Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with mac and itunes

Scrobblin on a Mac with no privileges

puritycontrol — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:34:17 -0800

Please help me install a Last.fm scrobbler for iTunes on Mac OSX 10.5.8 without administrator privileges. I'm a Windows guy, so please keep the explanation simple! This is for my iMac at work, which I've been using for a few months.

I know that you can scrobble iPod tracks, but my iPod is formatted for a PC. And my desk is tiny, so I'd rather not have to bring in an extra set of speakers and hook the iPod up to those. Thanks in advance.

iPhone not syncing calendars, photos, and triplicated my notes. Help?

scazza — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:02:40 -0800

iPhone not syncing calendars, photos, and triplicated my notes. Help? I am looking for help with this issue AND/OR great resources to help. There are tons of forums, its difficult to find my answer.

It started with my photos. First iTunes would not sync my selected album. I would sync over and over, and it would say it synced but on my phone it would say "no photos or videos." Then it stopped showing any options or albums under "Selected albums."

Then I noticed that it triplicated my notes.

Most importantly, since I really only got this phone years ago for the calendar and never had problems until now, it has stopped syning my calendar. Like iPhoto it has stopped showing any options under "Selected calendars." I am afraid to restore because I don't want to lose the information on my phone. It says it's backed it up, but obviously it's lied to me in the past.

It looks like there's a communication breakdown between iTunes & these other programs; like iTunes can't see my calendars, photo albums, & notes. Do I downgrade my software? I never had problems before. I upgraded to the latest Mac OS as well and that has made a lot of programs crash that never crashed before, my computer crashed 3x yesterday. My calendar is the most important, vital part of having this phone at all. I am starting to panic. My phone is 3G and I'm wondering if Apple is just dropping the ball on supporting not the latest model of their products.

How do I restore my itunes library, songs, movies and playlists

jeffreyclong — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:00:55 -0800

How do I restore my itunes library, songs, movies and playlists from a cloned backup after doing a clean install of Snow Leopard. I've googled this, and checked the archives and when I've tried it it hasn't worked like it's supposed to.

The goal is for my itunes songs, movies and playlists to appear in itunes exactly as they did prior to the clean install.

Can someone give me as simple as possible instructions for how to do this?

TIA

ipod touch updating error

klangklangston — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:27:22 -0800

Unknown error 0xE8000001 from ipod touch; won't connect. OSX 10.4.11, powerpc.

Last night, I tried to update my girlfriend's ipod touch software so that she could run apps (she'd been wanting it for a while, and I thought it would be a nice surprise). So, I paid my 4.95, downloaded the firmware… and got an error connecting to the iPod (the aforementioned 0xE8000001). I googled around, and it seemed like maybe I needed to update my iTunes version from 8 to 9. OK, so did that. Still, same error.

Fuck.

Now my iTunes says that I need to update my safari so that it can connect to the iTunes store, but I don't believe Safari 4 will run on a powerpc.

How can I: Revert to the earlier version of iTunes and how can I unfuck my girlfriend's iPod before she stabs me in the face?

Cleaning up messy music folders

1024x768 — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 10:11:46 -0800

Help me clean up my messy music files I am embarking on a clean up of my enormously messy MP3 folders. After several computer switches, and crash+restore jobs I have approximately a dozen different folders containing between hundreds and thousands of MP3s each. The issue is each folder is at least a partial duplicate of several others. Each of these dozen folders contains subfolders in various organizational formats. There's far too many files for me to devote the time to manually eliminating duplicates. Confounding matters slightly is that many of the MP3s have woefully inadequate tagging/ID3 data.

This motley collection lives on a Macbook pro running 10.5. I'd like to find an app/script/method that does the following

1) Eliminates all the dupes
2) Cleans up the ID3 info

The cleaned up collection will then be put into an iTunes library which I will let keep things from getting too messy in the future. I would prefer to use iTunes due to ease of syncing with my iPhone, but if there is a truly compelling alternative that will take care of everything, I am willing to consider it.

I'd prefer a free method of doing this, but would shell out a little bit of scratch if there were an app out there that did exactly what I wanted.

iPhone's DRM - let my music go!

DandyRandy — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:46:10 -0800

Does the DRM on iPhone work differently than the DRM on, say, the iPod Classic? I've got an iPhone 3G as well as a 160 GB iPod Classic, both synced to my home computer (PowerMac G5), which also houses my >26k-track iTunes library. Both devices are set to allow me to manually manage music.

When I take those devices to work and connect them to iTunes on my Windows machine (also authorized by the iTunes Music Store), they work differently. I can play the music on the iPod using iTunes, but I cannot play the music on my iPhone - all the songs are grayed out in iTunes.

Is iPhone different in that regard?

I need iTunes in my life but it won't install properly.

fantine — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 10:37:27 -0800

How can I get this dangnabit iTunes download to work? OK folks, I was trying to upgrade to iTunes 9 and have run into a snag.

I'm working on an iBook G4, OS 10.4.11. I was running the update and it failed to install properly because I didn't have enough memory at the time (I was running multiple programs and my computer had been on a for a while). Now I cannot open iTunes because the version I have is "corrupted." So, I re-downloaded the installer after freeing up more memory (I'm now working with about 2 GB).

When I open the mounted file thing, all I see is the itunes.mpkg as a blank file; it doesn't look like an open box, just a blank sheet of paper. When I click on it, I get the error message "The destination folder 'iTunes 9" is on a locked volume. Please select another volume destination." Then I get a box to "select a folder to expand the archive in." I selected desktop, and get "An error occurred attempting to expand 'iTunes 9.' A file was specified where a folder was required."

This sort of thing has happened to me before, and the IT guy told me that my computer had lost the ability to associate that .mpkg with a certain program. I have no idea how he got back that ability though.

If someone could please offer some insight into how I can get iTunes re-installed, or even revert back to an older version, that would be great.

the mp3s breathe shitty.

tylerfulltilt — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 19:55:56 -0800

okay, how did I screw up all my mp3's? I recently backed up the hard drive on my iBook G4. 1.2 ghz. 1meg ram. I go to pull all my mp3's back over to my iBook after installing a new hard drive and there's lots of problems.

First, all of a sudden there's a lot of duplicate tracks where there weren't any before. And on some of the tracks that have duplicates the songs won't play all the way.

For example, I have the song "Ocean Breathes Salty" by Modest Mouse. When I try to play this song, it'll play to about 3 seconds in and then stop. Ditto for it's duplicate track.

I've checked the files in preview, and in preview, there's a skip and a pause in playing at the same point as in iTunes.

however...

After that skip and pause the song will keep playing. So I'm guessing that certain of my mp3's were corrupted when I backed them up somehow. Does this sound like what's going on? What can I do to fix the problem?

I'm running Tiger 10.4.11. I'm running iTunes 8.

iTunes library sharing

anonaccount — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:50:42 -0800

I'm having a party at the weekend and planned on playing some music in the garden using iTunes - I need some help setting this up! My main music library is in my room on a beastly desktop. I planned to hook up my old iBook G4 to some speakers in the garden to play from the shared music library on my desktop machine.

This works - however it plays all music, not just the "checked" songs. I also can't use the iTunes DJ on a shared library (which would be ideal, as I want people at the party to cue up music rather than interrupting the flow).

1) Can I share only "checked" songs? (I know i can do single playlists - but I have a huge library and I really don't want to have to go through selecting just the checked songs to make the new playlist)
2) Can I hack iTunes DJ into working with a shared playlist?

I have an iPod too - if that helps!

electronica just doesn't do it for me

kidsleepy — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:32:30 -0800

How can I create my own Couch to 5K running podcast? I'm starting the Couch to 5K program and I want to make my own podcast/music track to listen to. All I need is to combine some music tracks together into one long mp3 and record some vocal cues at the appropriate times (start running, start walking). What's a simple way to do this? (I'm on a Mac, with iTunes, if it matters)

iTunes, let me watch this TV show please!

fantine — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:02:08 -0800

How can I make iTunes play a large video file? I am trying to watch an HD video on iTunes. The file is 1.62 GB (aka huge) and my iBook G4 does not like it.

Basically, the audio runs ok but the screen glitches and freezes and does not "keep up" with the audio. The whole thing runs slowly.

I would download a poor-quality video just to watch but it was only available on iTunes in HD (bah). I have shut down all other programs running to make it run faster, to no avail. My RAM is limited but I can't help that.

What are good short-term solutions? Some way to degrade the file quality to shrink it? Some hidden process on my mac that I can shut down to speed things up?

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

Useful iTunes keyboard shortcuts?

OmieWise — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 07:28:55 -0800

Is there a way, within iTunes, to change playlists (or navigate back to the main library) and to place the cursor in the search box using just the keyboard? I cannot find these options on any list of iTunes keyboard shortcuts, but I'm trying to rescue many gigs worth of music, and all the clicking around is killing me.

For want of a sync, the party was lost.

Oktober — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:24:59 -0800

Is there any way to put music on an iPod touch without syncing it with itunes or buying from the WiFi store? I have some mp3s. I have my iPod Touch. I even have the docking cable. What I don't have is the machine it syncs to.

I want to add some mp3s from a different machine to my iPod touch without losing what's on there already. I've already tried e-mailing myself an mp3 and then downloading it out of gmail, but it said the attachment was too large and couldn't be opened. Any ideas?

Why do my books skip?

arniec — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 08:10:38 -0800

Why can my mac (macbook pro) not rip audiobook CDs without skipping near the end? I love audiobooks, but I hate carrying around CDs. Best solution for me? Buy CDs, rip them using iTunes "Join Tracks" feature, put on iPod and go.

However I have a constant problem ripping audiobook CDs (all of which run close to the full 70 minutes available on a CD). Near the end of the CD I end up with skips, audible artifacting, and sometimes completely un-listen-able audio.

It is always near the end of the CD, though the point at which the problems come in may vary. It may be as early as 50 minutes in a 70 minute CD or as late as 65.

I'm importing the CDs using Apple Lossles Encoder. I have tried both with and without error correction when reading Audio CDs.

I don't seem to get this problem at all with Audio CDs, no matter their length. It's just an audiobook problem (perhaps audiobooks aren't pressed at the same quality? I don't know...)

I was hoping someone might be able to offer a suggestion, or if this is a known issue.

I'm using my MacBook Pro 2.4GHz Core Duo Intel system (4GB RAM, 360GB 5400RPM hard drive), so 2 models back from the current. I'm using the internal Superdrive for the reading (are there any known problems with this drive? Might I do better with a USB 2.0 external drive?)

Thanks!

iTunes iPopup

curagea — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 21:34:59 -0800

iTunes now pops a little box showing the currently playing song (pic here). How do I turn it off? I have iTunes 8.0.2 on Mac Leopard. This has never happened on previous iTunes versions.

Whenever I start playing a song, or change songs, whether manually or automatically, the popup shows up on screen (if album artwork was present, it'll sometimes show that). Doesn't matter if iTunes is currently in focus or not. At first, I thought it was pretty nifty, since if you change songs while it's still there, it'll rotate like a little cube. But then I can't see anything behind it while it's there. It doesn't steal focus away from any open windows, just pops up over them.

The popup displays for 2-3 seconds before it goes away.

Google has failed me this time. Anyone has/had this feature? How do I turn it off? I've looked in Preferences to no avail.

Why can't iTunes 8.02 find my songs?

Lillitatiana — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 12:35:09 -0800

Why can't iTunes 8.02 find my songs? I have a brand-new MacBook Pro (10.5.6), to which I copied over all my files from the Time Machine backup of my previous computer. Everything is working fine except for iTunes. I need to manually locate each and every one of my songs. A Google search yield nothing but this. It's helpful knowing others are having the same issue, but not so helpful in that the issue has yet to be resolved. Any tips, tricks, and suggestions are welcome. Thanks!

Halt, iTunes.

Pants! — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:47:01 -0800

Running Mac OSX, my iTunes window keeps moving so that the grey section that contains the play buttons, volume control, etc is hidden above the top of the screen. How do I fix it?

Kraftwerk is just out of my reach!

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 02:49:38 -0800

How can I change file extensions on a group of files "in bulk", specifically from .flac to .mp3? Keywords: iTunes, Mac, OS X. I just downloaded the entire Kraftwerk ouvre via BitTorrent. Hooray. However, are of the files are ".flac" and I need to change them to .mp3 to be able to add them to my iTunes library (right now iTunes won't add them). There are over 60 songs in the BitTorrent file. Any way can highlight all of them and change all of the file extensions at once?

Thanks!

Starting over with a new laptop, how best to stay organized?

pseudostrabismus — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 12:50:58 -0800

I'd like to know the best way to move a selected group of files & applications to a new laptop, and advice to help ensure that my new Mac doesn't get bunged up with duplicate & improperly deleted files like my old one did, with its inexplicably full hard drive and crammed iTunes & iPhoto folders. This is rather lengthy, geared to the slightly moronic layperson (me), and has 6 sub-questions inside. My old laptop quickly filled up & slowed down. I tried to back up & delete unused files, but later I'd find the same files still tucked away on the machine, not deleted after all. Also, when I first imported files from my old PC to my then-new G4, for some reason a lot of files showed up as "locked" on the new computer. Many of them (just word docs & jpegs, nothing important or complex) were nested into folders (from how I'd organized my old computer)- and try as I might, I could never get them all unlocked to delete them. It was such a pain in the butt.

So I have a new laptop now (thank you, Santa!), and I want to avoid all the problems from last time. Hence, I have some questions. And as you will soon discover, I'm not particularly computer-savvy. Plus I'm inexplicably intimidated by computer jargon. So simple explanations would be really appreciated here!

The potentially-relevant stats:
The old one is a 12" PowerBook G4, purchased in 2005, running OSX 10.4.11
The new one is a 2008 MacBook (aluminum body & glass screen) running OSX 10.5.5
I have a 1GB USB memory stick and a 500GB external firewire drive.

Okay, so here are some really obvious questions:

1. What's the best way to transfer many selected files from my old box to the new one?
I don't want all the files from the old machine- just the ones I'm currently using. And I particularly need to avoid accidentally moving copies of locked files to the new machine- which is tricky as they're all nested deep into folders and I can't find them all. In fact,

2. How do I ensure that I never again have any "locked" files on the new machine?!
Is there a default for this? I don't even know how they all got locked in the first place, and although I know you can select specific files & folders, then hit "Get Info" and select "Unlock", my files are nested deep into various folders, and that command doesn't unlock individual locked files nested in folders- believe me, I've tried!
And I can't just delete the locked files, either- that leaves the originals locked where they were AND adds locked & therefore undeletable duplicate files to the Trash, thereby doubling the number of locked files, aargh. I don't want to go all the way to the end of each tentacle and unlock the files one by one- there are hundreds.
Is there an easier, blanket way to unlock them all?

3. How do I transfer programs I downloaded from the web?
VisualHub is the main one I'm concerned about since it's discontinued.
But I'd also like to keep my paid copies of Net News Wire, VLC, Transmit, and Minuteur.
Also, I acquired a few other programs from friends (Final Draft, Photoshop). Is there an easy way to move those over, too?

4. How to transfer drafts of iWeb pages?

5. When I get going on the new computer, how best to keep the files streamlined on that machine?
I noticed that I was losing a lot of disk space to:
a) duplicate, "locked" files, as above
b) extra copies of photos & videos I downloaded from my digital camera- they all went into iPhoto, which was fine, but then there seemed to be other copies (?) floating around in the "Pictures" folder, and in other places.
c) iTunes songs. In the past, I would try to delete them in iTunes by selecting & dragging to trash or hitting delete, (like I used to on Windows Music). And then, after "deleting" them, I'd be annoyed to note that I didn't free up any disk space... because the files were still sitting in my Music folder. Obviously my limited PC skillz didn't transfer really well.

6. Is there an easy web tutorial that shows how you're supposed to manage iTunes?

Oh these are such dumb questions. I'm embarassed. Sorry, smart computer people. This is seriously not my forte. If you ever need help with something I'm good at, like public speaking or feng shui or crossing your eyes or something, I promise to be soooo nice when I help you! THANK YOU.

Accessing Admin's Music from a Limited Account

sjuhawk31 — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 07:31:37 -0800

MacFilter: How can I set up a user account that has access to my music on iTunes but nothing else? My family has asked me to bring my laptop and speakers to Thanksgiving dinner tonight. I'd like to set up my MacBook in a "kiosk-like" mode that allows iTunes to run (with access to my music folder) but nothing else. I have the first part of it set up: I created an account that is limited to use of iTunes. But when I launch it there's no music because that user's home folder doesn't have my files. How can I share that across users so I can let my relatives criticize my taste in music?

How can I automatically add tracks to the OS X iTunes Library?

harkin banks — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:05:26 -0800

Is there a scriptable solution to add items to the OS X iTunes library? I am in the process of switching management of my iPod from my older XP desktop to my MacBook. For a couple of years now I have been using a homegrown Perl program to download podcasts, and then running the console version of iTunes Library Updater as a scheduled task to automatically add them to the iTunes library. It's great -- works totally in the background, and when I sync my iPod everything is Just There.

I'd like to duplicate this process on my MacBook. The Perl script obviously ports fine, and I can schedule it using cron, but I can't find a way to automatically add items to the iTunes library. Some things I've considered:

-- iTLU is written in .NET, so that's out (unless it runs under mono -- but I fear that way lies madness.)

-- At Doug's Applescripts, the suggested solution is to add a folder action to the folder you want to watch. However, my understanding is that folder actions only work if the folder is actively being worked with in the Finder (open, having things dropped on it, etc.), so adding files to my podcast folder behind the scenes won't trigger a folder action.

-- There's a Mac::iTunes module on CPAN, but it looks pretty unfinished (for instance, under "Bugs" for Mac::iTunes::Library::Write it says "just wait".)

This is for a MacBook running Leopard. Any suggestions?

help me manage my contacts

luriete — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 11:49:02 -0800

I accidentally synced my mac's contacts with gmail, and added 4000 unwanted contacts. I manually stripped them out, turned off gmail syncing, and now I get an "unknown error" from itunes when syncing with my iphone, and a "syncing contacts will add 4000 (or so) contacts" message ... even though those people weren't showing up in my contacts app. Post-sync, those people are back in my contacts app, after I spent an hour cleaning it up and deleting them ... and they're on my iphone too, even though I got the error message.

How do I just nuke all contacts from my iphone and start fresh?

Keeping the same iTunes Library across Boot Camp?

dunkadunc — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:24:29 -0800

iTunesfilter: I'm running Mac OS 10.4 and Windows XP on my Mac Mini using Boot Camp. Thing is, I'd like to keep the two iTunes libraries in sync with each other. The actual music files are kept on an external hard drive, due to the library's size.
I do most of my music management in Mac OS, but I'd like to have the changes I make in OSX show up in Windows, as well. Is there some sort of software/script that will sync the Windows library with the Mac one, periodically?
Thanks in advance!

Researching going legit with dubiously sourced music collection

superfurry — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 03:55:59 -0800

Legitimizing iTunes Library. I have *ahem* a friend. This friend has a reasonably large digital music collection being managed by iTunes on a Mac. He would like to understand the cost of ensuring this collection is 100% legal, having realized that the vast majority of it is not. Purely out of curiosity, this *ahem* friend, has decided that maybe it would be a worthwhile thing to look into the cost of legitimately purchasing all the music in his digital collection. When this friend thinks about the fact that his largely ill-gotten music is being managed by iTunes, and that the iTunes Store probably 'stocks' a large proportion of this music, there might be a cool iTunes plugin that can do some amazing trick to give him a very good idea what the cost would be of purchasing all this music. Seems like a great opportunity for Apple to develop something like this.

Is there such a thing ? No matter whether it uses the iTunes Store, Amazon, etc.

It should be a plugin for iTunes or some other clever techy thing rather than manually doing an album count and then working it out from there.

Would also be ideal if it were OS X compatible.

iTunes won't let me import files

puffmoike — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 10:10:36 -0800

Why is iTunes preventing me adding files to the library? Used to work fine, but now iTunes informs me that "You do not have enough access privileges for this operation". I have checked (via Get Info in OSX) the Permissions for my Music folder and each of the relevant subfolders and all show that I have Read & Write permission. Arrrgghhh! Further info:

Can't recall changing any settings, and it worked just fine until a few weeks ago.

OS X 10.5.3
iTunes 7.6.2 (9)
library resides on the primary drive of my MBP (Macintosh HD > Users > Puffmoike > Music > iTunes)