Do all the indexing and voice activated features of SYNC work with an iPod? And does it also work with DRM-protected music on the iPod?

Yeah yeah, put it all on a flash drive. But the "customer" (my other) has a lot of older DRM-protected music and doesn't want to have to play the whole burn-it-to-CD-and-reimport-it dance with hundreds of songs. Given that, just buying and using an iPod (maybe a Nano) would seem to be the best solution, but only if SYNC fully works with it.

Thanks.

 

www.syncmyride.com

 

On the commercials for the little suv thing that Ford sells, they show someone with their ipod plugged in and using the voice activation to find the music and play it. I would figure it to work the same in the Mustang.

 

Sync hasn't changed, just read up on it.

 

http://www.fordvehicles.com/technolo...5565|205373340

 

My concern was that they are not very clear about whether or not the voice activated features work with iPods. They say it can play AAC and MP3 formats. They show it is compatible with an iPod, in so far that it can charge via USB, play protected content (that part of my question is answered), and connect via USB. But it doesn't explicitly say the voice activated features work with it. Was looking for confirmation from someone that it does.

 

idk, but you can take your ipod to the delear and test it out if you want...

 

I was looking around the Ford sync site I posted, really hadn't seen too much about how it worked before, pretty cool, about makes the price of the premium package worth it.

It shows the voice command working with a Ipod.

 

Here's a list of compatible devices: http://www.nsapp.fordtechservice.dea...N_iop_1_30.pdf

 

I use a 160GB ipod classic... It is 100% compatible. It calls up every possible menu item and playlist. Both through voice command and manually. There's no issue with playing songs.

 

ipod touch, all formats the ipod can play will play through sync, the voice controls just issue commands to it like any type of dock. the special thing that sync does its read through your track tags and index all that data to the voice command logic so you can call out the artists, tracks, genre, etc to select the music. works much better than i expected and i had high expectations prior to purchase.
i think the thing about sync i like best though is the bluetooth especially in a manual it is nice to not have to have your phone in your hand (that will get you a ticket someplaces too many fools out there more focused on phone than road) or be wearing one of those silly bluetooths

 

Ok, cool. Thanks. I just wanted to confirm everything works with an iPod before I go out and buy one just for this purpose. I was worried it might have some sort of reduced functionality...something the Marketing types usually like to hide from consumers.

 

Also works like a charm with my 80GB Zune player... Voice commands took some time to get used to my german accent but now it is great!

 

Skotty, I wouldn't mention this except that your post says you're planning on buying an iPod "just for this purpose". If you aren't going to be playing the iPod outside of the car, then you're really just using it as a storage device. It would be considerably cheaper to just use a flash drive. If you are going to be listening to it outside the car also, disregard this message.

 

The problem is we have a lot of older DRM-protected music and we would rather buy an iPod than spend the time and/or money to convert all the older DRM-protected music to unprotected.

 

Dad-blasted DRM.

 

Yeah, the odd thing about DRM is that supposedly, it's to hinder music pirates...

...not people who legitimately bought the music. Which is what it does, as Skotty proved just now. Music pirates will just download a different, unprotected file and then laugh at the people who actually bought the music, who can't listen to the file if Rhapsody/Napster/Apple hasn't verified their computers.

That's why I still buy CD's.

 

Yeah, it always was a pretty stupid scheme. All it takes is for one unlocked copy of a song to hit Limewire or whatever piracy sites happen to be in business at the time and it spreads to all of the rest of the networks anyway. And it didn't take some genius hacker in a pirate laboratory to convert a copy-protected iTunes download into an MP3 file. So DRM never did stop or even slow piracy, it just proved a great inconvenience for the people who bought music legitimately. A person could write a book about all the examples of the entertainment industry shooting themselves in the foot.