Apple Releases iTunes 5

[neoelectronaut]

I'm refugeeing at my aunt's due to Katrina, and while my Mac is downstairs, it has no internet connection at the moment. Downloading iTunes on the aunt's PC, however, just to check it out.

Man I'd love a wallpaper-sized version of this:

 

[baleensavage]

Screw Madonna...

Ahhh, but you see Madonna refused to go digital because she didn't get more royalties and she believed that the record companies make more profit off of downloads (which they probably do)...

Does anyone else smell a payoff by Apple here? Lets see, Madonna is one of the best selling artist of the last 20 years, and doesn't want to go digital because of money....It's a no brainer for Apple, throw her some money and get an exclusive contract and watch Sony and Napster cry.

 

[aegisdesign]

Ah, I did not know that. You would think that with a big update, and well into 4 years of having Mac OS X shipping, that iTunes would be Cocoa now.
-Chase

Oh Jeez. Still Carbon. They'll have to convert it to Cocoa to compile it for Intel. I was hoping v5 would have been it.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

I'm refugeeing at my aunt's due to Katrina, and while my Mac is downstairs, it has no internet connection at the moment. Downloading iTunes on the aunt's PC, however, just to check it out.

Man I'd love a wallpaper-sized version of this:

Forget that...I could go for a wallpaper sized image of the chick!

okay..back to macs...my iTunes download for windows isnt happening..nada. On my mac...83kbps. 2 minute download.

 

[aegisdesign]

I never knew you could do that!! How do you add a video? Just drag it in?

Yup. Just drag it in.

 

[wrxguy]

has anyone that came across the "please quit itunes before you continue" message figured out how to fix this prob?!??!? I can't get it to install cause it says that iTunes is running when its not!!!! any help?

 

[shidoshi]

Oh Jeez. Still Carbon. They'll have to convert it to Cocoa to compile it for Intel. I was hoping v5 would have been it.

Are we sure that it is still Carbon?

 

[rolandf]

A step

First impressions are nice - I like the new look, but what the hell is the volume slider doing allllllll the way over there?!

Also, I was thinking how maybe, just maybe, they should've delayed Tiger until... Late September? 10.4.3 is about to come out with around about 400 updates. 400!! That just means that 10.4.0 was further from completion than all other 10.x.0's. iTunes now looks good and new, but it didn't when Tiger came out. If they'd update the look of safari and a couple of other iApps, then released a far more bug free Tiger, I think we'd have appreciated the wait - although we'd have never known...

I agree, what does the volume slider do there!!!! Apple, does some comepletely un-motivated and silly changes to the interface, as e.g. in Mail.

The number of bugs fixed makes me worry, what can Apple bring out spectacular for Leopard, and first of all realiable.

Indeed, some of the technologies implemented in Tiger, could pave the way to some spectacular inovations, e.g. 3D desktop (c.f. how Widgets flip). And Apple has to deliver it sooner than later, as otherwise there will be no noticable difference to MS Vista, or KDE 4. (look of some of the themes) and an incentive to buy Apple OS.

But to get there, they have already to work on it in parallel, not just start this year.

Who know's Tiger might just have been some testing ground, and no more silly spoiling of the GUI. Let's hope it, at least!

 

[aegisdesign]

For me, it doesn't only have two positions, but with the display it can slide a little bit (but I'm sure you've seen that). This is how iTunes 4 handled it too, which slightly bugs me but I can totally understand why they did that.
-Chase

Ah, yes. It goes to the right as well. Can't say I use the mini controller anyway - I usually just hide my apps I'm not using. It's peculiar though.

I get the impression there are too many groups in Apple just doing their own thing and nobody with the responsibility to look at the overall picture and ask questions like 'Why is that blue, when it's grey here? Why does this have round corners and this square?'.

 

[aegisdesign]

Are we sure that it is still Carbon?

Yep.

resource files in the package and LSRequiresCarbon = YES in the info.plist.

 

[jydesign]

Ugh, had issues with upgrade install. Had to use Backup to restore my old library after a bungled import on launch. It still had issues and I lost all my Podcast subscription and organization info, sigh...

 

[rendezvouscp]

Ah, yes. It goes to the right as well. Can't say I use the mini controller anyway - I usually just hide my apps I'm not using. It's peculiar though.

I get the impression there are too many groups in Apple just doing their own thing and nobody with the responsibility to look at the overall picture and ask questions like 'Why is that blue, when it's grey here? Why does this have round corners and this square?'.

You sure would think that. What is a curiosity to me is that they're not only not rounded, but they're not "faded" into the background: it's just a few pixels missing, that's all.

I really hope that someone creates an app that changes the iTunes interface. I'm losing faith in Apple's design ideology, or what's left of it.
-Chase

 

[Dahl]

Does anyone know why this is happening? Is it karma? I've been a good boy lately...

I get this all the time too.
Any ideas how to fix it yet ?

 

[clayj]

I'm refugeeing at my aunt's due to Katrina, and while my Mac is downstairs, it has no internet connection at the moment. Downloading iTunes on the aunt's PC, however, just to check it out.

Man I'd love a wallpaper-sized version of this:

Agreed... she's very cute.

 

[Daveway]

No fair. Windows doesn't have to restart after the upgrade, but mac does.

 

[Ashapalan]

has anyone that came across the "please quit itunes before you continue" message figured out how to fix this prob?!??!? I can't get it to install cause it says that iTunes is running when its not!!!! any help?

yeh, i got the message, but fortunatly for me quitting itunes did the trick.
Have you tried (gulp) restarting?

Hope everything works out.
At least your making the most of a new update!

 

[Choppaface]

winamp has had gapless forever so its not that the feature isnt impossible, its it's just not on apple's to do list, probably because it doesnt make them any money.

I for one am for the new interface. Its nice to see apple make things _less_ flashy for once.

 

[m-dogg]

has anyone that came across the "please quit itunes before you continue" message figured out how to fix this prob?!??!? I can't get it to install cause it says that iTunes is running when its not!!!! any help?

make sure you don't have any itunes controllers running in the background...

 

[plinden]

No fair. Windows doesn't have to restart after the upgrade, but mac does.

Odd, Windows on my laptop asked me to restart, but on my desktop it didn't. I didn't restart the laptop since I'm in the middle of some work, but iTunes seems to be working fine on it anyway.

 

[jettredmont]

Because people post threads on MR like "My mini isn't working"

What mini?

And you somehow think that "My Mac mini isn't working" will make it a useful complaint which can be diagnosed and fixed?

If the guy whose machine isn't working gives you enough detail to be able to say anything more than "gosh, that sucks", you should be able to tell if he's talking about a Mac mini or an iPod mini. The sole exception to this, of course, being, "The hard drive on my mini is making weird scratchy noises", but whatcha gonna do about that kind of comment other than say, "gosh that sucks; head to the Apple Store and get it replaced" anyway?

 

[gorkonapple]

GRIPE GRIPE!

I LOVE that podcasts show up in the library now. Why? It's EASIER to manage them then from the menu. It goes to the pre 4.9 days where u used iPodderx to manage it and then created playlists and whatnot to manage your podcasrs. Also, to fix the music ones....here's a little tricky (Don't bother with the Genre Tag....), edit the smart playlist..add a new item and go to the drop down and select podcast. Then select is not true and bingo....all podcasts are gone. One thing you may want to do is create a master library smart play list that includes all of the stuff in the library EXCEPT podcasts....then base all of the other playlists off of the master. This also protects you from other weird oddities and if something else comes along the pike, you can make the change to exclude the other new stuff to the master, and then your back to normal again.

 

[rockman2023]

I've said this many times before, but it always bears repeating...

This is really starting tp p*** me off. I browsed the new iTunes pages at apple.com and still found no mention of gapless playback. Apple doesn't freaking care. It's pathetic. This is a feature that should have been in iTunes 2 at the latest so that those of us who really care about our music can enjoy albums without jarring gaps of silence between tracks. Now we have iTunes 5, and presumably it still isn't there.

What about when you said the Apple employees working on iTunes/iPod were all music lovers, Steve? Sounds like a lie to me. Nothing but empty hype. People who really care about music would not stand for such shoddy playback.

We all love to trumpet the fact that Apple is the company that pays attention to detail. I call BS in this case. This is one detail that's been glaringly neglected time and time again. Surely one Apple engineer realizes this is a problem and would like to fix it? It's not that difficult - numerous solutions exist. If Winamp can do it, why not iTunes? And don't get me started on iPod...

I'll go ahead and give it a try (nothing keeping me on 4.9), but I have zero hope that it was added and simply not mentioned. Apple does not always pay attention to detail - in the case of their music products they seem to only pay attention to what's hip or cool. I'm getting sick of it.

If any competitor's product even approached the ease of use and integration between iTunes and iPod, I'd jump ship in a second and replace my stolen iPod with something else. As it is, I keep waiting for the new generation of iPod that won't mangle my favorite albums. Seems it won't happen any time soon.

And before anyone replies, the following are not acceptable solutions:

• Cross-fading
• Ripping a whole CD as one big track

If a 20-year-old CD player can play without gaps and skip tracks, I want my state of the art jukebox software and device to do it too. Is that really too much to ask?

Unfortunately the masses don't care (they just want to shuffle), so Apple's ears are (tone) deaf to this request. What about the details, Apple?

</rant>

There, that felt good.

I don't know if this was quoted/replied to already, but here's my 2 cents on this "issue".

When I first started using looping sounds in Flash 5, I noticed that my sounds would ALWAYS have a brief pause before starting again. What I didn't know is that I should've been using uncompressed audio such as AIFF or WAV instead of MP3s. So, I'm under the assumption that over 90% of the population has a majority, if not all, of their music in some compressed format, and therefore, experiences gapped playback.

All in all, maybe it's not necessarily Apple's fault that there is gapped playback in-between mp3s. I haven't tested this in iTunes, or Winamp as bankshot claims.

Anyone, feel free to correct me, if necessary.

 

[neb_greely]

Sharing still works with Radio disabled. Perhaps you have some weird combination of preferences that interfere with each other.

That's very interesting - disabling radio breaks sharing for me.

Also, my next track button is broken. As in, it just restarts the current track. Anyone else have this prob?

 

[m-dogg]

winamp has had gapless forever so its not that the feature isnt impossible, its it's just not on apple's to do list, probably because it doesnt make them any money.

I for one am for the new interface. Its nice to see apple make things _less_ flashy for once.

I don't think that's why, I just think they are saving this as a "want-to-have" to throw into an update someday. A spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down, so to say...

"Look kids - gapless playback for you! finally!"

Then everyone downloads it and realizes that they ratcheted down the DRM a few notches in the update and we're stuck with it...

 

[mcdermd]

Why does Mail 2 have round upper corners and iTunes have nearly-square ones? The thin borders in everything make it look like graph paper. Definately a step down from Mail 2.0 for the "Plastic" look. Screw it - this thing is so ugly and I'm not really going to leverage any of the new features - I'm restoring back to iTunes 4.9.