Apple to Wipe iTunes Match iCloud Data on Monday, Sept 26th

[tigres]

They just wiped iCloud backups on Thursday, and a new backup took 2 hours to complete, vs 5 minutes before.

I never bothered signing up for match, never heard a success story that was issue free. Even though it's a private beta, I am curious to see how this launch goes with it, as it's current form sounds far from even usable.

 

[batchtaster]

I had over 10k but purged some last week.... Why? I have iOS bug affecting my push to my iPad and the engineers for MobileMe think that 10k messages in an inbox is excessive... Even if they don't specify a limit and I'm no where near a space threshold.

Anyway, it didn't help my random bug (push is apparently being turned off at times).....

If you don't keep 10,000 letters/documents on your (physical) desk at work or home, why keep 10,000 items in your email inbox? File them somewhere. If not to make things actually findable, certainly so that the technology isn't having to crunch through a giant pile of data every time it resyncs.

An actual number limit would be pointless, because the point where things get wonky depends on many factors including whether there are attachments (10 x 5MB attachments > 500 plain text emails).

 

[GenesisST]

As a layman, it seems to me it's a bad sign if you need a fresh start to mature a beta. I would love for Apple to prove me wrong.

Most layman think that CSI is reality as well...

"A GUI interface using Visual Basic to track an IP Address"

 

[ChrisTX]

This event can't come soon enough!

 

[TraceyS/FL]

If you don't keep 10,000 letters/documents on your (physical) desk at work or home, why keep 10,000 items in your email inbox? File them somewhere. If not to make things actually findable, certainly so that the technology isn't having to crunch through a giant pile of data every time it resyncs.

An actual number limit would be pointless, because the point where things get wonky depends on many factors including whether there are attachments (10 x 5MB attachments > 500 plain text emails).

1. I don't tell you how to manage your inbox....

2. I'm having some hardware issues preventing me from doing anything about moving them around right now. Basically, "it sucks to be me". However, if a service isn't going to state limits, I expect it to work. Last time looked at my gmail (gathers spam and list mail) I think it had over 25k in it.....

3. There are no published limits.....

4. The logs show that my iPad is randomly turning push off, despite my not setting it that way, despite the device not showing it set that way. My iPhone handles it just fine..... It's an iOS bug and it is sitting on someone's desk for attention.... But they are kinda too busy right now....

5. Meanwhile, to be on topic, I've yet to see how iMatch is going to be of much use to me at this time....

 

[Tonewheel]

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Signing up for iTunes Match with "compensation" of three additional free months was always about Apple debugging the server side of the service. Without a significant amount of users and server traffic, there was no way they could reasonably test and debug. They knew this early release wouldn't work as planned. After Monday's wipe, expect to see a drastic improvement in the service.

 

[realmike15]

Just a few things that tells me iTunes Match is no where near ready for launch:

1. When you click a song from an album to download from the cloud, the rest of the songs from that album disappear from that list. The only way to correct this is to re-start iTunes, which takes longer than usual as now it has to connection to iCloud. Downloading (1) album from iTunes forced me to close and re-open iTunes about a dozen times. Picture doing that for 200 albums, or 500 albums... good times.

2. iTunes match is really spotty. My library is very thorough and accurate to the iTunes store, I purposefully make minor corrections to Title/Album/Artist to match the iTunes Store, so I can download album art more easily. Despite this, M. Ward's Post-War for example was not recognized in the cloud and once deleted could not be re-downloaded. His album is on the iTunes Store, and matches the copy I had exactly.

3. When re-downloaded they are not always restored as they were. An album will be downloaded partially, but singles featured on that album will be downloaded as "singles (separate albums) instead of as part of the full album. It's clear their database is only looking at the song title, instead of the album it came from, or anything else for that matter.

 

[pmz]

I haven't seen Apple get Internet services right except for the iTunes Store (in its original form).

It seems problematic that Apple's idea of increasing the reliability and quality of a service is to delete all of users' server-side data. Like most of of us here, I'm not an expert on Internet services, not even a little bit. But it seems like betas usually grow into a mature product. Gmail didn't force users to delete all their e-mail as it grew. Other companies fail and fix. Apple tends to have a slash and burn mentality.

You know Tripod is still hosting some sites I created back in the late 90s? Apple has destroyed every Internet service offering it's offered when it came out with a new idea. eWorld, iTools, .Mac, MobileMe. I've paid for those except for iTools, and while I don't remember the details of what's about to happen with the iCloud transition (Apple seems to obfuscate that information), I am not trusting that my MobileMe gallery is going to be around or that my iDisk data won't disappear. I've lost enough e-mail through MobileMe to know it's possible at any time. And these are paid services. I never paid Tripod a dime, and it's still hosting the first web-sites I ever made.

As a layman, it seems to me it's a bad sign if you need a fresh start to mature a beta. I would love for Apple to prove me wrong.

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

 

[pmz]

Just a few things that tells me iTunes Match is no where near ready for launch:

1. When you click a song from an album to download from the cloud, the rest of the songs from that album disappear from that list. The only way to correct this is to re-start iTunes, which takes longer than usual as now it has to connection to iCloud. Downloading (1) album from iTunes forced me to close and re-open iTunes about a dozen times. Picture doing that for 200 albums, or 500 albums... good times.

2. iTunes match is really spotty. My library is very thorough and accurate to the iTunes store, I purposefully make minor corrections to Title/Album/Artist to match the iTunes Store, so I can download album art more easily. Despite this, M. Ward's Post-War for example was not recognized in the cloud and once deleted could not be re-downloaded. His album is on the iTunes Store, and matches the copy I had exactly.

3. When re-downloaded they are not always restored as they were. An album will be downloaded partially, but singles featured on that album will be downloaded as "singles (separate albums) instead of as part of the full album. It's clear their database is only looking at the song title, instead of the album it came from, or anything else for that matter.

If you were actually a developer you might of read the release notes that accompanied iTunes Match that said explicitly that ALL OF THE ISSUES YOU PRETEND TO HAVE DISCOVERED WERE KNOWN AND DOCUMENTED BEFORE THE BETA WAS EVEN RELEASED.

 

[iCrizzo]

I hope they seriously improved iTunes Match because the BETA was a mess and it never got any better.

Talk about screwing up your iTunes library.

Beta = that is the keyword!

 

[toddybody]

These next several weeks are going to seem long...

Right on.

Between iOS 5 and the iP5/4s...Im getting pretty stoked.

 

[realmike15]

If you were actually a developer you might of read the release notes that accompanied iTunes Match that said explicitly that ALL OF THE ISSUES YOU PRETEND TO HAVE DISCOVERED WERE KNOWN AND DOCUMENTED BEFORE THE BETA WAS EVEN RELEASED.

I missed the part where I said "I" was the person who discovered all these issues, or gave myself credit for it in anyway. I'm pretty sure all I did was list some serious issues with the service and said that it wasn't ready. Last I checked, these are not the Dev forums nor are those problems documented here.

If you spent half as much energy actually reading my post, as you did making that stupid response you might have realized that.

Cheers

 

[MacAddict1978]

If you don't keep 10,000 letters/documents on your (physical) desk at work or home, why keep 10,000 items in your email inbox? File them somewhere. If not to make things actually findable, certainly so that the technology isn't having to crunch through a giant pile of data every time it resyncs.

An actual number limit would be pointless, because the point where things get wonky depends on many factors including whether there are attachments (10 x 5MB attachments > 500 plain text emails).

email has gotten so much easier to search and sort that I get lazy. Apple Mail is a hog though (and the Lion update makes it crawl for me :-( ) so once every few months I'll clear out all the reminders to pay my credit card or phone bill etc. I currently have 5,000 unread emails, but they're mostly Facebook notifications and crap. Search "Facebook" command + a and delete and boom.

It's not a matter of filing for most people. It's just that we get tons of crap that's not really even junk mail that we semi want enough to not band from our in boxes.

The things that come in the real mail I chuck the second I take them out of the mail box.

 

[pmz]

I missed the part where I said "I" was the person who discovered all these issues, or gave myself credit for it in anyway. I'm pretty sure all I did was list some serious issues with the service and said that it wasn't ready. Last I checked, these are not the Dev forums nor are those problems documented here.

If you spent half as much energy actually reading my post, as you did making that stupid response you might have realized that.

Cheers

If you had a clue, at all, you wouldn't bother posting the same useless drivel that was included in the release notes weeks ago. No one cares about your opinion of the state of the beta that Apple issued. You sound EXACTLY like someone who scammed his way into the beta program and has no previous experience with testing software.

 

[milo]

I really hope they've improved the quality of matching, reports were consistently bad and I haven't heard better ones since. Yes, it's a beta but we're getting close to the release date and there haven't been later betas with users reporting a big improvement. It is concerning when there are starting to be whispers of GM being on the horizon but still no reports of Match working well yet.

And as I've mentioned in earlier threads, I haven't even seen good results from the much simpler task of matching for album art, which has been around for years. Apple has a lot riding on this, they need it to work great from day one or they're looking at another Mobile Me debacle. Don't release Match to the public until it's rock solid, if that means releasing iOS5 without match and adding it a bit later, so be it.

It seems problematic that Apple's idea of increasing the reliability and quality of a service is to delete all of users' server-side data.

This is a beta. Making people match again will give it another round of testing that you wouldn't get from continuing to use that same data.

 

[phpmaven]

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"should not be affected" lol

You find that humorous for some reason? No one has lost a single song yet using iTunes Match that I am aware of.

I hope they seriously improved iTunes Match because the beta was a mess and it never got any better.

Talk about screwing up your iTunes library.

Care to elaborate? It creates a new iCloud library that is completely separate from your original library. Once you turn it off, you are back to your original library.

 

[Dorv]

I hope they seriously improved iTunes Match because the beta was a mess and it never got any better.

Talk about screwing up your iTunes library.

I "love" all of the downvotes you got. These people obviously didn't have the problems we did. Music wouldn't download to the phone (in good service areas), smart playlists (and regular playlists) I'd spent a while perfect magically deleted ...

I'd expected to see updates, because it was v1 beta software, but never did, and indications are they're going live soon?

 

[mw360]

I really hope they've improved the quality of matching, reports were consistently bad and I haven't heard better ones since. Yes, it's a beta but we're getting close to the release date and there haven't been later betas with users reporting a big improvement. It is concerning when there are starting to be whispers of GM being on the horizon but still no reports of Match working well yet.

And as I've mentioned in earlier threads, I haven't even seen good results from the much simpler task of matching for album art, which has been around for years. Apple has a lot riding on this, they need it to work great from day one or they're looking at another Mobile Me debacle. Don't release Match to the public until it's rock solid, if that means releasing iOS5 without match and adding it a bit later, so be it.

Is it possible Apple are only matching to a subset of their complete catalogue?

 

[medazinol]

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"almost there"

 

[Dorv]

Care to elaborate? It creates a new iCloud library that is completely separate from your original library. Once you turn it off, you are back to your original library.

Like I said below, all of my playlists in iTunes on my MBP were completely borked. "My original library" was not restored.

Listen, I get that it is beta software. It wasn't something that affected my project, so I turned it on a whim for personal reasons, and turned it back of within a couple of days. I just had expected there to be updates to the system, and HOPE that this purge is related to one of them, and NOT getting ready to go live.

 

[adcx64]

I can't wait for iOS 5

 

[Peace]

Like I said below, all of my playlists in iTunes on my MBP were completely borked. "My original library" was not restored.

Listen, I get that it is beta software. It wasn't something that affected my project, so I turned it on a whim for personal reasons, and turned it back of within a couple of days. I just had expected there to be updates to the system, and HOPE that this purge is related to one of them, and NOT getting ready to go live.

There's a reason Apple is giving the Match beta testers 3 free months.

People seem to think because iCloud and IOS 5 is coming out in a couple of week so is Match. I don't subscribe to that view.

I'm guessing Match service will go live sometime in November.

 

[wlh99]

Beta = doesn't work yet, in testing.

The most complained about problem in these forums is that matches were incomplete. Doesn't it make sense that the next step in development would be to tweak the matching algorithm, wipe all the songs, and retest the matching?

No one should be surprised or upset with that.

 

[gnasher729]

Beta = doesn't work yet, in testing.

The most complained about problem in these forums is that matches were incomplete. Doesn't it make sense that the next step in development would be to tweak the matching algorithm, wipe all the songs, and retest the matching?

No one should be surprised or upset with that.

People who actually should be using this beta version (serious software developers) know and understand this. Unfortunately there are plenty of dimwits who don't understand the meaning of "beta" version. Including some who think it is a public service to publish a list of known bugs that Apple put out.

Is it possible Apple are only matching to a subset of their complete catalogue?

Quite possible. It would be possible that every song in Apple's catalogue has to be processed in a rather time consuming manner to participate in the matching, and Apple is in no hurry to finish this. Or they could use different methods for different parts of their catalogue, to find which works best.

 

[AHDuke99]

I really hope we see an improvement on the final release because the beta was a real mess. If the final product is anything like that, I will be sorry I spent $25 on it.