9 thoughts on “Mac Power Users 122: Another look at iTunes”

1. Bob DeGrande January 27, 2013 at 6:19 pm

   It may not be exactly what you are looking for, but if you use Mission Control you can have video play back in one space while still having access to iTunes in another.

   Also, anyone who mentions both Miles Davis and the Foo Fighters on a tech podcast is OK in my book.
2. Rogier January 28, 2013 at 1:22 pm

   Hi Katie and David,

   Every week, in the car, on the ride to my work I listen to your show, great! However, this is the first time I want to provide some feedback. I missed something very crucial in MPU 122 (the show about the new iTunes and iTunes Match).

   David is a big fan of smart playlists. And yes, one can do very nice things by using meta data like genre, play counts, etc. However there is one VERY BIG bug in iTunes Match… two pieces of meta data are NOT synchronised from iOS devices to your central iTunes library. Please also see the link below on the official Mac forum. I also email Dan, regarding the last Back to Work podcast you guys mentioned in MPU 122. Unfortunately I didn’t receive a comment from him.

   Since a LOT of people face problems with iTunes Match and synchronisation of play counts and “last played dates” I think you can make the difference. Your listeners base is big, so if you guys mention this bug on the next episode (and maybe even put a link (see previous paragraph) in the show notes), this could track Apple’s attention. Another thing you probably can do: forward this email to Dan/Merlin, since I assume my email sent to them is “lost in the bulk”. The more people discussing this problem, the better it is, right?

   Please do read this email, since iTunes is great, Apple is great, but unfortunately “power users” use things like smart playlists and they rely very much on accurate and up-to-date meta data… something Match does NOT provide at the moment .

   By the way, did I already mention your show is great?? Thanks!!

   https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3495653?start=0&tstart=0
3. Bruce January 29, 2013 at 12:04 am

   re: Rogier
   I experienced the same issues with iTunes Match not synching Play Count and Last Played information and therefore messing up my Smart Playlists (even the simple ones). It’s one of the reasons I didn’t renew my subscription (another is it changed much of my artwork and wouldn’t allow me to correct the errors). iTunes Match is riddled with bugs and mostly unusable for me. Even after canceling, I had to delete and re-build all my playlists to get them working correctly again. A real headache. I’d never recommend it to anyone.

   Generally, I really love iTunes though. Version 11 has it’s own specific quirks and things I’d like addressed (multiple TV seasons grouped together is annoying, the podcast layout is a waste of screen real estate, etc), but overall, it’s still by far the best way to manage my vast library of music, books, TV shows, movies, podcasts and apps. I know many would love Apple to break it up into five or so separate apps, but to me that sounds like a nightmare. One app to rule them all is the best bet in my book.
4. Ron Heiby January 29, 2013 at 5:17 pm

   Just a quick note: “noop” is actually pronounce with two syllables, as in “NO OPeration”. It generally stems from the assembly language instruction at the machine level that is intended to perform no operation. Some machine architectures have assigned various “side effects” to the NOOP instruction, perhaps such things as synchronizing chunks of circuitry within the processor that ordinarily operate asynchronously, or (in the old days) to provide a measured amount of delay to running code.
5. Bryan February 3, 2013 at 8:40 am

   Finally decided to pick up 1Password after listening to your continued ravings. The timing could not have been better, as they are having a 50% off sale during MacWorld. Thanks!
6. Dennis Austin February 5, 2013 at 1:00 am

   Could you guys explain why the iOS PodCasts app is deficient? It came up again on this show. I don’t subscribe to very many podcasts, but the Apple app seems to download mine just fine. They are easier to play than they were from Music, and I no longer have to sync with my Mac. “It just works.” What am I missing? (I tried DownCast briefly, but didn’t see any huge advantage. And I was upset that my listened/unlistened information was all gone.
7. Stuart Mackey February 7, 2013 at 9:29 am

   You both mentioned several ways to get iTunes playlists to “conform” to your expected ways. I have found a few that I use. I use the “unchecked” option for a lot of music (which I’ll get to), but also under the “Get Info” window, under the Options tab, there is a checkbox for “Skip when shuffling.” This won’t help for smart playlists, but it does help for straight shuffling.

   David’s point of minimizing Genre’s is a good idea, and also making sure Artist Names are consistent (with/without dashes periods, iterations of a band’s name, etc.) but I wish iTunes had a Evernote like “tag” function. A theory I have is you could create Text Expander snippets for your own personal genre descriptions (for consistency), and use them to populate the “Comments” field. The comments field is searchable under Smart Playlists.

   I am a video editor and own a lot of royalty free production music. One of the great ideas I had when I started iTunes Match, was put all of that music in iTunes on my main Mac Pro Tower as high quality AIFF, then upload them to match. I Uncheck them all, check “Skip When Shuffling” and apply the Genre “Production Music.” This way, if I want to edit a rough video on my iPhone, iPad or Mac Book Pro, I can download the high-bitrate version from match, then, when I move the project to my Mac Pro, I can swap in the AIFF version for the best quality.
   I also created a Smart Playlist called “Samples” which is set to: Length is less than 20 seconds and Genre is Production Music. This way I can quickly go through and find the piece of music I want to use, then open the album it is in and download the “full” version from Match. This is great on my Mac Pro so I don’t need to keep hardly any music on its hard drive.

   Keep up the good work! I love your podcast!
8. Andre February 11, 2013 at 1:08 pm

   Regard David’s comment rhetorically asking who listens to music on the computer rather than their mobile device, I’ve always found it nonsensical to do otherwise. If you computer is plugged into an AC outlet, why drain your iPod’s or iPhone’s battery unnecessarily? It’s also much more fluid to navigate through an extensive music collection on the desktop iTunes than doing so on a small touchscreen.
9. Matt February 18, 2013 at 8:48 pm

   I know that was a more musically oriented iTunes show but I have an issue with iOS app updates.
   It is a small, but long-term, irritation. I have 8 app updates in the iTunes sidebar AFTER all updates have been downloaded. I have two iTunes accounts and clear the updates for both. Everytime i clear all the waiting app updates the count is still at 8. The count use to be 5 but has recently climbed to 8.
   Anyone have/seen this issue before?
   Thanks

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