Escape Artists
The Lounge at the End of the Universe => Gallimaufry => Topic started by: stePH on June 02, 2008, 01:36:57 AM
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The war between Apple and Microsoft continues .... ;D
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The war between Apple and Microsoft continues .... ;D
Do you think if Microsoft bit into the Apple, they might obtain the "Knowledge of how to make stuff that doesn't suck"?
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The war between Apple and Microsoft continues .... ;D
Do you think if Microsoft bit into the Apple, they might obtain the "Knowledge of how to make stuff that doesn't suck"?
No, I think Apple would start making ugly things that fail often, still cost too much and don't work with anything else.
As a former vice commander of mine was fond of saying: "Remember boys, Murphy's out there and he's waiting for you."
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The war between Apple and Microsoft continues .... ;D
Do you think if Microsoft bit into the Apple, they might obtain the "Knowledge of how to make stuff that doesn't suck"?
No, I think Apple would start making ugly things that fail often, still cost too much and don't work with anything else.
Well, I don't know about how often Apple products fail, but I'm in the apparently tiny minority of people who think everything they've built in the last 15 years is incredibly ugly; and they certainly have issues working with other companies products (anyone here using an iPod without iTunes?); and their prices are generally about 50% higher than comparatively speced PCs, or MP3 players, or whatever.
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The war between Apple and Microsoft continues .... ;D
Do you think if Microsoft bit into the Apple, they might obtain the "Knowledge of how to make stuff that doesn't suck"?
No, I think Apple would start making ugly things that fail often, still cost too much and don't work with anything else.
Well, I don't know about how often Apple products fail, but I'm in the apparently tiny minority of people who think everything they've built in the last 15 years is incredibly ugly; and they certainly have issues working with other companies products (anyone here using an iPod without iTunes?); and their prices are generally about 50% higher than comparatively speced PCs, or MP3 players, or whatever.
I do --- I use hpodder to get my feeds and gnupod to load 'em on to my iPod. Failing that, I just use Amarok.
Heck, even if Apple ported iTunes to Linux, I'd have no reason to change.
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Sure, it's possible. But the insane random directory structure that iPods use is designed entirely to make it difficult to use an iPod with non-Apple managers. Windows products fail to talk to non-Windows products because they have sufficient hubris to forget that such products exist. Apple products fail to talk to non-Apple products because they deliberately try to use one product to lock you into a whole Apple environment.
There are third-party workarounds in both cases, it's true. But that doesn't excuse the problem.
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The directory structure employed is a result of legality, not technology. It's so that people can't copy music off iPods easily.
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So far as I'm aware, no law or court ruling in any jurisdiction anywhere in the world encourages DAP manufacturers to make life difficult for people wanting to make a backup of their music. If anyone has a legal right to decide how easy it is to copy your music from place to place, it's the copyright holder, and not Apple. And the copyright holder has marginally-effectve DRM at their disposal, if they want to take advantage of it.
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So far as I'm aware, no law or court ruling in any jurisdiction anywhere in the world encourages DAP manufacturers to make life difficult for people wanting to make a backup of their music. If anyone has a legal right to decide how easy it is to copy your music from place to place, it's the copyright holder, and not Apple. And the copyright holder has marginally-effectve DRM at their disposal, if they want to take advantage of it.
The music companies forced Apple to use DRM. Otherwise they wouldn't agree to distribution through iTunes. Steve Jobs announced about a year and a half ago that he thought DRM sucked. It's why you can now buy some non-DRM music at iTunes.
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Steve Jobs is lying. Or he disagrees with the ITMS management team, and has surprisingly little input. Several indie labels wanted to unencrypted downloads available on iTunes, and their response was "sorry, but we DRM everything. If you don't want that, go elsewhere." And then the mean old record companies let Amazon sell unencrypted MP3's, and they didn't even put up much of a fight over it! Shortly after that, ITMS started offering DRM-free downloads, having apparently won some major coup against the record labels.
But this is all beside the point, when it comes to them obfuscating directory structures and filenames. That has nothing to do with the record companies or DRM at all.
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Steve Jobs is lying. Or he disagrees with the ITMS management team, and has surprisingly little input. Several indie labels wanted to unencrypted downloads available on iTunes, and their response was "sorry, but we DRM everything. If you don't want that, go elsewhere." And then the mean old record companies let Amazon sell unencrypted MP3's, and they didn't even put up much of a fight over it! Shortly after that, ITMS started offering DRM-free downloads, having apparently won some major coup against the record labels.
But this is all beside the point, when it comes to them obfuscating directory structures and filenames. That has nothing to do with the record companies or DRM at all.
First, this (http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?newsid=9532). itunes plus has the entire EMI catalogue DRM-free. Also for quite a while they've had other labels music DRM-free at a slightly higher price (i think $1.29). I don't know where you got the info about the indie labels, but I'd recheck it or get a better source.
Second, if I understand it correctly, you're pissed because you can't just take your iPod and download all of your music onto any computer you happen to come across. You want it so that everytime a friend comes over you can just plug his iPod into your computer and steal his entire library. And you wonder why companies are pushing DRM?
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I don't know where you got the info about the indie labels, but I'd recheck it or get a better source.
I got that (a couple of years ago) from a marketing manager at Inception Records, who claims that ITMS refused to carry their music unless they were allowed to add DRM to it. Possibly he was lying, but I assumed that he knew what he was talking about.
Second, if I understand it correctly, you're pissed because you can't just take your iPod and download all of your music onto any computer you happen to come across. You want it so that everytime a friend comes over you can just plug his iPod into your computer and steal his entire library. And you wonder why companies are pushing DRM?
First of all and once again: Randomising the file names does not constitute DRM. You can put an iPod into disk mode and copy the music off onto your friends computer, and play it perfectly happily, assuming there is no actual DRM. Of course, it might take a while to re-name everything sensibly, but it provides absolutely no copy protection whatsoever.
If those tracks are DRM'd, though, then the publishers can prevent them from playing on unauthorised hardware, and coping music between computers becomes futile.
Second: I do not have an iPod. The DAP I do have acts as a UMS device, and I can drag-and-drop directories on and off it as I see fit. I also have no DRM'd music, as almost all of it has been ripped from CDs, with a few titles bought from Amazon, or other DRM-free source. And yet, I've managed to avoid the temptation to "steal an entire library". I have no desire to steal music from anyone, and I don't want to infringe on the rights of the copyright holder, but I also want to be able to exercise my rights to the music without Apple (who after all, are not the copyright holder and do not represent them) telling me that I can't do it that way.
Do I wonder why companies want DRM? No, not particularly. But I do wonder why no-one has ever done any studies to find out if their DRM is actually doing any good, or just costing a lot of money and driving even more people to pirates. I suspect the latter, but we really don't know.
But this is irrelevant, because the issue wasn't about DRM. It was about a bizzare file structure system that does nothing to protect copyright, but is specifically in place to encourage people to use iTunes to manage their iPods.
The point is that you suggested that not being cross-compatible with other companies' products was a failing for Microsoft, but when Apple put deliberate roadblocks in place so that owning one product pretty much requires you to own other Apple products, you go into some bizarre tangent about DRM being forced on them by record labels.
The first couple of generations of iPods could only be connected to a computer via firewire. Is it just coincidence that firewire ports are standard issue on Macs, but not on PCs? Or was this also forced on them by the labels?
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The first couple of generations of iPods could only be connected to a computer via firewire. Is it just coincidence that firewire ports are standard issue on Macs, but not on PCs? Or was this also forced on them by the labels?
Unfortunately I don't have time to go into the whole post for a response other than to say that Apple is focused on a very specific experience and they have a lot of legal shackles placed on them by the contract they are forced to operate under.
On Firewire Vs. USB — USB was massively impractical to use as the port until USB 2.0 Hi Speed (they need better nomenclature) Firewire was several times quicker, and considering that it was a given that gigs of information would be moved at once at several points over the iPods lifetime, cutting down that move from something like four to eight hours to one or two was a technical decision, though there's probably some merit to them trying to push Firewire out onto the windows ecosystem.
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The point is that you suggested that not being cross-compatible with other companies' products was a failing for Microsoft,
I never said anything about microsoft not being cross compatible. I do and will continue to saay that nothing from microsoft ever works without being messed around with.
I like Apple because it works straight out of the box. iTunes is a wonderful jukebox program that does everything I need. Nobody has been able to show me any one program for any DAP that can do everything I need as easily as iTunes does.
disclaimer: I don't use the iTunes store, because MP3 (and AAC) files sound like shit.
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The point is that you suggested that not being cross-compatible with other companies' products was a failing for Microsoft,
I never said anything about microsoft not being cross compatible. I do and will continue to saay that nothing from microsoft ever works without being messed around with.
Ah, my apologies. It was windup who said that MS products "don't work with anything else". But anyway. That was my point.
On Firewire Vs. USB — USB was massively impractical to use as the port until USB 2.0 Hi Speed (they need better nomenclature) Firewire was several times quicker, and considering that it was a given that gigs of information would be moved at once at several points over the iPods lifetime, cutting down that move from something like four to eight hours to one or two was a technical decision, though there's probably some merit to them trying to push Firewire out onto the windows ecosystem.
When the first iPod came out (October 2001), the transfer rate of USB 2.0 (which had been built into pretty much all computers made in the previous year) was 480Mb/s, and the transfer rate of Firewire was 400Mb/s. So the speed argument doesn't hold up as well as you might imagine.
True, since then, Firewire has increased to 800Mb/s, but at the time, they seem to have chosen the slower interface that was only available on Macs, rather than the faster interface that was on almost every computer.
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Nobody has been able to show me any one program for any DAP that can do everything I need as easily as iTunes does.
A file explorer does everything I need for my DAP, which is basically: move files on and off it. The idea of adding extra software to manage it has never made much sense to me, but I know many people find it very useful.
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Nobody has been able to show me any one program for any DAP that can do everything I need as easily as iTunes does.
A file explorer does everything I need for my DAP, which is basically: move files on and off it. The idea of adding extra software to manage it has never made much sense to me, but I know many people find it very useful.
iTunes has ripping and transcoding functionality built-in, which I find convenient. What I find inconvenient is the way it manages podcasts on my iPod. It orders them with the newest ones at the top of the list and won't play them in sequence unless I take the trouble to put them in a playlist.
I agree that all you really need is a file explorer, as there are other rippers and transcoders available.
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I agree that all you really need is a file explorer, as there are other rippers and transcoders available.
Hrm. I see "ripping CDs" and "putting stuff on my DAP" as two completely unrelated tasks. Possibly because I had my CD collection ripped before I ever got a DAP, and used to listen to music via my computer while I worked. But if you think of them as a single task of "get music from CD to my DAP", then it makes sense to use a tool that can do both transparently. I suppose you could rip directly to the DAP, but does anyone really not have their library on their computer?
Nowadays, I buy maybe one physical CD a month, tops. So streamlining that particular path isn't terribly important to me. But there's some food for thought, there. Thanks.
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It orders them with the newest ones at the top of the list and won't play them in sequence unless I take the trouble to put them in a playlist.
This limitation is inconvenient because I'd thought how nice it would be to be able to start a pod of casts and it play through all episodes rather than me having to navigate all the way back through the menus to start the next one (it's also frustrating that the iPod takes you all the way back to the starting menu when an episode ends instead of just going back to that particular show's menu of episodes). Anyway, I'd never really thought about the playlist option, though. I just played around with the SmartList option... It didn't order them in the newest first, but I couldn't figure out how it ordered them. May be something you may want to play around with, though.
disclaimer: I don't use the iTunes store, because MP3 (and AAC) files sound like shit.
Showing my ignorance, perhaps, but I thought iTunes used MP4.
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It orders them with the newest ones at the top of the list and won't play them in sequence unless I take the trouble to put them in a playlist.
This limitation is inconvenient because I'd thought how nice it would be to be able to start a pod of casts and it play through all episodes rather than me having to navigate all the way back through the menus to start the next one (it's also frustrating that the iPod takes you all the way back to the starting menu when an episode ends instead of just going back to that particular show's menu of episodes). Anyway, I'd never really thought about the playlist option, though. I just played around with the SmartList option... It didn't order them in the newest first, but I couldn't figure out how it ordered them. May be something you may want to play around with, though.
I've been hitherto unaware of "Smart Playlists" but I just set one up for "Genre= Podcast" and "Album= Snark Infested Waters", and it seems to have ordered them oldest-to-newest. But it won't remove them as I listen, as I have podcasts currently set up to do.
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It orders them with the newest ones at the top of the list and won't play them in sequence unless I take the trouble to put them in a playlist.
This limitation is inconvenient because I'd thought how nice it would be to be able to start a pod of casts and it play through all episodes rather than me having to navigate all the way back through the menus to start the next one (it's also frustrating that the iPod takes you all the way back to the starting menu when an episode ends instead of just going back to that particular show's menu of episodes). Anyway, I'd never really thought about the playlist option, though. I just played around with the SmartList option... It didn't order them in the newest first, but I couldn't figure out how it ordered them. May be something you may want to play around with, though.
I've been hitherto unaware of "Smart Playlists" but I just set one up for "Genre= Podcast" and "Album= Snark Infested Waters", and it seems to have ordered them oldest-to-newest. But it won't remove them as I listen, as I have podcasts currently set up to do.
See below.
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I suppose you could rip directly to the DAP, but does anyone really not have their library on their computer?
I think where we're mis-communicating here has to do with your moving of playlists. When you say "take playlists off" I thought you meant remove the music and put it on a computer that didn't already have it. I have twenty or thirty different playlists and I add a few to my iPod or take some off all of the time. I just go to the proper screen and check the playlists I want on my iPod and uncheck the ones I want removed. Takes about as long as it does to read the playlist titles. I hit "apply" and walk away. When I come back, it's done. It also updates my playlists if I made any changes to a list since the last time it was plugged in. I don't play with the files.
Anyway my point is simply there's no reason for me to be mad at Apple for making it hard for me to do things in a more difficult way when they have given me this program that works so easily.
disclaimer: I don't use the iTunes store, because MP3 (and AAC) files sound like shit.
Showing my ignorance, perhaps, but I thought iTunes used MP4.
Itunes uses mp4. Their name for it is AAC (or ACC I forget). Anyway it muddies the music. It's fine in the car or when I'm running around, but when I want to really hear music, I still listen to CDs. I'd listen to LPs, but I'm do damn lazy.
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Ah, my apologies. It was windup who said that MS products "don't work with anything else". But anyway. That was my point.
My intended implication was that Apple products don't work particularly well with anything else.
The larger point was that a combination of Apple and Microsoft would result in the worst of both companies -- Apple's interoperablility (or lack therof) and Microsoft's style and stability (or lack thereof). That's seems to be the outcome of large corporate mergers.
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Nobody has been able to show me any one program for any DAP that can do everything I need as easily as iTunes does.
A file explorer does everything I need for my DAP, which is basically: move files on and off it. The idea of adding extra software to manage it has never made much sense to me, but I know many people find it very useful.
A Google search has turned up some alternatives to iTunes. Most seem to be for pay, but Poddox is free. I'm inclined to give it a try.
http://www.poddox.com/
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This limitation is inconvenient because I'd thought how nice it would be to be able to start a pod of casts and it play through all episodes rather than me having to navigate all the way back through the menus to start the next one (it's also frustrating that the iPod takes you all the way back to the starting menu when an episode ends instead of just going back to that particular show's menu of episodes). Anyway, I'd never really thought about the playlist option, though. I just played around with the SmartList option... It didn't order them in the newest first, but I couldn't figure out how it ordered them. May be something you may want to play around with, though.
As far as I can tell, a Smart Playlist's default sort is the field used for Limit To, if that feature is turned on. If it isn't, I'm not sure what it does.
If you fiddle with the sort -- either by selecting a field or manually moving podcasts around -- and want it to play in that order, <right-click> on the playlist and select Copy to Play Order.
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thank you to everyone who brought up smart playlists. I had never used these before, but now I have seven set up. :)
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disclaimer: I don't use the iTunes store, because MP3 (and AAC) files sound like shit.
Showing my ignorance, perhaps, but I thought iTunes used MP4.
MP4 and AAC are the same thing.
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I suppose you could rip directly to the DAP, but does anyone really not have their library on their computer?
I think where we're mis-communicating here has to do with your moving of playlists. When you say "take playlists off" I thought you meant remove the music and put it on a computer that didn't already have it. I have twenty or thirty different playlists and I add a few to my iPod or take some off all of the time. I just go to the proper screen and check the playlists I want on my iPod and uncheck the ones I want removed. Takes about as long as it does to read the playlist titles. I hit "apply" and walk away. When I come back, it's done. It also updates my playlists if I made any changes to a list since the last time it was plugged in. I don't play with the files.
OK, I'm slightly confused by this. A playlist is a text file (normally with an .m3u extension) that defines the order in which tracks should be played. I have a couple of playlists set up, where what I want to play isn't easily defined by tags (for example, I have a playlist which is all songs by Warren Zevon, plus two albums of covers of his songs), but more often I just play everything in a given directory, because I have a filetree set up as artist/album/track.mp3. Basically, I rarely do anything that involves "playlists" rather than actual audiofiles.
Anyway my point is simply there's no reason for me to be mad at Apple for making it hard for me to do things in a more difficult way when they have given me this program that works so easily.
Making something deliberately difficult and then providing a way to overcome that difficulty is far less elegant than just keeping it simple in the first place.
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I suppose you could rip directly to the DAP, but does anyone really not have their library on their computer?
I think where we're mis-communicating here has to do with your moving of playlists. When you say "take playlists off" I thought you meant remove the music and put it on a computer that didn't already have it. I have twenty or thirty different playlists and I add a few to my iPod or take some off all of the time. I just go to the proper screen and check the playlists I want on my iPod and uncheck the ones I want removed. Takes about as long as it does to read the playlist titles. I hit "apply" and walk away. When I come back, it's done. It also updates my playlists if I made any changes to a list since the last time it was plugged in. I don't play with the files.
OK, I'm slightly confused by this. A playlist is a text file (normally with an .m3u extension) that defines the order in which tracks should be played. I have a couple of playlists set up, where what I want to play isn't easily defined by tags (for example, I have a playlist which is all songs by Warren Zevon, plus two albums of covers of his songs), but more often I just play everything in a given directory, because I have a filetree set up as artist/album/track.mp3. Basically, I rarely do anything that involves "playlists" rather than actual audiofiles.
This is also the way I usually work, but when I have multiple episodes of a podcast that I want to listen to in sequence (say, something I've just picked up and want to catch the back shows of, or anything from Podiobooks), this goes right out the window. Playlists are the ony easy option.
I also agree with your point about making something difficult and then providing a "solution". The only Apple products I have are my Nano and the iTunes software, so I don't know how much of this Apple does (though I'm sure Microsoft isn't blameless in this regard either).
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Anyway my point is simply there's no reason for me to be mad at Apple for making it hard for me to do things in a more difficult way when they have given me this program that works so easily.
Making something deliberately difficult and then providing a way to overcome that difficulty is far less elegant than just keeping it simple in the first place.
I was saying that you are doing things in a difficult way. Then you are mad that Apple makes it a little more difficult way. I'm happy that Apple gives me a blazingly easy way to do it that is far easier than your easy way.
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Easier than drag-and-drop? Well, if you find it so, then more power to you. My experience with such managers (including iTunes), however, has driven me in high frustration back to the simplicity of the file browser.
Each to their own, I suppose.
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disclaimer: I don't use the iTunes store, because MP3 (and AAC) files sound like shit.
Showing my ignorance, perhaps, but I thought iTunes used MP4.
they do, but its pretty much the same. my dad doesnt like the sound of mp3s either, he downloads a lota flack files. i think thats just a waste of space and completely ineffficient.
as for the ipod's random directories, i explored the thing on my own a while back and discovered the possibility of copy/pasting music from there. in my experience (at least on pcs) after the copy/paste, the computer auto renames the files, you dont have to manually do that.
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Easier than drag-and-drop? Well, if you find it so, then more power to you. My experience with such managers (including iTunes), however, has driven me in high frustration back to the simplicity of the file browser.
Each to their own, I suppose.
Hmm... I guess so. I switched to an iPod a year or so ago specifically to get away from the hassle of dragging, dropping, manually ordering and manually deleting on my iRiver. Now, I have a bunch of "smart" playlists set up, and most days I can just update the library, synch those and be done. It happens in the background while I'm reading internet comics. Though to keep the library pruned, a couple of times a week I go through and wipe things that got missed by auto-delete, and pick up the occasional podcast that doesn't get downloaded.
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they do, but its pretty much the same. my dad doesnt like the sound of mp3s either, he downloads a lota flack files. i think thats just a waste of space and completely ineffficient.
That would be FLAC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAC). As a losslessly compressed codec, it should be exactly as good as the source it was recorded from. In most cases, you won't be able to tell the difference between a FLAC recording and an MP3 at 192Kbps, but there also won't be huge difference in file size. Once you start getting into lower bitrates on MP3s, the sound can degrade quite significantly (music at anything below 128Kbps is unlistenable, IMHO).
Most of my library is in FLAC format on my computer as an archive, so that I don't need to go back to the CDs, if I want to re-rip them, but my "working library" (as it were) is transcoded from there to MP3 or OGG so that they take up less room on my player.
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See below.
If you fiddle with the sort -- either by selecting a field or manually moving podcasts around -- and want it to play in that order, <right-click> on the playlist and select Copy to Play Order.
Thanks for the tips, Heradel and Windup. I figured there was probably a way, but you just saved me the time in searching for the solution myself.
thank you to everyone who brought up smart playlists. I had never used these before, but now I have seven set up. :)
I love'em, too. I can't remember how i stumbled onto it, but i think i use more Smart Lists now than regular lists.
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thank you to everyone who brought up smart playlists. I had never used these before, but now I have seven set up. :)
I love'em, too. I can't remember how i stumbled onto it, but i think i use more Smart Lists now than regular lists.
I've now moved up to "Super Smartlists" as Wherethewild called them. That's where you set up a bunch of sub-lists and then have another list that refines the choices made in the sub-lists.
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As I understand it, one drawback to Smart Playlists (as opposed to the vanilla playlists) is that iTunes takes longer to start up because it has to scan through the entire Library each time and see which tunes satisfy the filters.
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As I understand it, one drawback to Smart Playlists (as opposed to the vanilla playlists) is that iTunes takes longer to start up because it has to scan through the entire Library each time and see which tunes satisfy the filters.
I can't say I've noticed the change, but my computer was "sized" for home photo manipulation, so it's over-powered for most other jobs.
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As I understand it, one drawback to Smart Playlists (as opposed to the vanilla playlists) is that iTunes takes longer to start up because it has to scan through the entire Library each time and see which tunes satisfy the filters.
I can't say I've noticed the change, but my computer was "sized" for home photo manipulation, so it's over-powered for most other jobs.
Haven't noticed anything and my machine is running at it's maximum just to watch a you-tube video.
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I resisted upgrading my iTunes until I got my new iPod in May. Managing podcasts was so much easier on my old version of iTunes. Now, it's a pain in the butt. I hate having to have a smart playlist to manage my podcasts, or even to view what episodes I have. I used to be able to see every episode from the podcast directory.
I can't stand my new Canon camera window interface either. Shouldn't newer versions of software be EASIER to use than older versions???? The software developers seem to work overtime to make things less user-friendly rather than simplifying.
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I resisted upgrading my iTunes until I got my new iPod in May. Managing podcasts was so much easier on my old version of iTunes. Now, it's a pain in the butt. I hate having to have a smart playlist to manage my podcasts, or even to view what episodes I have. I used to be able to see every episode from the podcast directory.
I can't stand my new Canon camera window interface either. Shouldn't newer versions of software be EASIER to use than older versions???? The software developers seem to work overtime to make things less user-friendly rather than simplifying.
umm i dont know whats wrong with ur itunes, but mine has a podcast directory without having to use a smart playlist....
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Do you have the newest version???? I never had to use Smart Playlists for podcasts until I downloaded the newest version in May. I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get a list at all. It just didn't work the way it used to. So, I went to iTunes support and their help files said that Smart Playlists were the only way you could list individual episodes of podcasts. THEY BROKE IT!
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Do you have the newest version???? I never had to use Smart Playlists for podcasts until I downloaded the newest version in May. I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get a list at all. It just didn't work the way it used to. So, I went to iTunes support and their help files said that Smart Playlists were the only way you could list individual episodes of podcasts. THEY BROKE IT!
There's a little triangle you can click next to the podcast in the directory which shows the individual episodes of a given podcast, like so:
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Do you have the newest version???? I never had to use Smart Playlists for podcasts until I downloaded the newest version in May. I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get a list at all. It just didn't work the way it used to. So, I went to iTunes support and their help files said that Smart Playlists were the only way you could list individual episodes of podcasts. THEY BROKE IT!
I just checked and it says that my version, 7.6.2, is the current version. I can expand the podcast list to view individual episodes by means of the little triangle that Heradel mentions.
(PS Heradel your illustration seems to be missing.)
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Do you have the newest version???? I never had to use Smart Playlists for podcasts until I downloaded the newest version in May. I couldn't figure out why I couldn't get a list at all. It just didn't work the way it used to. So, I went to iTunes support and their help files said that Smart Playlists were the only way you could list individual episodes of podcasts. THEY BROKE IT!
I just checked and it says that my version, 7.6.2, is the current version. I can expand the podcast list to view individual episodes by means of the little triangle that Heradel mentions.
(PS Heradel your illustration seems to be missing.)
Arg, yes, it was. Fixed.
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Thank you! My screen didn't look anything like yours. I realized that my problem was the view. I switched to list view and they all showed up! It's still different than it used to be. The list now shows episodes that haven't been downloaded and those episodes have a button that allows you to download them without going into the iTunes store. That's pretty cool, but cluttered.
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(PS Heradel your illustration seems to be missing.)
Arg, yes, it was. Fixed.
OMFG where do you find the time to listen to all that? I'd have to do nothing else in my spare time but listen to podcasts.
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(PS Heradel your illustration seems to be missing.)
Arg, yes, it was. Fixed.
OMFG where do you find the time to listen to all that? I'd have to do nothing else in my spare time but listen to podcasts.
Commute+multitrack mind+mindless work.
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(PS Heradel your illustration seems to be missing.)
Arg, yes, it was. Fixed.
OMFG where do you find the time to listen to all that? I'd have to do nothing else in my spare time but listen to podcasts.
Commute+multitrack mind+mindless work.
Mindless work would help. I can't really listen at work except on occasions when they've got me making copies of site plans on the wide-format copier. Then I put on the ol' iPod, resume playback of the last podcast, and get to copying. It takes very little mental energy to feed sheets in and catch the sheets coming out, nor to collate and staple the finished product.
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OK, I must say I LOVE SMART PLAYLISTS! Finally I can keep podcasts on my iPod until I'm done listening to them, and not have them automatically removed whenever I plug into iTunes just because I might have played the first half-second just to check out what the running time is. Smart playlists keep my place in the podcast and won't remove it until I've played it all the way through.
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thank you to everyone who brought up smart playlists. I had never used these before, but now I have seven set up. :)
I love'em, too. I can't remember how i stumbled onto it, but i think i use more Smart Lists now than regular lists.
I've now moved up to "Super Smartlists" as Wherethewild called them. That's where you set up a bunch of sub-lists and then have another list that refines the choices made in the sub-lists.
Things just get better and better. With my new machine I moved from USB1 to USB2. My iPod now syncs in under a minute, even when it's around 100MB transfer. Also with the latest update to my iPod it now "auto-ejects" after the transfer. It still is in my iTunes, in case I want to make any more changes, but I can disconnect at any time after it syncs without hitting eject in iTunes and waiting.
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Well, I don't know about how often Apple products fail, ...
I and my family members have had something like ten or twelve different Macs, starting with a Mac Plus (ca. 1986), and the only hardware failures I've seen were a diode in the power supply on the Mac Plus, and about a week ago the L2 cache failed on a 2001 G4 "Quicksilver" tower.
Oh yeah - I broke a two keycaps off of a keyboard when I dropped it on the floor, and I finally retired a 15" Apple monitor last year that I had been using since like the mid-'90s. It was getting somewhat dim and giving a bluish caste in places.
I still have the Mac Plus, upgraded with 4MB RAM, a third-party Motorola 68030 25 MHz processor, and an external 10 MB SCSI ZFP hard drive. It still works, along with the original mouse and keyboard.
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Steve Jobs is lying. Or he disagrees with the ITMS management team, and has surprisingly little input. Several indie labels wanted to unencrypted downloads available on iTunes, and their response was "sorry, but we DRM everything. If you don't want that, go elsewhere." And then the mean old record companies let Amazon sell unencrypted MP3's, and they didn't even put up much of a fight over it! Shortly after that, ITMS started offering DRM-free downloads, having apparently won some major coup against the record labels.
Told you so (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/companies/07apple.html?_r=1&ref=technology)
DRM free at iTunes
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An important thing to remember about iTunes + (DRM free version) is that it's also higher sound quality (256kbps) which to people who listen to a whole heap of music like me- very important. However it's only available on some albums (the popular ones mainly).
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I think all MP3 sucks. I only use it when I'm not really listening. For now I'm still a CD man. If I wasn't so lazy, I'd probably be a vinyl guy.
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I have sennheisers but thats the peak of my audiophilia. It's all because of Radiohead.
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talk about threadomancy
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I think all MP3 sucks. I only use it when I'm not really listening. For now I'm still a CD man. If I wasn't so lazy, I'd probably be a vinyl guy.
May I ask why you prefer vinyl? I hear that frequently from music fans. I still have many of my vinyl records but prefer CD's. I always had trouble keeping my vinyl scratch free during the college years, they were often handled by drunk folks.
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I think all MP3 sucks. I only use it when I'm not really listening. For now I'm still a CD man. If I wasn't so lazy, I'd probably be a vinyl guy.
May I ask why you prefer vinyl? I hear that frequently from music fans. I still have many of my vinyl records but prefer CD's. I always had trouble keeping my vinyl scratch free during the college years, they were often handled by drunk folks.
That was the problem with vinyl and part of the reason why I stick with CDs. Vinyl actually has a wider acoustical range than CDs. It's very subtle and you need a really great recording to hear the difference. You end up with more of a feeling than something you can point at.
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A fair amount of the stuff I listen to is crappy bootlegs though, and frankly it makes little difference whether a recording is 128, 256 or FLAC if it was only taken by a guy with mikes up his jumper.
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A fair amount of the stuff I listen to is crappy bootlegs though, and frankly it makes little difference whether a recording is 128, 256 or FLAC if it was only taken by a guy with mikes up his jumper.
It can make the difference between a bad recording and an unlistenable one. Take a recording with poor sound quality, degrade it further with a sub-128-bitrate* compression, and it's likely to go into "why bother" territory. I'd want those encoded at as high a quality as possible -- FLAC would be ideal.
* music encoded to MP3 at 128 sounds acceptable to my non-audiophile ears, but anything less makes it sound like it's coming over a crappy FM station.
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I agree that anything less than 128kbps sounds awful regardless of the recording quality, but I have live versions of the same song in 128 and FLAC and it makes no difference to the quality of the track. With studio recordings, it does.