"iTunes 4.6 includes support for playing your music wirelessly using AirPort Express with AirTunes. It also includes a number of other minor enhancements."
Buggered if I can see any difference between 4.5 & 4.6. Do you have to have AirportExpress connected for it to have that little option window (the pic showing "Living Room Stereo" on the AE page, it is next to the Equalizer button)?
Do you have to have AirportExpress connected for it to have that little option window (the pic showing "Living Room Stereo" on the AE page, it is next to the Equalizer button)?
(sic - it's just a popup menu)
Yes, same as how you won't see the iPod button (also next to the Equalizer button) unless there is an iPod connected.
Of course that's conjecture on my part, since no one has them yet.
On the topic of minor changes, has there always been a "Used/Free" space indicator at the bottom? With the Mac OS 9 style bar?
One of the "enhancements" seems to be that iTunes 4.6 refuses to play music that's been processed by Hymn.
Hymn leaves your user ID embedded in your song files when it strips off the DRM. I'll bet that the new software says "If this music contains a user ID, but isn't protected, then it must be de-DRMed music -- refuse to play it."
Hymn was trying to show that it didn't support piracy by leaving your user ID intact. I think all this change in iTunes 4.6 will do is encourage an update of Hymn which makes de-DRMed music unidentifiable and indistinguishable from music you rip from your own CDs.
I just copied iTunes 4.5 from another computer to replace 4.6. iTunes is now re-updating my iPod... because apparently every one of 662 purchased songs (all de-DRMed by Hymn) had been removed from my iPod as soon as 4.6 started up.
Is that with your iTunes set to Automatically update? Will it do this if your iTunes is set for Manually Update?
I had automatic update turned on. I'd guess that 4.6 wouldn't be so bold as to update your iPod and strip music from it if you had automatic updating turned off, but I have no intention of running 4.6 again any time soon to find out.
I'll bet that in a few days or weeks there will be a Hymn update that solves this problem. What I have to wonder is will there be a solution that fixes already-unprotected song files, or will I have to go back to my archived protected originals to solve the problem?
I don't support piracy, BTW. Every one of the songs that got stripped off my iPod and wouldn't play was one that I bought legally. I want the DRM off my music because I'm planning on buying an EyeHome soon, and the EyeHome won't play protected music files.
Okay... I bit the bullet and bravely connected my iPod to iTunes 4.6. Nothing happened, but I do have my iTunes set to manually Update all the time. So I haven't lost any of my unprotected music.
Okay... I bit the bullet and bravely connected my iPod to iTunes 4.6. Nothing happened, but I do have my iTunes set to manually Update all the time. So I haven't lost any of my unprotected music.
Have you tried to play any of that music through iTunes 4.6 yet? It won't play. iTunes comes up with a warning saying that you aren't authorized to play the music, saying that it was purchased by "[email protected]".
Is it only music ripped thru Hymm and gettunes? If so I should be fine. Or is it all music that has had the protection removed? And if yes, how do you know if the protection has been removed? Because I may, or may not, have a few songs in my iTunes that have, or have not, been downloaded from Poisoned (Hey, things'll change when we get an iTMS as well.) And so I hvae no idea which songs are safe.
There's already a simple fix that makes decrypted files immediately playable on iTunes (it's simply a matter of changing the name of certain m4a tags), but according to one user, this doesn't fix the problem with the same files being deleted from the iPod. Yet.
The trick seems to be that it's best to have patched your decrypted files before you run iTunes 4.6 for the first time. If you run 4.6 first, somehow the information about which files aren't authorized to play on the iPod gets cached somewhere, and it's hard to clear away.
I even replaced my "iTunes 4 Music Library", "iTunes 4 Music Library.xml", and "com.apple.iTunes.plist" files from back-ups on another computer, and still iTunes kept all of my decrypted files (all legally purchased!) deleted from my iPod.
Fixing the problem is possible, but tedious, especially with hundreds of decrypted files. Basically you have to delete all of your decrypted files from iTunes (making sure they don't all get thrown away completely), then re-add them to iTunes, making sure you don't screw up any playlists that you care about in the process.
These are the steps I followed:
1. I patched all of my decrypted files after having run iTunes 4.6 once. This step was a mistake.
2. I tried all sorts of stuff that didn't help.
3. I exported all of my playlists which contained decrypted songs.
4. Fortunately, I keep even my decrypted files in my "Purchased Music" folder, so I could do a "Select All" on that playlist, and then drag all of those files into a "saved songs" file on my desktop.
This won't always work well, since there's a small chance that some files will have the same file names, and dragging music out of iTunes doesn't copy the folder structures that will keep songs with the same file names out of conflict with either other. Using the "Create file name with track number" option helps reduce the odds of file name conflicts. I didn't have any such problems.
5. Fortunately, I don't use the ratings system in iTunes, so I was able to use setting a rating of one star on all of my decrypted files to mark them.
6. I went into my Library, added the "My Rating" column, and sorted the Library by rating.
7. I selected all one-star files, and deleted them. (Note: I use the default "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" option in iTunes, and you have to be in the Library, not in one of your playlists, to actually delete the copies of music files being managed by iTunes.)
8. I updated my iPod. I don't know if this was necessary, but I had a suspicion that updating at this point in the process might clear some cached data about unauthorized files from the iPod.
9. I dragged the saved decrypted files that were on my desktop into the iTunes Library. It took a minute or so for everything to be copied back into iTunes.
10. I updated my iPod yet again, to make sure it would now stop complaining about unauthorized music and copy my patched decrypted files to the iPod -- success!
11. I deleted (from iTunes, not the Finder!) the playlists that I'd exported as XML fines, then re-imported the XML files.
12. My saved "Purchased Music" list came up outside of the Purchased Music list that's indented below "Music Store", but I could fill that list in again by dragging all of the songs from the out-of-place Purchased Music list into the Music Store version of that list.
13. I updated my iPod yet again, to get my restored playlists synched.
14. I tested by quitting iTunes, restarting iTunes, ejecting and remounting my iPod, playing decrypted files from iTunes and from my iPod, etc. Everything appeared to be in order.
All in all, a lot of work, and if you have no convenient way to select and mark all of your decrypted files simultaneously, this task could be even more tedious. It might be easier to move all of your music out of iTunes and re-add it to your Library if you can't easily select your decrypted files as a group.
Comments
Originally posted by Paul
Do getTunes and hymn still work?
Can't check the first until I am back in the office and the second until the 15th.
Originally posted by eVo
So what are the other "minor enhancements"?
yeah, that's what i want to know too
Les.
Originally posted by les t
Do you have to have AirportExpress connected for it to have that little option window (the pic showing "Living Room Stereo" on the AE page, it is next to the Equalizer button)?
(sic - it's just a popup menu)
Yes, same as how you won't see the iPod button (also next to the Equalizer button) unless there is an iPod connected.
Of course that's conjecture on my part, since no one has them yet.
On the topic of minor changes, has there always been a "Used/Free" space indicator at the bottom? With the Mac OS 9 style bar?
Les.
Originally posted by Paul
Do getTunes and hymn still work?
One of the "enhancements" seems to be that iTunes 4.6 refuses to play music that's been processed by Hymn.
Hymn leaves your user ID embedded in your song files when it strips off the DRM. I'll bet that the new software says "If this music contains a user ID, but isn't protected, then it must be de-DRMed music -- refuse to play it."
Hymn was trying to show that it didn't support piracy by leaving your user ID intact. I think all this change in iTunes 4.6 will do is encourage an update of Hymn which makes de-DRMed music unidentifiable and indistinguishable from music you rip from your own CDs.
Originally posted by les t
Is that with your iTunes set to Automatically update? Will it do this if your iTunes is set for Manually Update?
I had automatic update turned on. I'd guess that 4.6 wouldn't be so bold as to update your iPod and strip music from it if you had automatic updating turned off, but I have no intention of running 4.6 again any time soon to find out.
I'll bet that in a few days or weeks there will be a Hymn update that solves this problem. What I have to wonder is will there be a solution that fixes already-unprotected song files, or will I have to go back to my archived protected originals to solve the problem?
I don't support piracy, BTW. Every one of the songs that got stripped off my iPod and wouldn't play was one that I bought legally. I want the DRM off my music because I'm planning on buying an EyeHome soon, and the EyeHome won't play protected music files.
Les.
Originally posted by les t
Okay... I bit the bullet and bravely connected my iPod to iTunes 4.6. Nothing happened, but I do have my iTunes set to manually Update all the time. So I haven't lost any of my unprotected music.
Have you tried to play any of that music through iTunes 4.6 yet? It won't play. iTunes comes up with a warning saying that you aren't authorized to play the music, saying that it was purchased by "[email protected]".
Originally posted by tonton
There's already a simple fix that makes decrypted files immediately playable on iTunes (it's simply a matter of changing the name of certain m4a tags), but according to one user, this doesn't fix the problem with the same files being deleted from the iPod. Yet.
The trick seems to be that it's best to have patched your decrypted files before you run iTunes 4.6 for the first time. If you run 4.6 first, somehow the information about which files aren't authorized to play on the iPod gets cached somewhere, and it's hard to clear away.
I even replaced my "iTunes 4 Music Library", "iTunes 4 Music Library.xml", and "com.apple.iTunes.plist" files from back-ups on another computer, and still iTunes kept all of my decrypted files (all legally purchased!) deleted from my iPod.
Fixing the problem is possible, but tedious, especially with hundreds of decrypted files. Basically you have to delete all of your decrypted files from iTunes (making sure they don't all get thrown away completely), then re-add them to iTunes, making sure you don't screw up any playlists that you care about in the process.
These are the steps I followed:
1. I patched all of my decrypted files after having run iTunes 4.6 once. This step was a mistake.
2. I tried all sorts of stuff that didn't help.
3. I exported all of my playlists which contained decrypted songs.
4. Fortunately, I keep even my decrypted files in my "Purchased Music" folder, so I could do a "Select All" on that playlist, and then drag all of those files into a "saved songs" file on my desktop.
This won't always work well, since there's a small chance that some files will have the same file names, and dragging music out of iTunes doesn't copy the folder structures that will keep songs with the same file names out of conflict with either other. Using the "Create file name with track number" option helps reduce the odds of file name conflicts. I didn't have any such problems.
5. Fortunately, I don't use the ratings system in iTunes, so I was able to use setting a rating of one star on all of my decrypted files to mark them.
6. I went into my Library, added the "My Rating" column, and sorted the Library by rating.
7. I selected all one-star files, and deleted them. (Note: I use the default "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" option in iTunes, and you have to be in the Library, not in one of your playlists, to actually delete the copies of music files being managed by iTunes.)
8. I updated my iPod. I don't know if this was necessary, but I had a suspicion that updating at this point in the process might clear some cached data about unauthorized files from the iPod.
9. I dragged the saved decrypted files that were on my desktop into the iTunes Library. It took a minute or so for everything to be copied back into iTunes.
10. I updated my iPod yet again, to make sure it would now stop complaining about unauthorized music and copy my patched decrypted files to the iPod -- success!
11. I deleted (from iTunes, not the Finder!) the playlists that I'd exported as XML fines, then re-imported the XML files.
12. My saved "Purchased Music" list came up outside of the Purchased Music list that's indented below "Music Store", but I could fill that list in again by dragging all of the songs from the out-of-place Purchased Music list into the Music Store version of that list.
13. I updated my iPod yet again, to get my restored playlists synched.
14. I tested by quitting iTunes, restarting iTunes, ejecting and remounting my iPod, playing decrypted files from iTunes and from my iPod, etc. Everything appeared to be in order.
All in all, a lot of work, and if you have no convenient way to select and mark all of your decrypted files simultaneously, this task could be even more tedious. It might be easier to move all of your music out of iTunes and re-add it to your Library if you can't easily select your decrypted files as a group.