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iTunes Disables MusicMatch
spooza writes "If you own an iPod and use it with MusicMatch on a Windows machine and then install iTunes, strange things happen: after the installation, MusicMatch is unable to communicate or even find the iPod anymore. Of course this might be a coincidence or bad programming on the Apple side, but since MusicMatch also introduced a pay-per-download service it seems not too farfetched to suspect that Apple simply took the opportunity to knock out an opponent. The funny thing is, Apple and MusicMatch cooperated before, because Apple wanted to have software that was able to work with iPod and thus not lose potential customers that want to buy an iPod but have only Windows." MusicMatch recommends deleting, then downloading and reinstalling, the MusicMatch software to reenable it.
You know, I would have thought this was simply another conspiracy theory on /. created to stir up controversy and debate. However, after reading this and this on Think Secret the other day I'm not so sure. This isn't the first not will it likely be the last transgression at this level pulled by Apple.
I have Xplay installed as well, and have noticed the blank screen in Xplay. When I downloaded iTunes, it immediately noticed my iPod. I thought that I could then delete Xplay from my computer. Well, after that, iTunes did not recognize my iPod. I had to reinstall Xplay. Have you had the same experience? Is this a glitch? I cannot find any information on this.
is it that bad seein a hot chick again? if i see a hot chick walkin down the hall i dont say "repost"
Then I got a mac.
,of course, the firewire ports on his laptop are 4 pin, and don't have power in them, so we had to leave the ipod plugged in for an hour or so before being able to use it.
Now I understand.
Apple is a corporation. Yes. They are out to make money. Yes.
Their way of doing so, however, is to make some rally kick ass stuff.
I *LOVE* OS X. And I"m a control freak. If I didn't have OS X, I would be using a linux desktop, no questions asked.
As it is I get a rock solid desktop that rules. In fact, I'll even go as far as to say that if you haven't sat down and really got to know OS X as a desktop, you only THINK You know what a good desktop is.
It IS that much better, in terms of user experience. Apple knows what "User experience" actually means.. to microsoft it's a buzzword. You don't know what good effortless computing can be if you haven't been using a mac.
What they say about itunes is totally true...
I bought an ipod last summer. I plugged it into my ibook. Then I opened up the manual, and started reading.. and basically every step said "If you have a mac, skip this step". When I got to the end, there was nothing for me to do.. I looked back at the laptop, and it had already done everyting.
THen my co-worker got one, and he uses windows.
It took us 5 or 6 weird dialog boxes to install MusicMatch.
Then we had to get musicmatch to import his music to it's library (which was REALLY slow, and it doesn't even move files around, just reads them). We had to reboot.
We had a few more dialog boxes for a few other components....
Then we could synchronize, which was by overwriting everything already in the ipod. And it was slow.
And,
End result:
I plugged in my ipod, and it worked. All the music I had ended up on my ipod in seconds, and it started charging up.
IT took us an hour or so of futzing around to get my co-workers to work.
It's kind of funny to see how Slashdotters race to the defense of Apple when they start acting like a monopoly, but when MS does it, the sky is falling.
Ok, on one hand you have a company a with ~5% OS marketshare writing software for another OS and specifically telling people it will disable certain other software on the system.
On the other hand, you have a company with ~95% OS marketshare bundling apps (such as a web browser) with their OS in order to crush the competition by leveraging the power of their monopoly.
Now please, explain to me how the first is anywhere near comparable to the second?
PS - If you click "Agree" on a fucking EULA, you damn well better have read it. Otherwise, you are accepting that there may have been terms in their you would have found disagreeable, but you don't care.
I use MusicMatch for ripping and encoding, its MP3 encoder does a good job at low bitrates (VBR ~128kb/s). Back when I used iTunes on my Mac the MP3 encoder it came with was terrible, when using VBR you had to jack the base bitrate way up or it was artifacts galore. Maybe it's better now, but I'll stick with MM thanks anyway.
As a player I don't like MM at all, BTW. I use Winamp for that, which is much niftier than iTunes in just about every possible way.
...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
Music Match for the following reasons. I use MP3 Music as a wholesale replacement for my entertainment center in my living room:
1. MMJ: Library is seperated from the player/playlist. Because of this I can sort by album, genre, artist, track, bitrate, year and a plethora of others while still keeping my play list clear. If I want to listen to 2 albums, I right click on the tree and add both to the player, then play only those selected. Later I can add more singles songs, or albums to the player. I don't have to create a playlist to do this, but I do have the option to save if I want. MMJ also lets me preview a track outside of the playlist/player. This lets me quickly view a track before choosing to add it to the player.
1. iTunes: everything is one big library. I have to CREATE and SAVE a new playlist, even for temporary use, and drag items to the list from the browser to play. There is no seperate player distinction. There is a browse function, but I can only play one album at a time when highlighting an album to populate the main player. (well not true, I can by browsing by all albums, then ctrl-click multiple albums at the same time to add the the player. But this has to be done at the same time, there is no option to add later to the main player). I then have to delete the SAVED list to keep the interface from being cluttered. Most often there is no use for me to keep every session of what I listen to. Itunes also does not let me preview a song outside of a list. So if I am listening to the one album I can listen to without creating and saving a NEW list, the player is hijacked with that song, unless I start over and do some fancy sorting and ctrl-clicking. Actually it does not seem possible to add 2 albums + 5 tracks to the main player with CREATING and SAVING a new list, due to the limitations of the browser not even being able to sort by song outside of the main player.
PS: It seems that iTunes is insistent on being a large mix tape interface of single songs. This coincides with the "purchase single song interface". MMJ can be either or, and is flexible when choosing to look at a library in terms of "album".
2: MMJ has the "smart list function" and is slightly better than iTunes at it. MMJ has the ability to TAG music with arbitrary data that reflects mood, tempo, and rating. You can add any textual data you wish to the TAG. You can then use the "Auto DJ" function to create smart lists based on data YOU provided, in addition to the standard id3 tag.
2: Itunes: provides 1-5 rating for smart lists and that is it.
3. MMJ: Music Match provides a method of having multiple DBs to store music. This is great when dealing with different situations of music storage. For example, I have a DB for music that I do not have physical media, a DB for songs downloaded from emusic.com, a DB for music I have media for, and a DB for music on the iPod. This makes iPod and iPod synch easier for me, as I have a separate DB and can remove items from the DB at will. The iPod will synch that data. The multiple DB works well when doing things, such as ensuring that all music for which I have media is encoded at a certain quality bitrate. To do this I simply load up the DB, sort by bitrate and identify the low bitrate offenders.
3. Itunes: So far it looks like there is only one DB for iTunes. I can synch the entire DB to the iPod, or make the laborious task of clicking a check mark on only the tracks I want out the current 7500 I have. I do not seem to have the ability to create a DB for separate instances of music. I cannot use iTunes to tell me what emusic.com downloads are encoded at 128, so I can revisit emusic.com and download the new 192VBR versions.
4: MMJ has the ability to skin the interface. This is critical to me, when using a TV at 640x480 as an output. I need the ability to change colors and font sizes to better suit my output environment. MMJ is also modular and can turn pieces of its interface off.
4: iTunes does not have to ab
One of Apple's human interface guidelines is to have an Undo feature whenever the user commands a big change.
Guess what. No undo. I experimented with a feature of the program (it didn't say what "organize the MP3's" meant, and I was curious) and I couldn't undo what it did.
If it had SAID "You can't undo this!" I would have read more to figure out what it meant. However, since it was an Apple program, I assumed that they were following their own guidelines.
And I got fooked.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Following your line of reasoning, would you also argue that Epson have a monopoly on producing drivers for Epson printers (if we ignore GIMP Print)?
-- Using the preview button since 2005
So let's get this straight. You worked at Apple (where?), but you use a pc at home for programming in C#... ok cool, then we can assume a fairly high level of expertise.
And yet... you can't get iTunes to run while very single one of my novice PC using family and circle of friends have no problem with it on any number of different systems.
Sounds odd.
I use both systems. Windows is fine, it does the job. But it is also a pain in the ass to use. When I use my Macs I just feel like the computer is working for me not against me.
Use what you like but this post smells particularly FUDdish.
Oh, and plug and play cameras were "WORKING" on the mac before they were on the PC. Let's not dredge up all those posts about plug and crash under Win95.
Yes, except Apple understands software and hardware engineering. Plus Apple has released a large portion of it's OS and compiler technology to the Open Source community.
Microsoft's stuff has the simple elegance of an elephant...with gout.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
I could watch it in the Task Manager's "Performance" tab, as my memory consumption gradually went from about 250MB to 1GB until the sync finished.
Then I found EphPod, which is better than MusicMatch *or* iTunes....
MusicMatch was a completely awful program. I'm reasonably computer literate and I just gave up on it half an hour after buying my iPod and found Ephpod. For my own personal needs, synching correctly filed MP3s with my iPod, Ephpod was perfect and as I don't want yet another 'media centre' is still better than iTunes. iTunes and Ephpod work quite happily together though so I use both. Disabling Musicmatch is boon to all.
I find it ironic that there was an article over a week ago about Microsoft's warning customers about iTunes, yet the relevant info (that it disables other programs) only came appeared today on slashdot. Perhaps someone should have looked into what MS was making a fuss about before mocking them for it. =P
You can make all the excuses you want for why it wasn't that good, including just blaming apple for poorly supporting windows.. but the fact remains..
It is extremely rare for things in windows to integrate as smoothly as they do on the mac.. WHY isn't important.
Take something as simple as a mouse.. even when you plug a usb mouse into windows XP the first time, it says "Detected new USB device " " initializing " "Detected HID mouse" "initializing " " starting mouse" or whateve.r. then it works.
So even though it did't ask for any drivers or anything.. it grinded and flashed several popups of technical info the end user doesn't need...
When I plugged a usb mouse into my mac, it just worked,within about 1 second. There were no popups or indicators, other than the mouse now controlled the cursor.
IT's hard to design things to work to the level apple wants in windows, simply because windows is so varied.. you don't know what the user already has, so it's hard to decide what will work smoothly.