Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: iTunes 10 (Read 77438 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

iTunes 10

Reply #100 –
Quote from: googlebot on
Apple just thinks that file system style organization is a thing, to which a small part of the population might be accustomed to, but which is not the most intuitive approach to organize music. Which is: Artists -> make Albums -> which can be categorized by Genres -> optionally with specific user selections in form of Playlists. To me this makes sense. Why carry along thought patterns of the past?

It makes sense to have a layer of organization higher than the file system, yes. It does not, however, necessitate obfuscating the file names. For instance, iTunes doesn't do that on my hard disk: everything is organized into a human-readable filesystem hierarchy. I do use iTunes and its extra metadata most of the time, that's true, and I have no particular desire to switch to using the filesystem only. But what I am saying is: since this mode of operation works, why change it for the ipods, if not to force the user to use iTunes to sync?

iTunes 10

Reply #101 –
I was under the assumption that the reason apple stores music on the ipods in such a weird way (screwed up filenames, etc) was to help improve performance.
AS much as I hate itunes the two killer features that keep me using it would be the music store although bandit.fm looks interesting and Apple remote app.  Oh and I hate to say it but as slow and big and heavy as itunes is, it just works

iTunes 10

Reply #102 –
You make a good point, "It just works"  out of the box. Very little if any setting up is required. For 99% of us on here tinkering isn't an issue, in the scheme of things we are just a very small portion of people.

Most people can't set up EAC, Foobar ect... they just don't have the knowledge. iYunes is very simple to use, for that reason it's always going to be used by most.

iTunes 10

Reply #103 –
Quote from: JensRex on
How to get rid of the stupid "traffic lights" on Mac, and restore normal title bar behaviour:

Code: [Select]
defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -int -1



Brilliant! Thanks. I hated the new look main window.


------------
Pete

iTunes 10

Reply #104 –
I may be misremembering, but I believe the the ipod file organization scheme is akin to a hashtable. It tracks everything in an internal database, rather than searching directories. (I.e., look up a track in the database, where the directory and filename is stored, which is faster than searching through directories for a certain artist/album/etc.)

iTunes 10

Reply #105 –
As far as I know it has always been this way, except that iTunes used to keep the track numbers and titles in the file names when writing to your iPod.  I'm pretty certain their changing the file names to something cryptic had to do with keeping people from easily copying their iPod's contents.  I am even more certain that the encrypted names do not make any difference in performance.

iTunes 10

Reply #106 –
I also don't think that it would make a difference performance wise. Apple started its iPod business with quite large investments and the music industry was very suspicious at first. They couldn't afford to let the iPods become known as the new preferred and very convenient tool for "drive-by" piracy. Like filling up and sharing your iPod contents wherever you go. Flash drives were basically able to do the same, but back then it was much more likely that a 32 GB iPod was at hand when required than a comparably sized flash drive in your pocket. I think for todays 160 GB iPods this is still true.

iTunes 10

Reply #107 –
Quote from: googlebot on
...Apple started its iPod business with quite large investments and the music industry was very suspicious at first. They couldn't afford to let the iPods become known as the new preferred and very convenient tool for "drive-by" piracy. Like filling up and sharing your iPod contents wherever you go. Flash drives were basically able to do the same, but back then it was much more likely that a 32 GB iPod was at hand when required than a comparably sized flash drive in your pocket. I think for todays 160 GB iPods this is still true.


iPods have that "use as hard disk" feature that leaves unused space which can be utilized as an HDD via USB. That should be helpful for those who want to snag their friends music collections on the go! 

j/k I like the feature for other reasons though. I used to have the Zune: it was locked down so you couldn't sync anything to it unless it went through the Zune software. Minor annoyance, IMO.

I wonder how the "music industry" loves it now that iTunes is the number one distributor of legal music? Selling lossy versions of product for nearly the same price as the CD is irritating to me. Bet they're loving it though. Even less effort in manufacture (and arguably quality control.) Probably less revenue for the artists as well from what I keep hearing.

IMO the music industry is, more often than not, ranting maniacally from its collective arse nearly every time they decry some new technology. They don't want to conform to technological advance and evoulution. I find it ironic that a computer company like Apple has to take up the slack and innovation for a lazy, non-inventive, and sue-happy industry whose very business is music distribution.
The Loudness War is over. Now it's a hopeless occupation.

iTunes 10

Reply #108 –
Engel I agree with you and I don't know if this situation is going to  change when digital will be  the only chance to get music once cds are gone. Maybe they'll go lossless but it's not going to happen anytime soon since broadband infrastructure and bandwidth are still weak to handle all that amount of data. Look at bluray, Microsoft and Apple are against it in favor or lower rips defined "HD" streamed or bought digitally. There is also another thing to keep in mind, record companies as far as I've always read use master tapes for most of the stuff in order to encode for iTunes Store. I don't know if a master tape->AAC is too different than a CD->AAC conversion, but how they want to let believe it is.

iTunes 10

Reply #109 –
Copying from the iPod to the computer once placed back in iTunes the file names will all be restored.

iTunes 10

Reply #110 –
@ Larson: Yes, you make a valid point about the amount of data transferred via MP3/AAC vs. lossless compression. (I know there's plenty of people still using dial-up connections that don't have alternatives where they live.)

If, hypothetically, CDs cease to exist at some point I believe that iTunes and their competitors will stay lossy for other reasons. Most people just won't care about lossless. A well encoded lossy format will likely be transparent to them (again: in theory.)

My problem with buying lossy is I just don't want it as source-material. Anybody can encode lossless to lossy for use on personal players and such. It's extremely ikely that lossy codecs will advance and/or change in years to come. I'd like to have CDDA to encode to them from, should I choose to use them.

I've never bought music from iTunes for those reasons. I'm in a really no objective position to criticize the quality of their files. (I did download a few a while back from Zune and had some quality issues with clicks/pops and dropouts.)  I'm not certain if they use masters or if they just rip CDs sent by the respective record companies.

...I hope that one day they will offer lossless at least as an option. I hope they don't charge a "premium" price for CDDA quality as they do now for "iTunes Plus." That bugs me even more: iTunes Plus AAC @256 costs already more than a CD where I live.

Edited to reference to whom I replied.
The Loudness War is over. Now it's a hopeless occupation.

iTunes 10

Reply #111 –
In terms of recording and sending the information to the iTunes Store; I believe it is almost all digital now.  From what I have gathered, most artists/bands will record their music digitally, mess with it in the computer, and output a lossless file.  You then start up Apple's software that gives you two options: encode to the iTunes Plus standard or encode to ALAC.  The files are then electronically sent to Apple where they are hosted on Apple's servers (though they might have to encode down to the iTunes Plus setting).  Record companies might still own the digital masters recorded to tapes but I think the whole online music system setup, at least with Apple, is digital.  In other words, the record companies aren't sending Apple CDs or tapes to put the songs up on the iTunes Store.  Instead they are going straight from the digital master files, on a computer system, and enccoding them to ALAC or AAC.

iTunes 10

Reply #112 –
Quote from: Engelsstaub on
I'm not trying to be a wise-ass or argumentative, but what DAP supports dragging and dropping?


Any players that can be switched to MSC (UMS) mode such as all Cowon and Sansa (Sandisk) players. I am currently using a Cowon J3.

iTunes 10

Reply #113 –
Quote from: Engelsstaub on
iPods have that "use as hard disk" feature that leaves unused space which can be utilized as an HDD via USB. That should be helpful for those who want to snag their friends music collections on the go! 


It has two inconveniences. You still cannot selectively pull music from the iPod, since file names are scrambled. Music you copy to the iPod in hard disk mode cannot be listened to on you iPod before an additional iTunes round trip at home. For both annoyances there are solutions. Still the iPod is not known as file sharing container nowadays.

iTunes 10

Reply #114 –
@Kornchild

yes record companies are the ones to encode music, they don't send any master tape to Apple, it's all digital nowadays; i guess Apple has control over "approval" or something like that before albums appear on the iTunes Store.

iTunes 10

Reply #115 –
Quote from: Engelsstaub on
I'll bookmark this thread and get back to you with my brother's results if you think it may be helpful.


Sure, I'd still be interested. I'm still on the fence with regards to jumping to Mac Mini or getting something like a Dell Zino HD instead. I would think either would meet these goals:

1) Run iTunes and be a music server
2) Play movies stored on HDD

Everything would go through my HDTV/Surround system.

Regards,
Dan

iTunes 10

Reply #116 –
Quote from: googlebot on
It has two inconveniences. You still cannot selectively pull music from the iPod, since file names are scrambled. Music you copy to the iPod in hard disk mode cannot be listened to on you iPod before an additional iTunes round trip at home. For both annoyances there are solutions. Still the iPod is not known as file sharing container nowadays.


Wow, this is annoying. I have no such problems on my J3.

iTunes 10

Reply #117 –
iTunes 10.0.1 has been released: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1103

Has anyone checked if this version contains QuickTime 7.6.8 and if encodings are different from iTunes 9.2.x?

Chris
If I don't reply to your reply, it means I agree with you.

iTunes 10

Reply #118 –
I am not sure if it comes with QuickTime 7.6.8 or not as Apple's updater software already downloaded and installed that on my computer back when I had iTunes 10.0.0.68.  I also don't know if Apple has updated their AAC encoder since iTunes 9.2 as I don't have any machines not running iTunes 10.  It appears that the only change with this updated version of iTunes is more integration with Ping.  There was a Ping sidebar when I first loaded iTunes and now, whenever you highlight a single song, you see a Ping option.  It is a little pull down menu where you can like a song, not like a song, comment on it, and it gives you some iTunes Store options such as visiting the page for the artist, performing a search for the song title, and viewing the genre page that the song falls into.  They essentially took something pretty simple (ie the little arrow symbols next to the song title, album title, and artist that took you to the iTunes Store to see the appropriate results) and complicated it by integrating Ping.

I wouldn't be surprised if iTunes turns into its own OS down the line.  One which integrates FaceBook, a music store, a movie store, and is able to run apps that you download.  Apple will focus on iTunes OS 1.0 Jungle Lion instead of Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

iTunes 10

Reply #119 –
iTunes actually makes the best mp3 CDs for my car.  It automatically changes double albums into one by renumbering, creates shorter filenames and shortens song titles and tags.  It automatically makes mp3s perfect and compatible for all car audio.  Furthermore, if you click on the playlist Album header, it will create a separate folder for each album on the CD.  Also, it creates an XML with information in case you reinsert the CD into your iTunes running computer.

I use dbpoweramp for ripping, and foobar for most of my listening these days.  However, the itunes store and CD burning make it worthwhile.  One more thing, winamp costs $20 to have equal burning capabilities of WMP or iTunes.

iTunes 10

Reply #121 –
Every time there's a new iTunes update, I just go "sigh" and install it anyway, and spend the next few minutes unchecking new startup additions and restarting the computer.

iTunes 10

Reply #122 –
iTunes 10.01.22 for Windows contains QuickTime v7.6.8.75.0 according to the included QuickTime.msi

Several sources report concurrently that, besides the new Ping Sidebar, iTunes 10.01.22 fixes some bugs:
Quote
  • Addresses an issue where the picture quality of a video changes depending on whether the on-screen controls are visible.
  • Resolves an issue where iTunes may unexpectedly quit while interacting with album artwork viewed in a separate window.
  • Fixes a problem that affects the performance of some third-party visualizers.
  • Addresses an issue where the iTunes library and playlists appear empty.
  • Resolves an issue that created an incompatibility with some third-party shared libraries.
This is HA. Not the Jerry Springer Show.

iTunes 10

Reply #123 –
I suppose at 5+ pages of posts we now know that iTunes is a worthy topic for posting on HA.  Not an iTunes fanboi here, just watching the entertainment.
Was that a 1 or a 0?

iTunes 10

Reply #124 –
Quote from: spoon on
Indeed as time trickles by iTunes seems less and less an audio player and more a selling platform (Tv shows, audio tracks, movies, books)


Couldn't agree more. But are there any real alternative to using iTunes (on a Mac).
I suppose I could downgrade to iTunes 9.2.1 to get rid of ping etc.


------------
Pete