Er, yes I know that. That's why I said you could convert FLAC to ALAC. As they're both lossless codecs, there's no quality degradation in the conversion process.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Superbass
In 20 years, do I want all of my music being stored in the digital equivalent of BETA tapes? Or the musical equivalent of .lwp files? I understand there'll probably be a converter created in that eventuality, which will be a pain in the ass.
The converter I posted earlier will do the job.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Superbass
-it supports CUE sheets
-it includes MD5 hashes so you can check integrity of files very easily
-pipe support
-replay gain compatible
-it's still being actively developed, so improvements to metadata/tagging, for example, are reflected in the Codec
-it's open source
-it's supported in Linux
Most of that is irrelevant. If you convert to AIFF as an intermediate step, you can use wavegain to "replay gain" the file, then convert to ALAC. AIFF supports metadata so you shouldn't lose any in the conversion process.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Superbass
Anyways, would it really be that difficult for Apple to implement?
No it wouldn't, but since they never, ever will it's better to use a solution that actually works rather than pointlessly whinging about it.
I must second the complaint about no FLAC support. It is not uncommon for labels to distribute music in this high fidelity format, and there's no good reason iTunes should not play it. It's quite unfortunate.
How big are these labels? Where are the tracks sold?
When it comes down to it, I really don't see much popular demand for FLAC.
However, this program is recommended by Macworld for adding FLAC playback to iTunes:
I was just looking at the spotify interface design - it's icons' are just as monochrome, except for the "library" and "starred" icons, there is no colour at all, yet people don't seem to be up in arms or confused by this?
The spotify interface clearly takes it's lead from iTunes, just inverted.
If you'd like to invert your iTunes interface, quit iTunes and enter this in terminal...
I was just looking at the spotify interface design - it's icons' are just as monochrome, except for the "library" and "starred" icons, there is no colour at all, yet people don't seem to be up in arms or confused by this?
The spotify interface clearly takes it's lead from iTunes, just inverted.
Who has been recommending spotify as an alternative? You're the first to mention it in this thread.
Nine Inch Nails (Reznor's website states that over 20% of sales are FLAC)
Brian Eno
The Eagles
The Beatles (they sell a complete works in FLAC USB drive on their website)
Bonnaroo Festival (complete concerts from the past several festivals)
Tallis Scholars (complete works)
Paul McCartney (last couple albums)
Merge Records (sells everything as FLAC - you might recognize Arcade Fire, Superchunk and Caribou as some of their artists)
are just a few of the "big" artists who sell their music as FLAC. Check their websites. Also, there are a ton of smaller jazz labels releasing in FLAC. I don't listen to much top 40, so I don't know about the major labels, but they're not exactly the most progressive organizations out there. Sure they're not sold on iTunes, but that's a given.
Fluke won't make songs play on an iPod, and still has pretty limited functionality in terms of tagging, album art, etc.
There's really no reason to continue with the back-and-forth and make excuses for apple, it's probably one of the 4 or 5 most commonly used audio file types (after MP3, WAV and maybe WMV), and Apple's denial of it resulting in 3rd party workarounds isn't excusable.
Most of that is irrelevant. If you convert to AIFF as an intermediate step, you can use wavegain to "replay gain" the file, then convert to ALAC. AIFF supports metadata so you shouldn't lose any in the conversion process.
No it wouldn't, but since they never, ever will it's better to use a solution that actually works rather than pointlessly whinging about it.
So, double converting is your solution - SO SIMPLE!
And how can you one the one hand say it wouldn't be difficult for Apple to implement, and then call my criticism of Apple "pointless whining"? Is that the AppleInsider MO here, anyone who finds fault with Apple is a "whiner"? It's disappointing that it's coming from a moderator.
Who has been recommending spotify as an alternative? You're the first to mention it in this thread.
No one, nor did I suggest it.
Just pointing out that Spotify is probably one of more commonly used alternative ways of listening to music on a computer, and the interface on that is also grey, with many similarities to iTunes. Why the aggression?
So, double converting is your solution - SO SIMPLE!
And how can you one the one hand say it wouldn't be difficult for Apple to implement, and then call my criticism of Apple "pointless whining"? Is that the AppleInsider MO here, anyone who finds fault with Apple is a "whiner"? It's disappointing that it's coming from a moderator.
It's pointless whining to say a company should add something simply because you want it. (Note: I haven't been following the whole thread so I don't know if that is what you're doing.)
Apple is a company sonit's ultimately up to them as it suits their needs as a company. So far, they haven't added any codecs under Xiph.org and their statement ofnitnbeing free and open may interrupted if deep pockets Sartre supporting it in a large scale.
As Mr. H stated, it's not an issue of coding difficulty (especially considering that you drop a FLAC codec into the QuickTime file and your good to go) so there must be other reasons for their decision. It doesn't sound like you've considered these other reasons at all. Does Google or MS support FLAC?
PS: I find it odd that you want this support for iTunes. I know a few people with an interest in "openness" and none of them use iTunes. They'd never dream of it. If you say it's because you use an iDevice then you have no little recourse than to go ALAC. We're talking lossless codecs here so you don't need to multiple versions if your using iDevices and "PC"s to listen to your music. I'd say choose you battles more wisely or figure out a way to get FLAC more popular so that Apple and other can't ignore it.
So, double converting is your solution - SO SIMPLE!
Where did I say it would be simple? Anyway, once you've setup the workflow (you can script the whole process) processing newly acquired stuff wouldn't take long.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Superbass
And how can you one the one hand say it wouldn't be difficult for Apple to implement, and then call my criticism of Apple "pointless whining"? Is that the AppleInsider MO here, anyone who finds fault with Apple is a "whiner"? It's disappointing that it's coming from a moderator.
I'm not making excuses for Apple. I'm just being realistic: they will never add FLAC support to iTunes or iDevices. So, if you want access to these FLAC files on your iDevices, you should spend your energies on creating the necessary workflow for processing the FLAC you buy so that it's playable on your devices. The technology is out there. You can do it with no loss of quality. All I'm doing is suggesting that you need to accept that Apple will never add FLAC to iAnything and deal with the situation in a manner that results in the music you want playable on the devices you want.
It seems at first sight to replace my genius bar with a Ping bar and give me no option to return it. This is a shame since literally the *only* good thing about the Genius thing is the genius bar connection to iTunes.
Also seems to screw up a lot of my cover art.
I'm getting really sick of the crap they are folding into iTunes that doesn't give you the option of removing it. The "Genius mixes" (that I don't ever want to see but are un-removeable), jumping in your face every time you sync are bad enough, and they might want to fix the broken implementation of cover-flow first also.
I wish there was a serious alternative out there that wasn't going to give users more hassle than Apples implementation of iTunes does.
I'll get slammed for saying this, but iTunes sucks. It badly needs to be rewritten. AFAIK it's still based on the old codebase from OS 9. It's dreadful on OS X, I shudder to think how it runs/walks on Windows. It does far too much, and all of it badly. The only reason people tolerate it (IMO) is because of the iPod/iPhone lock-in. My biggest compliant, and the reason I'll never use it, is that it does not properly support Libraries on another machine. But there's plenty of other ways it's bad.
I love pretty much everything Apple does, but iTunes is simply awful.
I'll get slammed for saying this, but iTunes sucks. It badly needs to be rewritten. AFAIK it's still based on the old codebase from OS 9. It's dreadful on OS X, I shudder to think how it runs/walks on Windows. It does far too much, and all of it badly. The only reason people tolerate it (IMO) is because of the iPod/iPhone lock-in. My biggest compliant, and the reason I'll never use it, is that it does not properly support Libraries on another machine. But there's plenty of other ways it's bad.
I love pretty much everything Apple does, but iTunes is simply awful.
I am sure Apple has been working on a group up rewrite in Cocoa, but this won't be easier. Unless their other apps, iTunes has additional challenges. Though I did expect them to have it ready for this last release. Besides it needing to be done, last year they added files that refer to iTunes as iTunesX and using QuickTime as an example, thatbrewrite took it from QT 7.x to QT X. I thought they would be ready in 2010. Maybe next year as it needs it, but at least this last version is faster for me.
I'll get slammed for saying this, but iTunes sucks. It badly needs to be rewritten. AFAIK it's still based on the old codebase from OS 9. It's dreadful on OS X, I shudder to think how it runs/walks on Windows. It does far too much, and all of it badly. The only reason people tolerate it (IMO) is because of the iPod/iPhone lock-in. My biggest compliant, and the reason I'll never use it, is that it does not properly support Libraries on another machine. But there's plenty of other ways it's bad.
I love pretty much everything Apple does, but iTunes is simply awful.
I don't see any "iTunes Killers" out there, I also have no issue with performance, stability or function within iTunes, my library is stored on an external hard drive and I have no issues.
Also, let's not forget it's free.
If there is any other free software out there that does all that iTunes does, I'd love to use it - choice is great. But what I hear is a lot of vague complaints about "performance" and the "suck factor" without anything specific, or any specific suggestions for improvement in functionality...
I am sure Apple has been working on a group up rewrite in Cocoa, but this won't be easier. Unless their other apps, iTunes has additional challenges. Though I did expect them to have it ready for this last release. Besides it needing to be done, last year they added files that refer to iTunes as iTunesX and using QuickTime as an example, thatbrewrite took it from QT 7.x to QT X. I thought they would be ready in 2010. Maybe next year as it needs it, but at least this last version is faster for me.
Problem is that once it goes cocoa, it won't run on PPC and there will be massive complaints from the legacy user base...
I'll get slammed for saying this, but iTunes sucks. It badly needs to be rewritten. AFAIK it's still based on the old codebase from OS 9. It's dreadful on OS X, I shudder to think how it runs/walks on Windows. It does far too much, and all of it badly. The only reason people tolerate it (IMO) is because of the iPod/iPhone lock-in. My biggest compliant, and the reason I'll never use it, is that it does not properly support Libraries on another machine. But there's plenty of other ways it's bad.
I love pretty much everything Apple does, but iTunes is simply awful.
I just turn off all the crap/stuff-I-don't-use (iTunes DJ, Genius, Sound Enhancer, Sound Check (I use replay gain; Sound Check sucks), Podcasts) and it works really well for me. Admittedly I don't like what they've done with iTunes 10, but the solution is simple: I haven't "upgraded" and will stick with version 9.
I don't see any "iTunes Killers" out there, I also have no issue with performance, stability or function within iTunes, my library is stored on an external hard drive and I have no issues.
Also, let's not forget it's free.
If there is any other free software out there that does all that iTunes does, I'd love to use it - choice is great. But what I hear is a lot of vague complaints about "performance" and the "suck factor" without anything specific, or any specific suggestions for improvement in functionality...
As much as people complain about iTunes it’s arguably a primary reason why the iPod was able to gain so much traction and, as you say, there still isn’t anyone competing well against Apple on this front.
If Chrome OS takes off it would make sense for Apple to have a web-based iTunes app. I’m not talking about internet streaming, specifically, but thinking that Apple needs to prepare for a more universal method for managing and playing music. Using a browser-based solution can still be local, though this feature is often overlooked.
As for specifics of disliking iTunes, I have a several niggling issues, but I’ll focus on videos. My biggest annoyance is the video player not working like QuickTime. I’m not even sure iTunes uses QTX in SL to play videos. It’s slower to start than QT and can often be choppy/blocky at the first few frames to start, and is more easily affected by other processes working.
It has fast forward < > and next video |< >| buttons that don’t scrub in real time, but jump in intervals that make it hard to use those buttons for searching. It used to be if you accidentally clicked once on the FF button it would jump to the next video, which makes this annoying and buttons designed for this task redundant. Really all I want is an option in iTunes to have QuickTime be called to play the video when I click on it in iTunes, as of right now, I’m actually right-clicking, showing the source in Finder and then double-clicking it if I need to access it via iTunes.
iTunes will store files with any A/V codec files… and play them back just fine, but it has to be in an approved container, like .MOV. I’d love to have all my videos organized via iTunes but I don’t want to redo all the containers for these files even though it takes about 10 seconds for a 30 minute show. In iTunes under Get Info the Kind is “QuickTime movie file” but the codec is still the same. I could also use a Reference Link which creates a .MOV files that points to the content. This works, too, and is nearly instant to make. This also shows up as a “QuickTime movie file”. The only way you know it’s not the source file is the size, which is usually in the hundreds of kilobytes.
I think we know that iDevices can’t play all file types, and it lets us know which ones it didn’t transfer over during a sync. So why not allow me to store all A/V files in iTunes, making it a true media organizer? They still don’t have to support the codecs on iDevices, or even in Mac OS X; let the 3rd partyies offer us the codecs.
I guess what I’m looking for is two-fold: 1) Consistency between media players, and 2) making media content storage and organization “no holds barred”. Is that specific enough?
Sorry, Sunday laziness. Once it goes Cocoa and 64 bit, which is pretty much a given for the transition..
Besides the nature of this rewrite that could be why they are holding off with the release, waiting for PPC Macs to be irrelevant enough to keep a single version of iTunes for Macs.
Nine Inch Nails (Reznor's website states that over 20% of sales are FLAC)
Brian Eno
The Eagles
The Beatles (they sell a complete works in FLAC USB drive on their website)
Bonnaroo Festival (complete concerts from the past several festivals)
Tallis Scholars (complete works)
Paul McCartney (last couple albums)
Merge Records (sells everything as FLAC - you might recognize Arcade Fire, Superchunk and Caribou as some of their artists)
are just a few of the "big" artists who sell their music as FLAC. Check their websites. Also, there are a ton of smaller jazz labels releasing in FLAC. I don't listen to much top 40, so I don't know about the major labels, but they're not exactly the most progressive organizations out there. Sure they're not sold on iTunes, but that's a given.
Add to that list Palace Records and the Daytrotter site.
I've sent a feature request to Apple about the FLAC codec. I'm very skeptical it will ever come to pass, which is why I'm strongly considering the workarounds suggested in this thread, or dropping iTunes all together. Lossless data portability does not seem to be a top priority for the player unfortunately.
Comments
Apple lossless is not FLAC.
Er, yes I know that. That's why I said you could convert FLAC to ALAC. As they're both lossless codecs, there's no quality degradation in the conversion process.
In 20 years, do I want all of my music being stored in the digital equivalent of BETA tapes? Or the musical equivalent of .lwp files? I understand there'll probably be a converter created in that eventuality, which will be a pain in the ass.
The converter I posted earlier will do the job.
-it supports CUE sheets
-it includes MD5 hashes so you can check integrity of files very easily
-pipe support
-replay gain compatible
-it's still being actively developed, so improvements to metadata/tagging, for example, are reflected in the Codec
-it's open source
-it's supported in Linux
Most of that is irrelevant. If you convert to AIFF as an intermediate step, you can use wavegain to "replay gain" the file, then convert to ALAC. AIFF supports metadata so you shouldn't lose any in the conversion process.
Anyways, would it really be that difficult for Apple to implement?
No it wouldn't, but since they never, ever will it's better to use a solution that actually works rather than pointlessly whinging about it.
http://gidden.net/tom/2010/09/25/rem...itunes-10-0-1/
I must second the complaint about no FLAC support. It is not uncommon for labels to distribute music in this high fidelity format, and there's no good reason iTunes should not play it. It's quite unfortunate.
How big are these labels? Where are the tracks sold?
When it comes down to it, I really don't see much popular demand for FLAC.
However, this program is recommended by Macworld for adding FLAC playback to iTunes:
http://code.google.com/p/flukeformac/
Mac only though.
The spotify interface clearly takes it's lead from iTunes, just inverted.
If you'd like to invert your iTunes interface, quit iTunes and enter this in terminal...
defaults write com.apple.iTunes high-contrast-mode-enable 1
I was just looking at the spotify interface design - it's icons' are just as monochrome, except for the "library" and "starred" icons, there is no colour at all, yet people don't seem to be up in arms or confused by this?
The spotify interface clearly takes it's lead from iTunes, just inverted.
Who has been recommending spotify as an alternative? You're the first to mention it in this thread.
How big are these labels? Where are the tracks sold?
When it comes down to it, I really don't see much popular demand for FLAC.
However, this program is recommended by Macworld for adding FLAC playback to iTunes:
http://code.google.com/p/flukeformac/
Mac only though.
Pearl Jam (everything)
David Byrne
Nine Inch Nails (Reznor's website states that over 20% of sales are FLAC)
Brian Eno
The Eagles
The Beatles (they sell a complete works in FLAC USB drive on their website)
Bonnaroo Festival (complete concerts from the past several festivals)
Tallis Scholars (complete works)
Paul McCartney (last couple albums)
Merge Records (sells everything as FLAC - you might recognize Arcade Fire, Superchunk and Caribou as some of their artists)
are just a few of the "big" artists who sell their music as FLAC. Check their websites. Also, there are a ton of smaller jazz labels releasing in FLAC. I don't listen to much top 40, so I don't know about the major labels, but they're not exactly the most progressive organizations out there. Sure they're not sold on iTunes, but that's a given.
Fluke won't make songs play on an iPod, and still has pretty limited functionality in terms of tagging, album art, etc.
There's really no reason to continue with the back-and-forth and make excuses for apple, it's probably one of the 4 or 5 most commonly used audio file types (after MP3, WAV and maybe WMV), and Apple's denial of it resulting in 3rd party workarounds isn't excusable.
Most of that is irrelevant. If you convert to AIFF as an intermediate step, you can use wavegain to "replay gain" the file, then convert to ALAC. AIFF supports metadata so you shouldn't lose any in the conversion process.
No it wouldn't, but since they never, ever will it's better to use a solution that actually works rather than pointlessly whinging about it.
So, double converting is your solution - SO SIMPLE!
And how can you one the one hand say it wouldn't be difficult for Apple to implement, and then call my criticism of Apple "pointless whining"? Is that the AppleInsider MO here, anyone who finds fault with Apple is a "whiner"? It's disappointing that it's coming from a moderator.
Who has been recommending spotify as an alternative? You're the first to mention it in this thread.
No one, nor did I suggest it.
Just pointing out that Spotify is probably one of more commonly used alternative ways of listening to music on a computer, and the interface on that is also grey, with many similarities to iTunes. Why the aggression?
So, double converting is your solution - SO SIMPLE!
And how can you one the one hand say it wouldn't be difficult for Apple to implement, and then call my criticism of Apple "pointless whining"? Is that the AppleInsider MO here, anyone who finds fault with Apple is a "whiner"? It's disappointing that it's coming from a moderator.
It's pointless whining to say a company should add something simply because you want it. (Note: I haven't been following the whole thread so I don't know if that is what you're doing.)
Apple is a company sonit's ultimately up to them as it suits their needs as a company. So far, they haven't added any codecs under Xiph.org and their statement ofnitnbeing free and open may interrupted if deep pockets Sartre supporting it in a large scale.
As Mr. H stated, it's not an issue of coding difficulty (especially considering that you drop a FLAC codec into the QuickTime file and your good to go) so there must be other reasons for their decision. It doesn't sound like you've considered these other reasons at all. Does Google or MS support FLAC?
PS: I find it odd that you want this support for iTunes. I know a few people with an interest in "openness" and none of them use iTunes. They'd never dream of it. If you say it's because you use an iDevice then you have no little recourse than to go ALAC. We're talking lossless codecs here so you don't need to multiple versions if your using iDevices and "PC"s to listen to your music. I'd say choose you battles more wisely or figure out a way to get FLAC more popular so that Apple and other can't ignore it.
So, double converting is your solution - SO SIMPLE!
Where did I say it would be simple? Anyway, once you've setup the workflow (you can script the whole process) processing newly acquired stuff wouldn't take long.
And how can you one the one hand say it wouldn't be difficult for Apple to implement, and then call my criticism of Apple "pointless whining"? Is that the AppleInsider MO here, anyone who finds fault with Apple is a "whiner"? It's disappointing that it's coming from a moderator.
I'm not making excuses for Apple. I'm just being realistic: they will never add FLAC support to iTunes or iDevices. So, if you want access to these FLAC files on your iDevices, you should spend your energies on creating the necessary workflow for processing the FLAC you buy so that it's playable on your devices. The technology is out there. You can do it with no loss of quality. All I'm doing is suggesting that you need to accept that Apple will never add FLAC to iAnything and deal with the situation in a manner that results in the music you want playable on the devices you want.
It seems at first sight to replace my genius bar with a Ping bar and give me no option to return it. This is a shame since literally the *only* good thing about the Genius thing is the genius bar connection to iTunes.
Also seems to screw up a lot of my cover art.
I'm getting really sick of the crap they are folding into iTunes that doesn't give you the option of removing it. The "Genius mixes" (that I don't ever want to see but are un-removeable), jumping in your face every time you sync are bad enough, and they might want to fix the broken implementation of cover-flow first also.
I wish there was a serious alternative out there that wasn't going to give users more hassle than Apples implementation of iTunes does.
I'll get slammed for saying this, but iTunes sucks. It badly needs to be rewritten. AFAIK it's still based on the old codebase from OS 9. It's dreadful on OS X, I shudder to think how it runs/walks on Windows. It does far too much, and all of it badly. The only reason people tolerate it (IMO) is because of the iPod/iPhone lock-in. My biggest compliant, and the reason I'll never use it, is that it does not properly support Libraries on another machine. But there's plenty of other ways it's bad.
I love pretty much everything Apple does, but iTunes is simply awful.
I'll get slammed for saying this, but iTunes sucks. It badly needs to be rewritten. AFAIK it's still based on the old codebase from OS 9. It's dreadful on OS X, I shudder to think how it runs/walks on Windows. It does far too much, and all of it badly. The only reason people tolerate it (IMO) is because of the iPod/iPhone lock-in. My biggest compliant, and the reason I'll never use it, is that it does not properly support Libraries on another machine. But there's plenty of other ways it's bad.
I love pretty much everything Apple does, but iTunes is simply awful.
I am sure Apple has been working on a group up rewrite in Cocoa, but this won't be easier. Unless their other apps, iTunes has additional challenges. Though I did expect them to have it ready for this last release. Besides it needing to be done, last year they added files that refer to iTunes as iTunesX and using QuickTime as an example, thatbrewrite took it from QT 7.x to QT X. I thought they would be ready in 2010. Maybe next year as it needs it, but at least this last version is faster for me.
I'll get slammed for saying this, but iTunes sucks. It badly needs to be rewritten. AFAIK it's still based on the old codebase from OS 9. It's dreadful on OS X, I shudder to think how it runs/walks on Windows. It does far too much, and all of it badly. The only reason people tolerate it (IMO) is because of the iPod/iPhone lock-in. My biggest compliant, and the reason I'll never use it, is that it does not properly support Libraries on another machine. But there's plenty of other ways it's bad.
I love pretty much everything Apple does, but iTunes is simply awful.
I don't see any "iTunes Killers" out there, I also have no issue with performance, stability or function within iTunes, my library is stored on an external hard drive and I have no issues.
Also, let's not forget it's free.
If there is any other free software out there that does all that iTunes does, I'd love to use it - choice is great. But what I hear is a lot of vague complaints about "performance" and the "suck factor" without anything specific, or any specific suggestions for improvement in functionality...
I am sure Apple has been working on a group up rewrite in Cocoa, but this won't be easier. Unless their other apps, iTunes has additional challenges. Though I did expect them to have it ready for this last release. Besides it needing to be done, last year they added files that refer to iTunes as iTunesX and using QuickTime as an example, thatbrewrite took it from QT 7.x to QT X. I thought they would be ready in 2010. Maybe next year as it needs it, but at least this last version is faster for me.
Problem is that once it goes cocoa, it won't run on PPC and there will be massive complaints from the legacy user base...
I'll get slammed for saying this, but iTunes sucks. It badly needs to be rewritten. AFAIK it's still based on the old codebase from OS 9. It's dreadful on OS X, I shudder to think how it runs/walks on Windows. It does far too much, and all of it badly. The only reason people tolerate it (IMO) is because of the iPod/iPhone lock-in. My biggest compliant, and the reason I'll never use it, is that it does not properly support Libraries on another machine. But there's plenty of other ways it's bad.
I love pretty much everything Apple does, but iTunes is simply awful.
I just turn off all the crap/stuff-I-don't-use (iTunes DJ, Genius, Sound Enhancer, Sound Check (I use replay gain; Sound Check sucks), Podcasts) and it works really well for me. Admittedly I don't like what they've done with iTunes 10, but the solution is simple: I haven't "upgraded" and will stick with version 9.
Problem is that once it goes cocoa, it won't run on PPC and there will be massive complaints from the legacy user base...
Cocoa doesn?t support PPC? Isn?t iWork completely Cocoa from the start and it?s compiled for PPC and x86, right?
Cocoa doesn?t support PPC? Isn?t iWork completely Cocoa from the start and it?s compiled for PPC and x86, right?
Sorry, Sunday laziness. Once it goes Cocoa and 64 bit, which is pretty much a given for the transition..
I don't see any "iTunes Killers" out there, I also have no issue with performance, stability or function within iTunes, my library is stored on an external hard drive and I have no issues.
Also, let's not forget it's free.
If there is any other free software out there that does all that iTunes does, I'd love to use it - choice is great. But what I hear is a lot of vague complaints about "performance" and the "suck factor" without anything specific, or any specific suggestions for improvement in functionality...
As much as people complain about iTunes it’s arguably a primary reason why the iPod was able to gain so much traction and, as you say, there still isn’t anyone competing well against Apple on this front.
If Chrome OS takes off it would make sense for Apple to have a web-based iTunes app. I’m not talking about internet streaming, specifically, but thinking that Apple needs to prepare for a more universal method for managing and playing music. Using a browser-based solution can still be local, though this feature is often overlooked.
As for specifics of disliking iTunes, I have a several niggling issues, but I’ll focus on videos. My biggest annoyance is the video player not working like QuickTime. I’m not even sure iTunes uses QTX in SL to play videos. It’s slower to start than QT and can often be choppy/blocky at the first few frames to start, and is more easily affected by other processes working.
It has fast forward < > and next video |< >| buttons that don’t scrub in real time, but jump in intervals that make it hard to use those buttons for searching. It used to be if you accidentally clicked once on the FF button it would jump to the next video, which makes this annoying and buttons designed for this task redundant. Really all I want is an option in iTunes to have QuickTime be called to play the video when I click on it in iTunes, as of right now, I’m actually right-clicking, showing the source in Finder and then double-clicking it if I need to access it via iTunes.
iTunes will store files with any A/V codec files… and play them back just fine, but it has to be in an approved container, like .MOV. I’d love to have all my videos organized via iTunes but I don’t want to redo all the containers for these files even though it takes about 10 seconds for a 30 minute show. In iTunes under Get Info the Kind is “QuickTime movie file” but the codec is still the same. I could also use a Reference Link which creates a .MOV files that points to the content. This works, too, and is nearly instant to make. This also shows up as a “QuickTime movie file”. The only way you know it’s not the source file is the size, which is usually in the hundreds of kilobytes.
I think we know that iDevices can’t play all file types, and it lets us know which ones it didn’t transfer over during a sync. So why not allow me to store all A/V files in iTunes, making it a true media organizer? They still don’t have to support the codecs on iDevices, or even in Mac OS X; let the 3rd partyies offer us the codecs.
I guess what I’m looking for is two-fold: 1) Consistency between media players, and 2) making media content storage and organization “no holds barred”. Is that specific enough?
Sorry, Sunday laziness. Once it goes Cocoa and 64 bit, which is pretty much a given for the transition..
Besides the nature of this rewrite that could be why they are holding off with the release, waiting for PPC Macs to be irrelevant enough to keep a single version of iTunes for Macs.
Pearl Jam (everything)
David Byrne
Nine Inch Nails (Reznor's website states that over 20% of sales are FLAC)
Brian Eno
The Eagles
The Beatles (they sell a complete works in FLAC USB drive on their website)
Bonnaroo Festival (complete concerts from the past several festivals)
Tallis Scholars (complete works)
Paul McCartney (last couple albums)
Merge Records (sells everything as FLAC - you might recognize Arcade Fire, Superchunk and Caribou as some of their artists)
are just a few of the "big" artists who sell their music as FLAC. Check their websites. Also, there are a ton of smaller jazz labels releasing in FLAC. I don't listen to much top 40, so I don't know about the major labels, but they're not exactly the most progressive organizations out there. Sure they're not sold on iTunes, but that's a given.
Add to that list Palace Records and the Daytrotter site.
I've sent a feature request to Apple about the FLAC codec. I'm very skeptical it will ever come to pass, which is why I'm strongly considering the workarounds suggested in this thread, or dropping iTunes all together. Lossless data portability does not seem to be a top priority for the player unfortunately.