iTunes 4.7 Changes/Enhancements

[atomiton]

the thing is, on macs, it never has that minimize feature anyway. that tiny tiny mini form we've always had is the minimize to tray on macs. the reason for this is because the mac desktop is a much more dynamic workplace, so something that small can be tucked away at the corner and not become soemthing anonying, and still be within reach.

another reason is that there are 3rd party plugins to allow for easy control of itunes. one of em puts controls on the menu bar, the other simply gives me keyboard shortcuts (the one i use).

Correct, and the windows environment works differently.
Background-type apps should go to the system tray. It's a matter of knowing (as a developer) how the user will interact with the app. In iTunes case, it's a background app and therefore should have the choice of going to the system tray.

there are also 3rd party apps that force this behaviour... however, they don't interface with itunes. most 3rd party apps for pcs are plug-ins etc.

For windows users, whether it's at work or otherwise, this is a about time.

 

[redAPPLE]

Does nobody know about the "Artist Alert"??? Surely I haven't stumped the Macrumors community...

i think this pops up during the setup...

 

[PlaceofDis]

i think this pops up during the setup...

read the whole thread, he answered it above, and it turns out its a new feature of the iTMS when you are viewing an artist's album

 

[feakbeak]

i have a few cds that have the exact same song as other cds but as i'm one for listening to albums all the way through i can't bring myself to delete most of my doubles.
in the next version it would be awesome to see some sort of meta-info so you could associate one song with several albums and have that information follow over to my G3 ipod.

but it isn't going to happen

Awesome idea, I like it. I have 250 duplicates out of 2500+ library. Most of them are different renditions of the song, but some are the exact same song from different albums such as compilations or soundtracks. I listen to albums often enough that I don't want to get rid of them.

I would be great to see a meta-data system built into iTunes that would let you have a song in multiple albums with a single source. Since this is all handled by ID3 tags currently it's not possible to single source songs across albums.

Another feature I would like to see is the ability to use the library browse feature within playlists. The problem for me is that I really like the browsing feature, but I don't always like sifting through all of the artists and albums when I know I'm only in the mood for rock music right now. It would help categorize your music a bit more.

 

[feakbeak]

New Taskbar Toolbar

You can now minimize iTunes to a toolbar on the taskbar within Windows. First you need to turn the toolbar on by right-clicking on the taskbar > toolbars > iTunes. You also have to be sure the preference to minimize to system tray is turned off. Now, when you minimize it will minimize to a toolbar on the taskbar. It's basically a smaller version of the mini player, without the display for track info.

I'm not positive this was added in 4.7. The help didn't state if this was a new feature or not, but I have never come across it before and I've been using iTunes on Windows since day one. Another poster briefly mentioned this in another thread.

It's very cool.

 

[veedubdrew]

I've noticed that 4.7 has some speed improvements on my machine. Window resize seems marginally smoother and scrolling speed in long lists of songs is glassy smooth now whereas before it was jittery. iTMS seems to load up and switch pages about twice as fast as before.

I also had a bug where I had a song in my shopping cart that I really didn't want and it wouldn't let me delete it, just giving me some error message. After the update, it deleted out of my queue just fine.

One thing that used to bug the crap out of me was keyboard implementation when using iTMS. I would click the Music Store link in the source list and then try to use the up/down keys to scroll the pages. Instead of scrolling, it would select "shopping cart" which is below the music store, of course, and the whole page would reload to the shopping cart. Not sure if I got that across well or not, but it was very irritating. Now when I use the up/down keys to scroll an iTMS page, it actually scrolls the page instead of changing source. I do wish that when the store was open in its own window that you could use web-like keyboard shortcuts to navigate (backspace key to go back a page, etc). I don't like using the rodent if I don't have to.

-Drew

 

[atomiton]

You can now minimize iTunes to a toolbar on the taskbar within Windows. First you need to turn the toolbar on by right-clicking on the taskbar > toolbars > iTunes. You also have to be sure the preference to minimize to system tray is turned off. Now, when you minimize it will minimize to a toolbar on the taskbar. It's basically a smaller version of the mini player, without the display for track info.

I'm not positive this was added in 4.7. The help didn't state if this was a new feature or not, but I have never come across it before and I've been using iTunes on Windows since day one. Another poster briefly mentioned this in another thread.

It's very cool.

THAT's MUCH BETTER than minimizing to the SYSTEM TRAY!!!! FANTASTIC!!!
SOoooo nice! It's the same size as Win Media Player... but Much simpler interface... although, I've always liked optionally seeing the progress bar.

Would be really nice if it showed the album art when you changed albums... but that's okay.

 

[AmigoMac]

The duplicate songs feature has been very helpful for some friends, I tried and did surprise me not to have a single duplicate song in a 4500+ songs library, the *PhotoPod* option will be tested on 11.09 or before

But there is some thing I haven't figured out...

I synced my iPod, I thought I was ready but edited some items and wanted to sync again, was the work automatically done? no, I had to eject the iPod and plug it again... is there a menu item to refresh the ipod sync?.

 

[phrac]

As a new PC user iam very happy that i just downloaded itunes for windows. seems to work great now if i can only get iphoto for windows....ill have my games ,music and photo's. Apple should sell a ilife package for window users.

I don't think this will happen:

Apple is in the software business (itunes) to sell hardware (ipod), not the other way around. So unless you see an Apple digital camera, you probably won't see any of the other ilife apps for windows. The point of the ilife apps is to get you to switch to Apple hardware.

 

[DJY]

As a new PC user iam very happy that i just downloaded itunes for windows. seems to work great now if i can only get iphoto for windows....ill have my games ,music and photo's. Apple should sell a ilife package for window users.

I think it is called switching!
I started with iTunes for Windows and a 3G iPod last Oct when iTunes came out for Windoze... loved it!
Loved it so much - I'm switched to Mac in June this year!
So now me and my 17" PB are very happy!

Has opened up new doors already as well - and Airport Express - LOVE IT TOO

 

[williamsonrg]

read the whole thread, he answered it above, and it turns out its a new feature of the iTMS when you are viewing an artist's album

I've also discovered that you can manage the Alerts you've selected, as well as select an option for an Alert for each artist you've purchased music from, under the main accout settings page. Very nifty, as are most of iTunes features.

 

[williamsonrg]

THAT's MUCH BETTER than minimizing to the SYSTEM TRAY!!!! FANTASTIC!!!
SOoooo nice! It's the same size as Win Media Player... but Much simpler interface... although, I've always liked optionally seeing the progress bar.

Would be really nice if it showed the album art when you changed albums... but that's okay.

Definitely much better than simply minimizing to system tray. I had been using a Firefox plug-in (Foxytunes) to do basically the same thing, but that only works when I am surfing the interweb. Of course, it's a rare occurrence that I don't have Firefox open, but you get my point.

 

[Flynnstone]

... collection on iTunes on a server in my back room running on Windows 2003 server, this is shared and allows me and my whole family to access music instantly on any mac / pc in the house...

Does everyone have their music in one "database"? What are the logistics?
I would like to do something similar, but want the files to recide on a Linux server.

 

[atomiton]

Definitely much better than simply minimizing to system tray. I had been using a Firefox plug-in (Foxytunes) to do basically the same thing, but that only works when I am surfing the interweb. Of course, it's a rare occurrence that I don't have Firefox open, but you get my point.

yea, I just found out about foxytunes.

I now use them both simutaneously, just so I can have the track name in the bottom of the window.

 

[Schroedinger]

observation

I know i'm preaching to the choir here, but I just checked out that new taskbar feature you guys were talking about on my XP laptop, wondering what it was. Then I saw that it was the same menu that pops up when i click and hold on the itunes icon in the dock on my mac. and the first thought that pops into my head is "wow, that's so not as pretty as on the mac."

I'm not a windows hater, I have my uses for it and it is a necessity, but I think my experience is a microcosm for the relationship between the two operating systems. OS X does things very casually and they look pretty. Later, a piece of that functionality gets incorporated into windows although not as pretty.

and not to be one of those "look at how much music I have" guys, but I checked and I have almost 8 gigs of duplicates. That's a little scary. Going through them will have to wait until next summer.

 

[rendezvouscp]

I synced my iPod, I thought I was ready but edited some items and wanted to sync again, was the work automatically done? no, I had to eject the iPod and plug it again... is there a menu item to refresh the ipod sync?.

Yes: File: Update songs on "name of iPod".
-Chase

 

[slowtreme]

Tunes Multi Plugin

Does Windows 4.7 work with Tunes Multi Plugin? all of these new tricks are already part of this plugin (minus the dupe checker). But I use this plugin to broadcast the current songname/artist. I don't want to lose this fuction.