the iPod photo, it just didn't feel like something I could get behind. However, in the case of the iPod Shuffle, the left side of the brain hasn't been able to put up that strong of a fight.
There are some excellent little USB drives out there that snap onto your keychain, some of which have beautiful industrial design, while the iPod Shuffle does seem a bit tampon-ish.
Some of the flash-based MP3 players offer more features for the money, including one that could be very handy: a built-in radio tuner. The glorious patented scroll-wheel of the iPod isn't present on the iPod Shuffle, which is really a big chunk of what makes the iPod so effortless to use.
For some reason, the iPod Shuffle seems to have major problems playing AAC files encoded with other software, which means you need to re-encode using iTunes, and there are arguably much better AAC encoders out there than iTunes.
At the end of the day though, I want something that can play a goodly amount of audio files while also giving me a goodly amount of storage for things I just want to have with me at all times. And for the price point, the iPod Shuffle really does pack a decent wallop of storage.
Basically, the left side of the brain has betrayed itself and given itself up to the lust, which means at some point in the future I'll be the proud owner of an iPod Shuffle.
You can partition up your 512 or 1 Gig iPod Shuffle up so that you have an arbitrary amount of storage to use for data instead of music, but then you're left with what you're really going to put on it. It's not that I'm at a loss as to what files I'd like to have on it, but rather what apps. Files are fairly easy, and it won't really matter how the iPod is formatted.
I.E., an easy one are things like your writings and text files that you consider to be very important and, while you may have backups, are just things you want to a copy of on your person. If you deal with encryption, or even SSH, you might want to have a copy of your various encryption keys with you. All nice things, but what about apps?
One of the coolest things I've seen for the tiny little flash drives are the portable Mozilla projects. A guy named John Haller basically spent the time to trim out a hell of a lot of fat from the individual projects, and made some modifications to how they work (no saving of data, cookies, disk cache, etc), and ended up with Portable Firefox and Portable Thunderbird:
Portable Firefox is a fully functional package of Firefox optimized for use on a USB key drive. It has some specially-selected optimizations to make it perform faster and extend the life of your USB key as well as a specialized launcher that will allow most of your favorite extensions to work as you switch computers.
After his modifications, Portable Firefox takes up 8.6 MB when installed, which isn't a big deal for the iPod Shuffle at all.
It's easy to see why this is a cool deal for Windows users. You can walk up to any Windows machine, plug in your USB drive, and have a safe browsing experience without having to deal with Internet Explorer. Throw in your most common bookmarks and you're good to go, let alone with email or calendaring. Neat stuff.
It's a harder case to make with Mac users, although there is some need there. There are times when I just cringe at opening a tab in Safari -- 95% of the time it's OK, but every once in awhile, especially on sites not geared towards Macs at all, things can just go haywire. Like on, say, eBay or Yahoo or Gmail.
You also never quite know what will actually be installed on the Mac you're sitting down at; you'd be surprised at how many installations of OS X there are out there in various labs that don't have Safari on them...
Still, the need wouldn't be quite as clear for Macs as it would be for Windows... but this was before we started talking about extensions. Firefox has some damn awesome extensions available to it, everything from ad blockers to the insanely useful web-development extension.
Unfortunately it's basically a Windows-only build, which means I'd have to have that data portion be formatted for Windows, not HFS+, which could cause other types of problems... and sometimes tells me partitioning out Windows and Mac discs is asking for trouble. Kind of a bummer, unless I'm missing something and someone somewhere has made one that'll run on OS X.
Luckily the creator has been extremely open about what he's done to make his versions, and the launcher (you can't just double click Firefox on your drive) is Open Source, so we could see a Mac version if someone was so inclined... but it might just be too geeky for it to have any traction on the OS X installed base, or we'd probably have seen it by now.
Posted by drunkenbatmanFebruary 07, 2005, at 07:46 PM
Comments (14)
Posted by: Noman at February 7, 2005 08:04 PM
Really? Last I checked, iTunes/QuickTime mopped the floor with other AAC encoders.
Posted by: Jason Terhorst at February 7, 2005 08:18 PM
Something tells me that it might work if you format the iPod shuffle with Windows, then plug it in to your Mac, since the Mac can recognize FAT without trouble, but Windows hiccups on HFS. Then, you merely need to hack the Firefox and Thunderbird ports, telling them to redirect your preference files to a place on the iPod. This probably wouldn't be too difficult. Last time I downloaded these apps for the Mac, I saw that it was only the one file, the app itself. This would make the Mac side pretty easy to do. Then, add the guy's Portable builds, just in case you run into Windows out there, and you'll be all set. That wouldn't take a whole lot of space, so you could have your browser, bookmarks, email, and music with you, anywhere, and can use either Windows or Mac. Once Mozilla Sunbird gets up to speed, you'll have an organizer as well. Sweet!
Posted by: barak at February 7, 2005 08:22 PM
Really? Last I checked, iTunes/QuickTime mopped the floor with other AAC encoders.
It might be on Apples (I don't own one) but not so on Windows. Same for MP3s. Apple's encoder is faster than some but it comes at a loss of quality.
Posted by: Kevin Ballard at February 7, 2005 08:24 PM
Yeah - I thought that as of 8 months ago or so (or rather, when I heard this was 2 months ago and I heard 6 at the time) the iTunes AAC encoder suddenly got a whole hell of a lot better, and has been improving since. I haven't actually compared, but I've heard that for 95% of music, 128kb AAC is virtually indistinguishable from CD quality when using the iTunes AAC encoding (virtually means most people won't hear a difference). So for most people, most music at 128kb AAC is equivalent to CD. YMMV. And I haven't heard of any other AAC encoders that can claim to be better than iTunes.
Posted by: JJ at February 7, 2005 08:29 PM
vasstheman says Can't you just copy regular Firefox for Mac to a USB drive and have it work?
Only if you were booting off that drive too. If you did that when it started up it would look for its profiles and preferences and not be able to find them. The goal is to not have to do that or worry about what is on the machine you were on.
Without making the changes the guy did to the firefox build you would drastically lessen the life of your flashmedia. It is possible to do all of this but doubtful someone would do it, it is a very niche feature only really geeky people would use.
Posted by: Erich Kreutzer at February 7, 2005 08:42 PM
Well I just checked how my iPod shuffle is formated and found out that it is actually formated MS-DOS File System as Disk Utility says. Thus, I assume that it would be possible to load the portable Firefox build onto the shuffle and use it as you would on any other flash drive.
Posted by: e-sine at February 7, 2005 08:43 PM
OH MY GOD NO CODEC FLAME WARS!
iTunes 4.7 has a different encoder than previous, in some cases better than before and in other cases worse. Nero is what I use on Windows and it keeps getting better too. Someone at hydrogen audio did a long comparison and the Nero VBR settings are considered to be superior to everything else. You can see the chart yourself. For CBR they are about the same.
This will not change much until we have HE-AAC (perhaps with quicktime 7) or AAC+. You can use AAC+ now on Windows which has spectacular sound, but good luck getting it on your iPod!
Posted by: Lubya at February 7, 2005 08:45 PM
I don't think the problem is getting portable firefox onto the ipod, just that it is a PC .exe build (I use this on my 256 keychain drive) and double clicking the launcher on a Mac will not do anything.... unless you had Virtual PC installed. Now THAT off a flash drive would be cool. ;)
Posted by: Christopher Perkins at February 7, 2005 08:53 PM
Hey DB: I'm a fan, but I think you are out in left field on this one. The impetus for a project like this just does not exist for the Mac like it does for the PC.
Posted by: Alec at February 8, 2005 12:05 AM
This is more than possible, someone just has to do it and maintain an OS X version. As someone said, the Apple user base may not be geek enough to make it worthwhile.
Posted by: Skatch at February 8, 2005 12:06 AM
From what I've read, although I'd be interested to know if I'm wrong, HE-AAC/AAC+/whatever you want to call it is only superior to standard AAC at bitrates below 128kbps. Isn't it intended for very narrow bandwidth situations like streaming over dial-up? At 128kbps and over I believe standard AAC is superior. Can anyone with more knowledge clarify or correct me?
Posted by: Mindflayer at February 8, 2005 01:46 AM
DB - as the other guy noted, the USB key is formated for Windows. That's the de facto standard for USB keys, and Apple chose wisely to stick with it.
Posted by: Noman at February 8, 2005 07:13 PM
e-sine: I'd take that as the last word on the subject were it not for the fact that iTunes 4.7.1 has a new encoder and the test you reference was with iTunes 4.7.
Can't you just copy regular Firefox for Mac to a USB drive and have it work?