Comments on David Alison's Blog: First impressions of iTunes 8

Impressed with the Genius feature. And the visuali...

2008-09-14T19:22:28.777-04:00

Impressed with the Genius feature. And the visualizer from Magnetosphere is awesome.

http://www.barbariangroup.com/software/magnetosphere

"We’re insanely, ridiculously proud to say that Magnetosphere now lives in iTunes..."

Love the new itunes update. I only wish itunes had...

2008-09-13T14:48:28.248-04:00

Love the new itunes update. I only wish itunes had a feature that allowed you to monitor certain folders so that any music within it is automatically added (a la windows media player)
am i right in thinking this is not an available feature or am i missing something??

@Desperate Postdoc: Thanks for that link. Hadn't h...

2008-09-12T09:41:02.950-04:00

@Desperate Postdoc: Thanks for that link. Hadn't heard of GimmeSomeTune. I just installed it and while it is picking up the album artwork and showing it in it's own window it does not appear to be updating iTunes. Not sure if this is an iTunes 8 issue or not, I have the preferences set properly and it does properly update the lyrics for songs in iTunes.

@Dub: There's an update that to 2.1 that's coming ...

2008-09-12T08:10:51.558-04:00

@Dub: There's an update that to 2.1 that's coming out today (downloading it now on my iPod Touch) that should provide a subset of the Genius features.

You really should consider getting a larger HD for your MacBook. They are very easy to install and the prices are dirt cheap. That plus you'll have a backup in case the HD in your iPod fails, which can happen quite easily.

@Chris: My daughter got me listening to Imogen Heap; Hide and Seek with the Visualizer is amazing looking.

Dave, press ? in the visualizer and try some of th...

2008-09-12T07:14:24.784-04:00

Dave, press ? in the visualizer and try some of the options. My fave is the freeze mode when you've got a nice stringy visual going. Awesome.

And try it with classical music, it really brings out the best in the visualizer - actually makes classical enjoyable. :)

to bad, it doesn't work for me. I have an MacBook ...

2008-09-12T06:47:25.625-04:00

to bad, it doesn't work for me. I have an MacBook with a 80GB HDD, so I am keeping only a limited numbers of songs on it. All my music is on my iPod, the 160 GB Classic, but Genius (like FrontRow in Leopard) seems not to be able to see it. It's a shame, really, there must be more people like me who are listening exclusively from their connected iPods.

My personal favorite features of iTunes 8 are actu...

2008-09-12T02:09:40.228-04:00

My personal favorite features of iTunes 8 are actually not there.

Feature #1

defaults write com.apple.itunes show-genre-when-browsing -bool FALSE

Feature #2

defaults write com.apple.itunes show-store-arrow-links -bool FALSE

Odd.

"The album art is then displayed, which really mak...

2008-09-12T00:38:30.874-04:00

"The album art is then displayed, which really makes me wish I was more diligent about grabbing album art for my ripped CDs."

This app called GimmeSomeTune could solve your problem. This program can fetch the album art from the internet based on information of that song as well as lyrics. You might want to give it a shot. Here is the link.

http://www.eternalstorms.at/gimmesometune/index.html

@Chris: Wow - I never run it so I didn't even chec...

2008-09-11T22:01:42.944-04:00

@Chris: Wow - I never run it so I didn't even check it. Very cool. I did find it hard to watch after a while though - a little TOO MUCH motion in that one. Thanks for the heads up!

Dave, dave, dave, dave!!Forget the Genius. Check o...

2008-09-11T21:57:10.691-04:00

Dave, dave, dave, dave!!

Forget the Genius. Check out the new visualizer. I sat and watched it for over an hour last night. That thing's freakin unreal!

Although, I do now have this strange urge to kill Microsoft...

@Pooter: Well, I thought 146GB was large but appar...

2008-09-11T18:23:01.635-04:00

@Pooter: Well, I thought 146GB was large but apparently I am wrong.

When you say large collection, could you quantify ...

2008-09-11T18:19:19.196-04:00

When you say large collection, could you quantify a little, as in how many songs or gigabytes? That would help me get a better idea of its efficiency when I do it on my circa 200 GB collection.

"I was surprised to find that the "Top Songs You'r...

2008-09-11T18:17:17.975-04:00

"I was surprised to find that the "Top Songs You're Missing" seemed to take into account what I had pretty well. I have several duplicates because of "Greatest Hits" collections, yet even when that was the only version of the song it didn't appear to recommend a song I already owned."

I did not find that. I have the CSN box set, and yet it recommended many duplicates I already had...