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Apple Releases iTunes 5

If my desktop were a sunny day, the new iTunes 5 would be a giant raincloud smack dab in the middle of it, ruining it all.

The old iTunes and brushed metal looked so much 'sunnier', so much more bright and happy.

The new one is just depressing...makes me sad to look at. It belongs on a beige PC running windows 95, not a pearl iBook running OS X.

The corners are even more square....right angles don't belong anywhere in OS X.

Obviously the new look was designed by a windows fan-boy, to apprently please the Windows-using iPod crowd... 😡
 
i actually like it... the only thing i don't like is the lack of consistency. so if they can just release an update to finally rid us of brushed metal all will be good.
 
Josh said:
If my desktop were a sunny day, the new iTunes 5 would be a giant raincloud smack dab in the middle of it, ruining it all.

The old iTunes and brushed metal looked so much 'sunnier', so much more bright and happy.

The new one is just depressing...makes me sad to look at. It belongs on a beige PC running windows 95, not a pearl iBook running OS X.

The corners are even more square....right angles don't belong anywhere in OS X.

Obviously the new look was designed by a windows fan-boy, to apprently please the Windows-using iPod crowd... 😡
Click to expand...

Get a grip 🙄
 
Fotek2001 said:
Get a grip 🙄
Click to expand...
Seriously.

I really like the new iTunes look. Granted it looks like nothing else on the system now, but given the choice between this and Brushed Metal, give me this ANY day.
 
visualizer

i didn't use the visualizer all that much in 4.9, but it looks to me like there is a lot of new action in 5.0. i love it.
 
Fotek2001 said:
Do any other MP3 player jukebox programs offer gapless playback for compressed digital music files?
Click to expand...

..I believe WinAmp has had it for years.. Allthough I haven't used it for years so I might remember wrong..
 
StarmanDeluxe said:
WHY DO FOLDERS NOT CARRY OVER TO iPODS? WHAT THE HELL'S THE POINT WITHOUT iPOD SUPPORT!?

GAH.
Click to expand...

This is absolutly right, does anybody know if Apple will release an ipod update for ALL ipods with folder support?
 
WorldMage said:
Wrong, the issue is that when the track get's compressed 'stand alone'
the samples at the end 'drift' from 'reality' - this happens normally during
the lossy encoding but it isn't a problem during the track because everything
shift's togeather. But since each track is encoded seperately the end of
one track doesn't match the start of the next track - so you will either
get a 'tick' or you need to do the 'cross fade' thing to bridge the difference.

This isn't a problem with CD's because they are encoded losslessly
(no drift). It might be possible to fix in the encoder (if you knew exactly
what the decoder was going to do) but is far from trivial to do.

BTW I also listen to a lot of 'whole albums' (most notably PF as well) and
it's annoying but I don't think it 'ruins' it.
Click to expand...

This is completly incorrect, the reason why mp3 is not gapless is because the audio is stored in frames which are a fixed length, unless the audio length is exactly a multiple of the frame length a small amount of silence will fill the last frame. It IS trivial to write a piece of code that checks the last frame for silence and cuts it off. Furthermore many new audio formats have, as part of their standard, a piece of data within the file to tell the decoder how much of the final frame is actually audio, this is what OGG does, and also AAC (although not the apple encoder for some reason).

The reason why iTunes is not gapless has nothing to do with the formats and everything to do with the software. Foobar, winamp, and mpd can all play gaplessly songs that itunes plays with a gap
 
NicP said:
This is completly incorrect, the reason why mp3 is not gapless is because the audio is stored in frames which are a fixed length, unless the audio length is exactly a multiple of the frame length a small amount of silence will fill the last frame.
Click to expand...
That's the first time I've seen this claim, so I'm skeptical. Even if you are right, the max frame length is 26ms of audio. On average, the final frame with padding bits set would still only have 13ms of silence at the end of a song. I think the delay in iTunes is perceptibly longer than that.
 
joechops said:
I agree. It'll take a while before I get used to it... 🙄
Click to expand...

It's so freaking ugly! I can't stand the square form of the info area. And the fact that the volume bar is now on the same horizontal line. It's looks like a webpage that has been stretched to a ridiculous resolution.
 
I have to draw my words back, for once.

The more sleek and less clumpy interface really is a boon on my 12" screen, and after getting accustomed the new interface isnät so terrible as I judged among the first ones. Now when I look at my old screen captures, iTunes 4.9 looks nothing but nostalgic. It aint no more technologic

And my friend just got laid tonight! Hooray! 😀
 
weldon said:
That's the first time I've seen this claim, so I'm skeptical. Even if you are right, the max frame length is 26ms of audio. On average, the final frame with padding bits set would still only have 13ms of silence at the end of a song. I think the delay in iTunes is perceptibly longer than that.
Click to expand...

I think a partial frame at the end of a song is only part of the problem. It's real, but does not account for the whole gap in either iTunes or iPod. I believe the real problem with iTunes is that it uses QuickTime for playback. QuickTime, I believe, was only designed to play one media file at a time. So, we have:

  1. iTunes tells QuickTime to play track #1
  2. QuickTime is done with track #1
  3. iTunes tells QuickTime to play track #2

I have zero hard evidence to back this up, but my gut feeling is it's something like this, and there's an inherent delay between steps 2 and 3, when QuickTime goes out and opens up the file for track #2. You can play around with start and stop times for individual tracks (Get Info) to make sure there is no silence when one stops playing and the other starts, but you still get a gap in iTunes. I think that's QuickTime closing down track #1 and opening up track #2.

If my hunch is correct, then it sounds like iTunes' playback engine may need to be redesigned to buffer song data and feed it to the audio output itself, rather than having QuickTime handle everything. If it keeps reading 5 seconds ahead, then by the time a song is finished, it's already got the first 5 seconds of song #2 in memory, ready to send out as audio. In that case, there should be no wait between songs.

Buffering such as this is not a difficult problem for any competent programmer or software team. I can only conclude that Apple's iTunes team is lazy and doesn't care enough to do it. Same for iPod. 🙁
 
Buying Movies

tubby said:
Next up!! I was curious if there were any hidden info-nuggets buried in the package contents. What I found interesting was an icon called "iTunes-mpeg4p.icns" which, judging by the little lock on the icon, alludes to a protected mpeg4 file. Hmmmm. There's also an icon for Movies ("iTunes-movie.icns") although it may have been there before.

Anyway, the MPEG4P gets me excited about possible downloadable movies. Any comments about this?

Tubbs
Click to expand...
Holy crap you're right
 
weldon said:
That's the first time I've seen this claim, so I'm skeptical. Even if you are right, the max frame length is 26ms of audio. On average, the final frame with padding bits set would still only have 13ms of silence at the end of a song. I think the delay in iTunes is perceptibly longer than that.
Click to expand...

yes thats correct, itunes worsens the problem, it inserts its own silence as well!

many people blame the gap in itunes on the format of the music, where it is mostly itunes' fault and should be fixed!
 
On the issue of the look of iTunes5, I actually quite like it. I prefer the the plastic look (brushed metal is getting kind old), and I think the new display window is much better. Couldn't stand the old green and black LCD. The corners are pretty ugly on teh overall app, though, but it looks good in the mini player. i wish they updated teh iTunes widget to match, though.
 
I love iTunes 5, and haven't experience any problems except I can no longer purchase music from the iTunes Music Store. Hehe.

It tells that there was an error in my purchase history, and to try back later.
Oh well.
 
Techobo said:
Boo, bring back the brush metal. What's next gradient ramps for Safari?
Click to expand...

We can only hope. Brush metal looks like Apple is trying to rice out their OS and apps. Its a fugly look IMHO. Maybe if the screen resolution, was closer to real world and it blended in better with the PowerBook frame and the ACD frame then sure. That would be kinda cool. As it stands the half hearted approach to Brush metal needs to die a horrible, horrible death. Brush Metal needs to live up to its initials and get flushed. 😛
 
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