Slashdot Mirror

Well, for one thing, because it'd have been nice to figure out how to hack iTunes this weekend when I had to change a whole bunch of song titles from "Artist - Album - Song title" to "Song title", and being able to do this programmatically would have saved me a bunch of time;

Because I could have fixed a bunch of other ID3 information on my iTunes DB if I could access it easily (and could easily find the info on how);

Because I'd love to see if I could, in fact, hack the iPod to have a stopwatch on it (for exercising. They give you a calendar and a clock but no stopwatch? WHY?).

Copying from the iPod is a different story. You'll have to download a freeware (sometimes GPL) app to do that, beacause Apple couldn't make it that easy to steal music and still pull off the iTunes Music Store.

If you're using iTunes on an Apple rather than on a Windows PC, the easier solution is to grab one of several Applescripts that will simply copy the selected iPod tracks to your iTunes library and / or hard drive. I use this one, which does the job just fine, but there are others. I'm sure these are covered in the book.

The "Rip CD's in a Row" script is perfect. I've used it on up to six optical drives at a time without an error.

And yes, I sent him 10 bucks by Paypal.

The "Rip CD's in a Row" script is perfect. I've used it on up to six optical drives at a time without an error.

And yes, I sent him 10 bucks by Paypal.

Well, assuming that iTunes meets your other requirements, this AppleScript may prove useful to you:

http://www.malcolmadams.com/itunes/scripts/scripts 02.shtml#ripcdsinarow

I haven't used it; I saw it earlier today when grabbing another script from their site. My experience with other Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes has been quite positive. I ripped (in some cases, re-ripped...stupid LAME bug!) all 1500+ or so of my CDs last year, and I used a few of those scripts to make my life easier. Give it a look-through.

``tell application "iTunes"; play "track 01" from "Goldberg variations"; end tell''

To be fair, you can do this... well, at least on MacOS X using AppleScript. Not sure about iTunes for Windows. I suspect that the same is available through VBScript/JScript using Windows Scripting Host. Many applications (eg. Word, Excel) expose functionality like this through COM. Unfortunately Windows Scripting Host is a totally open environment, without much (any) consideration for security issues, hence all the Outlook viruses that exploit these features.

I agree, however, that most applications do very little to support this functionality, and those that do usually do a poor (or insecure) job of it. I also tend to prefer writing code for UNIX based systems, or cross-platform code.

Here's a reference for iTunes scripting:
http://www.malcolmadams.com/itunes/

Javascript, as the parent post mentioned, would be great. Unfortunately it doesn't really work well as a OSA in practice. Especially when trying to get objects in other Applications. (Perhaps other peoples milage varies - but I was excited about the Javascript OSA when I found it but found in practice that it wasn't that useful) If Apple made Javascript OSA a full player then I think we'd be more productive. And of course both Acrobat and Safari make extensive use of Javascript.

Of course given the resources at Apple I don't expect it to happen. As I mentioned elsewhere, they haven't even added recordability to their applications and many applications have a very limited object model.

Still one can't say Applescript is the ugly stepsister at Apple. The Applescript GUIscripting extensions from last year are very powerful. Likewise Applescript Studio, while limited, is one of those hidden gems most people don't realize.

When done right Applescript can really extend an Application's power. iTunes is the obvious example. It's probably my most scripted application. Here's a great resource for scripts:

Doug's Applescripts for iTunes

Finder Toolbar Scripts

FYI: We have an AppleScript called MP3 CD to Library that works with iTunes in OS 9 -- some of the Finder scripting this script uses is not available in X.

Doug
Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes
RSS

FYI: We have an AppleScript called MP3 CD to Library that works with iTunes in OS 9 -- some of the Finder scripting this script uses is not available in X.

Doug
Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes
RSS

FYI: We have an AppleScript called MP3 CD to Library that works with iTunes in OS 9 -- some of the Finder scripting this script uses is not available in X.

Doug
Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes
RSS

There's a better way to get around the iTunes 32,000-song limit than the method in the Apple KB article. Doug Adams' iTunes Library Manager is a shareware AppleScript utility that manages multiple iTunes libraries from within iTunes. Works great!

I have about 15,000 MP3s, a few OGG files, and tried the MPEG-4 out. I really like the MPEG-4. way smaller than MP3s, plays natively in iTunes, and sounds great. I purchased Quicktime Pro and "rip" CDs to MPEG-4 with a nice applescript from this site:

http://www.malcolmadams.com/itunes/itinfo/makemine mpeg4.shtml

Yeah, the files don't play in my iPod...and that is a cryin' shame. Otherwise, I can't find anything wrong with MPEG-4.

You probably want to use Applescript for this. Check out this page for a buttload of iTunes applescripts. For example the "Get CDDB Track Names" script will tag the selected tracks in iTunes with info from a CDDB webpage (that you searched for). And you can use the built-in applescripts to search the CDDB.

But honestly, with only 2000 songs, it would probably be less work to do it yourself, especially if you can use iTunes multiple-edit mode on tracks from the same album.