Nicholas C. Johnson » Apple http://www.nicholascjohnson.com/blog Tue, 19 Aug 2008 01:38:37 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.1 en iTunes 7.1 — Now with full-screen coverflow! http://www.nicholascjohnson.com/blog/2007/03/05/itunes-71-%e2%80%94-now-with-full-screen-coverflow/ http://www.nicholascjohnson.com/blog/2007/03/05/itunes-71-%e2%80%94-now-with-full-screen-coverflow/#comments Tue, 06 Mar 2007 03:22:06 +0000 Nic http://www.nicholascjohnson.com/blog/2007/03/05/itunes-71-%e2%80%94-now-with-full-screen-coverflow/ iTunes 7.1 full-screen coverflowA few months ago I wrote an article about a not-so-spectacular release of iTunes 7.0. The main problems were with the way it presented coverflow on a Windows XP machine with an atypical video card and the gapless-playback feature that locked up hard drives while processing large libraries. Apple released some .0x patches and since then iTunes has been stable.

Today I updated to version 7.1 and I am impressed. Full-screen coverflow is ridiculously cool. It’s not really that helpful of a feature but to see your album covers flowing passed you in massive, full-color, liquidy reflective goodness is a treat to behold. So, thank you, Apple, for working to make iTunes even more enjoyable. (Now if they just get that whole DRM issue worked out… )

]]> http://www.nicholascjohnson.com/blog/2007/03/05/itunes-71-%e2%80%94-now-with-full-screen-coverflow/feed/ Don’t Upgrade to iTunes 7! (yet) http://www.nicholascjohnson.com/blog/2006/10/04/dont-upgrade-to-itunes-7-yet/ http://www.nicholascjohnson.com/blog/2006/10/04/dont-upgrade-to-itunes-7-yet/#comments Wed, 04 Oct 2006 21:13:14 +0000 Nic http://www.nicholascjohnson.com/blog/?p=3 I fired up iTunes this morning and it tells me there’s a new version 7 available. “Cool”, I say to myself. I then begin to read about the new features available: especially Cover Flow, album art auto-downloads, and iPod summary view. So, after v7 finishes updating I fire it up to check it out. The music library has three views now: standard, grouped with album art (very cool), and what Apple calls Cover Flow. Everything works fine except Cover Flow. It is messed up big time. The graphics and scroll bar are garbled beyond recognition. I figure somethings fishy but nothing that Google can’t tell me about it. I end up at the Apple support forum and find enormous laundry lists of things gone wrong with iTunes version 7 – on both the PC and the Mac!

Shame on you, Apple, for releasing a half-baked, piece-of-junk bunch of compiled code you’re trying to pass off as an application.

For those of you on a PC who have fallen into the version 7 upgrade trap, here are some simple downgrade instructions to get iTunes back to version 6.

  1. MOVE your “iTunes Music Library” XML file (found in your iTunes folder… (usually in your My Music folder) to the desktop.
  2. DELETE the “iTunes Libraries” database file found in the iTunes folder.
  3. Unistall version 7.
  4. Restart PC.
  5. Download version 6 and install it. (The v6 installer icon has a green musical note, not a blue one. Blue = v7.)
  6. After installed… go to File/Import and locate the XML library file you saved to your desktop.
  7. Your library will be restored, pointing to your actual song files (which have not been touched).

For those of you on a Mac… sorry. I don’t have any instructions for reverting to v6. Keep checking the forums and someone will figure it out.

]]> http://www.nicholascjohnson.com/blog/2006/10/04/dont-upgrade-to-itunes-7-yet/feed/ Don’t Upgrade to iTunes 7! (yet) http://www.nicholascjohnson.com/blog/2006/10/04/dont-upgrade-to-itunes-7-yet-2/ http://www.nicholascjohnson.com/blog/2006/10/04/dont-upgrade-to-itunes-7-yet-2/#comments Wed, 04 Oct 2006 21:13:14 +0000 Nic http://www.nicholascjohnson.com/blog/2006/10/04/dont-upgrade-to-itunes-7-yet-2/ I fired up iTunes this morning and it tells me there’s a new version 7 available. “Cool”, I say to myself. I then begin to read about the new features available: especially Cover Flow, album art auto-downloads, and iPod summary view. So, after v7 finishes updating I fire it up to check it out. The music library has three views now: standard, grouped with album art (very cool), and what Apple calls Cover Flow. Everything works fine except Cover Flow. It is messed up big time. The graphics and scroll bar are garbled beyond recognition. I figure somethings fishy but nothing that Google can’t tell me about it. I end up at the Apple support forum and find enormous laundry lists of things gone wrong with iTunes version 7 – on both the PC and the Mac!

Shame on you, Apple, for releasing a half-baked, piece-of-junk bunch of compiled code you’re trying to pass off as an application.

For those of you on a PC who have fallen into the version 7 upgrade trap, here are some simple downgrade instructions to get iTunes back to version 6.

  1. MOVE your “iTunes Music Library” XML file (found in your iTunes folder… (usually in your My Music folder) to the desktop.
  2. DELETE the “iTunes Libraries” database file found in the iTunes folder.
  3. Unistall version 7.
  4. Restart PC.
  5. Download version 6 and install it. (The v6 installer icon has a green musical note, not a blue one. Blue = v7.)
  6. After installed… go to File/Import and locate the XML library file you saved to your desktop.
  7. Your library will be restored, pointing to your actual song files (which have not been touched).

For those of you on a Mac… sorry. I don’t have any instructions for reverting to v6. Keep checking the forums and someone will figure it out.

]]> http://www.nicholascjohnson.com/blog/2006/10/04/dont-upgrade-to-itunes-7-yet-2/feed/