Tag Archives: itunes

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And so the umptiest product of Apple becomes “idiot-and-retard-proofed”. While removing distinctive features and breaking everything that I liked about iTunes 10.

Soon we Apple users have nothing to say but “Yes Apple, thank you Apple for taking away features, options and functional apps!” Or the better alternative – “I’m buying a PC!”

Whine whine whine!

Give me back my sidebar!

Yea! I liked having a sidebar in iTunes, where I can switch to a different section of iTunes in 1 click and at a glance can see what’s what.
Now? It’s 2 clicks, no oversight and it’s just a stupid interface. For example, by chance I saw there were 5 App updates and 2 podcasts downloaded. Great. With the sidebar I could just see that. Now I have to accidentally stumble over it because I might switch to a different section. If I didn’t I would probably not see that for days.

Playlists are useless now, too!

I have a smart playlist “Never Played”. It worked like magic. New songs, podcasts – They would show up there if there were 0 (zero) ‘plays’ and it wasn’t an audiostream (radio). Great!

Now? There are 60 items in there that aren’t downloaded (but bought and removed) and thus have 0 plays. Suddenly I have to add “location is on this computer” to the playlist rules. Fine. Small change… But after I changed that half my library reverted to 0 plays. Awesome! Why? Because iTunes, without telling me, removed the files from the library and downloaded DRM free files. Another automated convenience that I…Do…Not…Care…About… And only inconveniences me.

And another… I had playlists made that took a bunch of similar genres and put them in a smart playlist. Since the rules for smart playlists are either ALL or ANY for matches. Suddenly I can not have such playlists anymore. Because Apple thinks it’s convenient to list iCloud shit in there too. Music I don’t want anymore, podcasts and Books. And because there are several genres and songs are only in one the rules must be set to “match any”. Thus the label “location is on this computer” is a free pass to have most items in the iTunes library to be listed. Suddenly I was listening to Trance music when I was expecting Massive Attack or SepiaMusic.

Of course I’ve tried a few things and combinations. But due to the amazingly useless iCloud integration half my playlists are now unusable and completely inaccurate.

And where the hell is Coverflow! I like coverflow! Google tells me a lot of people like coverflow! Why the hell is it removed? How do I get it back. It’s just a neat eye candy trick. But I liked it. What good is album art now, since the only usable option is the text listing.

And that’s iTunes 11. Amazingly new refreshed and super stupefied iTunes 11.

It’s a trend!

And I hate it!

Awesome Apple! Thanks! Yet again I must alter my comfort-zone because you want to be groundbreaking things!

Grrr!

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So last night i had a epiphany of sorts. I suddenly realized my speaker set has multiple inputs. And i want to use that speaker set for multiple computers. But not always. Since the primary computer using it is the PC.

My PC uses the analog 3.5mm jacks. So i dusted off the Airport Express and hooked up a optical cable to it and to the optical input of the speakers and can now stream any Apple device to it. Including my iMac. yay!

It’s cool, easy and neat. No more fussing with shared libraries or Home sharing! Whee!

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With Snow Leopard i was finally able to synchronize my address book to all my computers and devices. Or so i thought.

After putting it into motion i quickly found out that iTunes didn’t see the CardDAV account and thus couldn’t sync the address book to my iPhone. Leaving me without phone numbers on that device.
A little after that i found out that Adium lost all it’s couplings with the contact cards i had made over time. Defaulting in the ridiculous names people put on their MSN accounts.

What that has to do with CardDAV? It seems that Address Book, the app, doesn’t actually synchronize the address book but rather looks at it remotely. Unlike iCal Calendar which transmits events and calendars to every device. Address Book just looks at them on the server and is able to edit them via CardDAV. Thus, on none of my computers is an address book present. Just the app looking at a remote contact list.

I would much prefer them to actually synchronize the data so i can use it for the various apps that work with Address Book. Like iTunes, Adium, Mail and the like.
Now with this new service i can easily share my contacts, yay! But not after i make the changes locally, also do them remotely. Then again to the local address book on the other computer. It’s quite a lot of hassle and i might just not use Address Book Server. Since all the editing it involves to *actually* sync it has just increased to twice as much editing.

Apple really thought this one through… Not :(

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Now that iTunes has a great Application manager. What would be the next step for iPhone apps and iTunes.

I think a logical new feature would be to run apps IN iTunes. Especially on laptops with multitouch touchpads this would work very well. For navigation tasks you just point and click with a mouse. But for more complex things like playing a game with virtual joypads the multitouch features of the newer laptops are perfect. How you would achieve this on other Macs? Say iMac or even a PC (ew)… No idea. Perhaps a USB tablet thing like a Wacom tablet could leverage there. Or even just Key controls like traditional games do.

So, what do i want? Well… I’ve got some really nice games on my iPhone. Mini-Gore, Assassins Creed, Hero of Sparta etc. Also i have a great App for learning Japanese and many more… Wouldn’t it be great if i could run those in a sort of “video style window” in iTunes.

I do realize that a laptop monitor by no means is the same as a iPhone screen but with the nice graphics of most apps i’m sure you could easily double the resolution/screensize to make it look better on a computer screen and still know what’s what without wading through pixelated rubbish.

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ridiculous bloat

And that kinda says it all!

Apple should force developers who make this crap to make ONE app and allow them to be localized or use the new in-app sales system. But this is just ridiculous!

And there are others, language tools, the game Mafia to name a few. They too have tens of apps basically doing the same thing in the store…

Atleast now you know how there can be 50k apps in the store!

Update: here’s more! What should this even be? Citynames?
moar bloat