PC user needing help with mac equivalent apps
Hi all,
This is my first post here, and I know you get questions like these a lot, so I have done a lot of searching, but I'm still coming up short with finding apps that do what I want. I hope you'll be able to help me out here
I'm using Tiger on a 15" Powerbook btw.
So here are my questions -
1. I'm trying to find a Winamp equivalent, because I'm really not a fan of jukebox style players like iTunes and I also have a ridiculously huge collection of MP3s without ID3 tags. These files are perfectly sorted in folders on a remote server which iTunes doesn't seem to like much. I've been considering using X11 + XMMS, but I thought I'd see if there are any native players like Winamp first.
What I liked in Winamp was going to the music folder and enqueing files with a quick right click. In iTunes I can't see a way of doing this easily. My library is just so big and there's no way to scroll through albums, just individual songs. So scrolling down, then adding it to the party shuffle takes a while. Even a script to do this in iTunes by right clicking in Finder would be enough for me.
2. Irfanview was my standard image viewer in Windows because it was just so fast to scroll through my photos with the mouse wheel. As far as I can see iPhoto doesn't even really have a way of moving between photos apart from putting it in edit mode and pressing next, but this isn't full screen or fast (version 2 is all I have, so this could be the problem). I just want to click on the first file in a folder and then jump to the next files with a keystroke or mouse wheel spin. No editing features would be required.
3. An IM app that has metacontacts. Fire and AdiumX are great but I couldn't find any options to use metacontacts in them. Do I have to use X11 and GAIM?
BTW Does Apple have any plans to put MSN, ICQ and Yahoo into iChat? At the moment it's useless to me as I've never met anyone who uses AIM or Jabber.
Everything else about my Mac I really love. Safari is great and ever since I installed Tiger (with its Spotlight searching) and Quicksilver I've been loving it more and more.
Sorry for such a longwinded post, I just got going and the questions flowed
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Cheers,
Michael
This is my first post here, and I know you get questions like these a lot, so I have done a lot of searching, but I'm still coming up short with finding apps that do what I want. I hope you'll be able to help me out here
I'm using Tiger on a 15" Powerbook btw.So here are my questions -
1. I'm trying to find a Winamp equivalent, because I'm really not a fan of jukebox style players like iTunes and I also have a ridiculously huge collection of MP3s without ID3 tags. These files are perfectly sorted in folders on a remote server which iTunes doesn't seem to like much. I've been considering using X11 + XMMS, but I thought I'd see if there are any native players like Winamp first.
What I liked in Winamp was going to the music folder and enqueing files with a quick right click. In iTunes I can't see a way of doing this easily. My library is just so big and there's no way to scroll through albums, just individual songs. So scrolling down, then adding it to the party shuffle takes a while. Even a script to do this in iTunes by right clicking in Finder would be enough for me.
2. Irfanview was my standard image viewer in Windows because it was just so fast to scroll through my photos with the mouse wheel. As far as I can see iPhoto doesn't even really have a way of moving between photos apart from putting it in edit mode and pressing next, but this isn't full screen or fast (version 2 is all I have, so this could be the problem). I just want to click on the first file in a folder and then jump to the next files with a keystroke or mouse wheel spin. No editing features would be required.
3. An IM app that has metacontacts. Fire and AdiumX are great but I couldn't find any options to use metacontacts in them. Do I have to use X11 and GAIM?
BTW Does Apple have any plans to put MSN, ICQ and Yahoo into iChat? At the moment it's useless to me as I've never met anyone who uses AIM or Jabber.
Everything else about my Mac I really love. Safari is great and ever since I installed Tiger (with its Spotlight searching) and Quicksilver I've been loving it more and more.
Sorry for such a longwinded post, I just got going and the questions flowed
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Cheers,
Michael
Comments
Originally posted by dojobi
... and there's no way to scroll through albums, just individual songs.
iTunes menu bar (top of screen) ... choose Edit > Show Browser ... you can browse by artist or album ...
In the full-list screen, you can also click at the top of the columns (Song Name, Artist, Album, Genre, etc) to sort the list by that attribute.
Originally posted by dojobi
2. Irfanview was my standard image viewer in Windows because it was just so fast to scroll through my photos with the mouse wheel. As far as I can see iPhoto doesn't even really have a way of moving between photos apart from putting it in edit mode and pressing next, but this isn't full screen or fast (version 2 is all I have, so this could be the problem). I just want to click on the first file in a folder and then jump to the next files with a keystroke or mouse wheel spin. No editing features would be required.
In iPhoto 4 &5, there is an organize view where you can see small thumbnails and also enlarge them to fill the window and scroll through them.
Originally posted by KingOfSomewhereHot
iTunes menu bar (top of screen) ... choose Edit > Show Browser ... you can browse by artist or album ...
In the full-list screen, you can also click at the top of the columns (Song Name, Artist, Album, Genre, etc) to sort the list by that attribute.
Thanks. I don't know how I missed that.
Since that bit's resolved, I just need to find a way to modify my MP3 files so that they all have ID3 tags. My folder structure is identical to the way iTunes makes the folders. ie Artist Name / Album / Track# Song Name. Are there any programs that would be able to make ID3 tags in these MP3s based on their location and filename?
Originally posted by ericeason
In iPhoto 4 &5, there is an organize view where you can see small thumbnails and also enlarge them to fill the window and scroll through them.
Cool. That sounds similar to what version 2 does, though, but I'll check it out down a my local apple shop. It seems to be overkill for what I want, but if it does the job, then I'll be happy. I'll keep looking for an Irfanview style program, though, as I find that sort to be just so much easier to use. Not every image I look at really needs to go in a photo collection.
a little exploring goes a long way !
On the ID3 tags thing - what exactly did that convert ID3 tags menu item do. I clicked it, and nothing seemed to change. It didn't even ask me how I've set up my filenames, so I can't see how it could build ID3 tags from the directory/filename structure.
I've found a few iTunes apple script sites, so I might have a look around there. I get the feeling iTunes really isn't made for people who've been collecting ID3-less MP3s for 10 years
ID3 tags are so much better than relying on the filenames though. I remember I used to not like them, a long time ago when I used Winamp, and then when I started using iTunes, I realized how much less work the ID3 tags are. You no longer have to worry about how the folders are organized.
I sort my collection as all my music is on a server that I access from multiple computers (3 PCs and 1 Mac) and I only use iTunes on my Mac.
Anyway, iTunes does it by ID3 tag, so I've got to learn to live with that I suppose
It says it also is able to grab album art automatically from the internet. Which is really nice for iTunes which has the feature to display album art while playing.
Cheers,
Michael
Originally posted by dojobi
As far as I can see iPhoto doesn't even really have a way of moving between photos apart from putting it in edit mode and pressing next, but this isn't full screen or fast (version 2 is all I have, so this could be the problem). I just want to click on the first file in a folder and then jump to the next files with a keystroke or mouse wheel spin.
When you are running a slide show in iPhoto 5, clicking the arrow keys takes you to the next/previous slide (I am pretty sure this works in iPhoto 4 also). Two problems. First, if you don't want it to advance itself you need to pause the slide show (an extra step in starting up). Second, every time you press an arrow key a little panel shows up at the bottom.