I use iTunes for practically all my Internet streams, except for Major
League Baseball. I understand, however, that they are going to make
podcasts available to put in our iTunes library, but that's provided
you have a MLB subscription for at least Gameday Audio. Don't know
about MLB TV. Richie Gardenhire, Anchorage, Alaska.
On May 19, 2008, at 2:36 PM, Darcy Burnard wrote:
Hi Eric. I definitely understand where you're coming from. Before
itunes became accessible, I was a die hard winamp user. I would hear
about itunes from sighted people, and it sounded like overkill for
what I needed. Now though, I love itunes, and couldn't even conceive
of the idea of going back to winamp. I'm not saying this will be the
same for everyone, just that it was for me. I found that itunes
really fits how I listen to music. I'll explain.
I have an airport express hooked up to my stereo, so I have itunes
streaming music to the express nearly all the time. I listen to a lot
of different types of music, and I like to not know what's coming up
next, so I generally keep it set on shuffle. However, sometimes I
might feel a little more selective, so I won't want to hear everything
in my library. Maybe I will just want stuff from a specific decade,
or a specific genre. Or maybe even music from a specific decade
within a specific genre. Sometimes I like to hear music that I
haven't heard in a while. With the itunes browser and smart
playlists, I can do all this with almost no effort.
Anyway, I guess my point is that if you listen to a lot of music, and
you don't want to be bothered selecting each track manually, then
itunes might be worth a second look. One thing I would suggest is to
turn on the browser. You'll find it under the view menu. As for
audio books, look for another message from me on that subject.
Darcy
On 18-May-08, at 11:34 AM, erik burggraaf wrote:
Hi Cara,
I'm a pretty new mac user, and so maybe some of this is just that it
doesn't work like my old stuff did, but I loved the method of winamp
and it's over all interface and functionality. Where-as ITunes
seems more like going back to windows media player or even musicmatch.
Take a week or two ago when I had to ask where the fast forward and
rewind controls were. They don't appear anywhere in the menues, so
I was stumped. What other features might I be missing in that regard?
Now, when I opened a file Winamp would play it. When I opened a
selection of files or a folder winamp would playlist it. It would
save those things if I wanted it to, but only if I told it to.
ITunes works backwards. You have to load your ITunes library. It
will play a file or selection if I open it in finder, but not
without placing it in the library and adding it to the main play
list. I find that rediculously clumsy. It keeps track of a lot of
information I don't care about, such as my own personal ratings for
things.
Here's a case where this got really in my way. I bought "A Civil
Campaign" by Lois M Bujold some weeks ago from Emusic. It was a 15
disc audiobook and it came in over 360 track by track files. ITunes
imported the entire 360 files into my music playlist and dumped them
right in with my albums. I tried to seperate the book out by making
a new play list from the files, but all that did was make an extra
layer of pointers to the files in my music playlist in my library.
So, to listen to my book I have,
*1 copy in my emusic download folder,
*one copy in my ITunes library,
*one set of pointers in the main music play list,
*one set of pointers in the new play list for the book files.
Mercy! God save me if I had an IPod, or I'd have a copy on there
too most likely. Using winamp I could just open the book from my
downloads folder and it would go until I opened something else. I
have to clean up the ITunes library to get rid of the extra copy
after every book, and at 360 files per book that's rather
inconvenient. At least when I moved to Toronto very quickly at the
beginning of april I had a few albums here because I'd played them
in ITunes and it added them to library on the fly, but I really
don't want it to do this with my audiobooks.
Now we have this issue where iTunes doesn't support flac, and it
doesn't support ogg, and so now I'm looking at VLC player, or at
least, I will shortly. But I don't really have a desire to have two
media players. Even under windows I refused to install real,
quicktime, and all the other junk they want you to have. It doesn't
appeal to my minimalist nature.
So maybe it's just me, but I'm really not sold on ITunes. I haven't
found any of it particularly inaccessible. I just don't like the
way it goes about it's business.
Best,
erik burggraaf
Certified Technician
Assistive Computing LTD Support and training
Sales department: 888-828-2445
Support and Training: 888-255-5194
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Website coming soon
On 17-May-08, at 4:07 PM, Cara Quinn wrote:
Strange / clumsy? -Am curious here, what you mean?
Would ya mind elaborating?… Thanks so much and perhaps we might
help make it better.
Smiles,
Cara :)
On May 17, 2008, at 11:25 AM, erik burggraaf wrote:
Hi friends,
What's the preferred method of playing flac files on the mac? The
flac website has sugestions, but I'd rather get something tried
and accessible. Apparently iTunes doesn't support the format and
won't any time soon.
Actually, I've been thinking an alternative player might be nice
all around. ITunes has been doing more or less what I want, but
in what seems to me an awefully strange and clumsy way.
Best,
Erik
erik burggraaf
Certified Technician
Assistive Computing LTD Support and training
Sales department: 888-828-2445
Support and Training: 888-255-5194
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Website coming soon
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