Re: Official Apple Thread

[Theicecreaman]

So what do you guys think of the new iTunes? Looks pretty nifty, I suppose, but I'm just glad it's not a slow piece of crap now.

[Wonko the Sane]

Is it quick and slick? I haven't had a chance to grab it yet. Actually didn't even know it officially came out until I read your post. Long, very busy day at work today.

Edit:
This sounds very useful:
Another new feature in iTunes 11 is Up Next. This enhancement allows iTunes users to select songs to play next. These can be queued up in a list of several tracks.

[Theicecreaman]

Yeah, I feels dude. I saw an article or something and updated.

It's better for sure, but I still feel like it could be improved. Basically, when you're viewing albums, you click once to see songs available, and it takes a second for it to load what songs an album has (it has this fancy color thing you'll see when you update). That's the only negative I've experienced so far. I also do not like the new icon--it looks very low-res. compared to my other icons on my taskbar.

edit:


omg guys I feel so hungry for something ethnic right now...this is the weirdest feeling yo. Hit me up with some crazy Thai shit right about now, yo.

edit 2:

actually scratch that about it being slow, it's actually fine. I think I am a bit bonkers today for some reason.

[Wonko the Sane]

Hungry for Thai.... music?! Your brain is going too fast for your computer?

Uh... did you eat the special ice cream again?

[Theicecreaman]

Nah, I just didn't eat much for dinner yesterday. I was referring to ethnic food

Now I'm getting hungry again...

What do you think about the new iTunes, Wonko?

[Wonko the Sane]

Well the old iTunes totally borked my iPhone and iPad and they wouldn't even sync with the new iTunes. It kept failing saying the connection was lost, and it was trying to sync everything to my iPad twice so it thought it was over capacity by 30gigs or some nonsense.

What I ended up having to do was restore my iPhone to a backup, which really doesn't do anything 'cause the old iTunes at least able to back up my stuff, so it just put it back exactly as it was (thank goodness). But somehow that magically fixed it. This morning I plugged in my iPad to do the same and somehow, magically, it synced just fine. So I have no clue what's going on. I'm going to restore my iPad too anyway because I don't trust iTunes right now at all.

Deep breath.


Aside from that though, it seems a ton less laggy. I can actually click between my iPad and iPhone in the devices dropdown without it taking two and a half minutes to change the screen. I think I like the new UI too without the sidebar on the left. I read somewhere you can get it back in the view menu, but I don't think I want it back. I had a ton of playlists and that sidebar was always a really long scrolling list because of that. Without the persistent sidebar it looks a lot more clean and slick. I like having a separate playlists button up top along with the other music related buttons/tab things instead.

I Also think I will really like the up next feature. Being able to add a random song to play next, then have iTunes continue with whatever playlist or shuffle or album I was listening to before that sounds really useful. I only wish it had the option to turn your up next history into a playlist. For example, there are times when I've played one song after another individually and after ten songs or so, realized I had a really awesome flow of songs going and should have been putting them into a playlist. It'd be nice if iTunes had a list of songs that have been playing and a button to turn it into a playlist for next time.

[Wonko the Sane]

Is wireless sync working in the new iTunes for you, Ice? After getting all that other stuff sorted, I'm having issues getting my iThings to stay listed in iTunes.

[Theicecreaman]

I will check tomorrow and let you know. I never use Wireless surf anyways...actually I rarely even sync my iPhone.

[Wonko the Sane]

Do you have it back up to iCloud instead when you plug it in? I have far too many pictures and videos from all my previous iPhones stored on there for that unfortunately. We're talking gigs... that'd take forever to back up over the Internet so I still have to back up to my computer.

Back before iTunes was all broke, I was able to just leave it running on my computer in the background all the time. That way, any time I plugged my iDevices into the wall to charge they'd wirelessly backup and sync to it. But then it broke and crashed and etc etc so that wouldn't work.

I've been trying to make the new version do that wirelessly but for some reason it's not. I don't know why... just wondering if it's me.

[Theicecreaman]

Yeah, I have iCloud dude. I use the Photo Stream thing.

[Theicecreaman]

So I don't remember the exact topic we had this in, but apparently you don't need a Facebook account for Spotify now?

http://www.spotify.com/us/help/guides/account/

This is recent. I have all my FB-like thingymabobers turned off for Spotify so it doesn't affect me, but you should def. check it out now, Wonkster

No excuses!

I heard about this first here: http://reviews.cnet.com/software/spotify-windows/4505-3513_7-35551786.html

I didn't read it, but the pros and cons seem about the same as what I mentioned previously, except shorter. The ads are definitely loud, but I only really notice when I'm listening to something not-so-loud, like a soft jazz song or something old and not edited-up like crazy. I honestly don't notice them often enough for them to be an issue, even if I'm listening with my earphones. Check it, dawg.

edit:

Oh, also, one other minor problem is that sometimes Artists are kinda-sorta duplicated. But this might be a new thing. Before, all of Jack Johnson's music was on his Artist "section" or "page" or whatever the hell you want to call it. Now, it seems to be split up. I also noticed this with a couple other groups, the only other one I can currently think of being NWA.

[Wonko the Sane]

I grabbed Spotify on my iPhone but I haven't really used it yet. But it's there for when I need it now.


But the real reason I'm posting now:

THE GOOGLE MAPS APP IS OUT!!!

And it's awesome.

Go get it.

[Theicecreaman]

I was just about to post this!

I'll download in a few. I think I'm gonna be driving somewhere within the week for which I'll need GPS, so I'll test it out then!

[Wonko the Sane]

Yeah let us know if it drives you off any cliffs or into the middle of the Australian Outback or anything.

[Theicecreaman]

So yeah, Google Maps rocks. The interface is awesome, and it's cool how you can save home and work info and stuff like that. And one word (phrase): street view. It's the shiiit.

Btw, for Spotify, I think you get one month of premium for free, so make sure to make good use of that! I think it's 320mbps MP3. I think if you give them your credit card info, you get a month of it free again, so I might do that soon for the wintertime.

[Wonko the Sane]

iTunes just got an update that's supposed to fix how laggy searching was. Hated that, made the search all but useless.


Edit: So search is much better. Still lags a bit but at least it's usable. While on the topic of usable things, guess what works again! WiFi syncing!

Edit of the edit: I never used to use the miniplayer 'cause it always seemed kinda pointless before. But it seems like it was also made more useful in the new iTunes. You can pretty much do everything you need to do in that little tiny window. It gets the Wonko seal of approval.

Thrice edited: I really like the up next list. It's great being able to just drag stuff around, remove songs, and add new ones, then continue with a playlist, but not play those two songs, play this one instead, reorder all of these, and it just does it on the fly as a one-off playlist. It's fantastic.

[Theicecreaman]

Updating right now

[Wonko the Sane]

So everything was going great with syncing until I decided to leave iTunes running all day/night for the first time yesterday. Turns out WiFi sync is still broken.

At some point after a couple hours of iTunes running, one of the iTunes processes, applemobiledeviceservice.exe or something like that, starts sucking up cpu cycles and syncing no longer works. The only thing I can do is kill itunes and kill the offending process. But then when I restart iTunes it doesn't see my iThings anymore and so syncing and backing up and all that won't work anymore.

I spent hours last night googling and researching and nobody has a solution, but everybody has the same problem. Apple has an article they released recently that says some children's internet protection software and other various software (like xfire apparently?!) causes conflicts with iTunes and you have to uninstall that software. I had an old XFire install, which I never use, so I got rid of that but the problem is still happening. The whole Internet is aflame with people hating Apple for blaming other software (which works fine) for their own problems with iTunes. This is really aggravating.

Have you had any issues Ice? Or do you not even leave iTunes running 'cause you use Spotify these days?

[Theicecreaman]

Have you had any issues Ice? Or do you not even leave iTunes running 'cause you use Spotify these days?

Spotify.

I hate how iTunes ALWAYS disappears from my taskbar whenever I update the damn the darn thing! It's insane.

So speaking of Apple stuff, guess which app has an update? Dropbox. It's niftier than ever!

For reals, check it out, dude. If you use it as much as I do, you know it rocks.

edit:

Okay so I have iTunes open after updating...it's totally frozen, man. This freaking sucks. It's not even opening now, dude.

[Wonko the Sane]

Yeah Dropbox is amazing, for serial. I've got a backlog of app updates so I'm downloading all of them now.

iTunes... I just don't even... I mean why can't it just...

[Wonko the Sane]

It's still funny!



The post office in my town is still mislabeled as a school that doesn't actually exist.

[Theicecreaman]

^^Exactly why the Google Maps app is so damn popular.

[Wonko the Sane]

Alright, Ice. You were right about Spotify. This is pretty cool. I just wish the quality was higher. It only streams at 160kbps which is pretty low for good headphones.

Currently listening to some Death Cab for Cutie (holycrapthey'reawesome), which I otherwise would have had to resort to Youtube for with even worse quality sometimes, depending on how old it is. So I guess it's acceptable for exploring new music I've wanted to listen to but don't actually own. (The singer from Death Cab for Cutie sang for The Postal Service, which is also totally holycrapawesome and you should check them out)

Also, you didn't tell me it integrates with my iTunes library, essentially acting as a full replacement for iTunes. And if you did, I wasn't paying attention. But holycrapthat'sawesome! See ya iTunes.


I took a quick look around for something like Spotify with higher quality and found Mog. Seems like that's the other big one, streaming everything at a much more respectable 320kbps, but it doesn't give you unlimited streaming for free like Spotify does in the US. Worse yet, there's no information out there on how much music you can listen to for free 'cause of the way they handle it. You get this gas tank thing that fills up as you use the social features built in, or even just browse new music, which gives you more music time.


So now let's turn this back to Apple for a moment... there's a lot of indications that Apple will be offering a streaming service of their own in the near future, but if they don't clean up iTunes then who is even going to bother using it? Seriously. iTunes is such crap.

[Theicecreaman]

Yeah, I probably should have mentioned that first, that is, if I did mention it at all.

Now stop whatever you're doing, go into Spotify, and download the TuneWiki App!

Basically, it shows lyrics as you're listening, and it's totally awesome. Great for knowing the lyrics to songs you didn't know the lyrics too, especially ones from your youth (if you're feeling nostalgic )

Btw, the new update SUCKS. Don't update if you haven't already (it was released a few days ago). It's SOOO MUCH SLOWER, and I don't like the new interface. Also, it adds video ads apparently (no sound), and it's easier to accidentally click on ads in general.

Basically, don't update if you haven't used it in a few days.

[Wonko the Sane]

I probably have the newest version... I downloaded the desktop app for the first time when I wrote that post. The image ads are kind of annoying though. I don't think I've seen a video ad yet, but that would be hella annnoying too. Do you know if anyone has hacked the client to remove those ads?

Also, lyrics?! Hell yes please! I actually thought to myself "gee, it'd be awful nice if this thing would show me lyrics also. Oh well, I guess that's too much to ask."

But turns out it isn't! I didn't even know about these apps you can add. Any other ones I need to know about?

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