GaryK

What have they taken out Iain?

Its not like when they upgrade Shredded Wheat to 2.0 is it? They always say on the advert 'nothing added and nothing taken away' Hey maybe thats the problem every new release of software *has* to add something and normally ***** something up!

Gary

Iain Young

In iTunes 6, you can split the track linsting window up. At the top, you can have it so that it displays album lists etc, and when you click on them, in the track listing below it just lists the items that belong to that album.

In the new itunes this has been removed, and replaced with that album art display thingy. Only problem is that it doesn't work with the ipod display, (in fact it's disabled - probably because the data transfer isn't quick enough).

I don't have any music on the pc / laptop at all. It's all on the ipod, and so the removal of this feature has been a massive step backwards for me. Hence why I've now gone back to itunes 6.

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

Iain
you can still do this...I think
In the three views you have (those 3 buttons at top), click on the list view. then go to the views drop down menu and select View Browser.
Then you have the little view list at top, click on one album and it shows all the songs related to that album below.

is that what you wanted, cos if it is then itunes does it for you in version 7.0

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

oh and unless you have only 1 computer, you wont be able to test this now until you back to 7.0 ..whoops

do you want me to post some screenshots of the vews in version 7.0 ??

Iain Young

Yes it is there, but it only works for stuff in the library on your computer. It doesn't work for things stored on the ipod (the buttons are disabled).

I suspect they've removed this for the ipod track listing because the data transfer speed isn't quick enough to support the fancy new graphics.

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

ok agree with that, have to wait til i can find my nano to test it, but surely disabling that view is pointless, because it is the least processor intensive, as oppossed to the other 2 views..wierd.

*just hunting around for me nano now *

Markus

Iain,
You're talking about the browse option and I can tell you it most certainly IS in iTunes 7 as I'm using it.

When you connect the iPod you will initially see the new iPod options screens and not the music, click on arrow to the left of the iPod icon in the sidebar and you'll see the "Music" Library on the iPod, click on that and by default you'll see the big list of music, all you need to do is eiher click the Browse button down the bottom or select "Show Browser" from the View menu.

One thing of note, if you have the iPod set to auto-sync, the above will NOT work, the Library listing on the iPod is actually greyed out, and I'm pretty sure this was also the case for iTunes 6

*** edited to add pictures ***


This is iTunes 7 set to auto-sync the iPod against the Library. As you can see the listing is there, but it's greyed out, plus the Browse option is also greyed out



This is iTunes 7 set to manually manage music. As you can see, the browser is now visible.

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

knew i wasnt going mad

markus to the rescue

Iain Young

Those options are all disabled on my itunes 7, and I have it set to update manually (i.e. I don't have auto-sync turned on)

Markus

That is seriously strange then. As the pics show it does indeed work. If you're back at iTunes 6.0.5, is it working as it should?

Could you connect your iPod, fire up iTunes and then click on the "Music" library on the iPod and take a screenshot of the window (command + shift + 4, then enable caps lock, position cursor over window and press the space-bar, a camera icon should appear and highlight the window you're hovering over (should be iTunes) then click the mouse button)

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

ah the little camera trick totally forgot about that, just use the screenshot cmd +shift+4 and select the window
thx for reminding me

Iain Young

Works fine in itunes 6, (which is what I've got installed at the moment).

p.s. isn't that a Mac key combination? I'm running on windows (so need to do a ctrl-alt-prntscrn )

messiah

Could it differences in the US & UK versions? If N. America is getting some content available now and we have to wait until the new year (movies?) would some features be disabled in the non-US version. Makes no sense when this feature has nothing to do with movies though.

Markus

Iain,
I was going to ask if you were Mac or PC. It could well be something odd with the PC version of iTunes 7.

Dracoro

I've got the PC version and I can do what Marcus says (i.e. browser for the ipod). Just tested it on g/f nano, will check later on my 60GB as well.

Iain Young

Weird. I tried it on two machines and it didn;t work on either. Will give it another go...

Mogsi

Also working fine here with my 4G Ipod and the PC Version of Itunes...

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

its just you iain

Iain Young

Very likely the way my luck has been going this week so far...

Iain Young

Fixed it. I ended up uninstalling it, manually removing anything apple / itunes related from the registry, then re-installing it again. Seems I needed to do the registry cleanup to get it working...

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

happy now

Iain Young

Yep

ozzy

iTunes 7 (even 6) is a serious resource hogger on a PC.

I did a quick comparison with my music collection (140Gb)

iTunes 7
Library database size - iTunes Music Library.xml - 47Mb
Library database size - iTunes Library.itl - 40Mb
Album Art - 215Mb
Memory used - 105Mb 190Mb and 90% utilization when it's shutting down the app
Time to load - 40 secs

Winamp 5.2.4
Library database size - 25Mb
Memory used - 12Mb
Time to load - 12 secs

iTunes looks the bo!!ocks, but it's slow with a large media library and is a PITA even on my 3Ghz, 1Gb, P4 PC with fast SATA drives

If your music is stored on a remote PC, then adding media to your library is slow as hell. I left mine running over night (100Mb/s lan) and it still hadn't finished 6hrs later. Winamp did the same in < 30 mins AND it did it all in the background.

I'm using Winamp with iPod support to keep my stuff up-to-date for now. It looks sh!te but it does the job.

Stefan

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

I hate to say this again, but all you lot with your memory hogging resources this and it takes ages to load that, are without fail using itunes on a PC.
Yup it was written on mac first and so it may be not as clean on a PC as it is on a Mac.

sorry, but its just the way it is.....

easist way is not to use it or get a a mac...simple

Iain Young

Why?

If a company (regardless of who) makes a device like the ipod which is not supposed to be dependent on a particular operating system, then I would expect the supplied software to be of a comparable quality on all supported platforms.

There's no good reason for the pc version to use so many resources compared with the Mac. It might have been written for the mac first, but that's no excuse. It's just shoddy programming.

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

valid point, but if you use both platforms, you will find that software which has been designed for both, will inevitably be poorer on one.

For example Photoshop runs like a dog on windows compared to a mac, yet Office runs much better and is more fully featured on a windows pc than on a mac.

Yes, you would expect the manufacturer to program cleaner code, as in the end they will sell more copies, but when the software is free, just how much incentive do you think Apple have in making better software for the platform?

try itunes on a mac and see how they differ..quite an alarming speed difference for a start.

Iain Young

We write software that has to run on over 20 different platforms, and they work pretty much the same on all of them. If we can do it, so can everyone else. It just takes a little effort

The speed difference between itunes on the Mac and Pc is purely down to bad programming on the pc side imo...

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

I am sure you can Iain, but as you pointed out it is just ****ty code and lazy programming.

so when is your new MacBook arriving

messiah

Just noticed the browse button is also the import & burn disc button - so both of them are gone too.

put a disc in and it wanted to import all tracks - now you have to highlight (like ctrl + click) then right click to get "covert to aac" to add them to the library.

WTF? Come on Mr Jobs - sort it out!!

Iain Young

Why would I want one?

All the software I use is on the pc, and I don't fancy buying it again for the mac, (I'm not that rich )