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Topic: iTunes 10 (Read 76320 times) previous topic - next topic
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iTunes 10

Reply #50
I'm not sure why my start-up times are so low. I don't doubt everyone else's though. I remember it taking a similarly long time on an old AMD dual-core notebook I had a few years back.

I remember (about the same time) fooling around with a MacBook Pro in a retail store and being amazed at how fast it launched off of the dock. (Perhaps because there was really no content in its "library?") I made the comment to a girl with a base-model white MacBook about how maybe it would just run better if I had it on a Mac. She told me "mine's slow to start up too." IDK.

I honestly don't think just having an Intel i7 and serious DDR3 RAM is making it act more like Foobar now for me. I really don't have an explanation for it. I opened it again today and counted off just under four seconds off the cold-boot.

Robertina's comment above about Apple's business model was not a bad point. I couldn't possibly disagree with that. It's usually not the artists complaining about piracy. (Metallica being one of the exceptions, of course.) It's the greedy execs. I don't believe the artists are getting crap for what's sold as digital downloads.

I read recently (I can get a link or find the source I'm quoting if anyone really cares) that the RIAA is demanding that iTunes and Amazon pay royalties for the thirty-second samples. These people stop at nothing and are just as responsible for any supposed "demise" of their industry as anyone illicitly downloading copies of their product, IMO. Now they don't want us to "hear a bit before we buy?!" What, are they afraid we'll hear how poorly produced so much of it is and pass? LMAO.

...that's one of my favorite things about having iTunes installed; I can listen to samples from almost any existent album prior to buying it.
The Loudness War is over. Now it's a hopeless occupation.

iTunes 10

Reply #51
iTunes is Apple's entrance into this world of organized intent to commit theft, coming with numerous user restrictions to protect their (you would say: "f*cking") business.


Well, maybe you should follow your own statement and read the posts in this thread again as no one is here to debate the digital distribution of music.  The point of this thread was to discuss the release of iTunes 10, not point to the corporate money hungry butt-holes runing the music industry.

iTunes 10

Reply #52
Performance of iTunes is definitely better on OS X. On my MacMini, iMac and Macbook start up times are almost instant and the exact same machines running Windows 7  start up times are slower but no where near the 15 - 20 second some people are reporting.

Must be something that some people have installed or some preference that is causing iTunes to be slow.





 

iTunes 10

Reply #54
I understand there are several valid reasons for not liking iTunes, esp. on Windows, but why is start-up time a big issue? I fire up iTunes every time I reboot (about once a week), and would do the same with any other music player. The only significant delays I have come from the fact that my music is on an external USB drive, which has to wake up sometimes.

Bloat, also, seems more of an aesthetic consideration than a technical one, now that 1 TB of disk costs about the same as a dinner for two, and 1 GB of RAM about the same as hamburgers for two. Starting a lot of extraneous processes would be a downer, if you were doing a lot of stuff and didn't have many cores, to be sure; which is one of the reasons why it ain't the best on Windows. But how much of the antipathy is criticism of the application of a verifiable kind (TOS 8 and all that), and how much is ideological objection?

iTunes 10

Reply #55
How about re-reading this thread then?

Imagine e. g. Amazon would announce a new software on HA to play and organize your music. Installer size = 71,4 MB (foobar = 3,1 MB). After an installation several services would run permanently in the background, even when the software isn't used. Amazon would tell you: we are selling portable media players too, but you can't use them without installing our software. Imagine the main purpose of this software would be to analyze your taste in music and to animate you to buy new music in Amazon's online music store. I am pretty sure that this software wouldn't meet anybody's 'enthusiastic' approval.

Indeed you seem to have "no f*cking clue" what the criticism here is about (you call it disparagingly "whining").

Wow, tough crowd. I'll be here all night. Be sure to tip the wait staff, they're terrific.

I wasn't really commenting about the financial/ethical side of this discussion, only about performance, and the notion that iTunes is ridiculously slower than foobar2000. Kinda thought that was implicit in my (bombastic) statement.

Quote
Apple's (and others) music stores are gigantic licences to print money, money which the music industry gets while the artists are fobbed off with a few cents.

iTunes is Apple's entrance into this world of organized intent to commit theft, coming with numerous user restrictions to protect their (you would say: "f*cking") business.

"licenses to print money"? Duh! That explains the *incredible financial success* of Rhapsody, Napster v2, Zune Marketplace, BuyMusic, imeem, and, last but not least, EVERY MAJOR LABEL.

I'm not disputing that major labels are responsible for many really horrible miscarriages of justice, or that in many cases artists are getting a raw deal from paid digital music downloads and are better off ignoring Apple (although that usually involves label issues). But every independent analysis I have read (and Apple has stated) that iTMS made little if any money for quite some time after it started, and if they are making the 10-20% margins some people claim they're making, it's due to considerable resources expended on their part to reduce transaction costs.

If Apple is printing money with the iTMS, it is because they have been among the very few to solve a tremendously difficult financial problem - of how to make money on what is now DRM-free digital intellectual property while respecting IP rights up to the letter of the law - and they deserve every penny for doing so.

And FWIW, I haven't willingly played music in iTunes for what must be going on 5-6 years now, and my iPod has been Rockboxed for years.

I don't quite believe that. You surely must have a library in the TB-range!?

Nope, 300GB total, 20,000 individual tracks. Running on a P4 2.4ghz with 3GB RAM on XP Pro. As far as fb2k configs are concerned, I'm running Media Library across all of this, with lots of Facets configuration, and a UI config that includes several different configurations in different tabs, amounting to 5 playlist instances and two different Facets instances, with varying configurations for each instance.

iTunes 10

Reply #56
Bloat, also, seems more of an aesthetic consideration than a technical one, now that 1 TB of disk costs about the same as a dinner for two, and 1 GB of RAM about the same as hamburgers for two. Starting a lot of extraneous processes would be a downer, if you were doing a lot of stuff and didn't have many cores, to be sure; which is one of the reasons why it ain't the best on Windows. But how much of the antipathy is criticism of the application of a verifiable kind (TOS 8 and all that), and how much is ideological objection?

Start up time is not an issue for me, but bloat and many unneeded startup processes is. iTunes may not by itself slow down the computer considerably, but there are countless other startup processes that are more useful and even necessary for the PC to run. Antivirus, the sound card and keyboard/mouse control panels, graphics, virtual drives,  Firewalls... iTunes is way down in the priorities. Imagine if all other programs you install wrecking the same havoc on your startup. It accumulates.

Also, quicktime has this nasty habit of hijacking the browsers' options for opening mp3s and possibly other file types. And Apple update will still try to catch you distracted and con you into installing Safari and whatnot. There is no real reason for Apple software to be so invasive in Windows. It almost seems to me Jobs does it out of spite.

iTunes 10

Reply #57
andy o

All those seem to be entirely reasonable objections to iTunes on Windows, and they are not at all the objections I was objecting to. I seem to recollect that iTunes uses some components in common with Safari, so Apple *might* think iTunes users could get a browser superior to IE for little extra weight, while they were at it. IME, every time you install something on Windows, it tries to hijack all the filetypes that it can possibly handle, and I have spent a lot of time unchecking checkboxes for that reason.

I agree that this behaviour is objectionable to people who are into computers. But computers aren't special any more. The notion of the "information appliance" is at least 25 years old, and was big at Apple before they introduced the Mac. Maybe the point is that iTunes, and iPhoto and the other iThings, are designed for people who want information appliances. Automatic behaviours that are a PITA to those of us who customize our computing environments may be close to magical in their cleverness to people who just want to listen to music and do simple (ordinary) things with photos while browsing the web and twitterfacing and whatever. And the extra processes are a real problem to someone who might be compiling code or processing video while listening to music, but the typical notebook now has more computrons than the average user will ever need, so they might as well be doing something marginally useful (like background formatting and spellchecking in a wordprocessor, which is great if you're writing but is, presumably, anathema to people who make a point of using only a simple text editor).

My point is that there are valid objections to iTunes, and even more sensible reasons why people wouldn't choose it for themselves, but that there is also a level of vilification of this poor harmless product that seem to miss the point of what it's intended to do, and smack of the kind of snobbery you tend to find in audiophile land (where, incidentally, some people believe that foobar2k sounds better than other players). Or, as one poster put it, iTunes is doubtless good enough for his girlfriend.

iTunes 10

Reply #58
Sorry for mentioning an unmentionable. I was just checking out my system tray and listing all the things there.

Anyway, when I mentioned quicktime hijacking the browser it wasn't just a simple file type hijack. It's been happening with Firefox and the hijack didn't even listen to FF's options for opening files. This had been happening for years (from googling). It seems to have been fixed with a recent build of quicktime though, or maybe with FF 3.6.9.

Yeah, I don't like iTunes that much, but I can put up with using it. I do disable most startup processes that get installed though. Getting around to manage my iPod with foobar2000 is a bit of a pain, or I'm just lazy enough not to wanna delve into re-learning it. I also think that Robertina has it backwards. ITunes doesn't compel you buy an iPod, it's the opposite.

iTunes 10

Reply #59
ITunes doesn't compel you buy an iPod, it's the opposite.


That is indeed true, IME, and is presumably the reason why Apple bothered to port it to Windows, with all the bloat (or dependencies, depending on whether you're thinking of Apple as today's example of the Big Evil Corporation, or of OS X as a *nixish OS).

iTunes 10

Reply #60
I wasn't really commenting about the financial/ethical side of this discussion, only about performance, and the notion that iTunes is ridiculously slower than foobar2000. Kinda thought that was implicit in my (bombastic) statement.
Other members reported that iTunes 10 would start significantly slower than foobar on their systems and you blamed them for their clueless whining only because you couldn't see that difference on your computer. Implicit in that statement is your contemptuousness of experiences if they differ from your own: you call "whining" what doesn't happen to you or can't be confirmed by you. I think with that attitude you shouldn't look up surprised if you get a frank reply.

Quote
"licenses to print money"? Duh! That explains the *incredible financial success* of Rhapsody, Napster v2, Zune Marketplace, BuyMusic, imeem, and, last but not least, EVERY MAJOR LABEL.
Major labels and distributors made essential mistakes in their business strategies, widely discussed all over the world. Are musicians supposed to pay for them?

Quote
If Apple is printing money with the iTMS, it is because they have been among the very few to solve a tremendously difficult financial problem - of how to make money on what is now DRM-free digital intellectual property while respecting IP rights up to the letter of the law - and they deserve every penny for doing so.
I can't share your romantic transfiguration, Axon. Have you read the web page I linked to? That laws are the scandal that needs to be dealt with. Laws, which are influenced or controlled by lobbyists, from former RIAA and MPAA attorneys holding now key positions in the US Department of Justice - with absurd and sometimes cruel consequences: The FBI considers copyright issues to be more important than human fates. Don't expect me to applaud. Don't expect musicians to say something other than Jessica Williams said on her web page.

Anyway, when I mentioned quicktime hijacking the browser it wasn't just a simple file type hijack. It's been happening with Firefox and the hijack didn't even listen to FF's options for opening files. This had been happening for years (from googling). It seems to have been fixed with a recent build of quicktime though, or maybe with FF 3.6.9.
On Windows XP with Internet Explorer, QuickTime manipulated the registry branch [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Media\MimeTypes]. A deinstallation didn't restore the original entries.

This is my last post in this thread. I am glad that it has been possible to throw light on iTunes 10 and the philosophy behind it from very different point of views.
This is HA. Not the Jerry Springer Show.

iTunes 10

Reply #61
I had ditch iTunes due to poor performance on Windows. Is it worth me having another look?

No  Unless you need it for an Ipod.  I really don't see any other need for it.  I use it only for that.  I don't let it touch my files.  Just load my non rockbox ipods.

iTunes 10

Reply #62
I honestly haven't used iTunes in a number of years, but I know from helping other people that iTunes is definitely something I won't be using any time soon. And startup times and whatever is pretty much missing the point.
Using iTunes involves installing an entire suite of software that Apple wishes to install on Window's users computers for almost any circumstance one would need Apple software. Why I'm required to do so just to play a few mp3s is obvious: Apple wishes to make themselves a part of almost everything I would wish to do.  This is certainly more than I'm asking for.

And it's this attitude they have, that they're so upfront about, that is a turn off because it's so obvious that the only reason they have to be so nice is so that they can monetize whatever it is I'm doing. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but when members here at HA provides information and solutions that are being given away, why not do it the free way?

iTunes being the way it is, I'd certainly never buy Apple hardware. Heck, I'm not sure I'd ever buy a Mac/book, given the few alternatives to iTunes for OSX.

Ping is just, "Now with itunes all up in your scrobbling!" Not really the kind of feature that attracts me any more to the whole suite. Kinda like iTunes LPs or Genius. In fact, each new version just seems to add a new gimmick that exists just to let me see how emaciated Jobs looks on stage.

Time for a poorly thought out analogy: I can take my car apart down to the engine block and figure out how things work, or I can take it to a mechanic and hope he isn't screwing me. HA is largely the former, iTunes is largely the latter.
elevatorladylevitateme

iTunes 10

Reply #63
I couldn't agree more.

I think we went around about the start-up time because someone wasn't willing to concede that iTunes is bloated and that this bloat couldn't possibly be the reason for the delay.

We were told that we can "just disable what you don't use" and that we "can even do a custom install" by omitting stuff we don't use.  The fact is that during installation we can't omit the portions that choose our tracks, show us eye-candy or sell us something.  Windows users (perhaps Mac users too, IDK) are also treated to a layer of system-level garbage so that the program can provide us with marginal ripping capability.  Am I missing something?


iTunes 10

Reply #65
Windows users (perhaps Mac users too, IDK) are also treated to a layer of system-level garbage so that the program can provide us with marginal ripping capability.  Am I missing something?


No bloat on a Mac, because the stuff iTunes insists on installing on Windows is part of the OS X system.

On "marginal ripping capability," what is on average the increase in audible errors that result from using iTunes doubtless simple ripping ability with CD Paranoia, compared with the state of the art abilities of EAC or DBPoweramp? I'm assuming not much with disks in excellent condition, because I don't hear any problems with new CDs, but I guess it's different with disks that have been around a bit.

I have no brief for iTunes--I just use it because it goes well with my iPod, and came free with my puter, but I am a little surprised at the vehemence of the objections. Anybody yet caught on to the way it uses the laser in the optical drive to beam the Distortion Reality Field of Chairman Steve straight into your brain? That's  what really worries me, and it probably explains why I don't hate the thing. I'm already a zombie.

iTunes 10

Reply #66
iTunes uses CD Paranoia?  I don't think so.  Where did you learn this?

When it comes to discs in excellent condition there will likely be little difference except for rare instances which have occasionally been reported (that a brand new disc gives errors, not whether iTunes did a good job).  The situation goes beyond audibility, however.  Secure rippers (XLD, Rip, EAC, dBpoweramp, etc.) will tell you if there was a problem, iTunes will not.  How often this happens depends on your discs.  One can't assume that everyone has the same portion of discs in their collection that rip perfectly with an insecure ripper.

As I alluded in my last post, the apparent vehemence stems from the fact that legitimate criticisms are being dismissed as if they don't exist, or that the people expressing them are somehow to blame.

No bloat on a mac? Are you saying that the code that gives you extra bells and whistles are already part of OS/X?  I doubt it.  Go back and read my reply, I'm talking about more than GEAR.

iTunes 10

Reply #67
There is a supposed secure ripping check box when using iTunes.  I am not sure how secure or accurate it is, but there is an option for it since iTunes 9 came out, if my memory is correct.
JXL

Note: They call it "error correction".  I've used it a few times and I think it just performs some re-reads.  Anyone know more on this?


iTunes 10

Reply #69
I think that the iTunes "error correction" CD ripping mode is nothing more than jitter protection.  I am not 100% sure on that though and I do know that, as greynol pointed out, it does not tell the user anything regarding the quality of the ripped file.  I can pop a damaged CD in EAC or dBpowerAMP and it will inform me that one track ripped with problems.  I can then take the same CD, rip it with iTunes, and it acts like everything is just peachy only for me to hear audible errors in the problematic track.

iTunes 10

Reply #70
As strange as this sounds  i have ad more successes ripping cd's with iTunes than XLD on my Mac, I have some cd's XLD just refuses to rip with any settings were iTunes does them fine. As for being bloated on a Mac, no way. It's fast and smooth as, even with a massive library.

Regarding "error correction" from my experience it's done more harm than good when turned on lots of times the cd just gets stuck in a certain spot and just loops over and over forever. Turning it off the cd will rip fine.




iTunes 10

Reply #74
I installed iTunes 10 in a sandbox (Sandboxie) on Windows XP SP3.

In the folder user, it created 91,9 MB (96 459 457 byte)

In the folder drive, it created 274 MB (287 473 684 byte) in Program, and 36,2 MB (38 003 677 byte) in Windows.
Rhythmbox, Flac + Vorbis, Sennheiser HD650 + Sony MDR-XB1000