They were never all just $9.99. Pricing seems to be based upon the number of tracks such that buying the full album is cheaper than buying all the tracks individually. There are albums available for the less than $9.99 too. Having said all that, I choose to buy CDs and rip both because then you don't have to bother with DRM even if it is light, and you can rip at a higher bit rate. However iTMS is great for finding and buying a track or two for a special purpose such as use in a video.
On the Mac there is a free (opensource I think, but I'm not sure offhand) Ogg Vorbis QuickTime plugin and that allows iTunes to play Ogg tracks, but it doesn't give iTunes the ability to rip as Ogg and iTunes doesn't fully support ogg tags. I.e. it's a kludge.
Mind you, I'm working with the Mac version, but allegedly the Windows version is exactly the same. iTunes smart playlists are what take iTunes over the top compared to anything else. Make a smart playlist with, among whatever other conditions, the condition "last played is not in the last month" and check the "Live updating" checkbox and you have a never ending playlist that doesn't repeat for a month (or whatever time period you choose.) Etc, etc. Go nuts.
ctrl-c/ctrl-v (or cmd-c/cmd-v in my case on a Mac) is slow? Uh, OK. Whatever. What's slow in Windows is that there still is no consistency in supporting these keyboard shortcuts - many applications ludicrously don't support it. On the Mac it always works and I cmd-c/v nearly instantaneously. Anyway, if you really want it on your mouse you can buy a 3rd party mouse and they almost all support mapping buttons and/or cords to keypresses such as copy and paste so you can have your cake and eat it to. Mind you, I can't vouch for Windows in that regard
Having had the chance to let iTMS for Mac settle, I find that I'm no longer interested in buying music from iTMS in general. Even though the DRM is relatively light, it none-the-less gets in the way if you don't have an iPod, which I don't. On top of that the bit rate isn't high enough for my tastes and even if it were an iTMS track is still less flexible than a CD and, by design, requires jumping through hoops to get it into another format. To me it's not worth $9.99+/-per CD or there about.
So when would I buy a track from the iTMS? I recently purchased a single track because I needed a clip from a song I didn't have on any CD for use in an iMovie I was creating. I had no desire to have the whole album and nor did I particularly care whether or not I ever heard the track in any other circumstance. For that the iTMS is perfect - I got the track I wanted and only paid 99 cents for it. Yes, anyone can watch the video and listen to the music even though it's protected AAC. That's where iTMS remains valuable to me, but not for purchasing tracks I listen to regularly - for that a CD is still the way to go.
Invented? The years since end-of-lifed slot-loading iMac G3's had no fan, using convection cooling instead. I have one in my living room hooked up to my stereo system. I had to replace the built-in hard drive with a much quieter Segate drive (much larger too, of course), but now it really is silent except for the occasionaly very, very quiet tick of the hard drive, and makes a fantastic music box. It is so quiet that I also use it as a server and leave it running all the time even though its in the reading room of the house. I dread the day that my trusy slotted iMac goes to pasture as there may be nothing to replace it.
Even if it were true that OS X would be just as vulnerable if it had 95% of the market, the fact is that it, umm, doesn't. Are you expecting the balance of power to change any day now?
One thing I'll agree on: Windows = Pinto. It's hideous, unreliable and downright dangerous to use.
I would be happy if they did. I mean, come on, what are you waiting for? They're all the rage - try to find even one art festival these days that doesn't have art cars. I mean it - I challenge you to find even one. You can't! I simply can't believe there isn't even one less talented person willing to flatter me with their copyright infrigement? I put a lot of effort into sticking all those barbie doll heads on to the hood of my rusted out Chevy van and - believe me - it wasn't easy. And don't forget the moss. You know it's easier to copy mine than to try to come up with your own, so get cracking and get artistically trendy the easy way!
FYI, it's my artistic take on a bunch of barbie doll heads stuck to the hood of a rusted out Chevy van. Plus moss.
Palm's OS 5 PDAs can play Ogg Vorbis with the addition of either Aeroplayer or the other one (Pocket Tunes). Aeroplayer is notable for, among other things, being free (as in beer) for use with Ogg Vorbis (registration is only required for MP3 playback.) These PDA's all have an SD/MMC slot and accept standard MMC and SD cards which is better than most standalone players out there which have proprietary memory modules or no expansion possible. Note, however, that the Tungsten C only has a monophonic headphone jack. The Tungsten T and Zire 71 do stereo out of the box. I can vouch for the TT, which has excellent sound quality with Aeroplayer.
Having said that, since I don't like listening on headphones (gives me a headache), I find that there is little value in a portable music player that does not have enough space to contain your entire music library. In that situation (use only hooked up to car and/or home stereos) the constant need to swap songs out renders even an overpriced 512 MB SD card pretty pointless - the same can be achieved more conveniently with a handful of (much flatter than a Tungsten|T) CD-RW Audio CDs or less than one MP3 CD-RW with an appropriate CD player (which are cheap as dirt these days). Moreover, the loss of a CD-RW disc is inconsequential while the lose of a Tungsten T or even just an SD card would be quite distressing.
Better still, and what I do, plug your PowerBook into your car stereo's AUX input and control iTunes or what have you with Salling Clicker and a T68i or equivalent bluetooth phone. Talk about geek cool.... Further I'm considering acquiring an old G3 or G4 tower to mount in the trunk of my car - I envision automatic music syncing via an 802.11b connection with my home iMac jukebox when I get in range. Surely someone has done this already?
People wouldn't be going to such desperate measures as to build these special kits if Apple would simply sell their hardware at a more reasonable price.
Hmmm... such kits are far more prevelant in the Windows and Linux worlds. What does that imply for you?
So where is the backup to data CD funtionality on iTunes? The only way you can do is manually. Um... try selecting "Data CD" as the type of CD to burn in the CD burning preferences of iTunes 4? Amazingly this "confusingly titled" option makes iTunes burn a - get this - data CD. Wow!
I have no idea what you are trying to say, but even the silliest schmuck would realize that if you burn the original AAC files to CD, you have the original AAC files on CD. Me smart smart, eh? There is no need to go to the CDDB - the tags are in there, including the cover artwork. It's called a backup, not a "mix CD".
Right. Specifically you authorize a *computer* (not a person or an account) to play all songs purchased with your account (now and in the future).
I'm interested in testing the 3 computer limit just to see how it works. Has anyone done this? What I'd like is if I could deauthorize another computer remotely given the music store account (really Apple ID) and password, so that you could never end up stuck at a machine without a free authorization "slot" to give to it.
The first consumer CD players were released in 1982 but the Beatles weren't there. Indeed they didn't show up formally until 1987 with the one exception of a limited release of Abbey Road in Japan in 1983.
Note that.m4p files are protected AAC and.m4a files are unprotected AAC. To easily convert.m4p to m4a and retain (more or less) the tags:
1) burn the.m4p album (all the files from one album) to an audio-CD (which you may wish to do anyway.)
2) rip that CD back to AAC format via iTunes and you end up with the same files sans protection (i.e..m4a).
iTunes will put tags in via freecddb or whatever they heck it is, but it won't automatically put the cover picture back since those aren't in that database, but the good news is you already have it:
3) select one of the.m4p files in iTunes and drag the cover picture to your desktop.
4) select all of the.m4a files of the album at once and then drag that cover picture to the iTunes cover picture to set it for all the selected files.
Now, somebody tell me - since we are burning 128 kbps AAC to CD and the ripping the CD to 128 kbps AAC is there any audio quality loss? For myself I couldn't tell if there was any.
Good point. Indeed I would think you should be able to rip right back into AAC format without the copy protection. It might be worth 99 cents to find out.... When I get around to it I'll have to try it. Incidentally, the AAC encoder in iTunes 4 seems pretty fast. It's certainly much faster than the AAC encoder that was in QuickTime 6.1.x. The results seem very good in my very preliminary trial.
According to MacCentral's coverage, Jobs said Windows will be supported by the end of the year. So does this imply that Apple will make iTunes for Windows, or does it mean that Music Match (or some other product) will be upgrade by its developer to support the music store or that there will be an web page version by the end of year? Who knows.
Touchscreens and remote controls do not mix. A remote that requires you to look at it to use it, as a touchscreen does, is annoying/inconvenient. It's bad enough to spend $20 on a product that proves annoying... I can't even imagine spending $1700 only to be annoyed. I have tried a couple remote control programs for PalmOS and while I find it useful for controlling my TV for which the remote has gone kabloey, I would much rather have a decent learning remote with real buttons. Indeed I'd rather just have my old TV remote working again and deal with 4-5 separate remotes.
The answer is that the "Post-PCs" will be replaced by a brand-name snack cake. This will happen for two simple reasons: 1. WindowsCE devices are easy to throw. 2. While it would be easy to throw a twinkie, they are usually eaten instead.
A pricey Microsoft-certified pile of smashed up plastic, glass and solder, or a tasty treat in your tummy? You decide.
FYI, I am a Mac user since the days of the Mac SE. In its day, even with the problems, the OS = 9 desktop database was a great thing - it was indeed a good concept. OS X's approach is, however, better IMHO.
FYI, I did try trashing the desktop database, several times. It didn't work and in some ways it made matters worse. True that in the past it had worked for me, but for whatever reason it stopped working and I was never able to resolve it (backing up my files, erasing the disk, reinstalling OS, restoring files, etc probably would have fixed it, but that's an agonizing process, especially if the only thing you had to backup to was 100MB zip disk!
Re:Evil bit support
on
A Better Finder?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I think most people who come from a Windows/x86 background don't really understand how magical it is to have a file system that, for example, can allow for different files of essentially the same "file type" yet be launched by different apps (file "creator" and file "type" tags exist)
So magical, indeed, that it would, not infrequently get corrupted and lose track of what was what and you'd end up with documents of certain types looking like generic, unknown documents that in some cases couldn't be opened by anything except BBEdit. The especially cool thing is that then you got to use an equally magical "rebuild the desktop" startup key combination that, again not infrequently, didn't do any good. I had documents that stayed generic up until I switched to OS X. Then it was easy to fix the problem and get it to open with the right application using the Get Info window on the file in question.
Moreover the argument was bogus to start with. In OS X you can set any file to be opened by any application regardless of what the default application is for that file type. I can set a particular.jpg to open in Preview even if the default is still GraphicConverter. I can also easily change the default application as well. This is essentially the same thing, except that it's reliable and easier to use.
To add to the OS X crunchiness, I have graphic files (JPG, GIF, PS, etc) open in Gimp by using an AppleScript application/droplet as a conduit of sorts to Gimp under X11. I just set my script as the default app for those file types. Nifty.
Slashdot Mirror
They were never all just $9.99. Pricing seems to be based upon the number of tracks such that buying the full album is cheaper than buying all the tracks individually. There are albums available for the less than $9.99 too. Having said all that, I choose to buy CDs and rip both because then you don't have to bother with DRM even if it is light, and you can rip at a higher bit rate. However iTMS is great for finding and buying a track or two for a special purpose such as use in a video.
On the Mac there is a free (opensource I think, but I'm not sure offhand) Ogg Vorbis QuickTime plugin and that allows iTunes to play Ogg tracks, but it doesn't give iTunes the ability to rip as Ogg and iTunes doesn't fully support ogg tags. I.e. it's a kludge.
Mind you, I'm working with the Mac version, but allegedly the Windows version is exactly the same. iTunes smart playlists are what take iTunes over the top compared to anything else. Make a smart playlist with, among whatever other conditions, the condition "last played is not in the last month" and check the "Live updating" checkbox and you have a never ending playlist that doesn't repeat for a month (or whatever time period you choose.) Etc, etc. Go nuts.
ctrl-c/ctrl-v (or cmd-c/cmd-v in my case on a Mac) is slow? Uh, OK. Whatever. What's slow in Windows is that there still is no consistency in supporting these keyboard shortcuts - many applications ludicrously don't support it. On the Mac it always works and I cmd-c/v nearly instantaneously. Anyway, if you really want it on your mouse you can buy a 3rd party mouse and they almost all support mapping buttons and/or cords to keypresses such as copy and paste so you can have your cake and eat it to. Mind you, I can't vouch for Windows in that regard
Having had the chance to let iTMS for Mac settle, I find that I'm no longer interested in buying music from iTMS in general. Even though the DRM is relatively light, it none-the-less gets in the way if you don't have an iPod, which I don't. On top of that the bit rate isn't high enough for my tastes and even if it were an iTMS track is still less flexible than a CD and, by design, requires jumping through hoops to get it into another format. To me it's not worth $9.99+/-per CD or there about.
So when would I buy a track from the iTMS? I recently purchased a single track because I needed a clip from a song I didn't have on any CD for use in an iMovie I was creating. I had no desire to have the whole album and nor did I particularly care whether or not I ever heard the track in any other circumstance. For that the iTMS is perfect - I got the track I wanted and only paid 99 cents for it. Yes, anyone can watch the video and listen to the music even though it's protected AAC. That's where iTMS remains valuable to me, but not for purchasing tracks I listen to regularly - for that a CD is still the way to go.
Invented? The years since end-of-lifed slot-loading iMac G3's had no fan, using convection cooling instead. I have one in my living room hooked up to my stereo system. I had to replace the built-in hard drive with a much quieter Segate drive (much larger too, of course), but now it really is silent except for the occasionaly very, very quiet tick of the hard drive, and makes a fantastic music box. It is so quiet that I also use it as a server and leave it running all the time even though its in the reading room of the house. I dread the day that my trusy slotted iMac goes to pasture as there may be nothing to replace it.
Even if it were true that OS X would be just as vulnerable if it had 95% of the market, the fact is that it, umm, doesn't. Are you expecting the balance of power to change any day now?
One thing I'll agree on: Windows = Pinto. It's hideous, unreliable and downright dangerous to use.
I would be happy if they did. I mean, come on, what are you waiting for? They're all the rage - try to find even one art festival these days that doesn't have art cars. I mean it - I challenge you to find even one. You can't! I simply can't believe there isn't even one less talented person willing to flatter me with their copyright infrigement? I put a lot of effort into sticking all those barbie doll heads on to the hood of my rusted out Chevy van and - believe me - it wasn't easy. And don't forget the moss. You know it's easier to copy mine than to try to come up with your own, so get cracking and get artistically trendy the easy way!
FYI, it's my artistic take on a bunch of barbie doll heads stuck to the hood of a rusted out Chevy van. Plus moss.
Having said that, since I don't like listening on headphones (gives me a headache), I find that there is little value in a portable music player that does not have enough space to contain your entire music library. In that situation (use only hooked up to car and/or home stereos) the constant need to swap songs out renders even an overpriced 512 MB SD card pretty pointless - the same can be achieved more conveniently with a handful of (much flatter than a Tungsten|T) CD-RW Audio CDs or less than one MP3 CD-RW with an appropriate CD player (which are cheap as dirt these days). Moreover, the loss of a CD-RW disc is inconsequential while the lose of a Tungsten T or even just an SD card would be quite distressing.
Better still, and what I do, plug your PowerBook into your car stereo's AUX input and control iTunes or what have you with Salling Clicker and a T68i or equivalent bluetooth phone. Talk about geek cool.... Further I'm considering acquiring an old G3 or G4 tower to mount in the trunk of my car - I envision automatic music syncing via an 802.11b connection with my home iMac jukebox when I get in range. Surely someone has done this already?
People wouldn't be going to such desperate measures as to build these special kits if Apple would simply sell their hardware at a more reasonable price.
Hmmm... such kits are far more prevelant in the Windows and Linux worlds. What does that imply for you?
It's cool that you can order a video of the transcript from CNN, but I'm holding out for the exclusive video of the transcriber's lunch bag.
So where is the backup to data CD funtionality on iTunes? The only way you can do is manually.
Um... try selecting "Data CD" as the type of CD to burn in the CD burning preferences of iTunes 4? Amazingly this "confusingly titled" option makes iTunes burn a - get this - data CD. Wow!
I have no idea what you are trying to say, but even the silliest schmuck would realize that if you burn the original AAC files to CD, you have the original AAC files on CD. Me smart smart, eh? There is no need to go to the CDDB - the tags are in there, including the cover artwork. It's called a backup, not a "mix CD".
Right. Specifically you authorize a *computer* (not a person or an account) to play all songs purchased with your account (now and in the future).
I'm interested in testing the 3 computer limit just to see how it works. Has anyone done this? What I'd like is if I could deauthorize another computer remotely given the music store account (really Apple ID) and password, so that you could never end up stuck at a machine without a free authorization "slot" to give to it.
The first consumer CD players were released in 1982 but the Beatles weren't there. Indeed they didn't show up formally until 1987 with the one exception of a limited release of Abbey Road in Japan in 1983.
Note that .m4p files are protected AAC and .m4a files are unprotected AAC. To easily convert .m4p to m4a and retain (more or less) the tags:
.m4p album (all the files from one album) to an audio-CD (which you may wish to do anyway.)
.m4a).
.m4p files in iTunes and drag the cover picture to your desktop.
.m4a files of the album at once and then drag that cover picture to the iTunes cover picture to set it for all the selected files.
1) burn the
2) rip that CD back to AAC format via iTunes and you end up with the same files sans protection (i.e.
iTunes will put tags in via freecddb or whatever they heck it is, but it won't automatically put the cover picture back since those aren't in that database, but the good news is you already have it:
3) select one of the
4) select all of the
Now, somebody tell me - since we are burning 128 kbps AAC to CD and the ripping the CD to 128 kbps AAC is there any audio quality loss? For myself I couldn't tell if there was any.
Unfortunately it would seem that Slashdot has not solved the troubling problem of butt kissing the choir.
Good point. Indeed I would think you should be able to rip right back into AAC format without the copy protection. It might be worth 99 cents to find out.... When I get around to it I'll have to try it. Incidentally, the AAC encoder in iTunes 4 seems pretty fast. It's certainly much faster than the AAC encoder that was in QuickTime 6.1.x. The results seem very good in my very preliminary trial.
According to MacCentral's coverage, Jobs said Windows will be supported by the end of the year. So does this imply that Apple will make iTunes for Windows, or does it mean that Music Match (or some other product) will be upgrade by its developer to support the music store or that there will be an web page version by the end of year? Who knows.
There's supposed to be something funny here that points out that Doom III is another in the line of identical games that all ma
Steve
Touchscreens and remote controls do not mix. A remote that requires you to look at it to use it, as a touchscreen does, is annoying/inconvenient. It's bad enough to spend $20 on a product that proves annoying... I can't even imagine spending $1700 only to be annoyed. I have tried a couple remote control programs for PalmOS and while I find it useful for controlling my TV for which the remote has gone kabloey, I would much rather have a decent learning remote with real buttons. Indeed I'd rather just have my old TV remote working again and deal with 4-5 separate remotes.
The answer is that the "Post-PCs" will be replaced by a brand-name snack cake. This will happen for two simple reasons: 1. WindowsCE devices are easy to throw. 2. While it would be easy to throw a twinkie, they are usually eaten instead.
A pricey Microsoft-certified pile of smashed up plastic, glass and solder, or a tasty treat in your tummy? You decide.
FYI, I am a Mac user since the days of the Mac SE. In its day, even with the problems, the OS = 9 desktop database was a great thing - it was indeed a good concept. OS X's approach is, however, better IMHO.
FYI, I did try trashing the desktop database, several times. It didn't work and in some ways it made matters worse. True that in the past it had worked for me, but for whatever reason it stopped working and I was never able to resolve it (backing up my files, erasing the disk, reinstalling OS, restoring files, etc probably would have fixed it, but that's an agonizing process, especially if the only thing you had to backup to was 100MB zip disk!
I think most people who come from a Windows/x86 background don't really understand how magical it is to have a file system that, for example, can allow for different files of essentially the same "file type" yet be launched by different apps (file "creator" and file "type" tags exist)
.jpg to open in Preview even if the default is still GraphicConverter. I can also easily change the default application as well. This is essentially the same thing, except that it's reliable and easier to use.
So magical, indeed, that it would, not infrequently get corrupted and lose track of what was what and you'd end up with documents of certain types looking like generic, unknown documents that in some cases couldn't be opened by anything except BBEdit. The especially cool thing is that then you got to use an equally magical "rebuild the desktop" startup key combination that, again not infrequently, didn't do any good. I had documents that stayed generic up until I switched to OS X. Then it was easy to fix the problem and get it to open with the right application using the Get Info window on the file in question.
Moreover the argument was bogus to start with. In OS X you can set any file to be opened by any application regardless of what the default application is for that file type. I can set a particular
To add to the OS X crunchiness, I have graphic files (JPG, GIF, PS, etc) open in Gimp by using an AppleScript application/droplet as a conduit of sorts to Gimp under X11. I just set my script as the default app for those file types. Nifty.
Yours miserably (like that arstechnica guy),
Steve
You can also use it as a kind of "holistic mousepad". Improves tracking and cures wrist pain at the same time.