Comments on: iTunes 7.0 is a Laggard

By: Annejelynn

Annejelynn — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 02:13:58 +0000

although I love the new blue theme… um, that’s about all I like re: iTunes 7.0 cuz that damn thing’s too slooow

By: erisian

erisian — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 10:01:45 +0000

I upgraded, then i decided i didnt want anything to do with i-tunes anymore. this doesnt have much to do with the version i was using, but it would have been nice to see some of the below thoughtfully added into the release (or future releases for that matter)

This is not for lack of funtionality per say, but more for inconsistent and proprietary functionality when formatting mp3s via i-tunes.

I do not have an i-pod and reluctantly started using i-tunes.. the clincher for actively using it was falling in love with the mass editing and organizational features of it.

i recently picked up a Creative Zen Vision M (highly recommend i.. all pluses except battery life). It was when i started using it that i ealized the drawbacks to formatting through i-tunes.

1) it only formatted id3 tags to v2, when industry standard for players is to read v1.1 so nothing read properly.

2) album art was flagged as “other” instead of industry standard of “Cover - Front”

3)compilations are only flagged in an i-pod compatible format as compilations. nothing was linked together properly… the correct way of doing so would be for them to go with the industry standard again.. using the “album artist” field to denote it as various artists or some other equivelant and using the artist field to denote the individual groups involved.

there were other things as well but i dont want to seem any more nit picky than i already do..

Their software is awesome, but it is far to geared at being proprietary. they have it built to function well for people using the i-pod and people trying to use collections with other devices are left with an initial feeling of “why doesnt this work right, no wonder the i-pod is so popular, it DOES work right” or something along those lines. I was initially concerned that my player could not read all the information i had painstakingly entered into i-tunes in an effort to clean up my collection. now that i know what is going on, i have to go back through and perform additional tasks to bring it all into line.

after a bit of scouring i found a program called MediaMonkey which has native support for my device as well as i-pod and others, syncronization, all my above listed concerns resolved.. etc. another nice feature was the ability to clone v2 tags over to v1.1 (en masse) allowing for both to be available.. saved me a lot of catch up time. the ability to compare albums of mp3’s against amazon and auto tag everything while simultaneously pulling down album art is a nice perk too.

basically, for people with an i-pod, i think that they are doing well and i give kudos on an excellent media manager. but for those of us that are not, i have to say they would be good to conform to the industry standard a little more.. make this cross platform AND cross device by doing so.. but still allow functionality like V2 ID3’s that make their product have a superior amount of available data..

sorry… i am writing a movie script right now and so i am a bit wordy.. blame it on the mindset

By: Chloe

Chloe — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 04:59:12 +0000

I think some of the new features, are, you know, swell and all, but it definitely isn’t perfect. I’m hoping they’ll have an update for it in a few months, because it does not run nearly as nicely on my machine (and I have a buttload of RAM– 1.37 GB ram on Windows XP) as itunes 6 did. I also experience some lag when I use the cover flip or even just have the cover art displayed as I scroll through my music library. It’s not BAD per say, but it scrolled so very efficiently and smoothly in v.6 that it bugs me. The cover art retriever is not working very well for me, although it has gotten quite a few that I didn’t want to input manually, which is a plus.
It hasn’t frozen on me, though… and it is very pretty.

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 03:31:13 +0000

I’m using a 7 year old G3 350MHz as a music server & I upgraded. There was an initial delay while it processed the library, and it pops up a dialog while opening because it’s chugging through 14K songs. I can use the CoverFlow view, but only because I don’t use the G3 for anything other than music.

I agree that the integration is the key thing to the success of the products. iPod+iTunes+ITMS+AirPort Express: all the pieces just plug together and the whole experience is transparent (if you stick to Apple’s stuff). I’m expecting the “iTV” (or whatever they call it) to take the ITMS/iPod experience to the living room TV the same way AirPort Express brings music to my home stereo.

By: minxlj

minxlj — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 18:25:27 +0000

Oh I LOOOOOOOOOOVE iTunes 7!!!!! Using it on a PowerMac G5 2.5GHz. Love the interface, the new design, the visual graph, everything. And the new Cover Flow is soooooooo cool - I spent about 30 minutes after downloading it just flicking through all my album art, LOL. Very snazzy, and seems to run just fine on this Mac, and on my eMac 1.25GHz at home.

Also the new GAMES - oh how I’ve longed for Tetris on my iPod. It was just a dream, a crazy dream, but NOW IT’S TRUE!!!!!! Couldn’t be happier.

By: xjanex

xjanex — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 04:04:26 +0000

i’m using itunes 7 on a windows machine. ignoring the fact that the first time i opened it after upgrading i had to put all the music back in (was it supposed to do that?) it appears that my ipod mini isn’t supported. was there a memo i missed? i kind of want to cry.

By: scoops

scoops — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 01:40:56 +0000

I haven’t had any problems upgrading or syncing; that has been all smooth. I went ahead to download a full season of a tv show and don’t like how it is downloading at all. It has really slowed down my iBook tremendously. The new iTunes automatically downloads three episodes at a time instead of one by one. It does have these pause buttons but as soon as you pause one it starts downloading the next one. I haven’t been able to find anything to change my preferences to how many items to download at once.

By: Samoya

Samoya — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 21:52:52 +0000

Wait. Should I or should I not Apple Software Update to easily update iTunes and other Apple software? Oh god, this is where I get cold feet.

By: A.J. Axline

A.J. Axline — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 21:32:46 +0000

Two experiences to share…

I upgraded my Mac Mini to iT7, and it went without a single hitch. The app seems to be a little bit slower, but it’s not too bad. I like the download monitor and the “by album” view; I dislike the missing equalizer button and the kludgy album cover view. But all in all, it works.

I upgraded my PC to iT7, and began a nightmare that opened with poor music playback, video podcasts that skipped and/or wouldn’t play at all, my P4 processor pegged at 70-100%, and a gapless playback scan that took slightly longer than one of Stalin’s ‘to-do’ lists to finish; the nightmare continued when I uninstalled iT7, and discovered that I was no longer able to access the external HD that housed my iTunes music library (”Drive has not been formatted,” I was informed) and severely degraded overall system performance; the entire experience ended with me having to burn my system down to the ground and rebuild it, sans my trashed music library, which I will have to recreate from CDs and various other backup media.

Two machines, two vastly different outcomes. The moral of the story: not all upgrades are upgrades… and beware the ‘point-0′ releases. There may be tygers.

By: jenny

jenny — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 16:04:44 +0000

It’s a little slow, but it’s just so darn fancy lookin’! Most of all, though, I listen to a lot of opera, and for me, the best moments are often transitions between the big numbers, which meant they were infuriatingly lost to the crossfade. So I was about at the point that I would sell my soul for gapless playback. I’m definitely at least halfway a convert.