Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me transfer music into iOS iTunes

Dear Aunt TUAW,

In the "Post-PC" era, is there a way to get an audio file, such as one stored on Dropbox, onto an iPad? Is a tethered transfer of audio from iTunes the only solution?

Your loving nephew,

Chris R.

Dear Chris,

In a word, no. iTunes maintains its own asset library system that isn't generally accessible (except for reading) to developers. Third-party apps can browse the unit's iTunes music library and choose tracks and play them back (and, even access the data directly if they need to). But there's no way for them to modify the library itself by adding new tracks.

Although apps like Dropbox can use the documents sharing API to open files in conforming apps, the onboard music app does not comply with this. It does not appear as a possibility in the "Open In" menus for m4a, mp3, and other audio data.

Basically this all goes down to digital rights. There have been numerous projects over the years to reverse engineer the iTunes library format and modify it, especially on Mac and Windows, but these projects fall outside of the normal terms and use of iTunes and the onboard iOS app.

You'd think that in the "Post-PC" era, Apple would know this and allow you to bring third party tracks like those from Amazon into the iTunes system sans computer -- but we're apparently not quite as "Post-PC" as one might imagine, yet.

Hugs,

Auntie T.