The Weasel King ([info]theweaselking) wrote,
@ 2006-08-05 21:45:00
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I think I'm offended.
I opened my new toy to find *this* printed on the shrinkwrap.



Gee, thanks, fuck you, Apple.

I was seriously tempted to return it to the store on the spot.

I didn't. I am, however, going to send a rude note to them, informing them that if I really wanted to be treated like a complete asshole, I would have bought a Sony.

(PS: Serial number written in tiny font, in white, on silver? Hard to read. Bitches.)

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[info]theweaselking
2006-08-06 04:45 am UTC (link)
iTunes = officially THE WORST MUSIC PROGRAM EVER.

Who the fuck makes a music program that doesn't let me sort by OR EVEN SEE the folder structure of the source files?

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[info]jezebel_z
2006-08-06 05:46 am UTC (link)
I think that they're just reeling from their mad success in the past few years by playing 'Fuck With The Punters'.

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[info]theweaselking
2006-08-06 06:10 am UTC (link)
I have vanquished the idiocy, by simply saying "fuck organisation" and copying the entire contents of my music folder to the iPod. I can reorganise the details later, when I care. Right now, it works beautifully and individual playlist creation is workable, if not convenient.

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[info]jezebel_z
2006-08-06 06:15 am UTC (link)
Personally I just stick mine on random and to hell with it.

Or at least I did, until I became disillusioned by it's corporate shinyness and washing-machined it in a fit of rage.*

I didn't do it accidentally, oh no. ahem.

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[info]gusto_gummi
2006-08-07 05:06 pm UTC (link)
Nice Boobies. :)

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[info]mrbankies
2006-08-06 01:03 pm UTC (link)
Most people simply don't care what folders stuff gets put in. It's the anal retentive computer geeks like us who do. If you're not keen on iTunes, I know that there are couple of good plug-ins for winamp, plus shareware that can be had for a modest fee (~$10 US). I'd especially say check out the ml_pod (I think that's the name) for winamp. Haven't used it myself, but it supposedly will strip the DRM from stuff you buy from the iTunes store.

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[info]theweaselking
2006-08-06 01:36 pm UTC (link)
I refuse to *buy* DRM'd music, so I'm not worried about that.

My problem is that my music is all sorted, by artist, album, genre, etc, and iTunes WILL NOT RECOGNISE THAT. I can't just hit a button and have all my Industrial in one place, subsorted by artist, like I've been doing for the last half decade in WinAmp.

And I don't want to start going through and updating ID3 tags *manually* on 5000 files because they *ARE* set correctly, just not the way iTunes wants them.

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[info]nubule
2006-08-06 04:46 pm UTC (link)
Can WinAmp group edit ID3 tags? Because you could use it to set the tags correctly and then let iTunes read them.

iTunes has a different philosophy of organisation than WinAmp, and I vastly prefer it. The playlist model of WinAmp irritates me to no end. I prefer having iTunes organise the music according to its system, but I’ve long been willing to surrender control for convenience, when it comes to applications.

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[info]theweaselking
2006-08-06 04:52 pm UTC (link)
No more than iTunes can. "Group edit" means "change each of these selected ones one after another".

"Set X tag to Y on all these MP3s" would just be TOO EASY, you see.

My problem is that I've already got my entire music library organised. I've got it sorted by genre then artist then album, so that winAmp opens whatever I tell it to open and it all shows up in the correct, predictable order, and iTunes *won't do that*.

Fuck iTunes. I've uninstalled it, and I'm just using WinAmp's ipod plugins. At their worst, they imitate iTunes, and they actually have proper sorting functions.

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[info]nubule
2006-08-06 05:17 pm UTC (link)
No more than iTunes can.
But iTunes can do that, that’s how I’m familiar with the feature.

iTunes would sort as you like, but it needs the ID3 tags. To me, using the file system to categorise is hopelessly messy.

If you have something that works and that you’re familiar with, good enough, though.

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[info]theweaselking
2006-08-06 05:37 pm UTC (link)
How can I do mass updates of ID3 in iTunes? And, more importantly, how can I *select all the right files to mass-update when I can't sort them properly in iTunes in the first place*?

And if I'm not using the file system to categorise, how am I supposed to, say, grab an album and copy it to another disk if I want to move it or share it?

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[info]nubule
2006-08-06 05:44 pm UTC (link)
You mass-edit the tags in WinAmp, then copy them to iTunes. Oh wait, WinAmp sucks. It’s probably too much trouble, but you could write a simple script to change the ID3 genre tags according to your filesysmte oragnisation. Alternately, you could copy one genre at a time into iTunes, select all the most-recently-copied files, and edit the genre tag.

iTunes organises the filesystem in Artist - Album format, so you could copy an album that way, but I prefer to simply select the album in iTunes and drop it on the destination volume.

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[info]theweaselking
2006-08-06 06:07 pm UTC (link)
Mass-editing genre tags is easy. I want it to detect that they're all in an album ALREADY and load them IN THE RIGHT ORDER so I can sort them, without having to manually add each folder to iTunes separately, one at a time, and work them from there?

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[info]theweaselking
2006-08-06 06:16 pm UTC (link)
Update: I can mass-edit tags in WinAmp if I just go to a different view, and it has the advantage of allowing me to sort my way before editing, letting me say "Yes, I know what I'm doing, trust me, AND not being crippleware.

Advantage: WinAmp.

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[info]kjn
2006-08-06 05:47 pm UTC (link)
Just grab the songs from within iTunes and drag them to where you want them.

Or use the show file function in iTunes (File > Show File) - since iTunes organises the songs as Artist/Album in the filesystem (if you let iTunes itself do the organising), you should easily be able to find the songs you want.

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[info]kjn
2006-08-06 05:39 pm UTC (link)
iTunes has no trouble with editing several files at once. Simply select one or more songs, choose select File > Show Info and edit away.

Also, iTunes has both a very good search and a browser (Edit > Show/Hide Browser) - the latter easily lets you select a genre, an artist or an album.

(I might be talking out of my ass here, since I simply can't understand your comment that iTunes doesn't understand you ID3 tags.)

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[info]mrbankies
2006-08-06 07:15 pm UTC (link)
As a general rule, I don't like to buy DRM'd music either, but I did take advantage of the pepsi cap offers (I was going to buy the soda anyway) and it's convenient to be able to buy single songs when I have no interest in the album. Besides, run it through ml_pod, and it's now DRM free.

Anyway, sounds like you've got it worked out by going back to winamp. Enjoy the iPod, I've been quite happy with mine to date. Thinking about upgrading to one of the nanos when they get around to bumping up the capacity.

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[info]theweaselking
2006-08-06 07:56 pm UTC (link)
I looked at the nanos, but the capacity was just too tiny. I bought the video version - not because I wanted videos, but because I wanted more than a measly 4GB of space.

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[info]ryusen
2006-08-10 06:25 pm UTC (link)
Yeah pretty much... as much as it does add soem convinience, i don't like all these new "we will internalize ALL the struture, so you don't have to." programs. Sure they have an added convinience, but they also have certain limits to what they can do. At least with folders, you have full control over it.

The other problem, is that once you have it in there, there's no way to get them out effectively. You end up losing all the work that you put into it. At least with WinAMP, you can edit the ID# tags and it will always work based on the ID3 tags. This way, you can always put the files into another system.

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[info]wyatt1048
2006-08-06 07:12 am UTC (link)
That's modern copy protection for you: assume the customer is a theif, even when proved innocent.

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[info]desdenova
2006-08-06 02:24 pm UTC (link)
It's not just copy protection; it's everything. Stores requiring customers to check bags before allowing them in the store. Companies requiring employees submit to random drug testing. Et cetera.

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[info]fortysevenbteg
2006-08-06 03:18 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, my iPod mini I got a year and a half or so ago had that on it, too, so they've been doing that for a while.

You might find this of interest. I installed it on mine with ease. Ogg support, too. Wee!

There's some bugs in the playback making the audio pause for a second every 10 secs or so, but my install is of an older version: I'm sure it was either fixed or was due to some misconfiguration on my part...

Best part is, you can boot back to the old firmware if you want. ;)

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[info]mrbankies
2006-08-06 07:13 pm UTC (link)
That looks very cool. I'm going to have to find my iPod cable now and try it out.

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[info]gusto_gummi
2006-08-06 09:06 pm UTC (link)
I take it that you steal music?

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[info]theweaselking
2006-08-07 01:46 am UTC (link)
No. If I did, I wouldn't be offended.

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[info]gusto_gummi
2006-08-07 02:32 am UTC (link)
It is not removable right?

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[info]theweaselking
2006-08-07 04:15 am UTC (link)
It's removable. It's on the shrinkwrap.

And the point is not supporting piracy or not supporting piracy or even whether or not DRM interferes with your right as a consumer or whether or not "information wants to be free" justifies "I don't want to pay the asking price so I'll just take what I want and pay nothing".

The point is that I legitimately bought a piece of hardware for the purpose of legitimately listening to music that I ALSO legitimately bought, and when I opened it up I was presented with a "Gee, you're a fucking thief, and we, the makers of your device, can't think of anything more important to write on the shrinkwrap than to tell you that you're a thief and stealing is, like, totally wrong, dude."

And that's why I'm offended.

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[info]gusto_gummi
2006-08-07 04:28 am UTC (link)
I do not think your the only one who got it. I think thats pretty much on every one. No need to get offended.

However...

"Gee, you're a fucking thief, and we, the makers of your device, can't think of anything more important to write on the shrinkwrap than to tell you that you're a thief and stealing is, like, totally wrong, dude."

... would be freaking hysterical. :)

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[info]theweaselking
2006-08-07 04:31 am UTC (link)
I *know* it's on every iPod. I *know* it's not targeted at me.

If anything, that's worse - they assume their ENTIRE CUSTOMER BASE, every single person who shells out the money for their hardware, are the kind of person who need that message.

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[info]gusto_gummi
2006-08-07 04:35 am UTC (link)
They should have said "Please".
What do you think would be a good massage to put on it to achieve the cause without being curt about it they they did?

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[info]theweaselking
2006-08-07 01:10 pm UTC (link)
They should have said "Please".

They did, in German. Just not in English or French (and I don't speak Japanese to check, there.)

As for an appropriate message? How about "Enjoy your iPod"?

There *is* no appropriate way to say "use your new toy for good, not for evil".

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[info]therayven
2006-08-07 04:41 pm UTC (link)
They shouldn't say anything at all. It only offends those with legitimate music and does nothing to prevent those with pirated music from continuing in their nefarious ways. It's just as asinine as watching a three-minute commercial in a movie theater about how you shouldn't steal movies. You are *there* and you are *paying* for the movie, so why the advertisement? It's not going to stop someone with a camcorder, it's not going to stop someone with a bootlegged copy, it just pisses off people in the audience who are being treated like children or criminals.

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[info]gusto_gummi
2006-08-07 05:03 pm UTC (link)
"use your new toy for good, not for evil"

PERFECT!

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[info]gusto_gummi
2006-08-07 02:49 am UTC (link)
I am not one for Piracy, Unless it is "Brother Bear 2" Do not financially support Kah Kah. :)

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[info]winterkoninkje
2006-08-07 05:30 am UTC (link)
Yeah, I noticed that and similar text on my recent purchases from Apple, quite obnoxious really. It's a shame that Apple's still one of the best vendors out there, even despite their ever pushing the boundaries of arrogance.

As for iTunes, it doesn't acknowledge filesystem hierarchy because such is notoriously subject to corruption. In fact, to have both FS and iTunes organization be consistant, iTunes has a feature to "keep music organized" which will keep it organized by artist first and then by album (with consideration for things tagged as compilations too). Also, that feature makes it so that if you change the tags then the files are relocated as appropriate (e.g. if you make artist names consistent instead of having "Beatles" and "The Beatles" and the like). Since I have very little reason to muck with my music outside of playing it or backing it up, this is more than sufficient.

Now, bear in mind that I'm one of those people who is impressively neurotic when it comes to organizing my music. I've taken the time to go in and check all the tags on my 6~7k songs including those fiddly bits like publication year, total tracks for the album, etc. And of all the programs out there iTunes is the only one I've found that can respect that sort of anal retention, even if it has its other failings.

If by "the information's already there" you mean encoded in the filesystem names then it shouldn't be too hard of a task to write a script to grab the information from there and put it in the IDv3 tags. I've written a few of them to do that before, though that was before the days of iTunes and I don't develop for windows so much.

As for grabbing everything by genre and the like, if the information is in the tags then you can pick any column to sort your songs by (and by selecting columns in order you can sort by multiple columns ala genre, then artist, then album, then track number). Also, from the main Library view you can click the Browse icon in the upper right to make a dropdown to list only songs matching a given (set of) genre, artist, or album.

if you're neurotic enough about genres to, say, distinguish between EBM, Futurepop, Industrial, Darkwave, etc but you want to make a logical grouping of all of them, you can use "smart playlists" where you can specify a number of search criteria[1] and could just list all those genres under your playlist for electronica.

[1] Alas, while well done for casual users, it's hopelessly primitive for truly resplendent things. You can only have all queries logically or-ed or and-ed together, can't mix them or use other logical operators. Also last I checked there was no scrollbar given once you pass too many queries so there's a limit on how much you can group together. However, newer versions of iTunes offer folders for playlists, and the folders themselves serve as playlists derived from combining all the playlists you put in them.

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[info]corruptedjasper
2006-08-16 12:48 am UTC (link)
I like my id3 tagit 3. It will do filename<>id3 conversion pretty much automatically, at least as long as the info it's coming from are consistently formatted.

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