After testing it, I now dare inform any readers who've learned to share my considerable caution in upgrading iTunes on Macs you can safely update now to version Six, which adds a video capability but came out almost frighteningly fast after iTunes 5 put "podcasts" on the market.
Thanks again to Michael Brewer for being braver than me and unveiling some of its secrets at the MacDev Center. Michael also commented on my almost routine "Wait!" warning when I linked to his article on October 14, essentially to back up what I wrote but on grounds different from mine.
At Apple's Cupertino headquarters, probably after further trials and collating the complaints from courageous computer users who played guinea-pig for iTunes 6.0, it's just become version 6.0.1. That little change makes all the difference, but won't stop me being a pain because it's so shrouded in secrecy.
On installing the upgrade and ensuring the most widely noted bugs have been squashed, I again noticed the little hitch Apple so often puts in the way of the fun they offer with music. It's an inability to spill the beans when things have gone wrong that bugs me no end! Just this once, I'll show you exactly why I see red.
Jargon messes with the music!
Here's some characteristically unclear lingo from a Mac's software update panel this week:
"With iTunes 6.0.1, you can preview, buy, and download over 2,000 videos on the iTunes Music Store and sync your music and purchased videos with iPod to enjoy on the go. To watch purchased videos, you must have Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later.
iTunes 6.0.1 features several stability improvements over iTunes 6."
Stability improvements?
As we'll see now I'm decided to get the point made, that's a wicked euphemism of the "collateral damage" kind. In part, what it means is: "This version is less likely to make a dog's breakfast of importing songs off your CDs, etc. & etc., than 6.0 did for many when we unleashed it."
Details of other problems people had digesting the new iTunes are amply written up, as usual, on specialist sites.
To get iTunes 6 functioning as it should, you need to upgrade QuickTime, Apple's homegrown video player, which also has important musical functions. On this related update, the company has the grace to be less economical with the truth (my italics in this extract):
"QuickTime 7.0.3 delivers several important bug fixes, primarily in the areas of streaming and H.264 video.
QuickTime 7 Pro users also gain the ability to create video and audio files that can be played back on compatible iPods. This update is highly recommended for all QuickTime 7 users.
[An] Important Notice to QuickTime Pro Users (...)"
then gives advance warning that if we've not paid the fee QT 7 requires of "pros" who plan to download videos or work with them, but already have a "pro" version up QT 6, we'll lose those extra capabiitie on upgrading unless we hand over the cash for a new licence key.
Fair enough.
QT 7 is, in some respects, a genuine improvement on 6.
So if Steve Job's firm can be perfectly straight there was something needed fixing in that, why merely mention "stability improvements" in iTunes when what Apple means includes making "important bug fixes" to the music software as well, before I felt able recommend it's now ready to install?
Who are they trying to kid?
And why? There's been a visible change among passengers, just like last year, in the Paris Métro ever since Apple Expo came to town a few weeks back. In an average rush hour, if you look around any carriage now, you're likely to see three, sometimes more, people with iPods.
It's an annual sales success story. Prior to the Expo, you'd probably see somebody else, but not several.
You can tell the iPods are new partly because the users let the wires hang all over the place, which is ill-advised, while a minor change in wire design is a give-away to their having the most recent headsets attached to the latest models.
Yet I've still had no reply from Apple Europe to the protest I mailed them just ahead of the Expo, exasperated by the latest dangerous software update. I felt it was bad practice to expose unwary music-lovers to the kinds of risks I detailed in writing.
My insistence about this is becoming tedious, I know, but take a look at these two items on iTunes and QuickTime, posted yesterday at the most comprehensive Mac trouble-shooting site around:
"Late-Breakers -
iTunes 6.0.1 (#2): CD playing/importing bugs not resolved for some users (...)
MacFixit reader Bill writes:
'As with iTunes 5.0, you can insert a CD, it appears on the desktop and in iTunes but the CD does not play nor can the songs be imported. iTunes freezes solid.
'I talked to an Apple expert in White Plains, NY, just before iTunes 6 launched about this problem with iTunes 5.0.1. He claimed that 5.0.2 would have fixed the problem. I never saw version 5.0.2 nor has version 6.0.1 fixed the problem.'
It appears that in some cases, changing the bitrate settings for importing data from CDs can allow the process to occur where it otherwise wouldn't (as explained in the iTunes 5.0.1 special report)".
Well, that may be easy as geek-speak goes but it's perhaps too technical for the inexperienced newcomer who just wants the iPod and the software to work, and the MacFixit special report link won't work for you unless you're a paid-up subscriber. Also
"Craig writes:
'The iTunes Podcast 'Categories' search feature remains broken. I had hoped the 6.0.1 update today would fix it. But for several weeks now, you cannot search for a Podcast via the 'Categories' selection that appears in purple at the lower left portion of the Podcast home page.
'An Apple representative has verified that this is a known bug in iTunes.'"
Isn't that reassuring?
What, then, of the new QuickTime?
After some more technical stuff posted yesterday at MacFixit, we learn how
"One reader writes:
'It looks like the Apple QuickTime Movie trailers site has had an upgrade. Whatever was done, I cannot run most of the trailers in the large format without them skipping and losing sync [the person means sound synchronised to the image]. I have the latest Quicktime (7.0.3) and am running Mac OS 10.3.9 ... which is supposed to be supported. Well, I guess it is, if you want to watch the miniscule version of the trailer'."
Being wrapped up in music, I've not bothered to check this yet but I do know the free and French-made VLC media player behaves better with some made-for-QT movies than QuickTime itself. VLC is multi-platform and one guy said to me the other day, "Where's the problem, Nick? Everybody uses VLC."
They certainly don't. Many haven't even heard of it.
If the movies stashed on my hard drives consisted of porn queens rather than women making music, I could almost understand why QT refuses to play more than a couple of minutes of some of them; it would be like someone whose definition of "liberal" is the one used by "right-thinking" Americans.
But there's no secret censorship built in by Apple and it's not because VLC comes from a country where adult or R film ratings aren't nearly as tight as they are across the Atlantic that the French player can handle stuff that gets QuickTime making arbitrary decisions about how long some movies are. In some cases to believe what the QT player says in its window, a clip about 15 minutes long is only 1'57" or something.
Such points now made, I'll shut up about the hindrances Apple puts between you, me and the music that the company's products should be giving us without such technical considerations to worry about; these encourage many of us to pay our MacFixit subscriptions to stay safe.
In a moment, I'll detail routine precautions to take when installing upgrades plus the tests I did, while there'll also be a follow-up mail to Apple. The gist of it just may be a little ironic:
"I'm glad your saturation ad campaign across Paris ahead of the Expo worked so well and new iPods are everywhere.
Now will you please tell me how you plan to respond when some of those happy people in the Métro and on the streets start to send you their new iPods for repair because shoddy software has stopped them working properly?"
Software update safety first
Once iTunes 6.0.1 was installed, I wouldn't even start up the programme before doing a "permissions repair" using Apple's Disk Utility, as I always do when such a software upgrade, from Apple or a third party, goes into my Mac.
Once completed, the repair panel showed nothing special had needed doing; that's fine, but the precaution is vital to prevent problems later because some updates do mess with those permissions.
Last night, I imported some singer-songwriters off CDs to go from iTunes to iPod.
Snce MacFixit warned iTunes 6.0.1 proved problematic about this for at least one person, I took one new file containing an album's worth of music out of the iTunes library, put it safely on the desktop in case I had the same difficulty, then bunged the same album back in the CD player to try a new import. It does work.
If it did because those import preference settings matter, it might be worth adding I don't use the default ones, but have customised them for AAC encoding at 192 kbps. That bit of geek-speak means I go for extremely high quality copies at the cost of using extra storage space.
This is because I often plug the iPod into my hi-fi to be able to jump quickly, using its own controls, from one singer to another or replay bits of a song I want to write about rather than mess around with the original CDs.
The iTMS sells music at 128 kbps, just fine for most people, but if you want higher quality off your own CDs you should skip 160 kpbs to jump from 128 to 192.
Since we're now talking "codecs", forget my informed reasoning; it's enough to know that 160 kbps is a good "bitrate" for the .mp3 songfiles most people are familiar with, but not for Apple's "advanced audio codec", which I happen to prefer.
The other key test was to ensure iPods plugged into the Mac still work and sync the data with iTunes. Mine do, but I checked since sometimes an iPod is no longer "recognised" by the computer after a software update and that's very bad news.
The last of language and likeness
Both my iPods, "kalessin's air" and its small sister "gaia's minstrels", have no problems synching with the Mac: the former's the new one Apple sent me instead of repairing a previous new one that came to grief because of bugged software.
I've not yet investigated the brand new video panel in iTunes, so will simply supplement Michael Brewer's helpful comment about a week ago by saying I understand it will work with iTMS outlets outside the United States -- but at a quick glace that's another incitement to spend money!
More shape to the substance
In the wake of other entries exploring the nature of music -- including one with a lot of nude pictures -- some readers have asked for more essays along with the singer-songwriters. Well, one of those is about ready.
My daughter's insistence on an overview of princesses and frogs is behind it, as well as a feeling I have it's time for a hefty swipe at one of the most absurd musical myths on the web.
This apart:
- while I appreciate kind words about such "insight" pieces, they take a very long time to research and write, as I found tackling that French angle shortly to come and others still in storage.
But most people's feedback says "keep the women coming" so the essays will be infrequent. As for the women some find simply distracting, now I made my serious point a few weeks back, the lass here is scarcely "gratuitous eye-candy" (to use a revolting expression), but I'm shutting the lid on a Pandora's box! A woman who's said pictures of sexy men she finds a kind of music has seen to that...
- a "scrooge" I may be, no fan of Christmas for purely personal reasons. But most people like it more than I do. So between now and then, you'll catch particular effort here to cover musicians and albums you might like to give or receive.
It won't be a "Best of 2005".
Others offer theirs abundantly, particularly in magazines; I enjoy reading them, but to make such lists here would entail invidious comparisons I prefer to avoid.
Instead, with luck, care over some recent purchases has filled my sleeve with a few stunners for your stockings since this is a young site and part of the aim is to make plenty of room for younger women whose reputations have only just begun to get around;
- for the long-planned index of who's here and what kind of coverage they get, I've realised we Mac users are lucky: the answer as to how to do it has been sitting on my machine right under my nose. It's called DEVONthink*.
Occasionally, it operates much as I do with iPods when I want to tease out those underlying patterns intuition brings increasingly to mind regarding women and their music;
- some of the "iMixes" are almost ready.
But a few people who know about the iTMS now it's open to more and more of us are asking, "What is an iMix?"
It's fun!
Good ones are imaginative, while mine tend to stray far from beaten tracks since I enjoy doing so. iMixes are simply a way of crafting and publishing personal music compilations at the iTMS, where anyone with iTunes can sample your selection. Better still,
"you can write liner notes about the picks, explaining your influences. iTunes saves your iMix for a whole year (...) For an iMix, iTunes creates a mosaic of cover art from your purchased albums, just like printing a cover for a mix CD. You’ll see your mix on the album page for songs in your mix, and other iTunes Music Store customers can rate your iMix" (from Apple's 'Create Playlists' page.
Mine will soon start appearing at the iTMS France and you don't need an account at that particular outlet to be able to sample them, start making rude remarks and giving me rotten ratings. Or even nice ones.
Either way, I look forward to it.
__________
*Software from DEVONtechnologies never came cheap but the firm realised the potential of the Mac OS X platform at once and has since steadily improved what I find the best database and organisation potential there is.
The company started in Germany before going international on the strength of a terrific reputation among people ranging from academics, researchers, creative artists and journalists like me.
The database DEVONthink offers can these handle any kind of file, from text and Net pages to music and video. For ages, it's been a favourite for tasks often for my main job, but I've just realised how smart I could make it with all my music.
Given what it can do, I use the "personal edition", seeing no reason to upgrade to the Pro one now that's also available
Now US-based, the company also produces some very good free software, such as a quick search tool if you've "lost" some document on your Mac, also well worth checking out.
As for DEVONagent, this is a "heavy duty" Net research tool that leaves Google light-years behind and can be customised according to your needs.
It interacts smoothly with the data base and other Mac programmes; what I realised is that by running this log through both, the software will do most of the searching, thinking and linking for me!
The only drawback -- for the lazy -- is that it takes a long while to set up the way you Iike, but that effort is rich in rewards.
It's "only" technology, of course, and no better than the mind that use it, but for a brain like mine that increasingly relies on intuition and networking of ideas where parallels may not be immediate obvious, you can bet I love smart software that's also intuitive.
Once you're on top of it, the unexpected links and connections it makes between pieces of data it considers related can be a helpful aide to whatever seems to go on, rather deviously sometimes, in my neurons!
Such technology may not be alive, but occasionally its workings are alarmingly close to our human processing capabilities.
2:39:53 AM 
|
|
