iPod mini a good fit for athletic types

The iPod mini started shipping last week as Apple Computer began moving out the 100,000 orders it had received in the seven weeks since it announced the newest addition to its music-player lineup.

The iPod mini has much in common with the full-sized iPod. Although it's smaller and a third lighter, the mini can play off a single charged battery for eight hours. Reports indicate that 10 hours with a new battery isn't unusual.

The mini is designed to be a step up from other companies' flash-memory music players, which are tiny in size but also in capacity. Even a $150-to-$200 flash player has just 256 megabytes of storage; the iPod mini has a 4-gigabyte hard drive for $249. Its older siblings start at $299 for 15 GB.

Like its big brother, the mini can use either USB 2.0 or FireWire 400 to connect to a Mac or Windows system to synchronize a music library stored in iTunes (both cables included, but a stand-up dock is optional).

An optional armband ($29) lets you snap the mini on for a run or a workout. An Apple spokesperson confirmed that the mini offers the same 25-minute skip protection found in the full-sized unit.

Apple's skip protection works by loading up to 25 minutes of music after your selection — say, the rest of the album — and storing that in a relatively small slice of cheap silicon memory.

If you're a runner or gym member, or just want the sleekest, lightest-weight player available that can handle more than several hours of songs, the iPod mini is the right choice.

The mini uses a modified, but arguably improved, version of the scroll wheel for navigating music menus and controlling music play. The latest full-sized iPod has four buttons above the wheel, which have the same intuitive feel as trying to sort out which burner on a stovetop corresponds to which dial.

The new scroll wheel can be clicked mouselike in one of four directions for menu, back, forward, and play/pause. It's quite elegant and intuitive.

I'm too young, too unhip and too cheap to rush out and buy an iPod mini. But as with many Apple products, it has an appeal that transcends its price simply because it does everything right without sacrificing good looks.

iPhoto sharing: Most of the improvements in iPhoto 4 were behind the scenes, making this component of iLife '04 ($49) less frustrating to use by increasing its speed and flexibility.

But if you have a broadband connection or a home network, you can take advantage of iPhoto's sharing feature that lets you share albums of photographs with other iPhoto 4 users.

Turn on Sharing by selecting the File menu's Preferences item. Check Share My Photos, and then choose to either share your entire photo library or selected albums. You can require a password for access.

Other users on a network see your albums by name in the album pane at the left of their copy of iPhoto 4, just as shared music libraries appear in iTunes over a local network.

Unlike your iTunes music library, you ostensibly own all the photos in your library. But Apple hasn't made it easier to use those shared photos. For instance, you can't create local albums that use shared photos, modify photos in others' shared albums, or access iPhoto libraries over the Internet.

Another gotcha with iPhoto sharing is that Apple hasn't updated its built-in firewall software to pass through iPhoto libraries. If you have either Apple's or another firewall turned on, you need to add a rule that allows iPhoto sharing.

In Panther, open System Preferences from the Apple menu and click the Sharing preferences pane. Click the Firewall tab. Click New. Select Other from the Port Name menu. In the Port Number, Range, or Series field enter 8770; in the Description field, enter "iPhoto sharing." Click OK.

In other firewall programs, add a rule that allows other computers on the local network to connect to port 8770 on your machine.

If you had iPhoto running with sharing turned on when you added this firewall rule, you have to first quit iPhoto and then run it again for the program to start sharing.

Blast from the past: A consistent complaint from Panther users who share files is that Panther's Connect to Server feature (found in the Go menu in the Finder) no longer lets you browse for servers on a local network. A simple AppleScript can solve this.

In your Applications folder's AppleScript, run Script Editor. Paste in the following in a blank new document the following text: open location (choose URL) with error reporting.

Save the Script Editor document on your Desktop. In the Save dialog box, choose Application from the File Format menu and uncheck Startup Screen. When you double-click this script, it provides you with a network server browser much like Jaguar's.

Glenn Fleishman writes the Practical Mac column for Personal Technology and about technology in general for The Seattle Times and other publications. Send questions to gfleishman@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists