I've used iTunes ever since it was available on the Windows platform. The most recent version is light years great than the original. But two nagging problems still exist with playlists and user data like ratings. And since playlists are probably the most time arduous activity and source of personal angst, it's not a good thing when they disappear. And on the Windows side, playlists have a bad habit of getting messed up way to often.
This most recent minuscule saga with playlists started innocently enough, a friend bought his son a new iMac. In the last few years Apple has brought out some great lower end units (well under 00). This has been one of the reasons they have increased their shop share. The iMac that my friend bought is a good example of this new breed of Apple computer. It has a nice 20-inch screen, is self contained, and very uncomplicated in setting up.
As far as speed goes, it's as good as any of the medium level Pcs and much great than most. It appears to be about the speed of my new minuscule Msi Netbook which is uncluttered and has the maximum ram. I assuredly like my Netbook since it's so small and quick in basic email and surfing. Anyway, the iMac is a good selection for a home computer and has all the bells and whistles you could want like web cam, beautiful screen, speakers, wireless network card, microphone, and lots of favorite applications.
So the setup was quick and easy, there was only one minuscule glitch with the wireless router that was probably my fault and not the iMac's. In fact the iMac setup seemed much quicker than a Pc, not sure why. So we looked at what we wanted to replacement from the original Pc to the new iMac. Office documents of all types just whizzed right over with no problems. We found similar software for many of the coarse tasks and got them all setup and working. I keep duplicate clicking and got lost in the menus sometimes but all in all it was easy and quick.
Ok, now for the iTunes music. Being the crudgemudgen I am, I made two back ups of the iTunes on the Pc. One with the iTunes menus and one by hand way. This was 60 gigs of music that came from a million separate places and would be a nightmare to replace, if inherent at all. The one thing I noticed right away is how iTunes on the iMac was much quicker in roughly every function.
So the first thing I tried was naturally copying the music files over from the Pc to the iMac. Ok, all the music showed up so I imported the library. It was taking a long time to get album and song info but that was normal. The qoute was no playlists. None, nada, the files were incorporated into the ideas and but were not usable on the iMac.
Ok, lets go find the files that include the playlists and see what's retention them from showing up. This is an Xml file that contains all the reference points to the file locations. Oops, it's retention the Pc formula of directory structure, which is separate on the iMac (Pcs file paths use letter designations, iMac doesn't). Ok, let's get the favorite text editor and see if we can replace the drive letter with the straight path information that the iMac needs to navigate. I was aware that the directory structure and file naming methods could be an issue but figured iTunes would fix it on the import. Wrong.
This took a few minutes since the playlists file was huge. I double-checked the file paths and made sure all drive letters were gone. Ok, import the library again and bingo; we had playlists and other data that we were missing before. There were a few that got chewed up somehow but easy sufficient to fix straight through the program. I did observation that some information still didn't make it like the play count. But I never understood what purpose that served anyway unless you were being expensed for some rental music.
iTunes on the Pc is lethargic and very slow once you get a lot of music. Not so on the iMac. This could be the developer's fault when creating iTunes for Windows but it is noticeable. And even though I told this story in a few minutes, trust me when I say this complex a few hours since the library was big and it took awhile to backup and import each time.
I was going to replace one of my older units with a new Pc with Windows 7 but now I just might get an iMac. I was impressed with the one I just setup and the reduced risk in malware and viruses is a very good thing. And I assuredly liked iTunes a lot great on the iMac too.
iTunes Drives Me Crazy
