QotD: More from iTunes
Posted April 28th, 2003 @ 08:42am by Erik J. Barzeski
Question: If you could design the next version of iTunes, what features would it have?
My Answer: Library sharing (like the Rendezvous one demonstrated last July), integration with this "service" thing that's not yet been announced, the ability to "buy now" from streams (and better display of the song being played in a stream), and… Uhhhh… I have no idea. iTunes is pretty darn great the way it is for me.
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Posted 28 Apr 2003 at 8:47am #
Apart from fixing the CDDB comment bug, I want fixes for streaming. Streams don't record the ID3 tag info (it could populate the fields the first time it streamed the file, then allow you to edit them like any other file, just saving them in the iTunes library files instead of in the stream itself, of course), and you can't pause them (most streaming protocols support requesting byte ranges).
Library sharing, as you mentioned, is the big one I want too. I have no less than four machines in my house that I want to play my MP3s with, and the best way is to have one machine serve the MP3s to the others. Streaming is one option, but as noted, streaming sucks in iTunes. Right now I manually load the MP3s via AFP to the boxes, but changes are not reflected in the remote computers when made on the server.
Posted 28 Apr 2003 at 8:52am #
Well…
A way to sort tunes by the latest added to the Library, that way you can easily get rid of recent stuff you've decided you don't really like.And following along that line of thought, an ability to right-click an instance of a song in a Playlist and delete the song from the library.Ability to create small-time internet radio streams, maybe for around the house or for listening to your music-at-home from work.Better volume equalization.A non-paned window mode.
That about sums it up for me 😉
Posted 28 Apr 2003 at 9:07am #
Double-click on a playlist, you get a non-paned window, FWIW.
Posted 28 Apr 2003 at 9:11am #
I wish it scaled better with large music libraries. It is extremely sluggish with ~20,000 songs - just switching iTunes in to hit pause can be painful (the hardware it is running on its more than adequate.)
Posted 28 Apr 2003 at 9:33am #
Amy, you can already sort by date added to the library - just go to Edit > View Options, and you can tell it to display a 'Date Added' column.
Posted 28 Apr 2003 at 11:08am #
This is a minor one, but last night, I was trying to consolidate some MP3s that had slightly different band names (e.g, spelling a number out, versus the arabic digic), I found an annoying habit, which is the auto-completion of artist names.
This is a great future, until you find out that it completes to the wrong one, and there's no way to over-ride it. The only way I found was to rename the tracks with the wrong name to something else, then back to the right one. Annoying. It should support the kind of auto-completion that Safari does, with arrow keys letting you alternate between possibilities.
Posted 28 Apr 2003 at 12:22pm #
Erik J. Barzeski's question of the dayErik J. Barzeski Erik J. Barzeski
I want cascaded and modular playlists, multiple music library support and a "show current song" option.
Posted 28 Apr 2003 at 12:49pm #
What about persistent playlists?
Currently iTunes easily destroys your playlists if you do something to your music lirbary (say restore it from backup. I've already lost quite a few playlists that way.
Ideally iTunes' playlists were in a 'Playlists folder' and could also be easily opened/played in the Finder (just as 'm3u' playlists), copied and mailed to other people.
Posted 28 Apr 2003 at 1:07pm #
iTunes Part 4
QotD: More from iTunes
Question: If you could design the next version of iTunes, what features would it have?
My biggest complaint is th...
Posted 28 Apr 2003 at 2:19pm #
Ogg support. Oh wait, this isn't /. nevermind.:-P
One thing I'd really like to see is some sort of listing in the Browser panes for multi-artist albums, like tributes or soundtracks. I hate having to scroll though all the albums to find the one I want.
Posted 28 Apr 2003 at 6:35pm #
Seriously, ogg support. The idea of an open format is a good one IMHO, and I love the idea of a less lossy format than MP3. Sadly, nothing mobile yet supports it... including the new iPod 🙁
Posted 28 Apr 2003 at 7:51pm #
Brad, Arcterex,
While the iPod doesn't have Ogg Vorbis support yet, iTunes has had Ogg Vorbis support for quite awhile.
Posted 28 Apr 2003 at 9:39pm #
Ogg Vorbis and FLAC (I don't care about Ogg FLAC except for completeness) support. Both decode and encode. Speex support would be nice too, but I don't use it for anything.
Posted 28 Apr 2003 at 9:54pm #
Aaron - yea, I'd forgotten about that. Still, having the iPod support ogg would mean I would be able to take my .oggs mobile, something that I can't do yet, and with the ipod not being a "new" device, and only really (AFAICT) requiring a software/os/firmware update, which is coming down with the new itunes anyway for the AAC support...
*sigh*
Course, I'd also like to watch movies on it, but for that you'd need to get one of the wince/ipaq type devices, which just aren't as sweet and sexy IMHO.
Posted 28 Apr 2003 at 10:07pm #
In response to Aaron Linville's post about existing Vorbis support:
illadvised.com was offline for three months or so, and the .dmg didn't give me any rights to host the thing on my website in the interim, meaning that the distribution of this thing is entirely dependent on a flaky webhost. Not to mention that it's (IMO needlessly) closed-source. Finally, the plugin isn't capable of handling Vorbis streams and doesn?t treat "artist=Sunscreem" as an artist comment (Jordan's plugin assumes that all comment, er, fields are in uppercase).
That said, iTunes could stand to be dechromed and its tag editor generalized, like foobar2000's.
Posted 28 Apr 2003 at 11:10pm #
iTunes 4! Online Music Store!
iTunes 4! Great. It looks like the music store thing majorly overshadows the Rendezvous file sharing, but oh well. Both are great features to add to such a good app. Because of the music store, the music industry has 3...
Posted 29 Apr 2003 at 12:31am #
I want CD art to be available from CDDB or some other similar source... What good is that special new feature when Apple has purported that 7500 songs will fit on the new iPod? Are we seriously supposed to find album art and drag it into that cute little box for all 7500? Bah. I don't ask for much! 🙂
Posted 29 Apr 2003 at 12:48am #
Thanks Aaron, but I was joking around. Was just making fun of /. whining. I have it on fairly good authority that the iPods wont be getting it soon. So, I don't really care about it right now.
Jamie, that's not what you're supposed to do at all. Just because we're not stealing music any more doesn't mean that we're supposed to start stealing art work. We'll be able to easily get them in Apple's forthcoming "iPhoto Music Art" service. 🙂
Posted 29 Apr 2003 at 4:48pm #
I'd love to be able to burn CDs in iTunes, but it doesn't support CD-TEXT, so I have to use Toast all the time. How hard would it be to support it?