Wage war on your out-of-control iTunes library with Song Sergeant
Through a series of unfortunate events this year, my iTunes library had become a shell of its former self. Over the years I had amassed a library of about 13,000 songs (yes, all legally purchased) but due to not one, but TWO hard drive failures and the theft of my iTunes backup drive, I now had a pieced together Frankenstein of a library that despite my best efforts to repair, was becoming clear that all the duct tape in the world wasn’t going to be able to hold together much longer. More often than not these days I would find myself clicking on a song and coming up up with the missing “exclamation point” icon and a message saying the song had disappeared. Sometimes I could find the song and manually relink it to my library, but just as often it appeared the songs had just disappeared.
Above: Adding 52,000 songs to your iTunes library is asking for trouble.
I had just about resigned myself to the idea of spending 3-4 weeks redigitizing the dozens of boxes of CDs I had moved to the attic when something amazing happened. A friend of mine (who shall remain nameless) offered to lone me his drive containing over 52,000 songs. (I’ll assume he too came about acquiring the tracks legally as well). Well, never one to look a potential timesaver in the mouth, I graciously accepted his offer, not realizing at the time that adding 52,000 more songs to an already dying 13,000 tracks would end up costing me more time and braincells than anyone would want to spend. And that’s when “amazing things 2″ happened – the folks at Lairware (apparently sent by angels) out of the blue asked if I would like to review their iTunes-fixing tool Song Sergeant. Read more
Apple’s not so subtle “F U” to the Beatles
Is a giant multi-billion company above petty squabbles? Doesn’t look like it.
One of the most popular rumors leading up to Apple’s “It’s Only Rock and Roll” music event this week was that the Beatles would finally be announcing the availability of their newly remastered catalog on iTunes. In fact it seemed like a dead lock once word of a Beatles Special event was announced for the same day. Well, the event came and went with nary a mention of an Apple/Beatles partnership, or even an Apple/Ringo partnership. But should we have been surprised?
We pointed out earlier that Apple’s choice to use a Rolling Stones song to promote a Beatles-themed music event seemed a little odd, and it turns out we were right. Real or imagined, music fans have historically considered the Beatles and the Stones to be “musical rivals”, and while they do not quite have the public Blur/Oasis feud we were using an example, there’s enough of a “who’s better?” debate to make Apple’s motivation of lyric choice highly telling.
In hindsight, it would appear that Apple knew in advance that The Beatles’ 9/9/09 multi-format musical event was going to diss iTunes, and they were none too happy about it. Perhaps Apple even purposely scheduled their music announcement to coincide with the Beatles’ to steal a little Beatle thunder – after all, it’s not the 1960’s anymore, and these days a new iPod announcement tends to generate more buzz than a re-re-re-release of 30 year-old songs with slightly less hiss than before. Apple’s little jab at the Beatles in the invite should have stopped the iTunes/Beatles speculation dead in its tracks, but I suppose the Beatles still have an optimistic fan or two.
Oh and by the way, if you were wondering, the Stones are better than the Beatles.
Is iTunes 9 sporting “Marble”?
Filed under: Apple Fanboyism, Rampant Speculation, design, iTunes
Looks like Apple’s rumored “unified interface”, code-named “Marble” might be a comin’ after all… starting with the somewhat UN-unifying iTunes 9 interface.
Faithful Macenstein reader Patrick writes:
“Hey, if you notice the new look on itunes 9 it is very different than snow leopard etc etc. But is this the marble theme apple said would be included into snow leopard but never turned up. Remember in the past itunes received the new “leopard” look before leopard came out. HMMMM whatd’ya think?”
I think you’re onto something. It certainly looks quite different than iPhoto and iTunes 8 and even Snow Leopard’s Safari…
God, I wish I cared about this event…
Filed under: Cynicism, Rampant Speculation, Rumors, Slow News Day, iTunes
Faithful Macenstein reader The Boston Spangler writes:
Hi Doc,
A friend of mine works at EMI music, and he just posted this pic up on facebook… Thought it might help fuel the Apple/ Beatles debate until we hear a real announcement today…
So, whaddya think?Thanks!
The Boston Spangler
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