While the number one use for scanned photos seems to be making photo albums we're always looking for innovative ways of using cherished digital images.
How about an iPhone case personalised with one (or more) of your own photos? Yes, photobox does them and not just for Apple's phones, but if you Google "personalised iPhone cover" you'll find a range of suppliers. If you only have printed photos and need digital, we can recommend a good photo scanning service.
Wednesday, May 01, 2013
Monday, April 29, 2013
CD Ripping & Album Artist Field
They don't always take our advice, and although I'm being paid to do it in a few minutes I have to grind my way through 100+ edits of album data for a client.
He has a substantial number of what iTunes thinks of a compilation CDs. Hotel Costes springs to mind, where a famous DJ puts together a collection of tracks; each one under its own artist attribution but the whole CD is directed by another person. How best to handle this?
My suggestion was to use the field "Album Artist" which we can add during CD ripping. This would result in the album name being what you see on the cover, each track is credited to the right artist but inside the Music file (should you ever need to look) the tracks are filed under that person's name, who can also be searched on and is listed in iTunes. No, this wasn't my clients desired strategy so instead I will need to insert the DJ's name before the name of the album in the album title field.
Had we done it my way the DJ's name would still appear in the Artist column in iTunes, and still be available to search, and the album name would remain untouched. But then the customer is always right (even when he's wrong) and I keep telling myself we are a service business so stick a smile on your face and get on with it.
He has a substantial number of what iTunes thinks of a compilation CDs. Hotel Costes springs to mind, where a famous DJ puts together a collection of tracks; each one under its own artist attribution but the whole CD is directed by another person. How best to handle this?
My suggestion was to use the field "Album Artist" which we can add during CD ripping. This would result in the album name being what you see on the cover, each track is credited to the right artist but inside the Music file (should you ever need to look) the tracks are filed under that person's name, who can also be searched on and is listed in iTunes. No, this wasn't my clients desired strategy so instead I will need to insert the DJ's name before the name of the album in the album title field.
Had we done it my way the DJ's name would still appear in the Artist column in iTunes, and still be available to search, and the album name would remain untouched. But then the customer is always right (even when he's wrong) and I keep telling myself we are a service business so stick a smile on your face and get on with it.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
iTunes Revamp - Time for a Rethink?
I don't know many people who have used iTunes longer than us, nor many who depend on it as part of their business. As I've often said, without Apple, the iPod and of course iTunes we wouldn't have a CD ripping service business.
Over the years I've helped people on iTunes and staunchly defended it against people in love with the latest gee-whiz music player, ripper, music management system or whatever. However even the most ardent Apple fan can't help but notice a sure and rising tide of negative comments about iTunes. Someone derided iTunes a day or two ago by referring to the latest version as a vain attempt to apply lipstick to a pig. That's a phrase that's been rattling round my head all week as I've been using the latest incarnation of iTunes. Hmmmm .....
I still want to try to defend iTunes but the latest tweaks have done nothing to help Apple's cause. Take a simple stat, how many tracks are there in your library? In the past a simple number at the bottom of the screen told you, but not now, it has simply been removed. That little number helped us enormously, particularly in a diagnostic situations, but now its gone. We miss it, why did Apple delete it?
For some reason iTunes reverts to the display which shows all your album covers, not the more detailed album / track / genre display. We don't find this very helpful but there's no way to override Apple's reference. Would that have been hard? Surely not.
Well I could go on - and I'll skip the massive size of the iTunes program - but I'm hoping Apple have recognised the tide has turned against them and us. I'm hoping a completely new iTunes is in the works. Soon, please.
Over the years I've helped people on iTunes and staunchly defended it against people in love with the latest gee-whiz music player, ripper, music management system or whatever. However even the most ardent Apple fan can't help but notice a sure and rising tide of negative comments about iTunes. Someone derided iTunes a day or two ago by referring to the latest version as a vain attempt to apply lipstick to a pig. That's a phrase that's been rattling round my head all week as I've been using the latest incarnation of iTunes. Hmmmm .....
I still want to try to defend iTunes but the latest tweaks have done nothing to help Apple's cause. Take a simple stat, how many tracks are there in your library? In the past a simple number at the bottom of the screen told you, but not now, it has simply been removed. That little number helped us enormously, particularly in a diagnostic situations, but now its gone. We miss it, why did Apple delete it?
For some reason iTunes reverts to the display which shows all your album covers, not the more detailed album / track / genre display. We don't find this very helpful but there's no way to override Apple's reference. Would that have been hard? Surely not.
Well I could go on - and I'll skip the massive size of the iTunes program - but I'm hoping Apple have recognised the tide has turned against them and us. I'm hoping a completely new iTunes is in the works. Soon, please.
Saturday, January 05, 2013
CD Ripping - What 2013 Holds
Welcome to the New Year, and it's hard to believe another year of CD ripping lies ahead. Born of a period of childhood fads there have been times when I've thought people would lose interest in mobile music, or maybe streaming services such as Spotify would render us all pointless; but no, we are still here and looking forward to processing more CDs.
We are resolved to do better. First, we have taken steps to significantly improve throughput. During our first few years order sizes were around 200 - 250 CDs, we could handle this best by working around 9-17 using what has become six PCs. However when we got larger orders, 500+, it was a challenge to get this voulume of music converted in seven days. Over the last couple of years CD collections of over 1,000 discs have become common. We'd like to get those out in a week but it's hard to do that using the previous process of distributed systems. About six months ago we invested in a Nimbie CD ripper. This enables us to load up around 100 CDs and leave those to be ripped in a batch. Add a few evenings of unattended operation and throughput has gone up. For this reason we have another robotic CD ripping system on its way to us and we are hopeful that big collections next year will be ripped as quickly as smaller collections.
Second, we've taken steps to improve the quality of our Data Grooming service. These are very much 'under the hood' but we hope our clients like the results, even though it is a bit frustrating that clients don't normally appreciate just how much better their metadata is than it might have been.
Third, we're gaining more experience at delivering even higher quality music. When we started iTunes Music Store supplied music at 128 Kbps but we opted for twice that level with 256 Kbps AAC files. Today more clients are looking for lossless music which means returning files on DVDs has become unrealistic. So we've been down the USB thumbdrive route into USB connected external drives and into NAS drives. Additionally we're able to supply music on hard drives which can be installed inside a tower style system or in a bay of your NAS unit.
Taking these enhancements we're confident that 2013 will be our biggest and best year yet, and if you become one of our clients, we look forward to meeting you.
We are resolved to do better. First, we have taken steps to significantly improve throughput. During our first few years order sizes were around 200 - 250 CDs, we could handle this best by working around 9-17 using what has become six PCs. However when we got larger orders, 500+, it was a challenge to get this voulume of music converted in seven days. Over the last couple of years CD collections of over 1,000 discs have become common. We'd like to get those out in a week but it's hard to do that using the previous process of distributed systems. About six months ago we invested in a Nimbie CD ripper. This enables us to load up around 100 CDs and leave those to be ripped in a batch. Add a few evenings of unattended operation and throughput has gone up. For this reason we have another robotic CD ripping system on its way to us and we are hopeful that big collections next year will be ripped as quickly as smaller collections.
Second, we've taken steps to improve the quality of our Data Grooming service. These are very much 'under the hood' but we hope our clients like the results, even though it is a bit frustrating that clients don't normally appreciate just how much better their metadata is than it might have been.
Third, we're gaining more experience at delivering even higher quality music. When we started iTunes Music Store supplied music at 128 Kbps but we opted for twice that level with 256 Kbps AAC files. Today more clients are looking for lossless music which means returning files on DVDs has become unrealistic. So we've been down the USB thumbdrive route into USB connected external drives and into NAS drives. Additionally we're able to supply music on hard drives which can be installed inside a tower style system or in a bay of your NAS unit.
Taking these enhancements we're confident that 2013 will be our biggest and best year yet, and if you become one of our clients, we look forward to meeting you.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
USB 3 - Wow
Sonos CD ripping has become a big part of our workload, with the size of CD collections getting bigger. This week we completed a 2,000+ CD project, in Apple Lossless for someone who is installing a Sonos system as part of a major home refit. This created a 750 Gb library which was placed on a new drive.
This had to be moved onto another USB drive. When we do this I always think back to the first time I tried to load around 40 Gb onto a drive, only to find the USB port on the Dell PC was USB 1.0. It took hours, and hours, and hours. When the computer started the copy process it calculated the task would take over 25 hours. Unfortunately I couldn't dedicate that chunk of time on the PC I was using so the task had to be put on hold.
Then this morning we received a USB 3 card, a technical straw to grasp. A few minutes later the card was installed, late this afternoon I started the copy job again. This time the predicted time was down to just over 5 hours. A massive five fold improvement in elapsed times. Wow.
This had to be moved onto another USB drive. When we do this I always think back to the first time I tried to load around 40 Gb onto a drive, only to find the USB port on the Dell PC was USB 1.0. It took hours, and hours, and hours. When the computer started the copy process it calculated the task would take over 25 hours. Unfortunately I couldn't dedicate that chunk of time on the PC I was using so the task had to be put on hold.
Then this morning we received a USB 3 card, a technical straw to grasp. A few minutes later the card was installed, late this afternoon I started the copy job again. This time the predicted time was down to just over 5 hours. A massive five fold improvement in elapsed times. Wow.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Nexus 7 - How not to sell
This afternoon we went to PC World to buy my wife's Christmas present - a new tablet computer, the Google Nexus 7.
We looked around the bench with the tablet computers but didn't see one, so we asked a salesman. He said he'd get one of his colleagues, who owned a Nexus, to demonstrate. A young lad was summoned, smart, keen, big smile. We're off to a good start.
He switched on the Nexus. We hadn't noticed it because it was set for the screen to go dark. It looked dead - as in not working. But it did come to life. Mr Enthusiasm says, "It's a great device, it's got virtually everything you'd need".
"Except a camera". Wife looks disappointed, and puzzled.
"Will it do Skype?" she says. "Yes" he replies. How? With the camera on the front. So why did you say it didn't have a camera. Because it doesn't have a rear facing camera, to take photos. You can't take photos with this camera? No, it's a webcam.
At this point it's beginning to go badly.
"Will it do email?" Yes, he says both Gmail and you can add another account; or you can access it via a web interface.
"Dropbox?" Yes, you can download that via Play. And we're off into an explanation of Play being actually work. Play is searched, but up comes a nag notice, the unit wants to upgrade from 4.1 to 4.2. Dropbox cannot be found, Play doesn't respond. Why is this happening? So the poor lad tries to explain that 4.2 is better than 4.1 but they haven't upgraded in the store. My wife is deeply suspicious? Just upgrade the damn thing and let us get on with it. Or maybe the new one is worse than the old one, suspicions are aroused.
Sensing himself to be on a loser he makes his excuses and leaves. We find the web browser and try to log into www.podserve.co.uk. First, the screen is being presented in portrait mode with relatively small keys. Salesman bobs back to say its supposed to be used that way. Wife not happy, so he lifts it out of the mount snd turns it landscape, gives it to my wife, scoots off.
"It weighs a ton". Which it does, because its stuck to some stupid anti theft device. We realise in real life it will be lighter, but how much. My wife would like a case that holds the unit, landscape, at 45 degrees. Lad is whistled up - do you have a case that will do that? No, just wallet style cases. He's firmly sent away, this is bad. I know my wife, the sale is lost.
We try to browse the web. Nexus will not browse the web. Enter a URL and it just sits there. Unless its nagging you to upgrade to 4.2. In a few seconds my wife, who had gone in to buy a Nexus, has decided its too heavy, the keyboard doesn't want to work portrait, it doesn't have a decent case, it won't surf the web. Where's the exit?
So, Mr PC World, if you're reading this; Mr Google too; here's what you need to do.
Upgrade the damn thing to 4.2. Remove that stupid shackle or at least have one available to try (under supervision). If you're going to sell web browsing tablets have an instore internet connection that supports the devices you have in store. One about the power of my home BT connection should do it. And offer a range of cases, including one that will hold the unit at a decent angle.
We looked around the bench with the tablet computers but didn't see one, so we asked a salesman. He said he'd get one of his colleagues, who owned a Nexus, to demonstrate. A young lad was summoned, smart, keen, big smile. We're off to a good start.
He switched on the Nexus. We hadn't noticed it because it was set for the screen to go dark. It looked dead - as in not working. But it did come to life. Mr Enthusiasm says, "It's a great device, it's got virtually everything you'd need".
"Except a camera". Wife looks disappointed, and puzzled.
"Will it do Skype?" she says. "Yes" he replies. How? With the camera on the front. So why did you say it didn't have a camera. Because it doesn't have a rear facing camera, to take photos. You can't take photos with this camera? No, it's a webcam.
At this point it's beginning to go badly.
"Will it do email?" Yes, he says both Gmail and you can add another account; or you can access it via a web interface.
"Dropbox?" Yes, you can download that via Play. And we're off into an explanation of Play being actually work. Play is searched, but up comes a nag notice, the unit wants to upgrade from 4.1 to 4.2. Dropbox cannot be found, Play doesn't respond. Why is this happening? So the poor lad tries to explain that 4.2 is better than 4.1 but they haven't upgraded in the store. My wife is deeply suspicious? Just upgrade the damn thing and let us get on with it. Or maybe the new one is worse than the old one, suspicions are aroused.
Sensing himself to be on a loser he makes his excuses and leaves. We find the web browser and try to log into www.podserve.co.uk. First, the screen is being presented in portrait mode with relatively small keys. Salesman bobs back to say its supposed to be used that way. Wife not happy, so he lifts it out of the mount snd turns it landscape, gives it to my wife, scoots off.
"It weighs a ton". Which it does, because its stuck to some stupid anti theft device. We realise in real life it will be lighter, but how much. My wife would like a case that holds the unit, landscape, at 45 degrees. Lad is whistled up - do you have a case that will do that? No, just wallet style cases. He's firmly sent away, this is bad. I know my wife, the sale is lost.
We try to browse the web. Nexus will not browse the web. Enter a URL and it just sits there. Unless its nagging you to upgrade to 4.2. In a few seconds my wife, who had gone in to buy a Nexus, has decided its too heavy, the keyboard doesn't want to work portrait, it doesn't have a decent case, it won't surf the web. Where's the exit?
So, Mr PC World, if you're reading this; Mr Google too; here's what you need to do.
Upgrade the damn thing to 4.2. Remove that stupid shackle or at least have one available to try (under supervision). If you're going to sell web browsing tablets have an instore internet connection that supports the devices you have in store. One about the power of my home BT connection should do it. And offer a range of cases, including one that will hold the unit at a decent angle.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Buffalo Link Station Duo
I'm looking at a Buffalo Link Station Duo 4.0 Tb dual drive with RAID, web access, built-in media server and "enhanced performance". We've become good friends, we've spent a lot of time together, a lot of time. Too much time. Let me tell you the whole story before I return this glorious red box back to its owner, our client.
We ripped over 800 CDs, almost exclusively classical. The drive is to provide a home for the music and serve music to a new Sonos music system. Nothing too challenging there, except that the unit arrived several days into the ripping. We've worked with Buffalo drives before and they're very good, as is this unit, even after the week we've had. We rip using recent Windows and Apple systems, all of which support long file names; and with classical music track names can be very long (and in Italian though that doesn't matter in this instance). Pop songs tend to be snappy (She Loves You - The Beatles) while operatic tracks are long and folder names incorporate performer, conductor and orchestra. No problem for NTFS and HFS drives.
We've been asked to rip into both FLAC and MP3, so believe me, we have a lot of data to transfer. The MP3s were just over 100 Gb, the FLAC files much bigger.
So when the ripping part was completed I hooked up the Buffalo to our network and installed the driver software that comes with the unit. After a couple of glitches (I'll put that down to me) the Buffalo popped up on my Mac's finder window. I copied the MP3s from the locally connected drive onto the Shared folder on the Buffalo. Wait a while, off it goes. I went to bed - yes, it's that long a job so I generally schedule this kind of thing over night. At 19:00 it was going OK.
Next morning, disaster. Whole list of file errors and the NAS had gone offline. I put this down to the router in the office losing its internet connection, and thus its IP address pool, which caused the Mac to stop seeing the Buffalo.
Tried again that night. Next morning, same failure. Decided I should delete the files that had been copied across. That in itself takes a while, but its bearable. Decided to try again that night, instead connecting the local USB drive into a Vista machine rather than the Mac. As I closed up the office files were flying over the network like magic. Next morning, the file transfer was still running, so it wasn't until nearly lunchtime that I saw there were errors in the transfer.
That night I thought I'd clear down the errant MP3s and then try with the FLAC files, from the Windows box. All looked OK so shut up shop. I slept with my fingers crossed.
Opened office next morning, there was an error message. This time I was given a hint that the file name was unsupported, along with a mighty list of the files that had not copied over. OK, mass delete, head scratch time. I looked in the supplied PDF and saw nothing to suggest that a drag & drop copy shouldn't work, but I found another site (not an official Buffalo page I think) which suggested this particular box runs a version of Unix which cannot support long file names. The explanation of the issue certainly fitted my problem.
So, Mr Buffalo, what do you do with 12,000+ files - all with very long names - and it's a four day Jubilee bank Holiday weekend? You can't edit those names down to 12, 20 or however many characters. Instead, I had a brainwave.
Thankfully we work from source files (AIFF) in circumstances where clients require alternative file formats. So I loaded all the original files (held on three USB drives attached to our Pogoplug) and from there, imported them into iTunes. I used iTunes to convert from AIFF into MP3, but pointed the output files at a folder on the Buffalo Link Station Duo. Writing the files under the Link station operating system produced files the drive was happy with. Did the same (or similar, for FLAC - we don't use iTunes for that as it doesn't handle FLAC) and that worked too.
Trouble is each conversion run took in excess of 28 hours, which is why this box is going back to the client very, very late.
We ripped over 800 CDs, almost exclusively classical. The drive is to provide a home for the music and serve music to a new Sonos music system. Nothing too challenging there, except that the unit arrived several days into the ripping. We've worked with Buffalo drives before and they're very good, as is this unit, even after the week we've had. We rip using recent Windows and Apple systems, all of which support long file names; and with classical music track names can be very long (and in Italian though that doesn't matter in this instance). Pop songs tend to be snappy (She Loves You - The Beatles) while operatic tracks are long and folder names incorporate performer, conductor and orchestra. No problem for NTFS and HFS drives.
We've been asked to rip into both FLAC and MP3, so believe me, we have a lot of data to transfer. The MP3s were just over 100 Gb, the FLAC files much bigger.
So when the ripping part was completed I hooked up the Buffalo to our network and installed the driver software that comes with the unit. After a couple of glitches (I'll put that down to me) the Buffalo popped up on my Mac's finder window. I copied the MP3s from the locally connected drive onto the Shared folder on the Buffalo. Wait a while, off it goes. I went to bed - yes, it's that long a job so I generally schedule this kind of thing over night. At 19:00 it was going OK.
Next morning, disaster. Whole list of file errors and the NAS had gone offline. I put this down to the router in the office losing its internet connection, and thus its IP address pool, which caused the Mac to stop seeing the Buffalo.
Tried again that night. Next morning, same failure. Decided I should delete the files that had been copied across. That in itself takes a while, but its bearable. Decided to try again that night, instead connecting the local USB drive into a Vista machine rather than the Mac. As I closed up the office files were flying over the network like magic. Next morning, the file transfer was still running, so it wasn't until nearly lunchtime that I saw there were errors in the transfer.
That night I thought I'd clear down the errant MP3s and then try with the FLAC files, from the Windows box. All looked OK so shut up shop. I slept with my fingers crossed.
Opened office next morning, there was an error message. This time I was given a hint that the file name was unsupported, along with a mighty list of the files that had not copied over. OK, mass delete, head scratch time. I looked in the supplied PDF and saw nothing to suggest that a drag & drop copy shouldn't work, but I found another site (not an official Buffalo page I think) which suggested this particular box runs a version of Unix which cannot support long file names. The explanation of the issue certainly fitted my problem.
So, Mr Buffalo, what do you do with 12,000+ files - all with very long names - and it's a four day Jubilee bank Holiday weekend? You can't edit those names down to 12, 20 or however many characters. Instead, I had a brainwave.
Thankfully we work from source files (AIFF) in circumstances where clients require alternative file formats. So I loaded all the original files (held on three USB drives attached to our Pogoplug) and from there, imported them into iTunes. I used iTunes to convert from AIFF into MP3, but pointed the output files at a folder on the Buffalo Link Station Duo. Writing the files under the Link station operating system produced files the drive was happy with. Did the same (or similar, for FLAC - we don't use iTunes for that as it doesn't handle FLAC) and that worked too.
Trouble is each conversion run took in excess of 28 hours, which is why this box is going back to the client very, very late.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
iTunes Starts At Will
Most of my (non CD ripping) work is done on a Mac Mini. One of the great things about the Apple platform is that it just works. Having faith in Apple I tend to just accept the messages to say there are new versions of the operating system or key applications and install them soon after they become available. Which is what I did yesterday, to a whole batch of updates - including to iTunes.
No fuss, no drama. I had to restart the computer (not always required) but carried on just as normal. Then a horrible screeching sound, starting quietly and getting louder. For some reason iTunes had fired up and started playing the first track in the library, which happened to be an audio book for kids about a scary spider - and the weird sound was a special effect that opens the tale. Mystery explained, shut down iTunes and carried on.
That same thing happened every few minutes yesterday afternoon. And evening. Finally I took the hint and left iTunes running. Spent most of the evening thinking "It's never done that before". And it's done it again this morning.
I don't know if this stems from something in iTunes, the operating system, Safari or OS X. The library to which iTunes presently points is stored on an external USB hard drive. What happens is that apparently spontaneously iTunes loads, opens and starts to play the first track in the library.
From yesterday's experience the phantom iTunes start doesn't seem directly coincidental to any other action such as accessing the external drive, opening a particular program or any hardware related action. I went out to the Post Office, leaving a silent office, and came back to find iTunes was open and telling a story.
If this is happening to you I regret I can't explain what's going on, or how to stop it.
No fuss, no drama. I had to restart the computer (not always required) but carried on just as normal. Then a horrible screeching sound, starting quietly and getting louder. For some reason iTunes had fired up and started playing the first track in the library, which happened to be an audio book for kids about a scary spider - and the weird sound was a special effect that opens the tale. Mystery explained, shut down iTunes and carried on.
That same thing happened every few minutes yesterday afternoon. And evening. Finally I took the hint and left iTunes running. Spent most of the evening thinking "It's never done that before". And it's done it again this morning.
I don't know if this stems from something in iTunes, the operating system, Safari or OS X. The library to which iTunes presently points is stored on an external USB hard drive. What happens is that apparently spontaneously iTunes loads, opens and starts to play the first track in the library.
From yesterday's experience the phantom iTunes start doesn't seem directly coincidental to any other action such as accessing the external drive, opening a particular program or any hardware related action. I went out to the Post Office, leaving a silent office, and came back to find iTunes was open and telling a story.
If this is happening to you I regret I can't explain what's going on, or how to stop it.
Thursday, May 03, 2012
A New iTunes?
I have got to the point where I have even bored myself predicting a new solid state storage based iPod model to replace the iPod Classic. If it happens, it happens - you heard it here first and a long time ago. Then I suddenly thought, what about iTunes itself?
History first. When Apple launched their first portable music player they relied on a non-Apple pice of software, MusicMatch. It wasn't bad, very mainstream computing interface. It was subsequently swallowed up by Yahoo, pretty much faded away. When iTunes hit it was a breath of fresh air, particularly compared with Microsoft's Windows Media Player. You could tell iTunes was built by music lovers, it did what people want when they enjoy music. And it put the track (not the album / CD) at the centre of the music library. Of course it was imbued with all the loveliness that so many people like about the Apple brand. It wasn't to everyone's taste, and there's still a cottage industry in non-Apple, non-WMP music playing and ripping systems. However for 95%+ of the tune loving populace, it has to be iTunes.
Just looking across the range of Apple's current applications, on a daily basis I use iPhoto, Aperture, Pages, address book and calendar, I get the feeling iTunes is creaking a little. So what next for the music monster?
First - CD ripping. OK, that's my business and it's where my thoughts turn first. I'd like ripping to be faster, maybe that will happen. For the typical iPod owner why do they even have to bother? Couldn't they just say they have bought a CD and allow Apple's vast music cloud to place that set of tracks into their library, to be downloaded as and when necessary?
Second - compression. When we started people had tiny hard drives against big record collections. Today the collections are only a little bigger, but iPod drives (not to mention laptops and desktops) are huge. If Apple could do to their Apple Lossless codec what they seem to have done to their jpg algorithm in Aperture, you'd get effectively lossless music quality in file sizes only a little larger than decent AAC files. Then, users wouldn't have to dance to the AAC, MP3, Lossless jig and agonise on what's right for them.
Third - DVD ripping. Movies are as much part of home entertainment as music, Come on Apple.
Fourth - bury the database. Yes, easier said than done, but all that wordage on the standard iTunes screen just confuses most users. Sure it needs to be under the hood but the look and feel of iTunes is dated and clunky. Apple is brilliant at interface design, this one needs an overhaul.
History first. When Apple launched their first portable music player they relied on a non-Apple pice of software, MusicMatch. It wasn't bad, very mainstream computing interface. It was subsequently swallowed up by Yahoo, pretty much faded away. When iTunes hit it was a breath of fresh air, particularly compared with Microsoft's Windows Media Player. You could tell iTunes was built by music lovers, it did what people want when they enjoy music. And it put the track (not the album / CD) at the centre of the music library. Of course it was imbued with all the loveliness that so many people like about the Apple brand. It wasn't to everyone's taste, and there's still a cottage industry in non-Apple, non-WMP music playing and ripping systems. However for 95%+ of the tune loving populace, it has to be iTunes.
Just looking across the range of Apple's current applications, on a daily basis I use iPhoto, Aperture, Pages, address book and calendar, I get the feeling iTunes is creaking a little. So what next for the music monster?
First - CD ripping. OK, that's my business and it's where my thoughts turn first. I'd like ripping to be faster, maybe that will happen. For the typical iPod owner why do they even have to bother? Couldn't they just say they have bought a CD and allow Apple's vast music cloud to place that set of tracks into their library, to be downloaded as and when necessary?
Second - compression. When we started people had tiny hard drives against big record collections. Today the collections are only a little bigger, but iPod drives (not to mention laptops and desktops) are huge. If Apple could do to their Apple Lossless codec what they seem to have done to their jpg algorithm in Aperture, you'd get effectively lossless music quality in file sizes only a little larger than decent AAC files. Then, users wouldn't have to dance to the AAC, MP3, Lossless jig and agonise on what's right for them.
Third - DVD ripping. Movies are as much part of home entertainment as music, Come on Apple.
Fourth - bury the database. Yes, easier said than done, but all that wordage on the standard iTunes screen just confuses most users. Sure it needs to be under the hood but the look and feel of iTunes is dated and clunky. Apple is brilliant at interface design, this one needs an overhaul.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Windows XP Support
Last week we completed a CD ripping project, as usual, spread over several computers - in this case we'd used four machines. Then it occurred to me that for the first time in ages we hadn't used a Windows XP box. Starting next week we have a new computer joining our array and with that there will be no more XP in The Hutch. So what?
Well, if we supply your music back to you on DVD you won't notice any difference in our service so you can skip the rest of this. If, like many users, you would like your music on a hard drive there could be a problem. Some years ago Apple pioneered long file names in its operating system, Microsoft followed with Vista and Windows 7. If we're ripping a collection (particularly with classical music) these modern implementations of iTunes will allow folders to be created with file names longer than supported in XP. In practical terms this can mean that the library our client loads at home may be a few tracks short if XP can't handle the length of the file names.
What can be done? Our preferred choice is for our client to step up to a later operating system. If this isn't going to happen we can look at their music data and take a stab at shortening the fields that are used in Mac OS X or Windows 7 to create the folders. That does mean that you will be missing some of the data but you will "get" more tracks. It's a better alternative to us saying with hostility "We don't support Windows XP".
Well, if we supply your music back to you on DVD you won't notice any difference in our service so you can skip the rest of this. If, like many users, you would like your music on a hard drive there could be a problem. Some years ago Apple pioneered long file names in its operating system, Microsoft followed with Vista and Windows 7. If we're ripping a collection (particularly with classical music) these modern implementations of iTunes will allow folders to be created with file names longer than supported in XP. In practical terms this can mean that the library our client loads at home may be a few tracks short if XP can't handle the length of the file names.
What can be done? Our preferred choice is for our client to step up to a later operating system. If this isn't going to happen we can look at their music data and take a stab at shortening the fields that are used in Mac OS X or Windows 7 to create the folders. That does mean that you will be missing some of the data but you will "get" more tracks. It's a better alternative to us saying with hostility "We don't support Windows XP".
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