Things I miss from my PC

Hi, I've had a mac for about a year now and I still miss these features from my old XP PC. They all seem pretty small things, but are oh so annoying, so i was wondering if anyone has any idea how i can get the following features on my mac or if anyone just agrees with me so i can share the pain!

A. In windows when i opened a folder with any music in, i could click 'play all music' or something like that in the corner and all the music files in there would open in a playlist. Any apps out there that will do that?

B. In a similar way, when i opened any picture in XP i could just use the arrow keys to cycle through any pictures that were in that folder.

C. In Itunes a song will be playing, say it's track 7 on an album, then i start to browse my library, then there's no way back to view the album i was playing! I have to locate it all over again.

D. Similar thing in Itunes, I'm browsing and stumble across a song I like from an album I forgot about, there is now way to say - play the whole album.

E. I can't stop Itunes adding every audio file i open to the library. I don't want it to do this for sounds or streamed music off the internet.

F. I have loads of music on an external hard drive, and some on my mac hard drive. Why can't i have two libraries IN THE SIDEBAR. I have resorted to option clicking everytime i open Itunes and choosing the lbrary i want. I'm not a software engineer but based on my windows experience this seems like a pretty basic idea.

I bought a mac because i need Logic for work. I have no passion for either PC or mac so please don't start the old PC vs mac thing, they are just machines, objects, they both work OK. But if anyone has any ideas to fix these things i'd really appreciate your time telling me how.

Thanks

G. Oh yeh ...when i right-click in a PC on a music file, i could select 'cue up' or something, and it would appear next in my current playlist. Can't seem to do that with itunes.

Most of those functions sound like additional bits added in from software programs.

One of them I can help with however is the pictures one. If you select the picture you want to view and hit the space bar to open quicklook you can scroll through files and pictures with the arrow keys then.

SMB_27 said:

B. In a similar way, when i opened any picture in XP i could just use the arrow keys to cycle through any pictures that were in that folder.

C. In Itunes a song will be playing, say it's track 7 on an album, then i start to browse my library, then there's no way back to view the album i was playing! I have to locate it all over again.

D. Similar thing in Itunes, I'm browsing and stumble across a song I like from an album I forgot about, there is now way to say - play the whole album.

E. I can't stop Itunes adding every audio file i open to the library. I don't want it to do this for sounds or streamed music off the internet.

F. I have loads of music on an external hard drive, and some on my mac hard drive. Why can't i have two libraries IN THE SIDEBAR. I have resorted to option clicking everytime i open Itunes and choosing the lbrary i want. I'm not a software engineer but based on my windows experience this seems like a pretty basic idea.

Click to expand...

B: Check out Xee, I think it'll let you do that. Or just use Quicklook (space bar) and the arrow keys... that's what I usually do.

C: Hit Command+L to jump straight to the currently playing song in your library. (Bonus hint: Command+F will select the search field).

D: You can invert the iTunes store arrow links to do just that. Clicking on an arrow next to an album or artist name takes me to a view of just that album or just that artist:
macosxhints.com - Modify the iTunes 4.5 link arrows' behavior

F: Why not have a single library with music from your internal and external harddrives? Just switch off the option under: iTunes > Preferences > Advanced > "Copy files to iTunes music folder when adding to library".

Then add all your external drive's music files to your library and voila: A single library with all your music. When you're not connected to that drive, those songs will just not play.

the space function in finder works on almost everything, it's really awesome, solves more of your problems, because you can use it to play mp3s!! so if u have a bunch of songs/sounds u don't want to add to your library, just space-play them, works like a charm

also, (D) when u are browsing through your library, if u click on the Grid View, it will give you the whole album btw u can then also choose to show by artist

As you correctly point out they are just machines and if you found the PC's a better system, go back to it and be comfortable. I have both a Mac tower and a Dell Latitude desktop for a number of reasons.

Hi,

Just a quick thanks for all your replys. The spacebar tip is really useful and i didn't know about it. It's a shame however that for pictures the arrow keys no longer work when you go into full screen mode. With music, the music stops when the music folder is no longer the active window. But still ...this makes things a little better.

For what it's worth i think i will go back to PC next time I upgrade. Mainly compatibility issues, high cost and i don't think itunes is all that great. But I guess I'll just make the most of having an utterly beautiful computer for now, until i go back to an ugly one that happens to work a bit better for me. Why is life always like this!