I HATE APPLE

iono i don't despise apple but after 7 or so ipods, ranging from shuffles to fullblown 80gig wonderkids, i don't think i've ever realized how much more efficient a plainjane mp3 player has been (and a lot less costly). there's an insane amount of customizability, all my album artwork is displayed (via a drag and drop of a single picture into the folder, which is p great and doesn't copy itself to multiple mb's like it does on itunes w/ each song getting it's own picture), and battery life lasts for days.

maybe something will fuck up in the next month or so but otherwise i'm kinda astonished how long i had been living under a cloud just b/c it seemed natural to buy an ipod and nothing else.

xpost

see: internet browser

I really like the iTunes genius function

it's like pandora with your own music

the new thumbplay beta is pretty sick yall jus fyi

Oh I have lots of issues with itunes, syncing just isn't one of them. Many xposts

tbf i think you have a shit computer if it takes 4 minutes for itunes to load

this problem is by no means confined to itunes, or to apple (microsoft word, for instance, is like offender #1 here), but there is absolutely no reason any computer manufactured in the last 5 or even possibly 10 years should take 4 minutes to load a media player. as computers became more powerful and became it faster, people stopped bothering with code optimization. which is, amongst other things, an aesthetic loss.

(n.b. i am a linux-running hippie)

not true. 10.4 to 10.5 was all about refactoring and optimization.

i mean this as a general trend from, like, 1990. i am sure that sometimes steve jobs says the word "optimization" onstage.

ugh sorry i've fallen into Be Mean About Apple Mode. always tiresome. although i guess this would be the thread for it.

Constraints of iOS have done wonders here.

10.4 to 10.5 added few new features while making everything smaller and faster.

Everything except iTunes.

iTunes has had some performance boosts, but they keep chucking everything and the kitchen sink into it. It's interestingly monolithic, especially when you consider Apple still has separate Mail/iCal/Contacts apps that are well-built around frameworks that each ties into. iTunes is an iPod manager, online store, and music/video library all in one. I haven't used it on Windows for quite some time, but on newer macs it doesn't do all that bad, outside of a few hiccups when it initiates/finishes syncing a device or when you're being constrained by hard drive access.

I'd almost bet that as things become more iOS-like, we might see either a separation of these interests, or at least a major reworking of how the whole ecosystem links together.

itunes takes like a fortnight to start up on my mbp after a crash. my library is pretty big, and i guess it's rebuilding some cache or something, but it does seem grossly inefficient.

Hard drive thrashing, I would bet.

You'd be amazed how much more smoothly this shit goes on SSDs or fast desktop systems.

10.4 to 10.5 was all about refactoring and optimization.

Do you mean 10.5 to 10.6?

got itunes going here on both mac + pc (duplicating libraries innit) and neither are giving me any probs

I was explaining to a friend the other day that OS X started out with so little optimization and so few GUI features that it'd be impossible not to make it faster over revisions. They kind of did the "ship fast, ship early, ship often" schedule for the first four or five versions.

xxp, yes

is having 5 copies of yr itunes library neurotic or sensible? i'm going for the former :(

Those are backups, it makes perfect sense.

only if all 5 are local xp

yeah :(

no offsite? no cloud versh?

this is 100% otm in my opinion and, given enough time (probably quite a lot), it will eventually be the thing that kills apple.

http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits/2011/03/the-apple-strategy-tax.ars

This article explains what people itt were talking about:

http://www.9to5mac.com/54578/apple-negotiating-unlimited-song-downloadspermanent-music-backups-for-itunes/

Currently, iTunes users need to repurchase music if they want to wirelessly download the songs to other iOS devices. Users could also of course sync via iTunes on their Mac or PC to work around these download charges.

(not that I ever thought you guys were wrong, I just didn't understand)

Currently, iTunes users need to repurchase music if they want to wirelessly download the songs to other iOS devices.

Well, that's another way of saying "there is no wireless sync". If you're not near your computer, you have to download it from the iTunes store as if new.

I suppose the bandwidth costs of everyone treating re-download as a cloud storage solution would be not inconsiderable, certainly for video.

http://images.macrumors.com/article/2011/03/07/131951-justin_ipad_2_in_store.jpg

I suppose the bandwidth costs of everyone treating re-download as a cloud storage solution would be not inconsiderable, certainly for video.

Yes especially because after like a day or so, people would stop thinking of it as "redownloading" and more as "hitting the play button".

I was very close to posting creepy camping-for-iPad guy, I am glad someone else did.

Really beginning to think that Gruber needs his own thread, but I don't want to be the one to start it.

The latest Talk Show podcast, 35-ish minutes in. They're discussing the new iPad cover and he's practically on some kind of nerd interpretation of the old "Magnets? How the fuck do they work?" routine.

So I dare to visit his website today because of his verbal spastic attack, and one of the links is to a news story about the actress from The Wire with his heartfelt and not at all patronisingly semi-racist comment of "That’s a shame, but I’m glad to see her alive."

I don't know if I could listen to him in podcast form. Is he ranty?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/browbeat/archive/2011/03/10/david-simon-creator-of-the-wire-speaks-on-felicia-snoop-pearson-s-arrest.aspx

Wrong thread, but good article.

It's a sort of postscript to the discussion of Gruber's concern about Snoop.

Oh, duh.

hey! so backups are useful. woke up this morning and found my hd was making a 'clicking noise' occasionally - when it did so, my mac would 'hiccup' but everything ran fine. updated my backup with Super Duper, swapped disks, everything's peachy.

the affected hard disk seems to be fine, I'm wondering what I can do to flog it and force it into failure so I can RMA it easily. any ideas?

magnets

lol maybe whack it a few times with a hammer. I wonder if it has a diagnostics log or something.

So I update my Apple TV and suddenly I've got some dumb shit called 'MLB.tv' that I can't get rid of AND it reset my time to somewhere in America.

Oh wow, I didn't think it'd show the sports stuff outside the US

HILARIOUS

mlb.tv is not lame!

it's batshit if you're not american or into bas(k)e(t)ball

it's pretty dumb if you can't get rid of it.

I don't know if I could listen to him in podcast form. Is he ranty?

Not ranty. More controlled, very slow. Lots of pauses in the conversation. I'm sure it's pretty much intended to come across as unscripted but they're obviously working to some kind of schedule/rundown.

This week's has this marvellous bit towards the beginning where they're talking about how to import video to the iPad version of iMovie and Gruber can't understand why it can't be easier to copy videos onto the device. He suggests that cameras should have wireless technology built in to enable this. It's like he thinks everybody should upgrade and buy new versions of equipment they already have - as opposed to Apple should include a USB port or SD card slot in their brand new product (which nobody owns) - because that would mean the decision Apple has made is wrong.

It's worst when he's talking about Google or Android, because it's obvious he's clueless. Pretty sure last week's podcast had them discussing that Samsung executive quote about "smooth sales" that Apple used in their iPad presentation and the show was recorded at least a few days after the quote had been explained and debunked.

Wow, what balls:

Apple said on Tuesday that it would delay the planned March 25 launch of the iPad 2 in Japan, writes Joseph Menn in San Francisco.

Nat Kerris, company spokeswoman, said Apple wanted to focus on helping employees and their families affected by the quake and tsunami.

"Our hearts go out to the people of Japan, including our employees and their families", Ms Kerris said. She said Apple's decision was not driven by supplychain issues, and that all Apple stores and other facilities in the country remained open.

good balls imo