the fluff of the new
Gotta say, one of the most annoying things about about Apple is this rather theatric approach they have to introducing new products and services. Apple nutters eat the stuff up — i get msgs from a certain friend like “tomorrow’s the big day!” and i have no idea what he is talking about. 
Still, being plugged into the kinder, gentler grand overlord that is Apple (as opposed to Microsoft or those bloody anarchists that use that “open source” stuff :P) i do find myself having to deal with both the good and the bad of updates, upgrades and new stuff that i’m supposed to want.
I’ve seen a number of itunes upgrades since i converted to the Apple religion. Honestly, itunes is a horribly boring application. For years i used to use Winamp and one of the most enjoyable things about winamp was all of the different skins you could apply to it. In fact, my first exposure to Kanon was via a beautiful winamp skin of Ayu. I had all the plug ins like SexyFont and whatnot, and was always on the lookout for new and interesting skins. With itunes, the only skin changes you get are subtle ones and they come from Apple.
With the new version we once again get all sorts of little tweaks to the itunes interface. Personally, i see no value in the ability to play movies or games on an ipod (after owning one, i will never purchase another one - it barely lasted a year and in that time was very touchy and never really worked right.) but i do use the itunes store from time to time, and they have added some features that let you browse your collection with more tools. THis is useful, of course, only if your tags are all correct. Most of mine are pretty messed up. That happens when you have a lot of .jp stuff in your queue.
I still haven’t finished rebuilding my itunes library from when my playlist got thoroughly corrupted. I have enough stuff loaded and in order to keep me going of course, but i still have a lot of older stuff i need to put in the playlists so i can access it. One of the nice things about Winamp was you just played the files as they existed on your hard drive or CDs. With Itunes, you have to have them somewhere on your playlists. This is actually a lot more convenient, but at the same time i find that my use of my collection is driven by the way itunes works more than by the collection itself. I guess there are worse things.
September 13th, 2006 at 11:28 am
I was always a Winamp user on PC…I still do, on my PC at work. I didn’t necessarily get into all the skinning, though I had a few favorites that I liked. I did like the overall functionality of it, though.
I have been using a Mac at home now for over a year and a half, and I couldn’t be happier. I’ev adjusted to iTunes, though I still miss the simplicity of Winamp. It does bother me a little that iTunes wants to ‘import’ all the music to it’s organizer, which, as you say, is more convenient, but if I have a new track to preview somewhere else on my system, I either listen to it in Preview (or some other application) rather than double-clicking it to open it in iTunes, since I would have to move it around inside iTunes once I put it where I wanted it. I stopped using the ‘Move music automatically to iTunes Music Folder’ option, as my collection is rather large, and I can’t contain it all on my built-in HDD. Instead, I prefer to manually organize my music, putting it where I have room for it, and letting iTunes play it from there instead.
Honestly, the biggest news I got from Apple yesterday was the addition of gapless playback…Finally! I think you may appreciate that one as well, as I know you listen to ambient/electronica, which tends to be ‘continuous-mixed’ alot. (I listen to a bit of it myself.)
Anyway, enjoy the convention in Deutschland!
September 13th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
Fred,
Today’s comic was masterful! I don’t know if you had this planned for months, or if you just found yourself in a curious place and decided to pounce on the opportunity, but the punch-line was a great pay off for the weeks of setup.
September 13th, 2006 at 6:50 pm
Have you heard of Shapeshifter before, Fred?
http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/shapeshifter
It allows you to apply custom themes to your system as a whole. Being as it’s a Mac system still, most of the themes that have been produced are relatively simple, minimalistic, or otherwise elegant, though there are several relatively complicated ones out there that are rather nice (Amora is a good theme, from what I hear).
Anyway, those allow you to apply a theme to your whole system, including iTunes. It’s not nearly the same as skinning WinAmp, but it at least allows you to change the interface of iTunes around a little more often than between Apple updates to the application.
Unfortunately, Shapewhifter’s support for iTunes breaks with each iTunes update, so people won’t be able to apply themes correctly to iTunes until Unsanity updates Shapeshifter to work with iTunes 7.
Incidentally, did you download iTunes 7, and if so, what did you think of it? The view that allows you to scan through the cover art of your albums in 3D is kinda nice, though a little gimmicky, in my opinion.
September 13th, 2006 at 8:34 pm
Finally, this comments page loads! Now that I’m looking at other sites (including Applegeeks), I have something that Fred could answer: does Applegeeks have banners like the banners you have here on the site? I listed yours on a blog of mine:
http://tye-fighter.blogspot.com/
They’re on the “More Links” section on the right panel. Bah. The question I was asking was: does Applegeeks have banners like those?
..
BAH! Why am I asking Fred? I should ask Hawk -.-
September 14th, 2006 at 4:11 am
I bought Tag & Rename about four or five years ago to help me tag my sizeable MP3 collection. I don’t think I could live without it. It’s better for doing bulk edits on albums and whatnot, but it works for individual files, too. It’s got a trial you should check out.
September 14th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
Damn, that sucks that your iPod broke so quick. I’ve had my iPod for alittle over two years now and its still working fine. The only thing that is starting to break down is the head phones, and you can’t buy those by themselves anywhere:(….and they’re the best out there. About the Apple thing, me being some one who love Apple, to me its starting to seem like everything is to good to be true (for me) like everything is just so before its time and I hope it doesn’t end up like saga did.
September 14th, 2006 at 9:52 pm
I’m not a big fan of iTunes either. I barely touch it on my powerbook. The only music I really listen to on my laptop, though, is the stuff I write myself.
That sucks about your trip bro.
Flying is a pain.
September 15th, 2006 at 5:37 pm
The only problem I really have with Apple’s theatrically sudden announcements is when my three week old top o’ the line iPod becomes old hat in a single night.
September 15th, 2006 at 6:01 pm
I know what you mean with the Ipod. For me, it’s been a “Frustration Station”. I had gotten it as a gift for my birthday in June, and didn’t even ask for it. I’ve been having trouble with Itunes (And I’m usually very good with figuring out Technology), because it just doesn’t want to work when I press “Update Ipod”.
So I’ve been wanting to step on my Ipod, and crush it.