Dear Fedi friends,I'm in a bit of a pickle and I could use your brilliant advice

[elena@aseachange.com]

Dear Fedi friends,

I'm in a bit of a pickle and I could use your brilliant advice.

Long story short, I need to wait an extra 24 hours before attempting to set up Jellyfin on my Raspi (waiting for gear to arrive).

I thought: maybe I could try a low tech / oldie solution first. I have my entire music library super well organized in iTunes (RIP). It's on an old Macbook Pro (2011) connected to an external drive. I can play all the tracks from that computer. I just resurrected my iPhone 6 (capacity: 64GB) to repurpose it as an iPod. My entire music library is 'only" 40GB so the iPhone could hold it all.

Only problem: iTunes on my Macbook Pro does not recognize the iPhone 6. I keep getting error messages when trying to connect to it. I suspect the firmware is too old (on the Mac / too new on the iPhone)... I could not even wipe the iPhone with that old Mac because it couldn't connect to the Apple servers.

The iPhone 6 is completely empty and has iTunes! (Not Apple Music but actual iTunes). It even filled with some tracks I had bought (not sure how).

What would you do in this situation? Are there any workarounds?

My old Macbook Pro is running iOS version 10.8.5 and iTunes is on version 12.0.1.26.

My iPhone 6 (wiped clean and re-associated to my Apple ID) is running software version 12.5.7.

Apple discontinued iTunes support years ago in favor of Apple Music and streaming subscriptions (no wonder, because 💰💰💰💰💰).

I wish I could put my entire music library on my iPhone 6, le sigh. I technically wouldn't even need Jellyfin.

I also have an iPod Touch (1gen) that may connect to my Macbook Pro but its capacity is only 16GB.

What would you do?

#AskFedi #AdviceNeeded #music #BigTech

[d1re_w0lf@mstdn.social]

@elena My “everything but the kitchen sink” app for iPhone is iMazing.
Maybe you could give it a try.

https://imazing.com

[elena@aseachange.com]

@d1re_w0lf thank you for the recommendation - I had never heard of it. Downloading it now! 🙏​

[woodsie111@mastodon.social]

@d1re_w0lf @elena hi, I have a very old iPod with all my music(from the time) on iTunes on it. Old laptop i used to use long gone but have macbook air now. If I connect the too will I lose all the music on the iPod? Thanks.

[timshel@social.sparkway.org]

@elena not sure if it would really help but for the old macOs version issue recently discovered https://opencorelegacypatcher.net
But I have never used it 😅.

[elena@aseachange.com]

@Woodsie111 @d1re_w0lf so from what I understand, iTunes worked only up to MacOS High Sierra. So you wouldn't be able to run iTunes from a new Macbook Air... unless iMazing is like magic 😅​

I just tried to unzip it on my old Macbook Pro but it's throwing me a 'corrupt file' error message, gh

[elena@aseachange.com]

@Timshel thanks! sadly in this case I don't think it will work... basically Apple only supported iTunes up to MacOS High Sierra. I don't want to upgrade my MacOS or else I would lose access to iTunes, sigh. I just want it to recognize my iPhone 😭​

[d1re_w0lf@mstdn.social]

@elena @Woodsie111 You most probably need an older version:

https://imazing.com/download/previous-versions

[elena@aseachange.com]

@d1re_w0lf @Woodsie111 thank youuuuuuuuuu 🏆​

[elena@aseachange.com]

@d1re_w0lf sadly even older versions (that should be supported) give me an error ("image data corrupted") sigh.

Time to stop this for the day, I need to pick up my little one from daycare. Will try again tomorrow...

[timshel@social.sparkway.org]

@elena maybe https://github.com/cormiertyshawn895/Retroactive to continue using iTunes on a more recent macOs 😅.

[elena@aseachange.com]

@Timshel thank you!!! I’ll look into this tomorrow. Now with my little one till she goes to bed

[joel@fosstodon.org]

@elena I know nothing but apparently just using iTunes on windows works lol

[montgomerygator@fouroclockfarms.club]

@elena Install Windows in a VM and pass the USB connection to the VM and use iTunes for windows?

[antoine_ali@social.zarrouk.eu]

@elena @Timshel Or, you could try to find an old windows iTunes installer somewhere.
Now granted you'd need to find a windows computer to make use of it...

[elena@aseachange.com]

@antoine_ali @Timshel thanks but no thanks! I'm a MacOS / Linux person, I'm not willing to cross over to Windows computers (no offense to anyone using them, just not my thing). Plus I already have a small apartment overflowing with electronics and photo / video equipment, I can't possibly justify getting a Windows computer just for iTunes 😅

[elena@aseachange.com]

@MontgomeryGator oooh great workaround! I will add it as a plan B for sure, thank you for the brilliant suggestion! 🙏​

[elena@aseachange.com]

@joel awww lucky you! I'm a little jelly to be honest 😆​

[antoine_ali@social.zarrouk.eu]

@elena @Timshel No need for a windows computer, just a VM (the hypervisor would need to support USB passthrough), Virtualbox does that.

Only a good solution if you're still on an Intel powered mac, x86_64 virtualisation on M chips is... horribly slow. We've tried that at work.

[elena@aseachange.com]

@antoine_ali @Timshel oooh maybe my old Macbook Air (circa 2013). I still have it around and used it up to this year as I loved its keyboard and ports. Perfect little machine for writing. Let's see if I can do this there. Thanks for the suggestions!