Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

steve666 · Oct 9, 2012, 10:02 PM

I have an iPod Classic and I play it for an hour tops each time. After using it for maybe 7 days or so it has to be re-charged. Does this sound right?
I clicked on 'get info' and under permission it lists me, staff, and everyone. Staff? I bought it at Best Buy, could it have been used as a demo? It didn't look like it.

subego · Oct 10, 2012, 06:56 PM

"Staff" is a default OSX permissions group.

How old is your iPod?

subego · Oct 10, 2012, 08:01 PM

Wait... I just read your post more carefully.

Seven days of standby time actually sounds pretty good to me.

steve666 · Oct 10, 2012, 09:36 PM

Originally Posted by subego

Wait... I just read your post more carefully.
Seven days of standby time actually sounds pretty good to me.

Really? So even if it's not used the battery runs down?

subego · Oct 11, 2012, 10:29 AM

All batteries do that, it's only a question of how long it takes.

It takes alkalines a few years, rechargeables can be as low as a few days.

How many charge cycles the battery's had is also relevant. How old is your iPod?

steve666 · Oct 11, 2012, 10:39 AM

It's 2 years old but it's always been this way. The charge just doesn't seem to last for as little as I use it and the charge goes down noticeably within an hour.
The permissions thing seemed odd to me. Why would it list staff?

Doc HM · Oct 11, 2012, 10:24 PM

Staff is just one of the defined user groups under OSX. By clicking on Get Info you are simply looking at the permissions assigned to the iPod hard disk when it is used in disk mode. All OSX disks have these same permissions. These permissions do not relate to the actual iPod OS, merely the hard drive and are assigned at the factory. Don't worry about them.

subego · Oct 11, 2012, 11:09 PM

Originally Posted by steve666

It's 2 years old but it's always been this way. The charge just doesn't seem to last for as little as I use it and the charge goes down noticeably within an hour.
The permissions thing seemed odd to me. Why would it list staff?

How many actual hours of play do you get between charges?

You really don't need to worry about Staff, except to note how poorly named it is. It's part of the UNIX underpinnings of the OS Apple tries to hide from you.

You can't have a user without a group for them to belong to, so there's a default group which every user gets put into.

For whatever reason they picked the name "Staff".

steve666 · Oct 12, 2012, 06:39 AM

Originally Posted by Doc HM

Staff is just one of the defined user groups under OSX. By clicking on Get Info you are simply looking at the permissions assigned to the iPod hard disk when it is used in disk mode. All OSX disks have these same permissions. These permissions do not relate to the actual iPod OS, merely the hard drive and are assigned at the factory. Don't worry about them.

OK, thanks for the info

Originally Posted by subego

How many actual hours of play do you get between charges?
You really don't need to worry about Staff, except to note how poorly named it is. It's part of the UNIX underpinnings of the OS Apple tries to hide from you.
You can't have a user without a group for them to belong to, so there's a default group which every user gets put into.
For whatever reason they picked the name "Staff".

I'd say I get about 7-10 hours of play between charges. I don't use it every day though, that's spread out over about a month

subego · Oct 12, 2012, 12:29 PM

Now I'm confused. Are you getting a week or a month between charges?

steve666 · Oct 12, 2012, 01:58 PM

Originally Posted by subego

Now I'm confused. Are you getting a week or a month between charges?

One month between charges but I use it about 7-8 times per month, less than an hour each time

subego · Oct 12, 2012, 02:15 PM

Dude...

I was going to tell you a week wasn't all that horrible.

Your battery is like, fine.

steve666 · Oct 12, 2012, 05:51 PM

OK, I thought it seemed like it wasn't lasting very long. Case closed

P · Oct 14, 2012, 11:56 PM

Originally Posted by subego

You really don't need to worry about Staff, except to note how poorly named it is. It's part of the UNIX underpinnings of the OS Apple tries to hide from you.
You can't have a user without a group for them to belong to, so there's a default group which every user gets put into.
For whatever reason they picked the name "Staff".

Actually what happens is that the iPod looks like a drive from OS 9. Regular UNIX permissions are set on three levels: user, group and world, and then two numbers to identify the user and the group it belongs to. If used under OS 9, all of these numbers are unset - 0 - which doesn't make sense for OS X. User 0 is root and group 0 is wheel, which are as reasonable defaults as any, but permissions 0000 means that noone gets to do anything. To avoid this little oversight in OS 9, OS X will identify any drive with such permissions and implement it's own reasonable defaults.

A user can be member of many groups, and by default most are. "Staff" is a group that includes all real user accounts (as opposed to the many many accounts that are never logged in to and only are there to run certain tasks in a limited environment), which makes some sense.

steve666 · Oct 15, 2012, 06:36 AM

I guess when i saw that I thought Store staff and was surprised. Glad to know it's a new one.