You prefer the original nomenclature - List Nutz ?
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Horrible things about the internet?
- Articles such as āX things you didnāt know about Yā.
or āX horrible things about Yā
Then thereāsā¦ reading a re-blogged post of a re-blogged post of a re-blogged blog postā¦
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Catalogonads?
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I donāt think DRM is the main complaint. Itās a huge buggy program (at least on windows) that became so popular because the iTunes store that the media players I liked to use got bought out by horrible, horrible places like Yahoo!. iTunes was always mediocre at organizing music to me, though it always had a great auto DJ function.
What did they change that bothered you? In regards to āmedia playersā, Iāve never used iTunes for videos. I just use VLC and QuickTime. For my mp3 collection, Iāve been happy with iTunes. What should I be using instead?
[quote=āemo_pinata, post:25, topic:54889ā]
I donāt think DRM is the main complaint.
[/quote]It shouldnāt be any complaint. Itās been compatible with non-DRM mp3 since the very beginning. iTunes was also the first to sell non-DRM music before any other major music retailers. You can thank Apple (and their corporate muscle) for bringing the music industry to these points who were dragging and screaming the entire way.
Itās a huge buggy program (at least on windows)
Iāve mostly used it on Mac, itās literally never crashed. Ever. Not once in over a decade.
However, Iāve also used it quite a bit on Windows and it chugged along on XP without any crashes or slowdowns and even on an older Vista machine right now. Never experience any crashes. Then again, Iām meticulous to keep malware, crapware, etc. off my Windows machines, so that helps.
iTunes was always mediocre at organizing music to me, though it always had a great auto DJ function.
Yeah, I think that comes down to personal preference, but I would agree with you there as I organize the music myself and iTunes lets me do that very easily.
Iāve never allowed iTunes to organize my music for me in all the years Iāve used it. I make my own Playlist Folders (for Bands) and Playlists inside those main band folders (for Albums). I then make all kinds of different, assorted Playlists however I want them and sort them however I want to. Theyāve continued to work fine after all these years with all the upgrades.
The only thing that really annoyed me is when Apple decided to remove the ability to open Playlists in their own separate windows. That pissed me off.
Personally, Iāve been whipping the llamaās ass since the nineties.* Still works fine for me.
*now thereās a statement that looks weird if you donāt know the context
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Donāt worry, you cant Win them all or Amp them up.
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Ah, I used to love WinAmp.
I used to use WinAmp on Windows and I used to use MacAmp (a flavor of WinAmp) back in the OS 9 days (1990ās, etc.), but gravitated to iTunes as it improved over time.
Hereās the MacAmp I was using in my car around 13-15 years ago or whatever: (you have to scroll down for any of the pictures to show up, I think)
Hopefully WinAmp will make a comeback?
Iām glad WinAmp is still out there and hope it remains. If iTunes ever fails to perform properly in the future or Apple nixes too much functionality, itās nice to know thereās something like that I can fallback on.
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Hey, if you canāt stand winamp, then Foobar2000 might be worth your time. Itās not exactly userfriendly, but once you set it up (according to a lot of parameters and a scripting language and all itās addons) itās just as good as winamp and can even be used as part of an Avisynth chainā¦
My favorite part of foobar2000 is its spectrograph, which shows a real fft graph, thatās highly customizable. Itās strangely very hard to come across audio players that have decent FFT graphs built in.
I swear to FSM I thought this post was meant sardonically.
Yeah foobar2000 isnāt easy to setup. But I just canāt leave it because itās the only audio player with a real spectrogram. Vu meters and histograms are nice, but nothing lets you actually read the audio like a spectrogram
I can admit I have an issue with GUIs changing on me - like why I still use the BB blogview religiously. But IMO the design wasnāt broke in iTunes 10 and was still OK in 11, yet they āfixedā it anyhow in 12, hiding many previous features behind obscure UI buttons and settings, pushing podcasts further into their separate ghetto, and making it difficult to find songs by artist in the main library view without using the search function that pulls up a bunch of unrelated stuff (and suggestions from the ITMS, natch). If their goal was to make the iTunes store the centerpiece of the app, mission accomplished. Otherwise, I miss the earlier days when coverflow wasnāt the foremost default way to browse music, and your music was yours to sort without needing a cumbersome system of cascading live playlists.
I still use iTunes on my Mac even though I switched to Android (side note- major props to the iSyncr devs!!), but if thereās better options that can keep my playlists that have been so carefully cultivated and sync them wirelessly to my phone, Iād love to hear em!
[quote=āCowicide, post:27, topic:54889ā]
However, Iāve also used it quite a bit on Windows and it chugged along on XP without any crashes or slowdowns and even on an older Vista machine right now. Never experience any crashes. Then again, Iām meticulous to keep malware, crapware, etc. off my Windows machines, so that helps.
[/quote]I have never had a computer or a version of iTunes that hasnāt crashed or skipped at least once and a while playing music on Windows. Ever. That is across four computers and with XP and 7 (never Vista). I use iTunes only to sync with my phone because of it.
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Since Vista/Win7 I have actually been happy with Windows Media Player for my mp3s. I just wish it had podcast support. Not sure what the solution will be with win10 when I get to that.
[quote=āWoodchuck45, post:34, topic:54889ā]
in 12, hiding many previous features behind obscure UI buttons and settings, pushing podcasts further into their separate ghetto, and making it difficult to find songs by artist in the main library view without using the search function that pulls up a bunch of unrelated stuff (and suggestions from the ITMS, natch). If their goal was to make the iTunes store the centerpiece of the app, mission accomplished.
[/quote]I only see iTunes suggestions below everything else during searches and my own library items are listed at top. Then again, I donāt really have a reason to use iTunes search to find my music. I use better options that are available with iTunes via Playlist Folders, etc.
I use Playlists (for albums) and Playlist Folders (for bands) extensively in iTunes so I donāt really have iTunes organize my music for me. I do what I want and my access to bands and songs is instant.
Every artist is in alphabetical order in the left-hand panel. I can tap the first few letters of the band names in the Playlist Folder and it will scroll to the band instantly and this is out of many hundreds of bands. For instance, I just typed āslaā after having any Playlist Folder highlighted and I was instantly taken to Slayer and it was highlighted in blue and instantly showing all albums and their songs on the right-side view:
I really canāt think of faster way than that.
After pulling up my band this way, I have the option of it showing every song from their discography in a list all at once (and in any order I prefer including by my own ratings, etc.):
ā¦ Or each album separately depending upon what I prefer. For example, click the album playlist:
And see this on the right: (and, of course, can sort by rating, BPM, etc, etc. if I choose to)
Or, I can change the view to a more graphical view where iTunes takes the color of my Album Art to influence the color scheme:
I should also mention that iTunes remembers how I set the view for each and every band and album as well. So when I go back later, itāll be the same view I left it at. I love that.
I rarely touch the search in the top-right corner most of the time. I also utilize LaunchBar (Alfred does this too) that works with iTunes to search and play individual songs, etc. (and control playback, pause, next song, previous, etc.) all from the keyboard along with xGestures for quick pause, etc. mouse/trackpad gestures. Thereās other ways to do that, but thatās the ways I prefer.
When one sets up iTunes like this with Playlist Folders (for bands) and Playlists (albums) inside said folders, other music players seem rather clunky and outdated to me. I find my music as fast as I can think with iTunes and the interface looks great, in my opinion.
No crashes, ever.
Otherwise, I miss the earlier days when coverflow wasnāt the foremost default way to browse music, and your music was yours to sort without needing a cumbersome system of cascading live playlists.
Coverflow?
I havenāt used Coverflow in quite a few years in iTunes. And, even when I did, it was optional and I rarely used it (I used my Playlist Folders, etc. as Iāve shown above for around a decade or longer now). Apple has never removed that option and has even improved upon it in the last few versions.
As a matter of fact, I think Coverflow was removed since iTunes 11.x and hasnāt been back since.
I still use iTunes on my Mac
Weird, you must be using the old version 10.x or below if it still uses Coverflow.
I switched to Android (side note- major props to the iSyncr devs!!), but if thereās better options that can keep my playlists that have been so carefully cultivated and sync them wirelessly to my phone, Iād love to hear em!
I also use Android. I like Spotify on my Android phone since it streams the music from my iTunes playlists when Iām on the road (and I didnāt bring my Shuffle or old 3GS). My music collection is too massive to put on most smartphones, so itās nice to hear all my iTunes music stream instead of buying a massive, expensive external sd card for my Android Phone beyond what I already have for it now.
Although I do put some music directly on the phone (I also love iSyncr for this) for when streaming isnāt possible or is sketchy (but thatās rare with a decent 4G provider for a smartphone unless you live in a rural area with bad coverage).
I donāt really like listening to music with a smartphone much anyway. It uses up the battery and also means putting the phone somewhere besides my pocket for headphones to reach my head. If Iām mobile and listening to music, I vastly prefer an Apple Shuffle.
Iāve had the shuffle fall off cliffs and still work. Iāve had a Shuffle fall next to my rear bicycle spokes and clang around and it still happily played while it was doing that. Shuffles are amazingly tough, the battery lasts ridiculously long, small as hell and syncs with playlists perfectly.
That said, I do have an old iPhone 3GS that is used as a music player (and other stuff) when I want to carry a larger amount of music with me than a shuffle can hold. It syncs with my playlists perfectly. I usually just canāt be killing my Android Phone battery for music while out and about. I need it for navigation, phone calls, texts, web browsing, etc.
[quote=āemo_pinata, post:35, topic:54889ā]
I have never had a computer or a version of iTunes that hasnāt crashed or skipped at least once and a while playing music on Windows. Ever. That is across four computers and with XP and 7 (never Vista). I use iTunes only to sync with my phone because of it.
[/quote]Thatās very odd to me. Iāve had the opposite experience with no crashes or skipping across dozens of Windows PCs spanning XP, Vista, 7 and 8.1. That has been with my own machines and those of friends, family and business aquaintances.
I have seen in the past with older XP machines where iTunes (on its first start) takes a terribly long time to load, however, and thatās plenty enough reason to use WinAmp or other alternative on those older machines if you donāt keep iTunes running often. However, on modern computers with latest iTunes installed? I donāt see the slow load times. And, as I said, Iāve never witnessed music skipping or iTunes crashes. If that was happening, Iād suspect malware, crapware, etc. thatās perhaps hindering it or lack of RAM maybe.
Or, if I had all the trouble youāve had with iTunes, Iād begin to wonder if there was something going on with corrupt playlists, preferences or something. Otherwise, Iād ditch iTunes in a heartbeat. Life is certainly too short to stick with an app that doesnāt function properly and crashes all the time.
So American.
Thank you.
I meant the original list. But youāre welcome!
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