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Brian Tiemann
Silicon Valley-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

btman at grotto11 dot com

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Friday, October 17, 2003
18:05 - Windows 101 for Diplomats
http://www.punningpundit.com/archives/2003_10.html#000981

(top) link
Before iTunes can perform well as an "ambassador" application to the Windows world, it apparently must learn to speak the language. Or vice versa.

The Punning Pundit has a post in which he describes his first impressions of iTunes for Windows. His conclusion is generally favorable, but the bulk of his post is taken up with gripes, most of which seem to stem from a general misunderstanding of how the application is supposed to work. Now, I'll grant that iTunes does require a little bit of explanation for people who think it's intended to be something it's not; and so while I've responded to the fellow directly in e-mail, I feel it would be a good idea to go through his gripes and address them point by point here, because they're worth discussing.

It took about five minutes to figure things out; the problem is that Mac people just don’t think like PC people, so the buttons are labeled different things and are in different places. Nary an "option" tag to be seen, but most of what I wanted was under "edit". "Edit" is used for other things in Windows, and, well you get the idea...

Windows apps all used to put the Preferences (or Options, or Settings, or whatever they call them this year) into the Edit menu. Then they moved them to the Options menu. Then they moved them to the Tools menu. The location of the Preferences on Windows apps has always been a moving target.

If Apple were to do the Windows version the same way as they did the Mac version, they'd put the Preferences into the Application (iTunes) menu-- but that doesn't exist on Windows. So if they were to do it the Windows way, they'd put it in the Tools menu... but iTunes doesn't have a Tools menu. Apple menus are designed as follows: <Noun> -> <Verb/command>. So, File -> Open. Or Controls -> Play. There is no place for a "Tools" menu. Rather, iTunes has File, Edit, Controls, Visualizer, Advanced, and Window menus. There isn't really a logical place to put the Preferences, is there-- except for under Edit.

Moving on...

Believe me, the difference is easy to hear. To make it a fair test, I ripped the M4A file at the same 320 kbps...

There was a slight difference in Apple’s favor. Not a big one, but a noticeable one. The Apple file was 14 Megs compared to the Mp3’s 10 Megs. I’m not sure if the M4A file is worth a 28% file size increase. And definitely not for a codec that no one else’s software can read...

That's weird. I never saw AAC files that were larger than MP3 files at the same bitrate. Well, maybe not never-- but probably 85% of the time. And it was never much larger.

In any case, it's an open standard-- there's nothing stopping other vendors from developing software that will read AAC files.

The big thing, though, the one thing that turns me off I-Tunes completely is this: Apple re-named all my music files and changed my organizational structure! Remember that friend I mentioned in the earlier paragraph, the one whose files I change as a prank? Well, Apple changed mine as a "convenience". It did have (buried in the bowels of the program) a check-box for “keep the I-Tunes music folder organized”, and didn’t tell me that the I-Tunes folder would be wherever I store my music. It also doesn’t let me set how it is organized. So all the CDs I have by with multiple artists are now scattered all over my music folder, organized by the artist responsible for each track. A sampler CD with 30 artists will now be under 30 different folders. And there is no half way with this thing...

Here's the answer you're looking for:



The deal with iTunes is this: It's not a mere front-end for your MP3 files, like WinAmp is. It's a complete music management system-- designed to handle all your music needs, from importing off CDs, to organizing, to burning to CD, to syncing to iPod, to sharing over the Net. It's all in the one application. And along with that comes the philosophy that you don't organize your music by folder and filename, but by song title and artist and album. It's a content-based interface-- one where you organize your media based on the intrinsic criteria that the media itself carries with it, rather than by some clumsy and ill-suited computer-imposed metaphor like "files" and "folders".

I've written about this at some length, years ago. (Geez, has it really been that long?)

And so the idea is that iTunes organizes all of your MP3 files for you, in the background, changing filenames and folder names to match the ID3 tags that you change within iTunes. This way, you can immediately navigate to any folder in your iTunes Music folder (which is inside your My Music folder), browse by artist, then by album, then by track. When you put in a CD to import from it, iTunes looks up the track names and album info, and it writes out the new files into pre-organized folders in that filesystem structure. But you don't ever have to go into the filesystem to find them-- it's just for your convenience. And you can customize it if you want-- you can have it add track numbers to the filenames, or not; you can even choose not to have it copy all your files to the consolidated folder. That's the default behavior anyway-- if you double-click on an MP3 in some random location in the system, it gets added right where it is. But if you turn on "Copy files to iTunes Music when adding to library", then it'll copy your MP3 files to the consolidated location. "Keep iTunes Music Folder Organized" is what controls whether iTunes renames files according to your ID3 tag edits on the fly. Why would you not do this? Only if you have MP3 files with all those underscores and huge long filenames, I suppose, all in a big flat folder and your own personalized system of browsing through them by folder/filename. Hey, suit yourself, I guess...

In any case, the whole idea is that iTunes will find all the track information when you import new albums, and create its music folders that way. If you already have a collection of MP3s, there's a good chance that their ID3 tags are not all filled in-- and so iTunes is going to have a hell of a time organizing them. But just select them in groups, Get Info, edit the ID3 tags, and let iTunes sort everything out for you. Don't worry, be happy.

And when it comes to compilation albums-- I'd wager that the "Part of a compilation" checkbox is not set in most of these songs' ID3 tags. Well, that's easily enough sorted out, isn't it?

For future imports, you put in the CD, and iTunes automatically figures out that it's a compilation. It then creates the audio files inside a "Compilations" folder, instead of scattering them to thirty different places according to the different artists. (Tip: select all the songs in the album within iTunes, Get Info, and turn on the "Part of a compilation" checkbox. Watch iTunes neatly assemble your files back together in the folders. Let it work as designed.)

Unless, of course, something went wrong in the automatic track lookup...

The other big knock against the I-Tunes is the lack of automatic ID Tag look up. I should clarify; there is a manual look-up, but one so dumb it couldn’t find the Who’s Pinball Wizard. As this is not an obscure song, I can only presume some difficulty on Apple’s end...

Something weird's going on here, because my Windows-using friends assure me that Windows iTunes does indeed do automatic CDDB lookups, just like the Mac version. Put in the CD, wait a few seconds, and iTunes automatically populates all the fields. If it wasn't able to look up your track names, even if you do it manually, suspect a network problem.

iTunes uses the CDDB, aka Gracenote, for its CD lookups. This is not a small database. If iTunes couldn't find information in it for a popular album, there's a network problem. And in any case it's not Apple's fault.

But! If iTunes doesn't find the track names on a CD you've inserted, just select all the tracks, Get Info, and fill them in yourself. Including the "Part of a compilation" checkbox if necessary. You only have to do it once. Then Import.

A more minor knock (but still worth mentioning) is that the player lacks as "pause" button. Seriously. I have to turn the song off if I want to have a moment of silence...

A more minor knock (but still worth mentioning) is that the player's "pause" button is not always present, even when a song is playing. Seriously. If I’m not on the "library" screen while listening to a song, I can't pause it. It’s a minor thing, but anything that makes me do more steps is a pain...

This confuses me. iTunes' Play button turns into a Pause button while it's playing. Or, if you have selected a different music source in the sidebar from the one it's currently playing from, it becomes a Stop button. The idea is that the music source you're currently viewing-- the Music Library, a CD, a playlist, Internet Radio, someone's Shared Music-- is a single big playlist, and if you let iTunes keep playing, it'll keep selecting songs from that window. If you shuffle it, repeat songs, start and stop it, it works all within that music source. But if you select a different music source, then iTunes assumes you're wanting to play music from that source-- and so the Pause button, which implies wanting to stop the music and then continue playing from the original source, instead turns into a Stop button so that the next time you Play, it'll be taking music from the current music source.

The alternative is for iTunes to have both a "Pause"(/Play) button and a "Stop" button... and the difference between them is subtle enough that I think most novice users would be confused. Control buttons should be as few as possible, and as significant as possible. You really want to make the user have to think about whether he or she wants to "stop" or "pause" the song?

Solution? Leave it in a single music source while you're letting iTunes play music on its own. The only reason you'd be switching between music sources a lot, in any case, is if you're playing with the application for the first time. Once you start using it, this will cease to be a problem, I daresay.

Tip: Double-click on any music source (a CD, playlist, whatever) to open it in a second window. Then you can work on that music source, edit its contents, change its settings, whatever you like-- and the music, playing from within the music source in the original window, will have a Pause button instead of a Stop button.

Other than that, I-tunes really is a nice piece of software. It is free (a big plus), fast, small, and has a decent (though non windows-friendly) interface. It is way, way better than Microsoft’s offering (though that isn’t saying much).

You don't say. Now, I suspected that most of the gripes from Windows users would be along the lines of how you can't resize the window by gripping the edges-- like in Windows-- or how the scrollbars are Aqua-themed. But these gripes are mostly founded in misconceptions about what iTunes is for, and how it operates. Yes, yes, I understand the irony of it all-- Mac software is supposed to be so intuitive! And iTunes is supposed to be such a great example of it! And yet here I am, having to write this long-winded essay explaining how to use it! Uh huh, yeah, I know. All very humbling and all that.

But, look-- for the new computer user, iTunes eliminates the need to think about "MP3 files". That's its entire point. If you come into iTunes expecting it to be a non-intrusive front-end like WinAmp, letting you keep your old MP3-collecting lifestyle intact while running iTunes under its default settings, I'm afraid you're cruising for a bit of a shock. Making friends with iTunes means giving up a goodly number of preconceived notions about how MP3s and digital music work-- you have to let go of obsessive control over filenames and folders in the filesystem; you have to work with ID3 tags and automatic lookups rather than manually organizing lists of files in folders to specify playlists. iTunes frees you from an immense amount of organizational hassle-- but if you try to hold on to what you have come to expect MP3 files to do under Windows, then making your habits reconcile with how iTunes does business makes things way more difficult than either the WinAmp method or the Mac method on its own could ever be.

UPDATE: Kris reminds me that in the iTunes installation wizard on Windows, there's a screen where it asks you whether you want it to automatically keep your Music folder organized... and it defaults to off.

I should also point out that this is exactly what I was afraid of, with taking iTunes to Windows: iTunes on the Mac is designed to take advantage of the Unique File IDs in the HFS+ filesystem, so even if you move your files around on the disk, iTunes will still be able to find them, even if you turn off "Keep my iTunes Music folder organized". But under Windows, it can't do that; if you move a file from where iTunes thinks it is, it'll lose track of that file. This complicates matters quite a bit, when it comes to the whole question of automatically copying files into the iTunes Music folder, or where to put newly created files. Ideally it should all still "just work" (iTunes should only copy files from their existing locations into iTunes Music, not move them-- and anything that it would automatically rearrange must be inside the iTunes Music folder to begin with, so I don't understand how any of the original structure can have been "lost")-- but hey, this wouldn't be the first time that what looks like a bug actually turns out to be a misunderstood feature.


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© Brian Tiemann