Well, I fired up the computer to discover that a family member had clicked 'yes' and updated iTunes. With the result that it wouldn't start. A bit of searching the boards suggested a QuickTime update, which did indeed make it start. Now it starts; the tutorial window opens, but crashes the program every time. So I exited the tutorials. So now I am having to figure out inductively what they changed and where everything went. Sigh.
ETA, and now first sync, and it's adding 443 tracks to my ipod. I have not added that many tracks since yesterday, despite Guvera! Going to have to figure out what setting it has decided to change in my smart lists. Sigh.
Man. And I was just wondering if the coast was clear on the new iTunes. Esp since my 'music computer' is an ancient laptop running XP, sounds like I want no part of this. Might try it on the Win7 office computer.
So is this family member of yours a particularly popular one?
You have my sympathies GP. There are only 2 of us who use this computer regularly, but sometimes one of my stepsons and daughter in law use it, and I dread to see what boxes they have ticked or other changes to the set-up they have made. My eldest stepson thinks that he has the right to make whatever changes he wants to set up the computer how he likes it, as he once did all the time in his teens (before I was around). It is the same with the TV when they visit - he still expects control of the remote controller and hence we have to watch sport of any description! His wife complains that he'd never get away with it at home, but Mrs G is too lenient with him!
You may find that someone has changed the quality level of tracks that load onto your ipod, or alternatively it changed to a default setting automatically.
Hmm. Syncing again with the new itunes, after adding some music. It not tells me it is adding 2254 songs. Yes the playlists and space estimate on the Touch seem consistent with my past practice and with the amount I usually add. Seems as if when I sync, iTunes decides to remove a whole load of tracks and then re-add them. Anyone else seen anything like this?
Also, anyone know why in Artist view some albums have all of the tracks in a lighter grey font? They play OK, are tagged OK, there seems to be no problem with the files, they are stored in the same places as the other ones...but some albums have light grey font for track titles instead of black.
Having been having very similar sync problems - think I have tracked it down to having the Touch connected when I have MediaMonkey running (although I don't use MM to sync!).
Not seen the problem with grey font tracks yet myself, though there are quite a few reports on the Apple support site about this. And there appear to be many different ways of trying to solve it - but looks as if it may well be caused by sync getting itself confused.
I've had a problem recently when syncing my iPhone to a new computer. I have my music library on an external HD, which I have typically moved back and forth between the old iMac in my office and a new Mac Mini (hooked to my audio system as a music server), but now I'm trying to avoid that by keeping it hooked to the Mini. When I tried to sync my iPhone to the Mini, which has the most current version of iTunes, it refused to sync because it told me I needed an extra 15 GB of space for the items I had selected. This was just wrong, because the playlists and artists I was syncing were identical to what was already on the phone (mostly my Guvera playlist, which is expanding daily but still leaves me approximately 3 GB of free space). Ultimately I had to take all my music off the phone and then reload everything before it worked.
I am going to have to do the whole take-it-all-off-re-add-everything routine, because the latest thing is that after the last sync it stripped the artwork from the couple of thousand tracks that it re-added.
I don't use Media Monkey, but I think it might be on the computer - I'll check that.
Basically, this software doesn't work properly.
Well, if you want to go back to the old version, you can - any additions/plays since the upgrade will be lost, though.
I have only played with v11 a little on the Mac. It's a mess; that being said, I created an entirely new library, so it's not that surprising I can't find stuff. There's always changes to get used to with new version but this one is a really big departure.
The sync problems sound like a pain. Taking everything off my ipod and re-adding takes HOURS.
Katrina, that sounds like USB1.1 speeds, not USB 2. How large is your ipod? I'd first investigate whether you're stuck at USB1 speeds for some fixable technical reason. Or is it an application hang problem? When tracks are copying, do they go ~1/second, or take several seconds for each track?
This laptop has USB 2, but itunes is converting everything to 128kbps on the fly. It takes a few seconds for each song.
It's a lot faster if I take that option off, but then of course the ipod doesn't hold as many songs.
Huh, I'd never dream of setting that option, but I guess I won't question your decision. Give me fast, frequent, updated playlist syncing any day! I view my portable players as updated, dynamic windows into my collection, so having a large fraction of it available at any given time isn't a big deal to me.
Early on in using itunes and ipods, I imported and converted nearly all of my music into Apple Lossless, not realizing that it took up more memory and couldn't be used to make MP3 CDs.
@kargatron, I've been caught at work (away from my syncing PC) too many times, wishing I could listen to this or that music. That's why I decided to go with max # of tracks.
@choiceweb, yikes, I used apple lossless at first, too. I think it's the default import setting, or at least it was. Yes, it uses a lot of memory for each track! When I started using a beats per minute program that required MP3s, I switched to MP3s and converted them.
I went the other way, started with MP3s and a couple of years ago started re-ripping everything as Apple lossless files. The sound quality on my main system is noticeably improved with the lossless files, though of course I still have thousands of MP3s where I didn't have an original source to re-rip. Storage isn't an issue because external drives are so cheap, but I generally try to avoid loading lossless files on my iPhone, since they take up so much of its limited capacity.
From CDs I am now tending to upload twice, once as a Lossless file and once at normal levels. This later one goes onto my ipod. I can only get less than 20% of my music (in number of tracks terms) onto my 30Mb ipod. I do put a few select albums on my ipad as lossless, as that has double the memory. But I do see a time coming soon where I will buy another ipod with considerably more memory. I hadn't actually realised that you cannot make CDs from lossless, not that that will a problem to me.
You can make CDs from lossless files, just not MP3 CDs. I burned a CD last week of the new Bob Mould and Redd Kross albums, and fit both on one CD with lossless files. The larger size of lossless files should really only be an issue for iPod storage.
I am not opposed to the aesthetics of the new iTunes release. But a bug and a major loss of functionality are annoying me no end.
The bug is that it fails to determine where the bottom of the screen ends at the Windows task bar. That means that if I add an album by an artist who already has several albums, the space under the cover art for the new one at the bottom of the list where you are supposed to enter the album star rating is under the task bar and I have to change the taskbar properties (and change them back as I hate autohide) to be able to rate the album (and therefore, given my ecology of smartlists, to get it to exist for iPod purposes).
The loss of functionality is the information I am now unable to see in various views. PLEASE instruct me if any of the following just reflects features I have not found yet. As noted already, album ratings are very important to how I set up my smart lists to cycle music around. So are play counts. As far as I can see, it is now only possible to view play counts in the 'Songs' view. At the same time, it does not seem possible to have the search function take you to the 'Songs' view. It has been my habit when sitting down for a few minutes at this computer to fire up itunes and scan the play count column and choose something to listen to on that basis (a kind of manual smart list if you like) - for example, maybe on the iPod I got half way through listening to an album that was then cycling off due to play count, and have left half an album, which faintly irritates me (album-oriented as I am); I would listen to the other half. In the previous iTunes it was very easy to scan through the list for this. Now it is very hard, since you can EITHER view by album OR see play count.
ETA, I just found the cure for the first one: ask it to "Show Status Bar", that cures it.
ETA2, the assumption in some past conversations (here?) and pieces I've read has been that albums are a dying thing and the current generation are oriented to songs/playlists. Yet the new iTunes interface seems to me more strongly album-oriented than the last one. There are fewer viewing options for songs - just a brute list. The pretty views are all album-oriented. Odd, no?
You're right that search will only take you to 'Songs' if the search result is a song, and that is annoying - but you can search in 'Songs' by using the column browser too, and mostly preserve your row-browsing.
One new bug that annoys me is that multi-field search doesn't work: search on <artist> <song> and you get nada, which is clearly a loss of functionality.
The new iTunes also stole most of the cover art from my iPod Touch. The last time this happened, the cure was to uncheck music, sync to remove everything, then recheck it and sync everything back. I did that this morning, for 4200 tracks. It made no difference. Has anyone found any other cures for missing cover art?
Not sure if this is the best discussion thread for this, but itunes had a 158 track Ray Charles album for $5.99. Looks like it has quite a few of the hits. It's on Charly Digital - anyone know anything about that label? I haven't been able to find much. Trying to decide if I should burn some of the gift card I've been holding.
I think I avoid Charly, because of questions about quality and provenance. (They are UK, where these recordings are presumably public domain ; source is probably just old records, at best.)
Having said that, guess what? I have an el cheapo 3-CD Ray bargain set someone bought for me. All the old stuff from back before he was a star, and was trying to sing like Nat King Cole...!
search on <artist> <song> and you get nada, which is clearly a loss of functionality.
This is the main reason why I'm not going to upgrade on this windows PC for a while. Either you or someone else mentioned that a page back or so - thanks!
I use that feature almost every time I use itunes.
Ah-ha, I just discovered the difference - that search works, but you need to hit 'return' before it works. The dynamic results don't do that, and you didn't need to hit return in iTunes 10.
Also, in case anyone else is suffering iTunes 11 slowness in searching - if you deselect 'search entire library', you'll avoid suffering frequent dynamic-search beach-balls, but you have to go to 'Songs' to search your entire lib, similar to searching in 'Music' in 10.
Comments
ETA, and now first sync, and it's adding 443 tracks to my ipod. I have not added that many tracks since yesterday, despite Guvera! Going to have to figure out what setting it has decided to change in my smart lists. Sigh.
So is this family member of yours a particularly popular one?
You may find that someone has changed the quality level of tracks that load onto your ipod, or alternatively it changed to a default setting automatically.
Not seen the problem with grey font tracks yet myself, though there are quite a few reports on the Apple support site about this. And there appear to be many different ways of trying to solve it - but looks as if it may well be caused by sync getting itself confused.
I don't use Media Monkey, but I think it might be on the computer - I'll check that.
Basically, this software doesn't work properly.
I have only played with v11 a little on the Mac. It's a mess; that being said, I created an entirely new library, so it's not that surprising I can't find stuff. There's always changes to get used to with new version but this one is a really big departure.
The sync problems sound like a pain. Taking everything off my ipod and re-adding takes HOURS.
It's a lot faster if I take that option off, but then of course the ipod doesn't hold as many songs.
@choiceweb, yikes, I used apple lossless at first, too. I think it's the default import setting, or at least it was. Yes, it uses a lot of memory for each track! When I started using a beats per minute program that required MP3s, I switched to MP3s and converted them.
Craig
The bug is that it fails to determine where the bottom of the screen ends at the Windows task bar. That means that if I add an album by an artist who already has several albums, the space under the cover art for the new one at the bottom of the list where you are supposed to enter the album star rating is under the task bar and I have to change the taskbar properties (and change them back as I hate autohide) to be able to rate the album (and therefore, given my ecology of smartlists, to get it to exist for iPod purposes).
The loss of functionality is the information I am now unable to see in various views. PLEASE instruct me if any of the following just reflects features I have not found yet. As noted already, album ratings are very important to how I set up my smart lists to cycle music around. So are play counts. As far as I can see, it is now only possible to view play counts in the 'Songs' view. At the same time, it does not seem possible to have the search function take you to the 'Songs' view. It has been my habit when sitting down for a few minutes at this computer to fire up itunes and scan the play count column and choose something to listen to on that basis (a kind of manual smart list if you like) - for example, maybe on the iPod I got half way through listening to an album that was then cycling off due to play count, and have left half an album, which faintly irritates me (album-oriented as I am); I would listen to the other half. In the previous iTunes it was very easy to scan through the list for this. Now it is very hard, since you can EITHER view by album OR see play count.
ETA, I just found the cure for the first one: ask it to "Show Status Bar", that cures it.
ETA2, the assumption in some past conversations (here?) and pieces I've read has been that albums are a dying thing and the current generation are oriented to songs/playlists. Yet the new iTunes interface seems to me more strongly album-oriented than the last one. There are fewer viewing options for songs - just a brute list. The pretty views are all album-oriented. Odd, no?
One new bug that annoys me is that multi-field search doesn't work: search on <artist> <song> and you get nada, which is clearly a loss of functionality.
I use that feature almost every time I use itunes.
I am still not going to upgrade, though. Probably not until I'm forced to. I love cover flow!