iTunes 4.5 Released

[idkew]

I read all of the posts, so I don't think I am double posting. Have you guys noticed that (at least the new free songs) have FairPlay version 2, whereas previously bought iTMS songs have version 1? So does this mean you are under the original contract for the first songs you bought, and can still only share to 3 computers and burn to ten discs? This might prove as an interesting hole in the future if FairPlay changes again (which it probably will).
–Chase

i can't answer fro sure, but my understanding of the system is that apple's servers allow you to play the music. not the file itself.

so- apple just has to change the server(s) to update the DRM. all the file does is stay encrypted unless it is sent the PW by apple to decrypt itself, decode itself and be played.

 

[GregA]

Does iTunes-Windows use safari code for movie trailers?

When you open the movie trailer section of iTunes it looks almost identical to the apple trailers website.

I assume there is some web-style code in there somewhere. Does anyone know what Apple is using to interpret the web layout on Windows? Some of safari? or webkit?

 

[wrldwzrd89]

When you open the movie trailer section of iTunes it looks almost identical to the apple trailers website.

I assume there is some web-style code in there somewhere. Does anyone know what Apple is using to interpret the web layout on Windows? Some of safari? or webkit?

I believe Apple ported part of WebKit to Windows for iTunes to use. Have you compared the file sizes of the Mac iTunes download to the Windows iTunes download? If you subtract the size of QuickTime from the Windows download, the difference can be explained by things like WebKit.

 

[jmerk]

"...online help..."

Or is easily answered by looking at the online help.

as in apple's online help or macrumors? i don't see any link on the macrumors site for "online help" but maybe i'm not looking hard enough. 😉

if you had read my whole post back to idkew (again 😉 ), you'd have seen that i had some critique of the whole "message board" as help. as a regular viewer of Adobe's help forums for assistance, i have to say that it is 'pert near impossible to find the help you are looking for without starting your own thread. i usually go through 5 or 6 pages worth of posts before i get frustrated and start my own. unfortunately, there is no easy/elegant way to search for your problem. it all depends on the subject line of the poster and when it says, "Illustrator CS problem..." that isn't very helpful to figure out how to best use the Transparency Flattener settings to print successfully. do you see the difference there? the same thing can be said of apple's message boards, the subject lines are generally useless and wading through 100+ messages to get help is a waste of time imho.

j

 

[Mac Dummy]

There is one area that Apple could improve on in the next version of iTunes, that would be allowing for protected WMA to protected AAC conversion. Then I could purchase music from an number of sites... I wouldn't be stuck with using just iTunes or going out and buying CD's. 🙂

By doing this Apple would be breaking DRM laws right?

 

[wrldwzrd89]

There is one area that Apple could improve on in the next version of iTunes, that would be allowing for protected WMA to protected AAC conversion. Then I could purchase music from an number of sites... I wouldn't be stuck with using just iTunes or going out and buying CD's. 🙂

By doing this Apple would be breaking DRM laws right?

Exactly (Apple would be breaking the concept of DRM by allowing this). That's why they haven't and won't (and besides, Apple didn't do it themselves; they actually used the Microsoft Windows Media SDK hooks present in the Windows version of WMP to do the conversion).

 

[GregA]

I believe Apple ported part of WebKit to Windows for iTunes to use. Have you compared the file sizes of the Mac iTunes download to the Windows iTunes download? If you subtract the size of QuickTime from the Windows download, the difference can be explained by things like WebKit.

I'm reasonably sure that programming in Carbon is more efficient than win32 too (Cocoa even more). Look at the total size of the MS-Word program on each platform - the Mac used to be MUCH smaller, now if I remember correctly it's just smaller.

Still, with parts of carbon ported under Quicktime, and much of Cocoa already ported through Openstep, I do look for "hints" on an Apple portable API...

 

[NusuniAdmin]

I'm reasonably sure that programming in Carbon is more efficient than win32 too (Cocoa even more). Look at the total size of the MS-Word program on each platform - the Mac used to be MUCH smaller, now if I remember correctly it's just smaller.

Still, with parts of carbon ported under Quicktime, and much of Cocoa already ported through Openstep, I do look for "hints" on an Apple portable API...

Not to sound rude or sound like a smart @$$: you cant program in carbon, because carbon is a library, but you can "use carbon" in apps.

 

[iPost]

There is a slight difference, Its all in the high end, symbols and stuff like that. But it still sounds alot better than MP3 and WMA

I certainly can tell the difference between 192kbps AAC and the CD, which is why I still buy CDs, and use my iPod as the modern day equivalent of a cassette tape player. Nobody expected cassettes to sound as good as the vinyl (and, especially later, the CD) and I don't expect AAC to sound as good either, but it makes the music a lot more portable than CDs, and that's definitely worth something. And, it sounds a lot better than FM radio. Regarding WMA (and I'm talking version 9 here, not the older versions), I think it does a pretty good job, and in my own listening tests, I've been able to hear certain things in a 192kbps WMA track that I couldn't hear in a 192kbps AAC track. However, with that said, I prefer AAC over WMA, just because to my ears it sounds a bit warmer. WMA tends to be too bright for my tastes and I found that if I listen to WMA tracks long enough with headphones, I'm left with this feeling that my ears are over-stimulated (I don't know how else to describe it -- but it almost feels like my ears are tired).

Regarding buying compressed songs (AAC/WMA/MP3) through an online music store, I'm not sure why anyone would want to do that, other than the convenience of getting the music faster, and using it on a portable (if that's all you wanted to use it for). I'm old enough to remember when record labels first started releasing albums on cassette tape. Then too, I wondered why anyone would pay the same price for a cassette as they would for the vinyl. And some of those first cassette releases sounded horrible (The Rolling Stones' "Some Girls" cassette comes to mind). But ultimately, I realized that people weren't paying for the quality. They were paying for the convenience of not having to buy the album, and a blank cassette, and then record the album to tape -- especially if they mostly listened to music through their car's tape deck, for example.

Anyway, this is a long-winded way of saying that you shouldn't consider AAC (or any of the other lossy formats) as a replacement for the CD. They just enable more/better ways of listening to music.

 

[wowser]

Just got this - Party Shuffle is a great idea - now my new songs don't get neglected 🙂

 

[iMan]

Music Store behaving strangely

Last days the music store has changed from english buttons to national set of norwegian... don't know if it is just the 4.5 upgrade or something else happening.
Also I sometimes get the countrywarning when hitting the "home" button, sometimes not. Earlier also I just got a message when I tried to log in that I needed an US billing adress. Now when I try to intialize the account for iTMS the whole program crashes... weird. Things are going on - Let's just hope it is what we are waiting for: signs of upcoming ww release 😀

 

[~Shard~]

Things are going on - Let's just hope it is what we are waiting for: signs of upcoming ww release 😀

Let's hope so! Hmm, since people are predicting iPod news at WWDC in June, perhaps it won't be in the form of a 4G iPod like many are predicting, but instead an announcement about international iTMS - I could see that...

 

[wowser]

ex actly what is meant by "upcoming songs"?? 😕

 

[~Shard~]

ex actly what is meant by "upcoming songs"?? 😕

To what exactly are you referring? - 😕 right back atcha!

 

[wowser]

To what exactly are you referring? - 😕 right back atcha!

On 'party shuffle', you can select from having 'recently played songs' and 'upcoming songs'. Does this simply mean songs further down on your playlist, or songs that you are starting to play more often. The latter would be a more helpful option

 

[chabig]

I think it means songs further down the list. For example, it you accept the default 5 previously played songs and 15 upcoming songs, then the total Party Shuffle list is 20 songs long.

Chris

 

[GregA]

On 'party shuffle', you can select from having 'recently played songs' and 'upcoming songs'. Does this simply mean songs further down on your playlist, or songs that you are starting to play more often. The latter would be a more helpful option

Upcoming songs simply means that you can see what iTunes is going to be playing - it's randomly picked them from your playlist and it's done it 15 songs in advance.

If you drag another song to the Party-Shuffle though, it'll play it in 16 songs. I set "upcoming" to 0, and then it'll still pick from my smart playlist of favourites if no-one has added any songs, or if they've picked songs it'll play those.

I wish we could "lock" the party shuffle so that while someone's browsing the library, they could double click on a song to add it to the list (instead of dragging it to the shuffle list). Now, if they double click it abandons the shuffle and plays the song.

 

[wowser]

Hmm. I'm now less enthusiastic about the Party Shuffle feature now. It does seemto be good at playing songs i like, but have not got sick of, though.

 

[chabig]

I set "upcoming" to 0...

That doesn't give you a chance to remove upcoming songs you don't want to hear.

 

[GregA]

That doesn't give you a chance to remove upcoming songs you don't want to hear.

True. But it also gets iTunes to play my hand-picked choices in preference to it's next 15 choices.

The best design (IMO) would be if it let me pick a song and automatically made that song play (and any other hand picked songs) before the songs it was randomly selecting from my playlist...

 

[chameeeleon]

There is, Apple hacked it for you 😉

If you're on a Mac, option-click the arrow.

If you're on Windows, shift-click the arrow.

Voila: you've just found the same artist or album in your own library.

Is there any way to switch it around so that click sends you to the same artist, and shift-click sends you to the Music Store?

 

[chabig]

Is there any way to switch it around so that click sends you to the same artist, and shift-click sends you to the Music Store?

Yes. http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20040429122915489

Chris

 

[chabig]

True. But it also gets iTunes to play my hand-picked choices in preference to it's next 15 choices.

The best design (IMO) would be if it let me pick a song and automatically made that song play (and any other hand picked songs) before the songs it was randomly selecting from my playlist...

It does work that way, sort of. Even though it shows you what it's going to play next, you can still drag songs into, out of, and around in the playlist. So just put your choices after the current song. It will play those and then continue with its random songs.

Chris

 

[harperska]

I wish we could "lock" the party shuffle so that while someone's browsing the library, they could double click on a song to add it to the list (instead of dragging it to the shuffle list). Now, if they double click it abandons the shuffle and plays the song.

The best design (IMO) would be if it let me pick a song and automatically made that song play (and any other hand picked songs) before the songs it was randomly selecting from my playlist...

This is indeed exactly how it works. If you right-click (that's control-click for those of you still using the soap bar mouse) on a song, you get two choices in the menu that pertain to the party shuffle. One says 'add to party shuffle', and the other says 'play next in party shuffle'. If say you have upcoming songs set to say 15, 'add to party shuffle' will put that song at number 16 in the queue, while 'play next in party shuffle' will do the logical thing and put it in number one. It's only milliseconds slower than a simple double click.

I am now quite a fan of party shuffle. I had been trying to use playlists and smart playlists to emulate what the party shuffle does to no avail. A random list that I can put a song of my choosing at the top of without sacrificing the randomness of the rest of the list. Way to go apple!

 

[Nermal]

Somebody's probably already mentioned this, but I don't feel like reading through 10 pages of comments, so...

You can now run multiple instances of iTunes 🙂

With 4.2, if one person is running iTunes and you Fast User Switch to someone else, the second person isn't able to run it. Fixed in 4.5 🙂