iTunes 4.5 Released

[Porchland]

4.5 vs. 5.0

This is a MAJOR iTunes update... Yet they called it 4.5 rather than 5.

Makes you wonder what's in store for iTunes 5, no?

I wondered the same thing, though I wouldn't necessarily call this a "major" update. I take the 4.5-vs.-5.0 version numbering to mean that there will be a more significant release sooner rather than later -- and certainly before WWDC in January '05.

 

[jvaska]

Yes - same here. Sorry for me previous happyness

Can you not see the store at all? From Brussels I can get it - I just downloaded the free song.

 

[johngordon]

love the new 'group compilations when browsing' feature. I'm a big fan of compilations and have 300+ artists in my itunes library, but only about 150 albums, so previously the 'artists' column in the browser was littered with hundreds of artists that I only have one song by, but now thay are all under 'compilations'

god spot! i know exactly what you mean - i have a few ministry of sound ibiza type compilations - which, as you say, litter the artists browse list with loads of artists i haven't really even flippin' heard of! the ability to syphon these off into a seperate list will be pretty useful.

i can go home and play in 50 minutes.

[hopes and longs for new ipod today too. and itms europe.]

Iain

 

[centauratlas]

Rumors vs WAGs

What I find amazing is that none of the rumors sites predicted this or even hinted at an iTunes update for today (at least that I've seen). This isn't a knock on MacRumors - I like the news. But for all the sites that claim to have sources - from ThinkSecret to Spymac to Macosrumors to Appleinsider etc - none got this. They must not have many sources in reality and I think much of what is published are just WAGs (wild a-- guesses).

The good thing is that (perhaps) Apple employees are to busy to submit stories or they are abiding by their contracts.

 

[Chaszmyr]

I wondered the same thing, though I wouldn't necessarily call this a "major" update. I take the 4.5-vs.-5.0 version numbering to mean that there will be a more significant release sooner rather than later -- and certainly before WWDC in January '05.

WWDC is in June, MWSF is in January

 

[Classic]

Anybody notice the image?

Anybody else notice the funky image on Apple's homepage?

I'm sure it will be fixed soon...

 

[TheT]

Can you not see the store at all? From Brussels I can get it - I just downloaded the free song.

How did you do that without an US billing address?!?

 

[dmbfan]

You can now unmount your iPod by clicking the little unmount icon that appears beside your ipod in the Source area. Nice touch.

 

[guyute]

There's NO WAY you can distinguish AAC@192 from the orginal CD, on a hi-fi equipment costing less than $50,000. You're not a music conductor like Herbert von Karajan, and you're not Mozart too, and of course you're not a bat
So, please stop worrying about it!

But if you are archiving music this is big deal. Who wants to archive cheapened quality music. This is big news for apple. With the popularity of FLAC and SHN this may spread quickly to new areas and maybe we can get some live recordings in this lossless format. I personally hate purchasing low quality sounds. With this new format maybe more people will be drawn in.

 

[CmdrLaForge]

Anyone else unable to use iTunes to convert WMA to AAC?

Works perfect.

 

[redAPPLE]

this is old news... it could do this a long time ago.

i have my mtv unplugged and pearl jam concerts done like this...

Handy Concept for Concept Rock


Many music CDs contain songs that blend into each other, and importing them to iTunes may create a small gap between songs that interrupts the flow. If you use the iTunes Join Tracks feature, the program melds two or more songs into one, continuous gap-free track. So now you can enjoy listening to classical music, concept rock albums and extended dance mixes without the silent treatment.

I've been waiting for this!!!

 

[wrldwzrd89]

I want to try out iTunes 4.5 (I don't use or want to use the iTMS), but I can't since I'm away from my Mac I'll download and install it when I return home in about 5 hours.

 

[jvaska]

How did you do that without an US billing address?!?

Uh, I just walked right in. I get some notice that says I'm from out of the U.S. but I can still go in. I already have an Apple ID so I just logged in with that. Then I simply downloaded - no credit card necessary.

Perhaps I should see if I can download other stuff.

 

[UKMacBod]

Can you not see the store at all? From Brussels I can get it - I just downloaded the free song.

You are outside the States and were able to download the free song??? How?

Are you registered with a US Billing Address, or??

 

[TheT]

How did you do that without an US billing address?!?

The iTMS is now available in German!!!!!!! i mean, the buttons are in German now... 10 minutes ago, they were English....

 

[Sincere]

What's so great here?

Well, I'm glad to see an update, but it doesn't do much for overall functionality, and most importantly, library management. I have a library of over 50000 mp3s and do endless ID3 editing and sent in several suggestions to them for improvements, but haven't heard any surface yet. The "keep compilations together while browsing" or whatever feature is probably the best addition. Jewel case printing is nice, but I usually just print out CD labels and use those instead... Hopefully an update might contain that, some add-on to rival lame shareware or crap like Discus.

I'm not going to go lossless, certainly, and I can't see many people doing it. I'm an audio professional, but this is my collection of music to listen to for fun... Sure, 128MP3 sounds like ass, but 128AAC or even 192MP3 is tolerable, and sure I can hear the difference, but unless the encoding is ****, it rarely takes away from my enjoyment. If I want to sample something, I'm going to rip it as an AIFF, or even better, sample it from vinyl. In my opinion this makes pitch-altering or other time compression rather useless except for amateurs trying to remix Jay-Z's Black album for the millionth time (there are better rappers to remix, how about some variety?).

Radio Charts and music videos are very interesting, but I'm on dialup, so they're rather useless to me... Not their fault, I'd surely check them out, had I the speed.

Overall, some nice add-ons, but almost all seem rather gimmicky to me. I'm very interested if anyone (especially users with large collections) is seeing performance enchancements. Things have been getting awful slow for me on a rev 1. 17", and it breaks my heart. More ID3 management (Most of the source for ID3 things are in AppleScripts I know, but they're painfully slow and often severely lacking), improved CDDB lookup (let me at least input the name and get some tracks for an incomplete album), label printing, and better support for networked libraries, and I'll be happy... Until then, this update is mostly "cute."

--Sincere

 

[CmdrLaForge]

How did you do that without an US billing address?!?

I guess he faked it

 

[TheT]

Uh, I just walked right in. I get some notice that says I'm from out of the U.S. but I can still go in. I already have an Apple ID so I just logged in with that. Then I simply downloaded - no credit card necessary.

Perhaps I should see if I can download other stuff.

You probably gave em your Credit Card # previously.. cuz it still asks me for mine...

 

[wrldwzrd89]

The iTMS is now available in German!!!!!!! i mean, the buttons are in German now... 10 minutes ago, they were English....

Is it true? Is Apple FINALLY launching the European iTMS? If so, that's GREAT! Apple could use the additional sales this would generate.

 

[robsworld]

iMix Votes cracked?

Looks like somebody already has cracked the iMix Votes System

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPublishedPlaylist?id=10031

Take a look at the first playlist....there are more than 100000 votes for this playlist. All other playlist have only max 5 votes.


rob

 

[TheT]

Well, I'm glad to see an update, but it doesn't do much for overall functionality, and most importantly, library management. I have a library of over 50000 mp3s and do endless ID3 editing and sent in several suggestions to them for improvements, but haven't heard any surface yet. The "keep compilations together while browsing" or whatever feature is probably the best addition. Jewel case printing is nice, but I usually just print out CD labels and use those instead... Hopefully an update might contain that, some add-on to rival lame shareware or crap like Discus.

I'm not going to go lossless, certainly, and I can't see many people doing it. I'm an audio professional, but this is my collection of music to listen to for fun... Sure, 128MP3 sounds like ass, but 128AAC or even 192MP3 is tolerable, and sure I can hear the difference, but unless the encoding is ****, it rarely takes away from my enjoyment. If I want to sample something, I'm going to rip it as an AIFF, or even better, sample it from vinyl. In my opinion this makes pitch-altering or other time compression rather useless except for amateurs trying to remix Jay-Z's Black album for the millionth time (there are better rappers to remix, how about some variety?).

Radio Charts and music videos are very interesting, but I'm on dialup, so they're rather useless to me... Not their fault, I'd surely check them out, had I the speed.

Overall, some nice add-ons, but almost all seem rather gimmicky to me. I'm very interested if anyone (especially users with large collections) is seeing performance enchancements. Things have been getting awful slow for me on a rev 1. 17", and it breaks my heart. More ID3 management (Most of the source for ID3 things are in AppleScripts I know, but they're painfully slow and often severely lacking), improved CDDB lookup (let me at least input the name and get some tracks for an incomplete album), label printing, and better support for networked libraries, and I'll be happy... Until then, this update is mostly "cute."

--Sincere

I have "only 3K songs, but I noticed that iTunes is slower after this update... might be because of the European iTMS

 

[dongmin]

Wish they had incorporated a feature request I had submitted: smart playlists are great, but it's a bummer that when you have multiple criteria you can only choose "match any" or "match all". For example, if I want to do something like "genre is soundtrack AND album isn't Fight Club or artist is Pink Floyd," can't do it with the limited logic of the smart playlists now.

Seems like this search criteria scheme is used elsewhere too (iPhoto, Finder find, xCode), and could similarly benefit from the finer control. Maybe they will be just haven't found an elegant way to do it yet that wouldn't confuse people....

Uhh, itunes lets you do that alredy. That's what the plus and minus buttons are for. At least in 4.1

 

[jvaska]

You probably gave em your Credit Card # previously.. cuz it still asks me for mine...

I'm sorry for confusing things...

I'm from the states but living in Brussels currently. Yep, I registered 4 years ago with them and bought something. But they don't have my credit card number on file as I just checked. Strange.

You need a U.S. address to register?

 

[CmdrLaForge]

The iTMS is now available in German!!!!!!! i mean, the buttons are in German now... 10 minutes ago, they were English....

As the billing adress information you still cannot enter a german adress.

But still "ONE CAN HOPE!"

 

[raynegus]

Not to rain on your parade, but that's been around a while... I think it was introduced with iTunes 4, but might have even come earlier.

When I went to reimport all my albums as AAC, I went ahead and did this with a few things -- lots of Pink Floyd stuff, etc. But all it does is combine the tracks so they get imported as 1 file. I don't want the entire Dark Side of the Moon album to be one file! I ended up only combining the ones that I always want to hear together (Brain Damage & Eclipse, or -- from another Pink Floyd album -- The Happiest Days of Our Lives & Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2).

I would think that they could just make them play correctly without the little jump between tracks ... isn't that as easy as buffering the next song? The best workaround I've found is to turn on crossfading, and then take the slider down to 0 seconds. It's not perfect, but it sounds closer to how it's supposed to.

I did the exact same thing! Works like a charm. Used it with select songs off The Wall, Abbey Road, Nirvana Unplugged, etc.