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Re: itunes for windows is a hog

Originally posted by cuchulann
beautiful design but it is a memory hog, 50 megs without visualisations, and it skips when I open up other programs, we are not talking about a wussy computer here either.
Think I will stick to musicmatch for the moment.

Any other experiences?, maybe i should try a wipe and reinstall!!!

My Process Viewer says 18,420k for iTunes

...plus 152k for "iTunes Helper.exe"
 
Re: Converting Real Music Jukebox format?

If you have the original source materials, you will be far better off re-ripping to iTunes with the AAC codec.
Or if you need pristine digital copies, use AIFF codec: it doesn't perform any compression (and creates huge files).
Any trans-coding from one compressed format to another compressed format will cause distortion and artifacts in the material, not a good thing.

Originally posted by ddbean
Does anyone know how to convert a full library of Real Music Jukebox songs into iTunes on Win2000 PC?

Itunes won't directly, and I don't see how to convert inside RealOne player.

If not I'll have to re-rip my work library into iTunes (which might not be a bad idea either if I get better sound quality)
 
Windows Font Issue

Originally posted by ebow
Is anyone else getting bogus characters in the menus? See my screenshot. What's happening is the ellipse characters "..." are being turned into rectangles because of an encoding problem, or something. I may have changed my menu font, but it's only set to MS San Serif (meaning I figured it was a complete font with all appropriate characters).

Windows 2000 and Windows XP have default system fonts set to Tahoma, a True Type Font. MS San Serif is an old font format. This may have been one of the reasons Win2k/XP are supported, but not 9x/NT4. You can change your system font back to the Tahoma by changing this key and rebooting... imagine that having to reboot? ;) I would assume any other true type font would work also.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes\MS Shell Dlg 2

There's probably some place you can do it in the convoluted interface too, but I'm not sure where.
 
2 Thumbs up, 4 out of 5 stars

OK a report. I got to download this about….. I’m guessing 20 minutes after Jobs was done with his announcement. I installed it on my work computer immediately. Installation was a breeze. Curiously it also installs Quicktime which I suppose could erk some people as it appears more like bundleware rather then a necessity for iTunes. *shrugs* Once installed it required a reboot, something that erks me. I really don’t think any program should require a reboot to install but with iTunes installing the capabilities to burn to a CD its understandable. Alas I couldn’t try out the store until I got home. Corp firewall in place. Massive restrictions. So far I’m impressed. Apple did a good job with a few exceptions.

1. The speed of resizing the apps is sluggish beyond words. If you grab the corner and expand the view it creeps along, and DON’T tell me its windows or my computer. I have iTunes installed on 4 computers now. Work computer 2Ghz, home desktop 1.7Ghz, Toshiba Laptop 855Mhz, Dell Laptop 2 533Mhz. Sluggish on all of them.
2. Scrolling down the iTMS page is somewhat sluggish as well. It doesn’t scroll smoothly like a web page. It lurches along. Not good.
2. It took me at least 10 minutes to figure out how to turn on the miniplayer mode. I was digging around the menus looking for it. Windows has 3 buttons on the title bar. Minimize, maximize and restore. In this case Apple decided to use the restore button to activate the miniplayer. Not very intuitive IMHO.
3. I hate having crap running in the background. iTunes has something called iPodService running that is chewing on just under 5MB of RAM. Somewhat pointless if I don’t have an iPod don’t you think? To Apple’s credit they created the TSR as a service so you can disable it if you want, which I did, but honestly most Windows users don’t know jack squat about services and won’t know where to look. In addition to that there is another process called iTunesHelper running along with the main app called, no prizes for guessing, iTunes.exe. What I can’t figure out is when you first start up iTunes it takes a honking 30MB of RAM to run and hovers in the 30-37MB range until you minimize the application at which time it drops to 7MB. From there it stick in the 7-9MB range no matter how many times you minimize, maximize or miniplayer it. I think this may be tied to the GUI slowness mentioned above. It doesn’t speed things up by minimizing it but I think its an indication of a potential problem. :(
3. You can share up to only 3 systems total. This blows but I’m guessing this is on both the Mac and PC side of things so its irrelevant as a complaint.
4. It’s a nitpick but all the popup dialog boxes are windows standard. It would have been nice if Apple could have standardized the type of popups from the app but I’m well aware of the amount of additional codework that would have had to go into such an endeavor thus its relegated to a nitpick.
5. MORE MUSIC ON ITUNES DANG IT!!! but isn't that a given? ;)


As for the iTunes Music Store. Its more then a little addicting. Does anyone know if there is a applet for the Mac that keeps track of iTMS purchases? I’m just curious if anyone has whipped up such a thing. It wouldn’t be all that hard to run up a major bill on iTunes. I’ve already downloaded 30 songs tonight. :eek: There is really only one feature I would like Apple to add to iTMS.
Rated wish lists. So lets say I find something I’m mildly curious about. I can right click on it and tag it as a wish list item and have the option of rating (1-5) how interested I am in it Example: 1 star(Red) – 3 stars(orange)–5 stars(green). So when I go to my wish list I can see that hmmm I was particularly interested in that one. Lets preview it.

Other then that the app is great. I love Sting and picked up a few tracks of his that I have on 256kb/s MP3’s. Oh my god. I just about dumped myself after hearing the quality. Screw MP3. I’ll live with what I have in MP3 but for my favorite tracks I am so getting them off the store. I have yet to load my MP3 collection since the tags are still a freaking mess so I have no way of telling how well it handles large MP3 lists. I was hoping iTunes would have a slick way of auto tagging music but I guess I’m going to end up shelling out 20 on Music Match for that feature. :( I’ve played around with Music Match a while now and am starting to play with iTunes. Both are nice players and to be honest both would work out fine for any PC users. iTunes IMHO has 2 things going for it. A slick easy to use playlist and library interface and iTMS. I do believe that these 2 features alone makes iTunes worthwhile and will allow it to becomes a major piece of software on Windows with the exception for those who have audio players that don’t support ACC or PDA’s that don’t support ACC. They will most likely go with a Windows service. Unfortunately this means my Jornada Pocket PC is effectively neutered to my MP3’s that I already own. This IMHO blows.

Summery: The speed of the GUI\Browser needs to be tweaked, few things need to be clarified for Windows users such as the miniplayer, and a few features need to be added to the iTMS but other then that it’s a sweet music jukebox and something I’m going to be using day in/out until I get a Mac.
 
Re: There is only one problem.

Originally posted by snahabed
I very much disagree with Apple's decision to not include WMA playback in the Windows version of iTunes.

I understand that they do not want to support a competing standard... that makes total sense on paper. But I just made my two Windows using roommates instaall iTunes.. they thought it was fabulous. I help them add their music to the Library, and lo and behold, it is all WMA. 2000 songs in WMA.

They don't know what WMA is. It is a Windows default for people who don't know better. It would be foolish for him to have two jukeboxes (Real for WMA and iTunes for AAC/MP3), so he will have to delete iTunes.

I really think that allowing WMA playback (NOT encoding) was necessary here to get people to jump ship.

Last night I was gripeing at someone on WinMX who was leeching from me. He said he didn't know how to rip CD's and that was why he didn't have anything to share (plus it seems he didn't know how to link his music directory for uploading). He was using WMP as his mp3 player and I was trying to guide him how to rip his CD's (I used to work tech support so I didn't mind).

Anyway, I had never used WMP before and had to look around to figure out how, and I was shocked to find WMP does not come with an MP3 encoder as installed. You can only encode in WMA without going to a website and downloading a third-party plugin engine (Microsoft has a site set up for you to do so).

Sneaky way to get people to use WMA.
 
Re: itunes for windows is a hog

Originally posted by cuchulann
beautiful design but it is a memory hog, 50 megs without visualisations, and it skips when I open up other programs, we are not talking about a wussy computer here either.
Think I will stick to musicmatch for the moment.

Any other experiences?, maybe i should try a wipe and reinstall!!!

iTunes is using up 18 MB of RAM on my Win XP Pro system. It's a 1.4 GHz Ahtlon / 512 MB / Audigy / NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra. Not much of a resource hog in my opinion. I also checked out WinAmp and Windows Media Player just for kicks.

iTunes - 18 MB
WinAmp - 13.5 MB
WMP - 18 MB

Seems fine to me! :)
 
Re: 2 Thumbs up, 4 out of 5 stars

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
Does anyone know if there is a applet for the Mac that keeps track of iTMS purchases? Im just curious if anyone has whipped up such a thing. It wouldnt be all that hard to run up a major bill on iTunes.

In the iTMS itself you can see all of your purchased tracks. Click on the triangle to the left of "Music store" in the playlist area. This will show your "shopping cart" and "purchased music" playlists.
BTW: I'd suggest you go in to the preferences for iTunes and select "use shopping cart" over the "one-click" option.
Shopping cart shows a "suggestions based on your selections" area, I've found some music that I would never have listened to otherwise that way.
 
Originally posted by Catt
That maybe so but still a large number of computers run Windows 98 and ME.
I am not saying that the operating systems aren't old, just that most software released on the PC is still compatible with all versions of Windows from 98 SE up to XP. I am very surprised Apple have made iTunes only compatible with 2000 and XP and at any rate to the best of my knowledge ME is younger than 2000.

I think you are right that ME is newer than Win2K, but Win2k is based on much better technology. If Apple would have supported Win9X they would've had to water-down iTunes because 98/ME isn't capable of the quality they pulled off for iTunes on Win2k/XP.

Apple needed iTunes to be rock solid on Windows to soak up market share at least in the music/multimedia sector for Windows users, and they did just that... iTunes works just like it did on my old iMac. I'm very impressed! Thank you Apple!

Now I just hope that they port all the iApps to Windows. I don't really take sides in the PC/Apple war, they both have their uses. If you need to network thousands of computers, with tiered security (Active Directory) and manage your desktops (WMI / Windows Installer) you go with Windows. If you want do multimedia and have a great user experience... Apple is the only way to go. So, Apple, go dominate multimedia on Windows and use all that revenue to reinvest and build hardware/OS market share, because every multimedia app I've ever used on Windows is piece of ****. WinAmp was the best jukebox around in my opinion, but it's just been far out-classed.

Great job Apple!
 
Messed up folder structure

remember the same feelings when I switched last year. I can sympathize with the Windows users who are upset that their folder structure has changed. Especially if they just wanted to 'try out' iTunes. Perhaps Apple should have left people's folders alone as the default option for iTunes Windows.

It asks you when you first launch iTunes whether iTunes should organize the music or not. There's also an option to copy the music into the iTunes folder when importing instead of moving it.

Sometimes it pays to answer NO, then read the help files first before diving right in.

This is not a dig. Just a fact that many times people do things without reading first, then blame the app instead of themselves.
 
Re: why do you hate me so apple?

Originally posted by x86isslow
i just tried and failed at installing it.

just cuz i'm too poor to buy my own computer, i'm stuck with a WIN98SE PC- 733 p3 256kram.

to those who say it told you so... i had to try it. it was my last hope of having anything apple (until i get to college)

If you really want to try to get iTunes on Win98 you could try hacking the installation. It's an MSI (wrapped up as an EXE). MSI is a Windows Installer file, it's basically a relational database containing all the info to perform the installation. There's a free tool from M$ called Orca that lets you modify MSI files. (Don't ask me why they named the editor after a killer whale.)

You can run the iTunes setup.exe with a /a command line to run an Admin install and get the source files and .MSI file out. The Admin install does not enforce the Win2k/XP requirement so you can do it on Win98/ME – but you will need Windows Installer v1.1 or higher, which you probably already have on your system. Then, just open that .MSI in Orca, hack out the Win2k/XP requirement from the LaunchConditions table and resave it. You can then run that .MSI on any Windows OS... but after all that work, it still probably won't work. But if you do try it, I'd love to hear what behavior you get! ;)

It’s a rather nice install, only 13 files. I’m impressed!

Have fun!!!
 
Re: Support wma and I WILL buy an iPod

Originally posted by jogosz
Well I am not too impressed with iTunes as a music player, but I think when paired with an iPod I would see the beauty of it. I do not understand why they wouldn't play wma files, at least on iTunes. If the iPod ever has a firmware upgrade that supports wma files, I would buy it. All of my songs are ripped in this way.

I think the point is that Apple would have to "buy" wma in some form before you could buy it.

The other big one for thought is that itunes is effectively a web browser and it surely wouldn't be to big a jump to click on a url within the music store and bring up a dedicated standards compliant web browser window. Is this a likely thought?
 
Re: iTunes flaked out on my friend's PC

Originally posted by crossed-over
So, who's installed iTunes on a PC? Let's have some reports on how well it works!



I convinced my die-hard PC using friend to download iTunes and give it a try, and he did. He has 4,900 mp3's and had them all sorted in folders by genre. He didn't use playlists, but rather, picked out the songs based on genre. For some reason, when he imported the songs into iTunes, it created folders for all the songs, and messed up his genre folders completely. Needless to say, he is pretty upset about it, as that was a lot of work to get them all arranged that way. It will be nearly impossible to find the time to fix all of that. This makes me, as well as Apple look bad. On the bright side, he thinks he has no other choice but to use iTunes with its playlists from now on, but I still feel terrible about it. Has anyone else seen something strange like this?

Yes, this happened to me as well. I believe it is related to the preference option named "Keep iTunes music folder organized" on the Advanced tab. This option is turned off by default, which is good. I suppose it would be nice to display a message stating it would move/reorganize files and folders.

I don't mind so much because I've been planning to use Windows iTunes permanently since the rumors started up. If your friend is using XP he could try to going back the last system restore point if he uses that feature. Just an idea...
 
Re: Sharing and Safari.

Originally posted by jelwell
Second, doesn't iTunes on the Mac use Safari/AppleWebKit for it's rendering engine? Did Apple port it to Windows for iTunes on windows? Are we going to see Safari on windows?

That's it, I want to know this stuff, I'm glad you asked what I was trying to ask.:)
 
Re: Cocoa/Safari.

Originally posted by GregAussie
I'm interested in this too. Not just the safari bit, but are they using the Cocoa api for this over on Windows (since earlier when "Cocoa" was still "Openstep" it did run on windows).

This has to be worth a thread of its own.
just off to check if there is one....
 
OMG apple australia REALY do sux
theie main page still has panther as the big thing, and iTunes for windows is on the bottom, yau would have NO IDEA u could get it for windoze, unless u were going specificaly for that reason.

ive told all my friends and i think ill be able to bug some of them in to it....the others....well i break into their houses and do it for them :D
 
Now that I've been able to sleep on it I have calmed down over apple not supporting ME with iTunes :)

But,

I'm now a little unsure as to why they made it so that you could only update your iPod to 2.1 if you have XP or 2000. Surely this is a fairly simple piece of software, i.e. the part that installs the firmware on the iPod, and the firmware itself is the complicated part. Not sure if that makes sense. Basically the OS doesn't have that much to do, does it? :confused:
 
"grab the corner and expand the view it creeps along, and DON’T tell me its windows or my computer."

Sorry, but I think it is your computer, or the way it's setup. It's a common problem, but I'm not having it - on very mediocre hardware (Athlon 950 and Radeon 7500 graphics with 384MB RAM)

"Scrolling down the iTMS page is somewhat sluggish as well. It doesn’t scroll smoothly like a web page. It lurches along. Not good."

It is a LITTLE choppy. But not too bad speed-wise.

"
2. It took me at least 10 minutes to figure out how to turn on the miniplayer mode. I was digging around the menus looking for it. Windows has 3 buttons on the title bar. Minimize, maximize and restore. In this case Apple decided to use the restore button to activate the miniplayer. Not very intuitive IMHO."

But nobody uses restore anyways, and it's in the same basic spot the button is on the mac (only reversed on the side). No biggie...

"
beautiful design but it is a memory hog, 50 megs without visualisations, and it skips when I open up other programs, we are not talking about a wussy computer here either.
Think I will stick to musicmatch for the moment."

about 19 (iTunes) + 4 (iTunes Helper) + 3.5 (useless iPod service) here. Not too bad...
 
"at any rate to the best of my knowledge ME is younger than 2000."

No, not really. Me is a repackaged version of 98 with a little better (but not full) WDM support and some gimmicky features that make the whole thing by far the worst, most unstable OS MS has ever created (and THAT's SAYING SOMETHING). Windows Me is total crud. It should never have been made, since Windows 2000, and newer, better, system came out before it! And since in reality, it's even WORSE than 98.
 
Originally posted by markie
"grab the corner and expand the view it creeps along, and DON’T tell me its windows or my computer."

Sorry, but I think it is your computer, or the way it's setup. It's a common problem, but I'm not having it - on very mediocre hardware (Athlon 950 and Radeon 7500 graphics with 384MB RAM)
Nope. I have 4 computers its installed on. 3 2k systems and 1 XP. The XP system has NOTHING else installed on it. I put a clean install of the OS on it just this last weekend and I've been tweaking the services to make it run at optimal performance. During the dragging expanding process its eating 80%-100% of my CPU utilization. You can see in the attached picture that just clicking and holding the corner of the app eats up 100% of the CPU. This is a 1.7Ghz system. No way in heck should it be doing that. All drivers, patches are up to date. There is something else going on here. I think the comment by Jobs: Best software ever on windows was just a tad premature.
 
Originally posted by feakbeak
I think you are right that ME is newer than Win2K, but Win2k is based on much better technology. If Apple would have supported Win9X they would've had to water-down iTunes because 98/ME isn't capable of the quality they pulled off for iTunes on Win2k/XP.

Apple needed iTunes to be rock solid on Windows to soak up market share at least in the music/multimedia sector for Windows users, and they did just that... iTunes works just like it did on my old iMac. I'm very impressed! Thank you Apple!

Now I just hope that they port all the iApps to Windows. I don't really take sides in the PC/Apple war, they both have their uses. If you need to network thousands of computers, with tiered security (Active Directory) and manage your desktops (WMI / Windows Installer) you go with Windows. If you want do multimedia and have a great user experience... Apple is the only way to go. So, Apple, go dominate multimedia on Windows and use all that revenue to reinvest and build hardware/OS market share, because every multimedia app I've ever used on Windows is piece of ****. WinAmp was the best jukebox around in my opinion, but it's just been far out-classed.


No. ME, contrary to the name, did not come out in 2000. It came out Spring-Summer of '99. It was a stopgap between 9x and XP to keep sales from going into the toilet. Hence the reason it sucks so badly. It was rushed. It had a lot of filter thrown in and it shows. I can’t tell you how many computers I’ve seen run ME that break within 30 days of install. Its got to be in the 90% range. I'd rather blow my head off or slash my wrist with a ME CD rather then use that POS. 2000 was released Feb of 2000. They are 2 sep OSs for a reason. 2K was intended as a replacement for NT that was intended for the business user. 2K has solid support for 9X apps but its not perfect. Not by a long run. That is why you have ME for the consumers.
your comment about 2K being based on better tech is like saying jumping off the empire state building would be a bad thing. It’s the understatement of the millennium. I can say with total confidence ME is the biggest cesspool of craptastic code ever to grace the face of planet earth. Nothing comes close.

As for porting all the iApps to Windows. No. Never. Worst idea ever. It gives windows users little incentive to want to switch. Leave it at itunes. it gives em a taste and may make them want more.
 
Originally posted by SiliconAddict
Nope. I have 4 computers its installed on. 3 2k systems and 1 XP. The XP system has NOTHING else installed on it. I put a clean install of the OS on it just this last weekend and I've been tweaking the services to make it run at optimal performance. During the dragging expanding process its eating 80%-100% of my CPU utilization. You can see in the attached picture that just clicking and holding the corner of the app eats up 100% of the CPU. This is a 1.7Ghz system. No way in heck should it be doing that. All drivers, patches are up to date. There is something else going on here. I think the comment by Jobs: Best software ever on windows was just a tad premature.

I just tried the same thing on my P3-800/Radeon 7500 (dual monitor)/256MB/30Gig machine here at work and noticed the same thing. Interestingly enough, if I turn on "display window contents while dragging" in the display control panel, I get the same thing when I resize or move any window.

I think it's totally related to the fact that Apple has set iTunes up to "display window contents while dragging" regardless of what the system setting is set to. And I agree, that's not really the way you're supposed to do it...
 
some comments

Originally posted by SiliconAddict
Nope. I have 4 computers its installed on. 3 2k systems and 1 XP. The XP system has NOTHING else installed on it. I put a clean install of the OS on it just this last weekend and I've been tweaking the services to make it run at optimal performance. During the dragging expanding process its eating 80%-100% of my CPU utilization. You can see in the attached picture that just clicking and holding the corner of the app eats up 100% of the CPU. This is a 1.7Ghz system. No way in heck should it be doing that. All drivers, patches are up to date. There is something else going on here. I think the comment by Jobs: Best software ever on windows was just a tad premature.

the RAM usage I have already discussed it here
as well as CPU usage : https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=42088&perpage=25&pagenumber=2
 
well it looks like this tactic has already worked, i nagged my friend into downloading it, hes a diehard lunix guy and i get this email

....I just finished downloading iTunes for Windows XP and it is the best
>software I have ever seen. Honestly.
>
>
>
>It automatically equalises and fixes the music volume and you get full
>speed MP3 ripping and CD burning for free, it’s simply the best......

>If all Apple software is this good, I’m buying a Mac.

>Just amazed,


....is there anything else i can add?? :D
 
"during the dragging expanding process its eating 80%-100% of my CPU utilization."


For me it's about 80-95%. For comparision, resizing Mozilla 1.5 goes about, GUESS WHAT, 80-95%. That's NORMAL. This happens in EVERY PROGRAM - check it out. Redrawing a window constantly is VERY processor intensive. That's the reason you can turn off the "show window contents while dragging" option. Of course, that makes your computer very boring and some programs override it anyways; but it is an option! (of course, iTunes may override it). Hardly Apple's fault...
 
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