The new iPod status bar, part of iTunes 7, can show you more information than meets the eye. I totally discovered this by accident, but if you click on the bar graph, it will toggle between three sets of information, showing space used, number of items, and total playing time.
I haven’t quite figured out what’s in the “Other” category. I have noticed that it goes up and down dramatically depending on the other media. Meaning, if you have less Audio, Video, or Photos… the Other category will go down as well.
I would imagine that the “Other” category encompasses 1) contacts and calendars and the new iPod games, 2) stuff like documents that you’ve manually copied to the hard drive using the Finder, and 3) album art.
Strangely, I noticed a huge difference in the size of “Other”, just by changing the amount of video being synced, even if I left all other things (music, contacts, etc…) the same.
Well, that’s where the album art comes in. Assuming you’re talking about videos downloaded from the iTunes Store, even those have album art. (Get info on them, and change to the “Artwork” tab.) So when you eliminate a bunch of video, you’re eliminating a bunch of the artwork as well. It seems like Apple is being explicit and not lumping the artwork in with what it’s attached to.
I’d bet that you’ll have the same effect when you change the amount of music that you sync, assuming you have artwork for your music.
Well, I use my iPod for my Freelance portable hard drive, so for me, other means how much I am using on the hard drive side.