Rubénerd!

I finally got around to updating iTunes to 10.4 this evening. Unlike Firefox 5 to Firefox 6, the difference in performance is like night and day!

iTunes wasn't always bad

Before even getting my first iPod, I first started using iTunes on my beautiful blueberry iMac DV with Mac OS 9. While Winamp (and XMMP) allowed you to generate playlists, they were shoehorned into a relatively small window in an application that otherwise still attempted to emulate the appearance of a physical sound deck and amplifier. Speaking of which, remember those SoundBlaster "Deck" applications for Windows 3.1? Those were the days ;).

By comparison to these, iTunes put the playlists front and centre in a large, easy to navigate window with controls optimised for computer screens. It was dead simple to use, and as a bonus it kept all your media organised on your hard drive automatically. No more unwieldly folders of MP3s!

A couple of years later I got my black and white 15GB iPod 3G (which I still use!) and was able to sync my music with my growing collection of (ahem) legally obtained media on iTunes, ironically faster than even my iPhone 4 can today with its inclusion of a FireWire cable. As is generally the case with Apple, it Just Worked™.

People only buy Apple stuff because of advertising

Over time, we moved to Mac OS X, and Apple released Windows users from that awful RealPlayer application by releasing a version for their platform. Remember RealPlayer? Sometimes when we talk about how Microsoft and some open source software projects can't design graphically pleasing and easy to use software, it pays to remember software like that!

Ironically, starting with version 5 (from my own memory), iTunes began to be the victim of its own success. With each iPod iteration, the application took on more roles to accommodate them, and the Carbon codebase which had enabled the transition from Mac OS 9 was starting to let it down, big time. As I said in October 2010 when it was really starting to get ridiculous:

Oh and by the way Apple, when are we getting a Cocoa version of iTunes?

What was once a nimble and usable application turned into a sluggish mess, so much so that applications were released specifically to allow people to not have to interact with it. And people (like me) paid for them!

Some iTunes KL nostalgia from January 2007 ;)

Today

I belabour all this to put into context just how thrilled and happy (both!) I am with iTunes 10.4. Despite running on a 8 core Mac Pro with 6GiB of RAM, the previous iTunes simply couldn't handle scrolling through 40,000+ tracks. Changing metadata on multiple tracks used to be agonisingly slow, and adding new content even slower.

The new version is fast. Everything is instant. The window resizes without artefacting or jittering. It has visual consistency with other apps again. Hallelujah!

I'm sure I speak for all Mac users when I thank the iTunes team from the bottom of my heart, and ask them what the heck took them so long!

While we're on the subject of music today, I couldn't help but buy Kyary's PonPonPon release on iTunes this evening. Yes I ordered the CD, but I couldn't help myself!

According to Tokyohive, the track made it to #1 in Finland and Belgium of all places. You Make Me Happy!

UPDATE: As of 20:31 AEST, if you Google "Kyary’s PonPonPon iTunes", this post appears as result #8. Take that SEO folk!

If this error message pops up for you, right click your iDevice in the left iTunes column, click Transfer Purchases, then try syncing again. Learned that after running around several circles today!

I tell you what, the iTelephone made syncing a smartphone/PDA with the Mac easy again since the late Palm lost interest, but it's still far from perfect.

Unfortunately despite my best efforts at staying at version 9, I had to update iTunes to 10.0.1 this afternoon so I could install the latest iTelephone update. Looking at the interface and how it's still the the most sluggish Apple application on my Mac, I'll still be using Exaile for actually playing music ;).

Cocoa iTunes! Come on, help a brother out!

Fire up the Terminal and type this:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -1

I'm on tethered internet so I can't (and don't feel compelled) to download iTunes 10, so I can't check if this works or not. If it makes your Mac explode, don't come to me for a replacement. I would replace it for you, but I've got a lot to do right now you see.

Apple has released new stuff, so because Slashdot and the like dub me an Apple fanboi it's my civic responsibility to discuss them... from my iTelephone. We still don't have home internet, you see :(.

iPod shuffle

Don't get me wrong, I adore Apple products because they're the only consumer electronics company that can design things (and yes that includes B&O!) but only Apple could remove buttons from something, make an advertising campaign out of it, then put the same buttons back and advertise it as a feature ;).

iPod nano

A very interesting change having a touch screen, but I wonder what impact it will have on usability, especially when you're walking around with your hand in your pocket. The ClickWheel was such a boon because you could operate it without looking, and you could memorise the order of the menus.

It also lost the ability to play video (which they heavily advertised in previous versions) and it no longer has a built in camera. In many ways its like the transition from the iPod Mini to the nano, they're two completely different devices. It's basically a slightly larger iPod shuffle with a screen.

iPod touch

There are lots of people who can't justify buying an iPhone 4 and an expensive new phone plan, and I know if I was one of them I'd be really considering getting one of these now that it has the "retina display" too. I mean I look at the screen on my iTelephone and look at every single other phone on the market and I feel like someone has rubbed grit into my eyes, or my glasses are really dirty!

Apple TV

It has an A4 chip which I think we were all expecting. They were able to keep the interface true to the original though. Unfortunately, I must be one of the few people in the universe who doesn't like black or think its cool, so the new colour is a bit of a shame. Oh well, I'm weird.

iTunes

For a brief moment in Leopard, iTunes looked like a Mac native application with a consistent interface. Now it looks different again, and I strongly doubt they've made it a Cocoa application either. Honestly, iTunes is the easiest application to use to organise lots of music (as the name suggests!) but it's also the most unstable, unreliable application Apple ships. People were asking about 64 bit, but that won't happen until it's rewritten in Cocoa owing to Carbon's 32 bit limitation.

I suppose they don't want to do an Objective-C rewrite because they have so much invested in the current codebase, and they still want to make it reasonably portable for Windows users. Bummer.

Ping

The new iTunes music social network thing. As someone who's worked as a network administrator, I shudder a bit at their choice of name. Oh well, if people use it and like it. I prefer the Whole Wheat Radio model, personally.

Conclusion

Some interesting changes, and its good to see Apple can still deliver stuff. I won't be getting any of it though. I mean, my iTelephone 4 has an iPod in it ;).

In a worrying trend, it seems Apple will be furthering Facebook integration this time with iTunes. MacRumours is hardly an impartial source on such matters, but that ratio above doesn't look too favourable.

Look, Apple, I love you man, but instead of all these gimmicky features that introduce serious privacy and security concerns for a website people won't be using in a few years, why not focus on making the software run smoother? I've been using iTunes since version 1 on Mac OS 9 and it keeps getting worse; it's the only software other than the Firefox 3.5 series that can frequently crash my Mac.

I understand you have two concurrent code bases to maintain and in that context it makes sense to keep using C++ and Carbon for this reason, but when you start to hear people complaining about using an iPhone because the otherwise easy to use iTunes software is bloated and slow, you know you have a problem.

I really, really hope you either have plans for a native Cocoa version or have one running in house along with these silly new features.

I just updated iTunes to 9.1, seems they're gearing up for the iPad release because my "Audiobooks" library is now a subheading in a new library called "Books". Wonder how many long years it'll take for books to be available in Australia and/or Singapore?

Oh and by the way Apple, when are we getting a Cocoa version of iTunes? I run Ecuote and Exaile, the latter of which is a GTK+ X11 app and it's still faster and more reliable.

UPDATE: I wonder if I can start dragging ePub books into this now? That'd be really, really, really cool!

Can that time really be right? Back in Singapore my dad and I combined have well over 130GiB of music and I don't remember seeing a time like that!

I've figured out why some iTunes users have been reporting problems with subscribing to the Rubenerd Show through the iTunes Store. I deleted my own subscription, searched for "Rubenerd Show" in the iTunes Store and resubscribed to only be given a small circle and an exclamation point.

When I right clicked and chose "Show Description" I was given the above dialog box. No wonder it isn't working, it's trying to access new shows from http:///show/feed/ for some reason!

I don't know how or why this happened. I'll be contacting Apple about this to see if I can get it pointing back to the proper URI again. I believe my good friend Felix Tanjono submitted my podcast to the iTunes Store back in 2005 back when Australia and Singapore didn't have access to it.

While I'm sorting this out you can still go to iTunes, choose the Advanced menu and click Subscribe to Podcast, then enter the following address as a stopgap:

http://rubenerd.com/show/feed/

Sorry about this, I don't know how this could have happened :-(.