iTunes = Meh x 100

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[rant]

For the life of me, I just don't get it. I know that this is absolutely the last forum on earth that I should be venting this rant to, but w/e I suppose. I don't belong to any other Mac forums on the net. (Aren't you all so lucky ! :Evil: )

iTunes. Ever the source of controversy. But it's not iTunes which deserves the real investigation. It's Apple. Why, I ask myself, is there ONLY iTunes to get the job done ? Sure, I've tried Cog and one other app with a small footprint, but seriously.. those apps just seem to fill the role of 'sabotage', and keep Apple users in good with their flagship media player, iTunes.

Why is this rant coming out *again* now ? Well I just upgraded to Snow Leopard last week, and am only now fulfilling my media player needs. I've NEVER liked iTunes for a couple of extremely valid reasons, but there's nothing else out there in Mac land which does the job much better.

I'm facing this issue again, because, as I had finished importing everything from my external HD to iTunes, I wanted to play some Interpol songs. But they were nowhere to be found in the library. I'm like, "hu ?" I don't get it.

Then it hits me. So I do a search for .ogg. Yay.. at least I have my answer now ! Then I also remember, that not only are all of my ogg files sitting lonely on my external HD, but so are my FLAC files ! Greeeeat.

Yes. I'm aware of Xiph. And yes, I'm aware of "Fluke", which imports FLAC files into iTunes, but I always get left with a feeling of incompleteness after having to resort to using these extensions in order to play what every other media player out there does, natively.

Apple still feels it needs to stick the big brother mentality to its users, and this bugs the heck out of me. It really is like 1984. Come to think of it, Apple's mentality is far different from what they claimed it to be back when the first Macintosh computer was released, which was that of being unique, and seeing individuals as being free from the tyranny imposed upon them by companies who employed the 'box' mentality.

But from what I've seen in the past year and a half of having owned two MacBook Pro's ( don't get me wrong, I love them) and having bought a friend's iPhone 3G, Apple is quite suited for an Orwellian reprise. Being tied down to one product/application is fine if you don't mind it, but what about people whom prefer options ?

What possible logical reasoning can there be for not seeing a suitable competitor to iTunes ? Guarantee you all, that if the iTunes store didn't exist, it wouldn't matter worth a snarf. But that's just one aspect of this. And I don't have the time for the rest of it.

That said, I've only seen ONE possible contender for the media player throne on the Mac side, but it too, leaves me feeling like I have to decide between stability (iTunes) or the inherent features which I crave so much.

ENTER SONGBIRD

Why Songbird, why ? Why do you tease me so, with your all so 'almost' perfect existence and then leave me hanging like a windsock on a day with no breeze ?

How can it be that the iTunes devs are able to make an extremely stable product (I'll give them that in spades) which consumes a more than reasonable amount of real memory while making music sound pretty fregin' good, while the Songbird devs on the other hand... Seem to fall flat on their faces ?

I LOVE almost everything about Songbird. The way it handles its library database (flawless with my external HD), the import methods and especially the watched folder feature, which iTunes is SORELY lacking. Songbird also handles my files in exactly the same way in which they are seen. Every tag is read properly and every album and song is listed in their proper order. I couldn't get iTunes to do that, even if I were holding a blow torch to its interface and told it that I was about to get Mid Evil on its little patooty !

But alas... Songbird has its flaws. The first flaw, is almost forgivable since I'm pretty sure that some good cleaning up of code will optimize things and iron the situation out. This situation being the 'occasional' short hiccup in audio playback. Now realize, that all of my music is being fetched from my external HD, so perhaps it's a deeper issue than I'm making it out to be. Could be hard to fix, I dunno.

The second issue on the other hand, is what kills me. This is a very well documented issue, and I believe that it has actually improved since Songbirds' last incarnation. Songbird, the memory hog !

From the moment it is opened, it jumps to using 65 MB of real memory without even playing anything, using its default skin, and only having one extension installed but not running. I have a feeling it is due to the nature of the built in Mozilla browser. They really need to either let go of that thing, or make it an option for the user to uninstall if they wish.

And that is the last piece of software (for now) which is keeping me from eternal bliss and enchantment with my Mac. Well, luckily for all of you, the wife needs me, and so I must march off and do whatever I'm asked, like a good lil' boy.

[/rant]

Doug
 
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Thank you for using the rant tags appropriately. ;)
 

dtravis7


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I forgot all about this thread.

I hear you on Songbird. I really do not like it at least so far. It's just not my cup of tea I guess. :D

I am all for either Apple or some third party making a driver so iTunes will natively work with .OGG, .FLAC. It would make things easier for especially switchers and cause less switcher hatred of iTunes. I don't work much with either OGG or Flac but when I do it would be nice. I am sure someone could write a driver. It was done way back for WMA and iTunes.
 
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Doug b
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Ya know... I can actually live with having to install third party plug ins which allow importing and playback of those file formats. It's not the end of the world I suppose, though native support would certainly be much better because it would ensure core stability in the program due to code optimization and such..

But what bothers me even more than that issue, is how iTunes handles file importing, database storage, tagging and file sorting. Apple assumes that everyone is okay with how iTunes sees fit to look at a file and correlate it within its database structure, ignoring the basic elements outside of a specific tag. For example, if an album of mine isn't tagged at all, a different media player such as Songbird would simply look at the file names, and arrange them in a logical order. iTunes doesn't even try to do this.

iTunes even ignores certain id tag versions, and this is why I wind up having albums from the same band which I know are tagged with a year and track number, sorted in a totally discombobulated manner. Perhaps though, it is because I don't let iTunes consolidate my library and put stuff into a folder the way it wants to.

And why should I want to ? I spent a good deal of time long ago, putting files and folders into a structure which I was comfortable working with. (see screen shots) Think about how I have things arranged for a moment, and tell me the iTunes way of doing anything makes sense:

I keep everything on an External HD. Everything is arranged in alphabetical order. See screen shots. Why then, would I want iTunes to copy all of that to another part of the same external HD in some weird messed up (IMO) order just so that it can sort things the way I already have them ? (when it doesnt' even do that, anyway.) And so now I have double the space taken up on the external drive, too. Why yes, I get it. I'm supposed to delete the original files. But why !? Everything is already so nice and tidy ! Besides that point, what if I decide one day that another media player, or let's say OS is right for me. Now I've got these files in this weird order because of iTunes, and I have to re-arrange everything again. This means having to delete or recreate folders, then copy paste stuff everywhere. Believe me, I've gone through this already as an experiment. NEVER again.

I can't be the only Mac user (switcher even) who does things in such a way. After all, it wasn't so long ago that the music loving geek crowd wasn't subservient to these crummy online music services whom offer up horribly compressed files with zero liner notes and such. What I still do, and hope that other do as well, is purchase real music from a store. I love vinyl, personally speaking. But right now my Rega table is in the States, while I sit here in EU. (ironic)

I like physical media. I like not only the quality it affords my audio equipment, but I also like looking at original artwork and liner notes. If there's good music to be purchased, I'll buy it. I test music online, and then buy if I like it. So naturally, I have ripped a LOT of albums. Some to Mp3, and others to Ogg and some to FLAC.

My favorite Mp3 player plays Ogg and FLAC natively, so why shouldn't I ? (iRiver IHP 120 or Sansa Fuze) I even have an iPod modded with ROCKbox. Point being, I've invested time into having things be the way I like them, and don't like a program dictating things otherwise. It's unnatural. Every other media player I've ever used in my life (besides iTunes) has cooperated in this respect. They were made to. And not with some complicated database system. Usually some simple C+ or C++ coding with an SQL database for querying. At least let me choose between the two methods, Apple !

And how difficult is it for them to integrate a watched folder option so that I don't have to manually import files every time I add them to my external HD library ? Bottom line is, if it weren't for two things, I'd switch to Songbird in a split second:

1. iTunes doesn't skip a beat when playing music. I store every piece of music I own/have on an Western Digital 500gig MyBook external HD. iTunes obviously does a great job at communicating with the HD and buffers everything perfectly so that there are no gaps in audio playback.

2. Songbird does just the opposite. I'll get between 1-2 second gaps in audio playback at random times. This simply isn't acceptable, and darn right annoying.

If either of those two things changed, so would my media player of choice. Until then, I have to live with iTunes being a constant thorn in my side, the way it has been since day one. I'm not crazy. I just like things how "I" like them.

Doug

Screen shot 2009-11-22 at 1.14.07 PM.png

Screen shot 2009-11-22 at 1.23.57 PM.png
 
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so write something better. I'm not motivated enough to, but I'm also not irritated enough with iTunes or Songbird to bother :D
 
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Doug b
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so write something better. I'm not motivated enough to, but I'm also not irritated enough with iTunes or Songbird to bother :D

Dude, believe me. If I could, I would. But I don't have the time or talent for such an endeavor. It just irritates me that iTunes COULD be everything I need it to, but they just don't care enough to make it so. It's this proprietary way of handling things and the whole being 'different' thing IMO.

Besides, something tells me that even if I did have the opportunity to do it, Apple would somehow see to it that the app never made it that far. I mean, why are there so many media players (and great ones too) for Windows, and only ONE somewhat sufficient one for OS X ? I say sufficient because to me, iTunes isn't fully functional in the same way that other media players are. If Songbird fixed that caching issue, it would be the end of iTunes for I suspect, more than just me.

All other media players for OS X (the 2 or 3 which exist) are pure garbage. Cog was the closest after Songbird, but fell short in many ways by a long shot. VLC can play stuff, sure... but that's it on the short term. Really kind of weird if you asked me. I just can't believe that I'm the only person out of millions who feels this way. Am I trapped in the Matrix or something ? (god if the answer was only so simple ! )

Doug
 
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My guess is that simply the # of developers out there is directly proportional to the number of users, and in the case of Apples.. it may not even be directly proportional (I believe you'd find it to be a lower percentage per capita). I think that has more to do with 3rd party apps than anything. I don't really believe there's some vast conspiracy out there, 3rd party apps (especially free/shareware) are more limited in general anyway.

I did install plugins for OGG and FLAC, which resolved the major problems I had with iTunes.. the last one, well.. that was the management issues.. and in the end I simply came to the conclusion that since I wasn't using any other player (no more windows machines around, and my linux laptop is a work laptop) I really no longer cared.
 
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Doug b
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I hear ya. But what would you do in my position ? Please seriously take into account the things I've said about how I organize stuff. There currently appears to be no solution for my issues with iTunes. I can deal with the FLAC and Ogg thing, but not having a watched folder option for auto import upon startup, and having to re-tag everything because of how it sorts stuff, is a bit ridiculous to me.

At this point though, I'll settle for it all, so long as my other MacBook pro isn't totally borked and there's a reasonable explanation for what happened to it. And as if I didn't have enough to think about with this stuff, I'm now starting to witness another issue all together with my 13' Unibody MBP. When hooked up to an external monitor, at random times after sleep, I'll wake the screen only to see what looks like television fuzz. The kind you get when there's no connection. Greeeeat.

But that's for another thread. Aren't I the lucky one eh ? ;D

Doug
 
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I think I've seen some applescripts floating the web for auto-import.. you could probably automate tagging as well using applescript. Check out dougscripts.com etc might find something useful by itself.. or some inspiration
 
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Thanks for the suggestion. The only thing I've seen that was related to auto import was unfortunately made for ... Windows. *sigh* Funny, after all this, I'm in iTunes right now and totally not understanding something in regards to how it follows *or doesn't* its own instructions according to set tags.

I'm looking at three albums. Each one by Interpol. The order in which they reside is not correct, and it never has been, in iTunes. So I select one of the albums entirely, and cmd+i I change the tags so that each album has an number which correlates to what album number it is. Turn On the Bright Lights is their first album, so that is marked 1 of 3 and so on. Even after doing this, and clicking on the appropriate tab, *first album number so they're in the right place, and then artist so that the artist's are in alphabetical order* it changes nothing.

I don't understand this. I will look into dougs scripts for an automated tagging script though, thanks. I've looked at his stuff before, but didn't look into that one specifically.

Doug
 
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Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes ♫ Folder Actions

I believe that will at least be close to the action you're looking for vis-a-vis auto import from folder

Awesome, I'll look into that. And wouldn't you believe it.. I actually found a script which seems to solve the way it sorts things. It actually mirrors the way I have my files labeled and changes them as such within the playlist ! I then had to do some really weird futzing around with the label tabs on top though, in order to get everything synch'd up right, but it's looking good now, thanks to you man !

I owe you big time !

doug

Edit: In case anyone is looking for a similar script, here it is. It's the one labeled Tags Mirror: http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/searchTheScripts.php?page=3&my_srch_term=id+tags
 

dtravis7


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Doug, I also like the old days of the actual album and the pictures and liner notes. I miss those days! :D
 
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OoooOOooo and I sort using "Album By Year" because well.. I work chronologically too.

and I miss LP's... well that's not true, I have a ton of them still ;)
 
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Well, I'm almost there. iTunes still wants to give me grief though.

Doug
 

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Doug, I tried to view that and it said I did not belong there! :D
 
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dtravis7


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That one works. I see what you mean. I will mess with itunes in a bit and get back to you if I find a way around it.
 
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Thanks a lot. I really appreciate your effort. Hopefully this can help others as well.

Doug
 
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Just an update:

I want to thank Dysfunction a LOT. I got the script which Doug wrote for folder actions and adding songs to iTunes, to work. Right on man..

iTunes is really a battle though, and wish it wasn't so. But after everything has been said and done, I've finally got it to about 99% fully functional. Had to:

1. Install Xiph plug in globally in order to import and playback Ogg files.
2. Use FLUKE in order to import and playback FLAC's (still doesn't work well with tags though) (the actual import process was painful, too.)
3. Add Mirror script which mirrors the file name from the original file.
4. Manually add some numbers in front of album names so albums are in order

Sounds like less of a hassle than it actually is. It's annoying as h3ll. And it's still not totally perfect, but a lot more acceptable. I just can't wait for the day when Songbird isn't such a memory hog, and doesn't skip during playback from an external HD. Because that will be the day I say adios to iTunes.

Doug
 

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