Apple Releases iTunes 5

[itcomesinwaves]

I like the new look. And I have a few thoughts on user interface. Apple does need to move it's interface towards a consistent model, but not as much as many people on the boards want. I feel the interface consistency was much more important in the early days of computing, when the idea of desktop computing was still very foreign to most people. In those days it was much more important to provide a consistent world to the user, with well defined (if mixed) metaphors. These days most people are familiar with the 'idea' of computing, and don't need their hand held as much. I mean look at dashboard, where the user interface guidelines are extremely loose.

We can all agree that the GUI something of a clusterf*ck right now. I feel like Apple is still in a very experimental stage and is still responding to user feedback (but not initial kneejerk reactions).

Has anyone else noticed the speeeed?! Good god, it finally scrolls smoothly through my nearly 9000 song library and resizing is as smooth as it should be on my G5. I'm guessing that at least some of this has to do with the decision to dropped brushed metal. If never had a problem with brushed metal, but if this is the case, I'm all for wiping it from the OS as soon as possible.

 

[paulwesley]

Search now works for: albums, artists, genres

I've been waiting so long for playlist folders. Sweet!

And I love that search now also works on the Albums, Artists, Genres lists! Search for the album title/artist and then click it and you just get those songs. Very nice since I like listening to whole albums at a time...

iTunes has arrived... Now if you could only set it to ask you what format you wanted to import CDs when you clicked import...

pwm

 

[Elektronkind]

WTF? why do I need to install QT7 when I only need this new Itunes?

I really have some issues with the new updates:
- the FORCED bundling of iTunes & QT (I know it happened with the earlier iT's as well but it STINKS)

Did it ever occur to you that QuickTime and iTunes are very much linked together? It's Quicktime that actually decodes your music files and plays them. iTunes itself is just a management app.

- you need to deactivate iTMS if you are not interested, wheras in iT4 it was an option. A fundamental difference, and for me a principal one as I don't intend to make my music player a marketing tool for Apple.

Then click that one button in preferences to turn it off and be done with it. If you are so against marketting machines, then why are you buying from a publicly-traded company in the first place, mate?

This is pushing it for me. Apple's marketing machine in full effect. They offer you a hand but take your arm instead.

Go on, cry me a river. You have some pretty thin skin, man.

/dale

 

[dops7107]

ummm i dont know if anyone else had this problem, but after i installed it on my pc (im on my powerbook now) i ran it, launched a new playlist to burn and it froze up on me, so i control +alt+ deleted and then windows goes into a bloody memory dump with the"bad pool header" title. everytime i restart after about 20 seconds it does it again. its okay in safe mode, what drivers does itunes 5 install?????? so i can uninstall it

I think you're asking the wrong people, buddy...

 

[NicP]

All of you people bitching about gapless playback realize that true gapless on either MP3 or AAC is a hack, right? Both formats have fixed frame-lengths, whereas CDs do not. This means if a track doesn't completely fill up the last MP3 or AAC frame, silence is appended to fill it. The only way around this is either:

a) Take a bit of the next track and put in that blank spot (or kick part of that frame over to the next track, whichever makes sense based on how much of the frame is filled)
b) Note exactly where the actual audio data stops in some tag of some sort and pass that information on to the player

In the first case, you're re-arranging things, and in the second, you're doing something non-standard, so you can't guarantee that the same method is used in any other encoder. And there's several technical reasons, at least for MP3, why detecting "on the fly" is very difficult (which go right over my head, as I'm no audio compression engineer to say the least).

So even if you have a gapless player, unless your files have been ripped with an encoder that's doing either of the above (and in the second case, your player supports that method), you're going to get a bit of silence. The ONLY way to get around this is to use a format with no fixed frame length, like OGG, FLAC, ALAC, AIFF, or WAV (IIRC).

OGG and FLAC have fixed frame lengths, not sure about aiff or wav though.

AAC and MP3 are also gapless if ripped with other decoders and played with other players

all 4 formats use this method "b) Note exactly where the actual audio data stops in some tag of some sort and pass that information on to the player"

its a STANDARD part of the format for all of those (except mp3 which is just a special feature in the latest lame codecs)

 

[MBMatt11]

I finally found the smart shuffle. It is in preference under playback. It seems okay, I am not sure what I was expecting, but I think I was suspecting something more. Like being able to conrtol genre occurences.

 

[trqy]

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'll have a Porsche, Ferrari or something else and can't drive it up to 50kmh or higher? Then they'll come across with saying "Don't expect too much, that's just it be happy with that. If you don't like it then go for something cheaper you can find the speed you want there." How odd it is.. These are not written to you bankshot, written for that thats-enough-for-me-people. I'm totally with you bankshot and can't get it why they'd not still put that MUSTBE feature into iPod software. I can't believe that. It's still ANNOYING!

 

[trqy]

Ohh.. I'd forgot something to say..

The new UI totally sucks with WinXP. Try clicking on File, then you'll see what i mean, if you can't then i'll tell. The shadow under the "File" is almost starting from the app's left border. You see that? It really looks really really amateurish, something buggy.

Try to get a general look. If you notice enough, you will see that aquaish blue scroll theme and the plastiky menu theme combination sucks too. I'm not a brushed metal fan but i look for the harmony in the theme. It was present in before v5.

Try to get into Help/About iTunes. This time you'll see that your XP theme is back!

The only positive is for about application's internal speed. Now it's faster than before. And reserves less memory than before too.

I can't believe Apple did such a crappy design... And i think it's a marketting fault too. The brushed metal theme was a really good example and attraction to WinXP users about how the MacOS X looks like and how an operating system makes you feel like in a total harmony. Naaah.. damn it's really looking baaad baaaad baaaaaaaadddd...

 

[Mike Teezie]

I hate the way it looks. The dark grey "plastic" is wrong, the big boxy window is wrong. The dual times on either side of the progress bar is pretty nasty. When it looks the absolute worst to me is when it's collapsed into it's mini-window. I have to keep the graphic eq on, or I can't bear to look at it.

That's a first for me since I switched to Apple years ago.

I wish I could go back to 4.9.

 

[Surreal]

i want smartlists within smartlists

album within artist and such

 

[The Tuck]

So this lyrics thing is sort of cool, but what's now sorely missing is the ability to search / create a smart playlist on lyrics.

Let's pretend you had loaded lyrics into most or all of your library -- I don't know if that's farfetched or not -- then you needed to come up with a "theme mix", say all songs about winter or whatnot. It would be so cool to make a smart playlist of all songs where the words "winter", "snow", "december", "christmas", etc. were in the title OR in the lyrics. Now, that would be cool. But you can't do it, because lyrics aren't an option in the smart playlist settings.

More short term, I was hoping to do a quick scan to see if any of my existing 5000+ songs had lyrics already loaded into them (assuming Apple is using some standard MP3 tag for lyrics), but really, there's no way to do this unless I'm just totally missing it.

Oh well. Must be either it's too much of a CPU hog to search on lyrics, or Apple just forgot.

I just noticed that a song that a friend of mine made himself has lyrics already in the song file. It kinda surprised me. I think they are using some standard for embedding lyrics into song files since this song he sent me a few years ago has lyrics already in the file.

 

[Chundles]

iTunes 5 now:

- displays "time remaining" for disc burns
- VBR AAC encoding
- shows an iTunes icon and a number when dragging songs to a playlist instead of the old thumbnail image of the list of songs (shame really, it was cooler the old way)
- Puts "Importing," "Burning" and "General" preferences into three tabs in the "Advanced" preference pane.
- has an "every hour" option for updating Podcasts
- looks like someone chipped a pixel off each corner...
- changed the icon for movie files
- puts podcasts into the regular library (argh it's frustrating, I was able to get rid of most of them but now my macTV podcasts are still in the library and no longer in the podcasts section.
- feels much faster to resize/scroll etc.
- feels like the search function is slower

 

[switchr92]

disagree

I hate the way it looks. The dark grey "plastic" is wrong, the big boxy window is wrong. The dual times on either side of the progress bar is pretty nasty. When it looks the absolute worst to me is when it's collapsed into it's mini-window. I have to keep the graphic eq on, or I can't bear to look at it.

That's a first for me since I switched to Apple years ago.

I wish I could go back to 4.9.

i disagree, completely. Its not that ugly, i like it a little more infact. why is dual times "nasty"? god, u r retarded.

 

[omegalpha]

UGLY!!!!

Bad taste... and it does'nt fit with Tiger. Especially the square window. What the hell is that ?

 

[flapjackspeeder]

Sucks.

Ok... I dislike iTunes 5 for four reasons so far.

My podcasts now get mixed with my music library.
It recopies any songs that I've played since the last synchronize with my iPod.
The 'Purchased Music' section has mysteriously vanished.
It's hideous.

What I like about iTunes 5...
Faster searches.

So.... wheres the downgrade button?

(looks like the purchased music section vanishing could be a weird fluke... I see it in the screenshot on apple's site.. but its disappeared after I updated)

 

[kretzy]

This is one change that made the most sense to me. The track progress meter is used in the iPods, so why not use it in iTunes also? It makes more sense to have this than to display the "Time Remaining", "Time Elapsed" etc that used to be below the song/artist title.

And all of you guys complain about the UI being ugly blah blah blah...well, lets see what you think would look better. If it's so bad lets see some pics of UI's that you made or think look nicer.

I meant the actual bar (see below)

The fact that it actually displays time remaining and elapsed time, is one of the only things i like about it.

And as for the UI 4.9!!!!!! It looked infinately better and also matched the looks of Finder, QT, DVD player etc

I also find the new search bar irritating, when i search for songs that i know i have, they don't appear beacuse from a previous search a specific search setting is already in place.

 

[moodler]

Just tried the crossfade set to zero trick with iTunes 5, and it doesn't work. There's still a gap -- perhaps only a quarter-second or so, but definitely audible. This doesn't particularly bother me, but for those of you who do care, you can continue to be annoyed.

Why not change crossfade playback to 1 second then?

 

[rekahs]

found it!

kill sizzling tunes and then install! maybe they should post that somewhere.

oh my god thank you!!!

been driving me crazy!

 

[trqy]

Why not change crossfade playback to 1 second then?

Because i don't wanna feel crossfaded when switching through the songs on a live cd or a concept album. I am a music producer and that's something really annoying for me. I wanna click play and feel like there, that's it.

 

[kerpow]

This has got to be the worst upgrade I've seen from Apple. It looks horrible, offers nothing cool or exciting and the parental control is typical of the nanny state we live in these days.

 

[kerpow]

I've only installed it on my G3 iMac which runs Panther (ISP problems at home so haven't installed on my Tiger PB). How does it affect the iTunes widget? Don't say its changed to a fugly plastic square.

 

[Maxiseller]

Because i don't wanna feel crossfaded when switching through the songs on a live cd or a concept album. I am a music producer and that's something really annoying for me. I wanna click play and feel like there, that's it.

That's just ridiculous though; if you are a music producer, you'll know that iTunes isn't the best way to listen to a live concert. In fact, i wouldln't really say anything beats a good 'ol Stereo system, a great amp and monitors and a bunch of old-fashioned CD's.

iTunes is a dukebox. You didn't often see in the 60's and 70's music producers recording and listening to their bands on those big machines that play you a tune for a quarter did you?

 

[Chundles]

That's just ridiculous though; if you are a music producer, you'll know that iTunes isn't the best way to listen to a live concert. In fact, i wouldln't really say anything beats a good 'ol Stereo system, a great amp and monitors and a bunch of old-fashioned CD's.

iTunes is a dukebox. You didn't often see in the 60's and 70's music producers recording and listening to their bands on those big machines that play you a tune for a quarter did you?

Surely you mean "Jukebox"??

 

[Bedawyn]

notice how the square corners make it work better as a maximized app. And when you open it, it fills the screen...

(and everyone else comparing it to Windows)

*sigh* This has nothing to do with Windows. The Mac OS had maximized windows way back when I used my first one. And the new UI is definitely reminiscent of Mac UIs from the late 90s. The retro look is a bit odd, yes, but taking a step back isn't bad if the last step you took forward was a mistake -- which I believe the brushed metal was. It feels like Apple has finally realized that they've already proved they can do eye candy, so now they don't have to worry about it anymore and can get on with more important things -- like functionality.

- you need to deactivate iTMS if you are not interested, wheras in iT4 it was an option. A fundamental difference, and for me a principal one as I don't intend to make my music player a marketing tool for Apple.

What are you talking about? There's nothing that forces you to use iTunes. Don't like it, don't use it. Don't want to see the icon, deactivate it. Just like in 4.9. The only difference is that the preference checkbox is under the new Parental Controls tab. It still clicks on and off just like before.

The Purchased Music list is also still where it's always been in the source list.

All the folks talking about the improved search confuse me. The search doesn't seem to do anything it didn't always do, if you were using the regular list window instead of browse. I've always been able to type in artist and album name and have the album just appear... It would be nice to have the double-sort, so that you could sort simultaneously by album and year within artist, but I can't when I'd use it that much. Not too many artists put out more than one album a year, so sorting by year within artist usually sorts by album as well, and I rarely want to listen to albums in anything other than track order, which it defaults to. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're asking for?

The next feature I really want is smarter smart playlists, that allow you to use any/all for sets of criteria instead of single criteria. The nested playlists helps to manage my too many playlists, but I could get rid of half of them outright with smarter playlists.

Overall, though, I am so happy with this update. After using it for a while, I can say -- for the first time, I actually like iTunes. I used it before, because I need my music and Soundjam didn't work anymore, and because I wanted the functionality of iTMS and the smart playlists. But I never really liked it. Now, yes, I'm definitely regaining my faith.

 

[instantypo]

option click circled arrows

Option-clicking the arrows seems to be broken too...

To me that is indeed a big loss. It now toggles browse view when you do this. Weird...