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-UE
I've started using a Mac.
Okay, so because my TAFE course in programming focuses mainly on OS X and iOS, I've had to get myself a brand new MacBook Air and start getting used to doing my programming work on it. I've only had this thing for a few hours and I'm already getting a little annoyed at some of the key differences:
- The scrolling directions are inverted from what they are on pretty much every other desktop operating system I've ever used. I guess this makes sense to me when I'm using the touchpad, but it definitely does not when I'm using the scrollwheel on a mouse.
- Most of the Control key shortcuts I'm used to on Windows are now moderated by either the Alt/Option key or the Command key. I can already tell that this will take me quite a while to get used to, mainly since I'm still using Windows on my main computer...
- The 'maximise' button doesn't cause the window to fill the entire screen. Yes, there is now a pseudo-universal 'fullscreen' button in the top-right corner, but to be honest I rather prefer the middle ground that I get in Windows, GNOME, KDE, etc.
- Having the menu bar cut out of the program window and stuck perpetually to the top of the screen is something I just couldn't warm up to in Unity, and unsurprisingly I'm not too fond of it here either.
- I would love how the headphone jack supports TRRS headphones (i.e. the kind that have an inline microphone + remote), but unfortunately the center button on my earbuds seems to only work with iTunes which I don't even want to use for my music in the first place. (I'm sure I can change the program association somehow, but I haven't bothered...looking it up...yet...yeah, I'll do that once I finish typing this up.)
- Launching applications through the Finder instead of any kind of start menu feels a little weird to me, but I guess that's not really a big issue.
And I'm sure there are some others I'm forgetting about as I write this initial post. But I've noted a few good points, too, I just felt like rattling off a few of my personal gripes first. The Multi-Touch is something I'm rather liking so far, and I'm sure I'll hugely appreciate the Thunderbolt connector once I inevitably start using it for something.
Anyone who knows how to use a Mac got any tips for me? Because I'd love to hear them.
Comments
To me, the dock feels much more like the Windows 7 taskbar, but I guess that sorta counts too.
I own one. I was raised with them, actually; consequently, PCs baffle me.
What's your issue with iTunes?
I keep my entire music collection on an external hard drive, and so far foobar2000 is the only music player that's been able to satisfy my needs (completely portable, keeps my music folder organised by artist and album, etc.).
Something tells me iTunes probably won't deal very well with the external music folder, and I can't copy all my music to the main SSD because it's only 64GB which is barely enough room for the music itself, let alone anything else I'd want to put on it.
Well, there's always the option of switching out what's actually on your computer relative to what you listen to while having the computer connected to the hard drive.
Macs are coats.
iTunes is also slow as shit and isn't very configurable and somehow (at least, from my experience with it, though that was a while ago) does not support sorting music by directory and filename (as opposed to by metadata) even though that should be the simplest thing possible.
I don't use Windows Media Player, or even Winamp; I use foobar2000.
The one cool thing about Macs that I like is that you can keep a program open without keeping any of its windows open. In Windows you have to keep windows open if you don't want to experience load times for longer-loading programs.
On the other hand I don't like the cult of computering built around Apple's own products. It's like, the company wants you to use its products, its official or sanctioned apps, its programs, etc.. No, I like using my freeware and open-source and unauthorized stuff. I like being able to dick around filesystems and changing settings and hex values if the need arises; I like going behind the curtains and fixing the settings to whatever I like.
Also, MacOS seems to have lots of unnecessary graphical bells and whistles. I'd rather not have any of them, and just have a very clean, sleek, customizable, and fast OS.
Unfortunately Microsoft is going in the direction of both of these -- both trying to make an official everything and get you to use it and only it, and inserting lots of graphical bells and whistles into their signature OS that merely slow things down.
psst, use linux
I know; I need to figure out how to use it, and how to emulate all my Windoze games on it.
but linux is for hackers, communists and 40-year old virgins
It's also tends to perform exponentially better because it doesn't have nearly as much pointless bloatware. If it was better supported it'd basically be superior on all counts.
I'm just waiting for streaming to get good enough to have remote desktop gaming services. It'd render compatibility and hardware concerns almost meaningless as long as you were near a hub.
I kinda want to switch (back) to Linux but, eh, inertia. Windows 7 is "good enough".
Gaming is a reason to keep Windows installed but given how little I game on PC I probably wouldn't boot into it all that often.
OnLive is something I've been wanting to try out, but unfortunately it's only available in the US, the UK and Belgium...
I used Linux for a while. The smoothness was nice, but damn, a bunch of stuff simply assumes you're a programmer.
Sadly my podunk town isn't likely to have anywhere near a good enough bandwidth or latency to pull off OnLive anytime soon. It's still measured in kbps.
Isn't there Wine for that?
I hate to sound thick, but why does this matter? I would rather have my music organised directly by metadata in the first place; it's infinitely more convenient for me than having to browse some labyrinth of directories. Granted, I can see having a problem with the strict list format that older versions of iTunes used, but using the current grid system resolves most of those issues.
Also, what is this sloth that you speak of?
Because often, there are releases that are by different artists that nevertheless should be grouped together (say, for soundtracks). Or even releases by the same artist, but who happens to use different names, which you want to preserve in the metadata while still having them grouped together. Also, compilation albums don't necessarily have a clear "Album artist," and it may not be appropriate to just sort it by publisher and it is always horrible to just throw every compilation into generic "Various Artists" blob.
You shouldn't have to have a "labyrinth of directories" anyway. Everything should just be organized by Artist/Album for the most part except for cases when there's some more meaningful way of grouping music (like as mentioned before, source material/album or producer/album).
Also in my experience (again, it's possible I'm misremembering or things have changed since I used iTunes), iTunes isn't even very good about grouping things by metadata. It likes to split albums into multiple groups if there are any differences in the artist/album/year/etc. even if it may be the case that it's supposed to be that way (though yeah, in theory that shouldn't be very common) and more importantly, it handles having multiple tags of the same type (multiple artists on one track, etc.) very poorly. If you have a song that's listed as being by artist A and also artist B, when you look at your artist list you won't actually find that song under artist A or under artist B (it should show up under both). Instead it'll be under "artist A/artist B" or something, which defeats the point of having multiple tags.
(looking this up, this may be due to a limitation of the m4a format, and so doesn't necessarily mean there's anything particularly bad about iTunes here. I don't really want to download iTunes to figure out how it deals with tags in other kinds of files though)
Also, iTunes still isn't very configurable in how your music is actually displayed, but I don't really want to hold foobar2000+ColumnsUI+ESPlaylist up as a good example of that if only because having to use titleformat strings to design layouts is absolutely horrible, and so I'm not sure what music player actually would be good for that.
tl;dr: because.
What DYRE said, plus the following:
* Music of multiple formats, some of which don't have proper metadata. Such as WAV or AU files.
* Especially if some of these formats have custom programs to play them. We're talking various chiptune or emulated formats. Examples include MOD, IT, SPC, NSF, etc..
* Inconsistent tagging between acquisitions. For example, let's say you have some songs by "Shantae", and some songs by "Jake Kaufman", and some songs by "Jacob Kaufman", and some songs by "virt", and some songs by "Jake "virt" Kaufman".
* Inconsistent tagging for classical music. The idea of a single "artist", and focusing strongly on the performer, is very much a pop music thing. There is unfortunately no consistently-usable "composer" and "performer" tag. Some people will say "Frederic Chopin" is the artist, some people might say "Yundi Li" is the artist, and some people might say "Frederic Chopin, Yundi Li" or "Frederic Chopin and Yundi Li" is the artist. (And don't even get started on "Frédéric Chopin" and "Fryderyk Chopin". Or "Sergei Rachmaninoff" and "Sergey Rachmaninov".)
* Some acquisitions come with no metadata at all.
TL;DR: Metadata is a very poor way of organizing music.
My means of organizing my music is called File Manager. Okay, it's called Windows Explorer these days. But I call it File Manager because I grew up on Windows 3.1.
And I don't have a labyrinthine complex of directories and subdirectories. All the top-level subdirectories are composers (e.g. Chopin, Fryderyk), artists whose names were used to publish the music (e.g. Utada, Hikaru), and contexts (e.g. Pokémon). Within each top-level subdirectory are albums, singles discs (i.e. with several songs each usually), sonatas, symphonies, OST discs, or any other coherent grouping. Ungroupable tracks are left in the top-level subdirectory.
The only issue I've encountered so far is how to count things like remixes, or songs with single releases used for soundtracks. For those I usually make a judgement call as to what I'm likely to be looking for when I want to find it. Metroid Metal is filed under Metroid, rather than Stemage, because of this.
Since I rely on the filesystem, I can immediately file away all acquisitions, without having to retag stuff properly. I can also retain file integrity, since I need not modify files to correct metadata inconsistencies.
Also, primary artist is composer, secondary artist is performer.
Not that I completely disagree with you on that, but iTunes and a lot of other music players give the same basic result through the 'group by album' option, only the list is then alphabetised by album name rather than artist name.
But that in itself can still be a bit annoying, I know. That's why I prefer foobar2000's completely customisable grouping system, because it lets me set it up to group my music by album artist and album name rather than just by album name. (I'd copy and paste the algorithm I use for it, but I'm on the Mac right now and foobar2000 is a Windows-only music player.)
@glennmagusharvey: While I agree there are problems with the ways music metadata normally works, you dorealize that it's quite easy to edit it, right? So these...
...are pretty easy (if somewhat tedious) problems to solve.What do you use to edit metadata?
I found a prog called MP3Tag a while back (I think that's the name). Haven't dusted it off in a while though; I've just given up on retagging stuff after a while, because -- as you note -- it's tedious.
In iTunes, right-clicking on a song and selecting 'Get Info' brings up a window where you can change all the metadata.
Hate to break it to you, but all recent versions of iTunes group compilations together. Naturally, the individual tracks are also listed under the artist name, but one may still listen to a soundtrack through without having to create a new playlist or some nonsense. It also sorts by album artist rather than track artist now, so albums by a single artist with guest contributors are listed under the main artist rather than scattered about.
Now, alternate artist names are still a problem, but I guess I don't have as much of a personal problem with that given my weird knack for remembering useless information.
^ Yep.
^^ Does it do masstagging? And can it read from non-standard fields, like Composer?
^ How does it group compilations together? If I just bring on board a load of MP3s, will it do that?