iTunes 4.5

If that's still not enough free music for you, Apple is now giving away a free song each week.

Yeah...if you live in the US. Adding insult to injury, users in other countries not only don't have an iTunes store yet (while here in Europe there are a plethora of similar online music stores, so Apple's excuse that it is difficult to coordinate rights among different EU countries is a bit suspect) but we can't even download the free music! I have a dot mac account and in theory one can sign in with that, but no, it doesn't work. Left out in the cold again....

ncm

On 30-Apr-04, at 3:45 PM, Tony Meyer wrote:

> iTunes 4.5 (the Windows version at least; I presume the Mac one too,
> but
> haven't had a chance to check) finally has a feature I've expected for
> a
> long time - the ability to click on a song and buy it from the iTunes
> Music
> Store. This is something that you can use to demonstrate that you're
> *promoting* songs, not just letting other people listen to them for
> nothing
> (particularly when used on a shared library).
>
>

In the Mac If you Option-Click the arrow icon it will display songs
from your own library not the iTunes music store. Perhaps it behaves
the same way in the Windows version?

-manuel

At 16:22 05-05-04, Nina Contini Melis wrote:

>Yeah...if you live in the US. Adding insult to injury, users in other
>countries not only don't have an iTunes store yet (while here in Europe
>there are a plethora of similar online music stores, so Apple's excuse
>that it is difficult to coordinate rights among different EU countries
>is a bit suspect)

Hmm... exactly which music store do you consider to be similar to the
iTunes music store? As far as I know, they are either:

a) limited to a certain label
b) having a very limited catalog
c) having a very complex pricing scheme, like the OD2 range of stores
d) having problems with the music industry about licensing issues, as the
incredibly cheap Weblisten (www.weblisten.com)

As far as I know, all music stores that want to offer a broad catalog of
labels/music, with a flat pricing scheme just like the iTMS, are having the
same problems.

Dirk Paul

On May 5, 2004, at 8:22 AM, manuel wrote:

> In the Mac If you Option-Click the arrow icon it will display songs
> from your own library not the iTunes music store. Perhaps it behaves
> the same way in the Windows version?

This hint in MacOSX Hints offers a means to reverse that behavior so
the arrows, by default, browse your own library. An option click will
then take you to the store.

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?
story=20040429122915489&query=itunes+option

Very nice.

--Nik

On 6/5/2004 2:14 AM, "Tony Meyer" <ta-meyerihug.co.nz> spake thus:

> Wouldn't there be a reasonable number of people listening to shared
> music at work?

Not here, or at least, not any more. Our entire campus network is one big
subnet with several thousand machines attached (which strikes me as a silly
arrangement, but never mind). The ITS folks here recently had to filter out
Rendezvous packets because Rendezvous isn't really intended to work on
networks of this size (which is why Apple limited it to a single subnet,
probably not expecting people to put their entire network into one subnet,
etc., etc.). Rendezvous was effectively flooding the whole network as every
Mac on campus went looking for stuff.

Thus, no more iTunes music sharing at Otago :(

--
=Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
mailto:nstangerinfoscience.otago.ac.nz

Another nice new feature in smart playlists is the ability to further
limit the pool of songs from which to choose. For example, I have my
main playlist set to certain genres, not 1, 2, or 3 stars (i.e.,
unrated or excellent) and limited to 500 songs selected from least
recently played. It works pretty well.

On 5/6/04 11:37 AM, "Nigel Stanger" <nstangerinfoscience.otago.ac.nz>
wrote:

>> Wouldn't there be a reasonable number of people listening to shared
>> music at work?
>
> Not here, or at least, not any more. Our entire campus network is one big
> subnet with several thousand machines attached (which strikes me as a silly
> arrangement, but never mind). The ITS folks here recently had to filter out
> Rendezvous packets because Rendezvous isn't really intended to work on
> networks of this size (which is why Apple limited it to a single subnet,
> probably not expecting people to put their entire network into one subnet,
> etc., etc.). Rendezvous was effectively flooding the whole network as every
> Mac on campus went looking for stuff.
>
> Thus, no more iTunes music sharing at Otago :(

That's pretty silly, since iTunes uses http - type headers for things and
you can just filter out any user agent of "itunes".

john

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

On 6/5/04 at 9:37 AM -0700, Nik <GerberiNik.net> wrote:
>On May 5, 2004, at 8:22 AM, manuel wrote:
>
>> In the Mac If you Option-Click the arrow icon it will display songs
>> from your own library not the iTunes music store. Perhaps it behaves
>> the same way in the Windows version?
>
>This hint in MacOSX Hints offers a means to reverse that behavior so
>the arrows, by default, browse your own library. An option click will
>then take you to the store.
>
>http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20040429122915489&query=itunes+option
>
>Very nice.

Yes, it is a nice hint. But the arrows still don't appear unless I enable the
'Show iTunes Music Store' option in Preferences. I had that option turned off
since the iTMS is useless in Australia.

Why can't we have the new arrow feature without having the iTMS option
enabled. I will (half-heartedly) accept that Apple still has licensing issues
which prevent giving other countries access to iTMS, but how about
acknowledging that and stop treating non-US users as second rate citizens.

--
   Charlie Garrison <garrisonzeta.org.au>
   PO Box 141, Windsor, NSW 2756, Australia

On 5/7/04 5:52 PM, "Lorin Rivers" <lriversmac.com> wrote:

> Another nice new feature in smart playlists is the ability to further
> limit the pool of songs from which to choose. For example, I have my
> main playlist set to certain genres, not 1, 2, or 3 stars (i.e.,
> unrated or excellent) and limited to 500 songs selected from least
> recently played. It works pretty well.

What's new about that? It's been like that since iTunes 4.
 
Kirk
 
            My Latest Book: Mastering Mac OS X: Panther Edition
                  http://www.mcelhearn.com/panther.html
  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  . . . . . . . kirkmcelhearn.com | http://www.mcelhearn.com . . . . . .
  . . Kirk McElhearn | Chemin de la Lauze | 05600 Guillestre | France . .

On 8/5/2004 3:52 AM, "John C. Welch" <jwelchbynkii.com> spake thus:

> That's pretty silly, since iTunes uses http - type headers for things and
> you can just filter out any user agent of "itunes".

iTunes wasn't the problem, it was just caught in the collateral damage. The
real problem was the number of Macs scanning the entire network looking for
printers. This was particularly annoying on the client end too, because
there were dozens of the damn things in the printer list, which would cause
all printing dialogs to freeze for a couple of seconds while refreshing the
list.

And as of 10.3, you can't stop this behaviour because Apple removed the
check box to "Look for shared printers" from the printing setup. This means
that this is now always on. Why?!??! This has to the most spectacular
example of boneheaded useful feature removal that I've seen recently. The
only solution is to take the radical step of disabling Rendezvous, either on
the network (as happened here) or on your machine (by removing certain files
from /System). This is the sort of behaviour I expect from Microsoft
products :(

--
=Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
mailto:nstangerinfoscience.otago.ac.nz

I really like the new Party Shuffle feature. It really fits well with the way I listen to my music, except for one little bitty difficulty which keeps me from actually using it in practice.

You can't use shared music in the party shuffle, any more than you can add shared music to music sharing clients. We mostly listen to our music with a iBook connected to our stereo via sharing, with the music actually stored on our G4 server. We very rarely listen to music on the server itself. This means that we have a tantalizingly useful feature that is being held just out of our reach. This is related to the fact that you can't put shared tracks into playlists on the client, either. Yes, you can always create the playlists on the server and access those playlists via sharing, but it's annoying to have to leave the living room to queue up some music. To add insult to injury, this workaround doesn't work for party shuffle, since the contents of the server's party shuffle is not available via sharing.

I don't know why Apple has disabled this ability. If it's some sort of reminder not to be naughty and copy music, then it's a pretty ham-handed way of doing it. They could clearly allow playlists to link to shared tracks while still not allowing copying.

On a related note, I would also really like the option of updating playcounts, ratings, etc. from sharing clients. True, you wouldn't want this ability to write music metadata to be the default - you wouldn't necessarily want your dorm neighbors or coworkers messing with your ratings. But for those of us with multiple computer households, it would be excellent to be able to do this. Again, since we rarely play music on our server, the top most played song in our library says it's been played 4 times. The real top played songs in our household have probably been played well over 50 times.

Anyway, yes, I have asked for these features in Apple's iTunes suggestion box. But if there are other TidBITS readers who want these features, too, then it probably wouldn't hurt to vote for these features by suggesting them to Apple yourselves. :grin:

[Count me in - iTunes sharing is next to useless for the family that wants all their music available from multiple Macs. We stick with a shared Music Folder on our server, but that has its own downsides. -Adam]

iTunes for the PC is a welcome addition to the music players available. However, NONE of the several players around, including iTunes, seems to do what I consider to be a simple task!

I keep my music collection in folders on a series of CD data discs in MP3 format. These are played on my portable MP3 player.

iTunes refuses to allow me to set up the songs on my many CDs into its library such that I can assign info such as GENRE, ALBUMS and other categories. This is of course easily done when the music files are stored on the hard drive. I believe this is because the info is stored in the MP3 tag. Why is there such a limitation in setting up playlists for removable media? Surely this playlist data could also be stored in a db on the disc. Anyone know of a work-around?

Darrall Cutting

On 5/10/04 2:43 PM, "Nigel Stanger" <nstangerinfoscience.otago.ac.nz>
wrote:

>> That's pretty silly, since iTunes uses http - type headers for things and
>> you can just filter out any user agent of "itunes".
>
> iTunes wasn't the problem, it was just caught in the collateral damage. The
> real problem was the number of Macs scanning the entire network looking for
> printers. This was particularly annoying on the client end too, because
> there were dozens of the damn things in the printer list, which would cause
> all printing dialogs to freeze for a couple of seconds while refreshing the
> list.
>
> And as of 10.3, you can't stop this behaviour because Apple removed the
> check box to "Look for shared printers" from the printing setup. This means
> that this is now always on. Why?!??! This has to the most spectacular
> example of boneheaded useful feature removal that I've seen recently. The
> only solution is to take the radical step of disabling Rendezvous, either on
> the network (as happened here) or on your machine (by removing certain files
> from /System). This is the sort of behaviour I expect from Microsoft
> products :(

Then turn off the mDNS options on the printers. With HP printers, it's dead
simple, just use the web config, and Bob's. What I'm betting is *also*
happening (when you're not printing) isn't Print Setup Utility, but
*Safari*'s rendezvous connection looking for Rendezvous web sites, and every
HP printer with mDNS enabled is a Rendezvous web site to safari.

But what you are seeing is not a malfunction. It's how Zeroconf works. The
fact is, if you have thousands of machines on a single subnet, then this is
going to happen with Zeroconf. It's *how it's designed to work*, and if you
read the specs, it tells you that on a REALLY BIG SUBNET, you're going to
have issues when you try to print, etc.

The reason it's always on is simple..it's called *Zeroconf*. Not "Mostly
Zeroconf". But "Zeroconf". The fact that your campus is *very* poorly set
up is not Zeroconf's fault. It's working the way it should.

But since I well know (MIT!) the chances of changing anything at a
university barring napalm, the way to kill this problem without doing silly
system hacks or filtering stuff that isn't broke is to take a weekend during
the summer, or any break, and stop the rendezvous/mDNS filtering. Enable
Safari's Rendezvous web site detection. You should get a nice fat list of
every HP printer (any Zeroconf enabled printer with a web config really, but
I know it works with HPs.). You'll then have to each one, (and probably
change your user agent to windows), and kill the mDNS service on the
printers. That will kill rendezvous printing and print browsing. This is
also a GREAT time to set up IPP for those printers, as it is almost as good
as PAP, but without the AppleTalk stigma.

However, this kind of thing is only going to get more common. Big subnets
with thousands of nodes are a silly idea.

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

The one feature I wish iTunes had that Windows Media Player does have is the 'queue it up' feature, where you can browse through your library and pick songs and queue them up for listening. I do this often, and party shuffle just doesn't cut it. I want to choose which songs to listen to randomly, not have Party Shuffle choose for me.

Larry Beck

>iTunes refuses to allow me to set up the songs on my many CDs into
>its library such that I can assign info such as GENRE, ALBUMS and
>other categories. This is of course easily done when the music files
>are stored on the hard drive. I believe this is because the info is
>stored in the MP3 tag. Why is there such a limitation in setting up
>playlists for removable media? Surely this playlist data could also
>be stored in a db on the disc. Anyone know of a work-around?

The data *is* kept in another place. It is kept in the "iTunes 4
Music Library" file. Along with data that is only stored in this
database (like play count) it stores most of the data that is kept in
the MP3 tags. If you remove one of the MP3 files, iTunes will still
show the information for that song. If you try to use the song (play
it or get information for it), iTunes will ask if you want to locate
it.

It doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to add what you want
to iTunes. I guess you just need to convince Apple that it would be
useful.

--
+------------------------
| Ray Davison
| Senior Systems Consultant, Academic Computing Services
| SH1042 Simon Fraser University
| Burnaby, BC Canada V5A 1S6
| Phone: (604) 291-4448
| FAX: (604) 291-4242
| email: raysfu.ca

On 5/12/04 4:27 PM, "Larry Beck" <beckhomebyu.net> wrote:

> The one feature I wish iTunes had that Windows Media Player does have is the
> 'queue it up' feature, where you can browse through your library and pick
> songs and queue them up for listening. I do this often, and party shuffle just
> doesn't cut it. I want to choose which songs to listen to randomly, not have
> Party Shuffle choose for me.

Set Party Shuffle to 0 songs and 0 upcoming songs, then add your songs. It
will still show one song selected at random, but that's better than all
random.
 
 
Kirk
 
            My Latest Book: Mastering Mac OS X: Panther Edition
                  http://www.mcelhearn.com/panther.html
  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  . . . . . . . kirkmcelhearn.com | http://www.mcelhearn.com . . . . . .
  . . Kirk McElhearn | Chemin de la Lauze | 05600 Guillestre | France . .

Larry Beck wrote:

>The one feature I wish iTunes had that Windows Media Player does have is the 'queue it up' feature, where you can browse through your library and pick songs and queue them up for listening. I do this often, and party shuffle just doesn't cut it. I want to choose which songs to listen to randomly, not have Party Shuffle choose for me.

In the Party Shuffle settings at the bottom of the window just set "upcomings songs" to 0 and in any other playlist or the Library use the context menu "Add to Party Shuffle" to do what you want. Using "Play Next in Party Shuffle" you could also force them to the pole position.

- Michael

> the 'queue it up' feature, where you can browse through your library
> and pick songs and queue them up for listening. I do this often, and
> party shuffle just doesn't cut it.

I'm not sure if I understand your feature request correctly, but in its
current implementation, Party Shuffle offers something very similar:
just set the "upcoming songs" pop-up menu to "0" and drag'n'drop songs
from your library onto the Party Shuffle item in the Source pane.

The menu's name is a bit confusing, since all files you've added will
be listed. What's more, iTunes will only randomly add a new song if
there are no more songs left in the list.

The Party Shuffle does have one very stupid UI flaw, though: if you
want to locate the song that iTunes is currently playing via the
Shuffle feature, the "Show Current Song" command (Cmd-L) will highlight
the entry in the Party Shuffle play list instead of revealing the song
in the Library. This also fails if you select Library in the Source
pane before hitting Cmd-L. Now what is point in _that_?

Jochen.

On 10 May 2004, at 13:43, Nigel Stanger wrote:
> iTunes wasn't the problem, it was just caught in the collateral
> damage. The
> real problem was the number of Macs scanning the entire network
> looking for
> printers. This was particularly annoying on the client end too, because
> there were dozens of the damn things in the printer list, which would
> cause
> all printing dialogs to freeze for a couple of seconds while
> refreshing the
> list.

To be fair, there are probably very few people with thousands (or even
hundreds) of machines on the same subnet. There are many good reasons
not to do this, in fact. Your school picked a very odd network
topology and are blaming problems on others instead of reexamining
their decision.

On May 13, 2004, at 2:10 PM, Jochen Wolters wrote:

> The Party Shuffle does have one very stupid UI flaw, though: if you
> want to locate the song that iTunes is currently playing via the
> Shuffle feature, the "Show Current Song" command (Cmd-L) will
> highlight the entry in the Party Shuffle play list instead of
> revealing the song in the Library. This also fails if you select
> Library in the Source pane before hitting Cmd-L. Now what is point in
> _that_?

Hit Command-R and it takes you directly to the source of the file
itself....thus easy to attach to emails, work with, etc. Used it a lot
back in the old days of 7 and 8--and was glad to find that they hadn't
disabled it in X.

Paula
http://www.communitymx.com