09.15.05
I was wrong.
Rumor-mongering is still fun, even when you’re totally off.
They did announce the “iTunes phone.” Just no over-the-air iTunes Music Store purchases. Maybe they can do it, they just didn’t want to.
iTunes 5. Normally I wouldn’t be excited, except it has one feature I’ve been wanting for the longest time. Playlist folders. No more having to scroll through a huge list of playlists. Why do I need a restart to install iTunes? It makes no sense. Update: it turns out it was probably the iTunes Phone driver that required the reboot.
After the reboot, it just got worse. As soon as I started it up, it told me it was converting my old library and gave me a progress bar. The bar didn’t move. Ever. It just spun. The only indication anything was going on was the fact that iTunes was at nearly 100% CPU utilization. When it finally finished, it told me it failed and was backing up my old library. Things seemed mostly intact, fortunately.
Except, my podcasts were gone. *sigh* It turns out that I wasn’t the only one with the podcast problem. All that was left was a ‘Podcasts’ playlist which had all the files I had already downloaded. I spent entirely too long re-subscribing to every podcast in the playlist. I wish I had realized sooner all I had to do was select everything in that playlist and drag it to the Podcast source. *sigh*, again.
Almost more annoying than everything else, iTunes reset the added date for everything in my library. This is just plain annoying and never should happen. I figure I would suffer, the only playlist I have that depends on it is “Recently Added” and I would keep bumping it out a couple days at a time until I got back up to the 30 days.
Of course, iTunes had different plans. I’m not sure what caused it, but I had to go through the entire process a second time. It happened right after I got a Quicktime update, so maybe that was it. iTunes seems to let me quit and start it again without trouble now. Hopefully it won’t happen again.
Now that I’ve had iTunes for a few days, I have to say it’s growing on me. Fortunately, not everything is bad about it. It’s just the really horrible first impression sucked. I like the new look, though I hated it at first. The new shuffle features rock. I end up much a much better mix in the Party Shuffle. Again folders rock. Though, they’re not spring-loaded like the finder. I’m sure they’ll iron that out later.
Smart playlists now can select tracks based on whether it’s a podcast. That’s nifty. I really want a playlist of all the least recent, unlistened podcast in my library. Smart playlists won’t do the trick, but maybe I can whip up an applescript.
It’s strange that video podcasts don’t seem to get that podcast flag set.
And the one more thing of the day… the iPod Nano. I so want one. I did the math, I think I could fit all the music I know I like and then some on the 4 gig. I think I want the black one. I think I’m actually going to get it, too.
The scariest bit of all: the Harry Potter iPod. Someone hold me.