Just a very quick tip for Linux users with iPods – you can use Spotify to sync music between your desktop and the iPod.

The reason I mention this is that my wife’s well-meaning parents got her an iPod for Xmas, and we quickly discovered that it’s not possible to plug a new iPod into a GNU/Linux computer and have it ‘just work’ (libimobiledevice, which sorts out syncing of older iPods, doesn’t yet have music syncing for iOS5, and nor does it have it planned for the next release). And while Apple have their iCloud thing which allows you to store stuff on their servers and then access it from an iOS device or web browser, to *upload* music to their cloud you need to use their proprietary software which doesn’t work on GNU/Linux.

We could, of course, run iTunes in WINE – except that downloading iTunes requires some Windows-only hackery that means you can’t do it from a browser running on GNU/Linux as far as I can tell.

This sort of thing is why I normally avoid both closed devices and non-free software, and why I have a loathing for Apple and all its workings that sends me into a blood-boiling rage whenever the name of Steve Jobs is mentioned. But happily, I have a single piece of non-free software installed on my machine, and that software provides a solution.

If you have a Spotify premium account (and it is *well* worth it if you don’t and you love music – unfortunately new accounts require a Facebook account (older ones didn’t), but there’s nothing to stop you creating a FB account with a disposable email address and never using it again if you don’t want an account there) and wireless internet you can do the following.

First, allow Spotify to see the local files you want to sync. You do this by going to edit->preferences and then clicking “Add source” under “Local Files”.

Next, create a playlist of those files.

Now connect your iOS device to the same wireless router your GNU/Linux box is connected to, and from the App store, download Spotify. Log onto Spotify with the same ID you use on the GNU/Linux machine. Within a few seconds, your iOS device should show up under ‘devices’. Click on it.

It will show a list of all your Spotify playlists, with a checkbox in the top left hand corner of each. Check the playlist you have created of your MP3s, and they will be copied across to your iOS device, where you can play them in Spotify (you can’t play them in iTunes this way, but you can play them).

While Spotify won’t let the same user play streaming music on multiple devices simultaneously, it *will* let the same user play *local* files on as many devices as you want, so this can be used for multiple iOS devices.

Unfortunately, for those of you who want to watch video, I know of no way to sync video between iOS devices and GNU/Linux computers, but this way works very well for MP3s.

(For those of you running OpenSolaris, one of the BSDs or some other odd OS, Spotify works extremely well in WINE on Debian, and I imagine it will work equally well on any OS on which WINE is supported)