Brennan’s Blog

There are so many tempting accessories for iPods. I have 2 iPods. I got an iPod mini over a year ago and now recently I decided I had to get an iPod nano to give me the killer battery life it offers. I have cases for both of them but that was all the accessorizing I did for them until last week. I browsed the iPod accessories at the local Apple store and found the Universal Dock and Apple Remote to be quite tempting. After considering all of the possibilities I bought them.

At home I have one of the original snow iBooks which is showing it's age. I mostly just use it as a file server and iPod docking station at this point now that my new Dell has taken over my life. So I plugged in the Universal Dock and dropped in the mini which will now be my home stereo system, with remote!

So far it has gone well. I had to set the iBook to never sleep because each time it woke up it would mount the iPod into iTunes and stop playing music. I really like being able to do some reading on the couch with the remote closeby to adjust the volume or change to the next song. And, honestly, who does not like having a remote in their hand at all times?

I do have some concerns though. The Univeral Dock and Apple Remote just worked together. If I purchase a new Mac Mini which works with the remote, what will the Mac Mini and the Universal Dock do when I press buttons on the Apple Remote? Is there a way to assign the remote to a specific device? With the XBox wireless controllers there is a feature to bind the controller to the dock, but there is nothing similar for the Apple Remote at first glance.

I also had trouble with authorizing my new Dell. I did not deauthorize my old PC before I tore it apart and started using my new Dell. I am limited to just 5 computers or devices to play my iTunes purchased music. With 2 iPods and now 2 computers at home it is getting tight. I deauthorized my work PC so that my new home PC could play my music. But I did not see the ability to deauthorize my old PC which is no longer functional. I have placed that hard drive into a drive enclosure which is now attached to the iBook. I do have a Ghosted backup of the PC, but I would hate to restore that PC to just deauthorize that old computer. There has to be a way to do it.