I stopped trusting Apple

September 12, 2006 11:31 AM

So the new Itunes 7 was just released but I am a little wary. Is there anyplace I can go (or keep my eye on) to see what, if any, restrictions have been introduced by the new Itunes. I am thinking things like Network-sharing (incompatibility with Ourtunes?), Limits on how many times you can burn, etc.? Or will I just have to watch and wait?
posted by vacapinta to computers & internet (31 comments total)

Macintouch's Reports have been useful to me over the years:

Homepage
Readers Reports of iTunes

Give it a few days before the iTunes 7 reports start rolling in.
posted by jamaro at 11:37 AM on September 12, 2006

If your playlist includes iTunes Store purchases, you can burn it to disc up to seven times. This is less restrictive than in the past.

They've loosened iPod sync restrictions — you can sync an iPod's contents between two computers.

Looks like they've added gapless playback!

I downloaded ourTunes 1.3.3 and it does not appear to be able to connect to a shared library from iTunes 7, though it can see it on the network. You'll probably need to wait for an update to ourTunes.

I'm liking the interface of the new version. Much, much cleaner.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:57 AM on September 12, 2006

Looks like they've added gapless playback!

Pardon my ignorance: that's gapless playback through iTunes on the desktop, or somehow getting gapless playback on the iPod itself when you load files through iTunes?
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 12:15 PM on September 12, 2006

Looks like iTunes at least:

Playing albums straight through

Some CDs, such as live concert albums and classical albums, are meant to be played straight through, with no fading between the songs (or tracks). If you turn on Crossfade Playback, you can have iTunes turn it off when you play these albums.

To override Crossfade Playback for specific songs:
• In iTunes, select a song and choose File > Get Info.
• Click Options.
• Select "Part of a gapless album."

Tip: You can select all the songs at once (press Command as you select them), choose File > Get Info, and then choose Yes from the Gapless Album pop-up menu.

I bought a new iPod so I should know soon if there's gapless playback there, too.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:20 PM on September 12, 2006

It's almost certainly only through iTunes on the desktop. Gapless playback on the iPod would require a software update for the iPod, which hasn't come along yet.
posted by jjg at 12:21 PM on September 12, 2006

you can sync an iPod's contents between two computers
Not quite. you can sync an ipod's songs bought from the itunes music store between two computers :(

the new ipods have gapless, aye.
posted by bonaldi at 12:25 PM on September 12, 2006

I think it might do gapless on existing iPods as well. I just synced my iTunes purchases from my work laptop to my iPod and iTunes is currently going through all my other songs on the iPod "Determining Gapless Playback Information."

The interface so far is fantastic. I love the new iPod Summary that comes up when the iPod is connected and shows disk usage, etc. Very cool. Flipping through album covers to browse is fun, too.
posted by sbrollins at 12:39 PM on September 12, 2006

If they ever get Album cover flipping on the iPod, I'll be in heaven. Heading off to get the new iTunes now...
posted by joecacti at 12:56 PM on September 12, 2006

[excuse the tangent, but still iT7 newness + paranoia related]

So on the subject of album art, how'tha'hell did iTunes 7 find art for (example) a bunch of 70s & 80s punkrawk MP3s I d/led recently from http://www.kbdrecords.com/ ?? Near as I can tell there is no separate JPEG on my HD for any of these music files. And I know I cleaned out the browser cache since I downloaded and before installing iT7...

1) I like the album art flippy feature -- but I don't want Apple to go find it all for me for privacy reasons. Anyone found a batch way to do this other than Doug's Find Album Art With Google script?

2) How can I embed artwork in the free mp3s from my band / label?
posted by omnidrew at 12:57 PM on September 12, 2006

it didn't find the artwork. It was already embedded in the jpegs you downloaded.
posted by unSane at 1:02 PM on September 12, 2006

never knew that iTunes did this -- found an article on embedding artwork here -- http://www.mvldesign.com/itunespodcast.html

so...how to embed the JPEG in an existing MP3 without re-encoding?
posted by omnidrew at 1:07 PM on September 12, 2006

When the album artwork window is showing in iTunes, you can drag album art on to it while a mp3 is highlighted. This has worked to embed album art for me in the past.
posted by mikeh at 1:13 PM on September 12, 2006

how to embed the JPEG in an existing MP3 without re-encoding?

The album art is added to the metadata. The audio encoding isn't touched.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 1:13 PM on September 12, 2006

Crap, the ITunes 7 install borked my iTunes. Now I got NOTHING! The iTunes application could not be opened an unknown error occurred. Gah!
posted by joecacti at 1:26 PM on September 12, 2006

thanks
posted by omnidrew at 1:28 PM on September 12, 2006

Ah... A quick visit to the support forums yields the solution... Using Remote Desktop with sound forwarding hoses it. Turn it off and bingo!
posted by joecacti at 1:31 PM on September 12, 2006

So the gapless play is not working when I listen to Abbey Road on my 5G iPod, although if I play the songs off the iPod through iTunes it works. Just got a prompt for an iPod software update (to v1.2) when I plugged it back in to the computer, so maybe that will enable the gapless on the iPod itself?

As far as album artwork goes, I used iTunes Art Importer to import artwork for everything in my home library. Pretty time-consuming process, though, and there was still some stuff it couldn't find. I like having the option to import everything automatically from iTunes.
posted by sbrollins at 1:40 PM on September 12, 2006

Weird, I haven't been prompted for a 1.2 update yet. sbrollins, if you're still reading, are you on a Mac or PC?
posted by mikeh at 1:58 PM on September 12, 2006

mikeh do a software update
posted by bonaldi at 2:02 PM on September 12, 2006

Just came back in....I'm on a PC.
posted by sbrollins at 2:13 PM on September 12, 2006

jjg writes "It's almost certainly only through iTunes on the desktop. Gapless playback on the iPod would require a software update for the iPod, which hasn't come along yet."

Rockbox does gapless on the ipod.
posted by orthogonality at 3:41 PM on September 12, 2006

Along with gapless playback, there also was a software update announced/implied that applies to 5G and newer iPods. You won't get gapless on existing 5G's until you do the software update.
posted by rhizome at 3:53 PM on September 12, 2006 [1 favorite]

I've been playing around with the new itunes (PC) during the last couple of hours. The album art is great, but you have to give them your credit card number. The visual browser is snazzy, but is choppy even with a modern video card. Does it really take 200MB of RAM to play some silly music files? I hope it runs better on a mac.
posted by |n$eCur3 at 4:30 PM on September 12, 2006

I also find it slightly annoying that when I remove the itunes shortcut from my start menu, it respawns a copy of itself each time i open itunes. Also, anyone else noticing distorted playback? I'm reverting to winamp/foobar until they decide to patch it.
posted by |n$eCur3 at 4:51 PM on September 12, 2006

The album art is great, but you have to give them your credit card number.

Actually, you can select "None" for your payment method. (You can also use PayPal.) Also, you can log in using your AOL account if you have one, rather than creating a separate Apple account.
posted by kindall at 4:54 PM on September 12, 2006 [1 favorite]

It's almost certainly only through iTunes on the desktop. Gapless playback on the iPod would require a software update for the iPod, which hasn't come along yet.

It's both. iPod software hit 1.2 today. I installed and tested, and sure enough, Ben Folds Live was nice and gapless.
posted by Mikey-San at 5:24 PM on September 12, 2006

Does it really take 200MB of RAM to play some silly music files?

Running at about 30 MB here, Mac OS X 10.4.7. Once you start flipping through cover art, however, memory usage skyrockets. I expect this, though, due to OpenGL texture loading . . . but a great deal of it is never released after leaving Cover Flow mode.

I managed to shoot it up to ~200 MB by browsing artwork, and it's settled back down to 103 MB . . . but it doesn't seem to be going any lower. I have only been watching for the last five minutes, however, and one might expect these extra objects to stick around longer than normal because of various people's usage patterns . . . but if it doesn't drop more, I'd call it overzealous retaining or, well, a leak.
posted by Mikey-San at 5:32 PM on September 12, 2006

(That is, over the course of some period X, it should only keep around the current Y cover textures, and throw the rest away. How long X is and how many Y is, however, are surely things the engineers debated. It remains to be seen how well that debate ended.)
posted by Mikey-San at 5:51 PM on September 12, 2006

Ah... A quick visit to the support forums yields the solution... Using Remote Desktop with sound forwarding hoses it. Turn it off and bingo!

Thanks for posting that, joecacti! You saved me from re-installing everything. AskMe comes thru again!
posted by RibaldOne at 7:02 PM on September 12, 2006

kindall, I don't see any way to select "none" as payment method.
posted by omnidrew at 10:20 PM on September 12, 2006 [1 favorite]

I can choose "none" on my existing iTunes account; I was assuming they offered the option during signup as well. Guess not. But at least there's a way to avoid having them keep your credit card number on file.
posted by kindall at 12:12 AM on September 14, 2006