Jeep Tunes, iPhone Style

Some times it's nice to go for a jeep ride, the radio off, just listening to the sounds of the road, nature, and all that surrounds you. Sometimes. Most of the time it's more nicer to listen to your favorite tunes. There's really only a few options available to listen to music and even fewer to listen to podcasts. AM/FM radio is ok, tapes/CDs are a little better, satellite radio is just a little better (redundant!), and the best situation is when you can listen to your MP3s. My jeep allows me to have 6 DVD disks crammed full of digital media. That's about 24 gigabytes for those keeping count. Yes, in dash is great when wheeling, but most of the time your iPhone rules! If you're bored of the iPod just switch on Pandora or Slacker Radio! But managing that digital media has been a chore, a real tedious bore. Pairing your iPhone to one computer just plane sucks for those that travel and are on the go, or for someone who just wants to get a new song at work. There's just never been a reasonable solution. Until now, go get a Mac. I have a MacBook.

Here's what i did. i knew that i didn't want to pair my iPhone with my work machine and that i didn't want to clog it up with all my photos and music. Plus what happens when you have to give the Mac back?

I put all my music and photos on an external hard drive. This is a great way to keep a mobile/offsite backup of your precious photos and music! i took the MacBook that work gave me and created my Windows 7 VM. You can use VirtualBox, VMWare Fusion, Parallels or whatever. I chose Parallels. Inside that VM i installed iTunes. i pointed the music library at the external hard disk. All the files i sync with the phone are on that disk, which keeps the work machine free of it. i keep the snapshots/backups of the VM on the external disk as well in case the machine is lost or dies. I can now move that VM, and along with it all my data, to any machine. Further, there's no need to copy all that data to the new machine and there is no 60+ GB transfer of the VM when moving to another host.

So, i sync my iPhone to iTunes running in a VM. It's totally portable! i'm no longer stuck!

If i am ever traveling and i break my phone or whatever, i can fire up the laptop, plug in the external drive and sync. Elegant ain't even close. Ya, you don't need a Mac, the solution works on Windows too, but a PC won't run Windows like a Mac will :)

Oh, not to mention, now i can use the work machine as a portable music powerhouse. When i am on vacation i use iTunes as a media server and put the Roku where the drunk partiers can play whatever they want without fondling my Mac.