iTunes
Sunday, September 14th, 2008
by lepton
Apple iTunes version 8 added a new Album Cover Grid View that shows many album covers, but doesn’t list the songs. Want the iTunes 7 style Album view back? It’s still there, but hidden. Here’s how to get it.
The View control near the upper right corner of the iTunes window controls the main view type for your music.
iTunes View Control
The middle of the control used to show an Album view that had the album cover on the left side, and a list of songs to the right of the cover. This was replaced by the new Album Grid view in iTunes 8. The grid view simply shows all the album covers so you can scan through them quickly. The old Album view is still available.
To see the old Album view, switch to the List view, which appears when you click on the left part of the iTunes View Control. Now, in the very leftmost column header, where the tunes are numbered, there is a tiny triangle. Click it, and it toggles between the List view and the old Album view!
iTunes old Album View
In this picture, you can see the triangle to the left of the word “Artwork”. It toggles between List and Album views.
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Saturday, July 12th, 2008
by lepton
Sure, the new iPhone is great, but it’s not new hardware that is the most significant thing that happened this week. It’s the App Store. The App Store is the key to this whole project, and I’ll tell you why.
This new phone has pretty much completed the hardware side of things. We have global positioning, 3G connections, and a non-recessed headphone jack. Sure, there will be hardware improvements down the line, like a higher resulution camera and so forth. But all the physical pieces are there.
There are still many things missing from the iPhone. Where is video recording, voice dialing, instant messaging? The thing is, the things that are missing are all software things now. And that is no problem.
Apple has a very solid mechanism for automatically updating the phone software, far better and easier than any other phone. People don’t have to go to a dealer to update the basic operating system, an update just pops right up when you plug it in at night to charge it. This means everyone will actually GET the updates when they are available. So if Apple adds instant messaging to the operating system, you’ll get it.
What if Apple doesn’t add instant messaging or those other things? It’s the App Store to the rescue.
The App Store icon has popped up on every iPhone, you can browse through hundreds of applications already. Just a touch and a touch, and you now have that AIM instant messaging application on your phone, in seconds, and for free!
The App store is going to fill the gaps in the iPhone system, and it will have just about everything imaginable. Soon there will be thousands, then tens of thousands of applications available. On day one of the store, there were already tens of thousands of developers applying to put applications in the store. We are going to see everything in there, good stuff and bad, free and expensive, clever and dumb. Pick, choose, and put whatever you like on your phone.
An entire industry will spring up based on iPhone applications, similarly to how an industry for physical accessories sprung up for iPods and phones. It si going to be big.
Apple seemed to take forever to bring out a development system, and another forever to let in most of the developers who applied. But when they deliver, they deliver!
The iPhone Software Development Kit (”SDK”) is amazing. It is a full-size, full-blown development system for software writers. It is as extensive and robust as the development system used to make full-sized Mac software. In fact, it actually IS the same development system, they simply added the ability to develop for a new platform, Cocoa Touch devices, of which there are two, the iPhone and the iPod Touch - so far.
The development system isn’t even in the same league as systems for most other phones. Symbian, no, Android, to early to tell. The Touch SDK is so good, we are going to see many desktop-class applications available.
It’s so good, it seems obvious - the system is destined for more than just a little pocket device.
When the Apple Tablet comes, and it will, it is not going to be a scaled down Mac laptop - it will be a scaled up iPhone. Mark those words. I’m thinking… January.
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Monday, September 17th, 2007
by lepton
Here is a bug in the current version of iTunes 7.4.2 and the earlier 7.4 versions. I have an iPhone and see this. It will likely appear on video iPods as well. Videos watched to the end and deleted to conserve space will not be marked as viewed in the next sync. Here are the details.
When you watch a video podcast to the end, a dialog pops up asking if you want to delete the video to conserve space. If you agree to delete it and then sync the iPhone, the video is not marked as watched in iTunes. So, if you have a preference like “Sync 10 most recent unplayed episodes of all podcasts” set, it will not work - the video you deleted is not marked as played, and in the sync, it is simply copied back onto the iPhone in an unplayed state.
Earlier versions properly marked such deleted videos as played, and they would not be copied back.
Note that if you choose to keep the played video, when you sync, it will properly be marked as played in iTunes, and with the preference set as above, will correctly be deleted from the iPhone.
Do you also see this bug with your iPhone or video iPod?
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Saturday, September 1st, 2007
by lepton
So NBC is leaving iTunes store. Why? I’ve heard they want more control over distribution options. They want more control over piracy. They want more control over pricing options. DING DING DING! We have a winner! They want to charge more money. They want you to buy things in bundles, they want you to start paid subscriptions. But you know all this.
HULU. They have this new store called hulu.com. This is where they want to bring you to buy their stuff. The stuff you see on NBC, some stuff you see on Fox… The studios want more control and this is where they want to apply it. It’s not open yet. We don’t know the full pucture yet. But hey, it’s moronic. I can think of two things to say about it.
Hey, it’s going to be a great idea! If only they had done this in the past, producers of entertainment could have made a ton more money! Instead of putting records in the record stores, open your own company record store that has your stuff exclusively, and make people go there to buy on more restrictive terms! That’ll work… Let’s see, remember all those Disney stores that were in all the malls all over America, where you had to go to get Disney stuff? Whatever happened to those?
Hey, did you know that NBC broadcasts shows like “The Office” out over the air for free? That’s right, for free! And yet, lots of people are willing to pay two bucks to get a lower technical quality copy that they can download over the Internet in the iTunes store. Lucky us! No? Not lucky us? It’s actually bad? Yeah that’s bad, we think we can make people pay more. We think we can put on heavier copy restrictions. We think we can get people to pay on a subscription basis. We think they want the pay versions of our stuff, they really, really like us, they want it even though we broadcast the stuff for free and in fact we are dying to get more people to watch those free broadcasts so we can get back up to being the number three net again.
IS that what you are thinking? It’s moronic! Your customer’s aren’t your enemy to squeeze and choke! Do any of you have kids? Go home and talk to them. You could be making money hand over fist on the Net. Instead you are killing yourselves. Look, I’m not Einstein, go ask some real people and HEED THEM. You can clean up, I’m tellin’ ya.
Don’t make your product more expensive, harder to get, and harder to use. Do the opposite. Make it easy to get, easy to use, and cheap. Go ahead and keep the commercial breaks in your shows to subsidize them a bit. Better still you are going with product placement, and those in-show ads are being WATCHED. The key is to make shows an impulse buy, make them easy to find, to get, to use, to put on the customers devices - ALL their devices. SO WHAT if they give a copy to a friend! People invite others to their living room to watch TV with them, don’t they? And you LIKE that, right? Because they might start watching themselves at home later! Well let people watch a copy of a show. Make damn sure it is easy as pie for that friend to start buying their own copies. And instead of working on DRM, work on ways to make sure you can count how many viewers you have. Count those viewers and you can crank up those proces for those product plazcements. DUH! Work on that!
That’s why iTunes is a win-win, you morons! So far it is the easiest way for people to get your shows is through iTunes. It’s an impulse buy. One click! Join the party. Make hulu, stay on iTunes, make the shows cheap, make them copyable, make ways to count those copies and those viewers. We all win and instead of being called greedy morons you are called the smart good guys.
It’s your choice, NBC, studios, content producers of all types. But the money is out there waiting for you. It’s just laying there for you - it’s actually LOOKING for you. You want it or not? Loosen up and everyone wins big time. Less DRM. More counting eyeballs. Work on that. Everyone wins.
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Tuesday, June 26th, 2007
by lepton
The newest iPhone video came out today, and it shows an iPhone being synced using the iTunes application.
Something is missing, there is no “Ringtones” tab to be seen in the video, something we did glimpse in the January keynote video.
Uh-oh. Can you easily set up any tune you own as a ringtone? Will you have to stick with the set of ringtones that come with the phone, as seen in the guided tour video? Will you have to buy special ringtones from the iTunes store?
We need to know!
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