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MrBS · Jun 13, 2002, 09:00 PM

Here are a couple things I would like to see in the next version of iTunes.
If a new version was seeded with Jag, please post any changes.

Next Song Pointer: I would like to be able to drag a "pointer" off the iTunes control area into any of my playlists, which is would designate where iTunes looks for the next song. If I'm in the middle of a song on playlist A and want to start listening to playlist B, it would be nice to just be able to open B and drag this pointer where I would like to start listening to B. It's annoying cutting in the middle of songs and even more annoying having to wait for one to end to tell it what you want to do next.</li>
Album shuffle: Like the feature on the iPod, with a little better implementation. When an albumn finishes, go to the first song on another albumn. (it's kind of funny how the iPod gets the functionality before iTunes, like Mail having springloaded folders before the finder)</li>
Tangential shuffle: It would be nice if there were a button available when you were in shuffle (or any order besides albumn I guess) that would temporarily suspend whatever order is going on and just play through the albumn, and then continue on. So you could be listening to all of your mp3s in shuffle, then when one particular artist strikes your fancy or it's just an albumn you like to hear all the way through, a simple click of a button lets you finish listening to it and then you get dropped back into the shuffling. It would act as if all the songs following that one in the albumn were just "randomly" selected, they would be marked as played and be taken out of the shuffle queue. </li>

Maybe I'm just bored at work, but those seem like useful features. For how I use iTunes at least.
~BS

Fotek2001 · Jun 15, 2002, 01:18 PM

I'd like to see the interface tuned up a bit, I'm not that keen on brushed metal anyway but the shuffle and visualisation buttons are really ugly and not at all OS X like. It'd also be good to see a little progress made on improving the CPU usage which is, frankly somewhat excessive.

In terms of features, how about adding some capability to get album covers and switching from CDDB to something a little more advanced like FreeDB.

nutbits · Jun 15, 2002, 02:30 PM

Bring back the "Record From Sound Input" feature that they stripped out of SoundJam.

jfinete · Jun 15, 2002, 03:42 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by MrBS:
Here are a couple things I would like to see in the next version of iTunes. If a new version was seeded with Jag, please post any changes.

</li>[*]Album shuffle: Like the feature on the iPod, with a little better implementation. When an albumn finishes, go to the first song on another albumn. (it's kind of funny how the iPod gets the functionality before iTunes, like Mail having springloaded folders before the finder)~BS<hr /></blockquote>If you use the Search or Browse features to list only a particular artist or album, and then press play, iTunes will shuffle between the listed songs.

phrenzy · Jun 15, 2002, 03:56 PM

Use Folder As Playlist!

I would like to see something in the left collumn - Instead of saying 'Library'

I would like an item that says "Folders" and point that to your music folder - so you can browse your music based on how it exists in your folder arrangement.

Like, just say - "Play this folder"

And when you download a new mp3 to a folder it should reflect the contents of the folder in real time like the finder...

I hate having to 'add' my new downloads to the list.

waffffffle · Jun 15, 2002, 04:28 PM

I made another thread about iTunes keeping track of your favorites (most played songs) and make a playlist of those tunes with the click of a button. Maybe also the ability to create favorites of each artist and genre.

It would be nice if it basically kept track of the history of your songs played and at what time. It would be cool to be able to check back months later to see what song you were listening to at a particular date and time.

I wish it would act as a shoutcast streamer so you can use it with Live365 or another relay server. This would also work best if you could use live sound input from the computer's mic or other input source.

Ability to play Windows Media files. Unfortunately I am forced to deal with many of these audio files.

iTunes seems to corrupt its library file way too often for me. It really ****es me off that I lose my entire library every couple of months, and with it lose all of my playlists, volume settings, EQ settings, and the enabled/disabled songs.

There's should be separate enable/disable buttons for iPod synchronization and playback/importing. Right now those blue checkboxes do both (i.e. if a song is disabled for playback it is also not sent to the iPod). I wish that there was an option to have 2 seperate buttons or to have just 1.

There needs to be a keyboard button for enabling/disabling songs, so that way that can be enabled and disabled in groups (select a bunch of songs at once and enable/disable them with a keystroke/menu item). Right now I am forced to rely on an AppleScript in the script menu.

Ability actually HIDE songs from the giant list view (and make them appear witha keystroke/menu item).

When music files are opened for the first time in iTunes there should be an option to have all of theose filed copied/moved into proper folder in the library folder. I hate having to move the files manually.

Built-in cover art and cd label generator. The AppleScript that works with AppleWorks does not work too well. It should be able to print to all of the different brands of labels and tray inserts.

Overall improved UI responsiveness. iTunes is dog slow on my Pismo 400 with 640 MB or RAM.

Lower CPU usage. When playing songs in iTunes the rest of the computer is considerably slower. That shouldn't be.

A keyboard command to zoom the window (making it small, zoom is the wrong term, see below).

Also the green zoom button (+) is ALL WRONG for the OS. When I have the iTunes window fully expanded I want to be able to hit that button and have the window expand, or maximize if you will, to best fit the content of the window. So if I have a short playlist the window would get relatively small and if I'm showing my whole library the window would expand to the entire screen. There should be seperate button for making the window small.

Live window resizing would be nice. Maybe if iTunes didn't use its own stupid Aqua-like resources and instead stuck to Apple's own interface guidelines this wouldn't be so hard to do.

Skins for the small window view.

Also more information viewable in the small view (like the track progress bar).

Preference option to turn on and off the the ability to click iTunes buttons while it's in the background and have it respond and/or come to the front.

There are probably more but I'm going to go submit this as feedback now.

Gankdawg · Jun 15, 2002, 05:35 PM

How about burning support for more drives? I have a 32X Sony drive that I am using the hacked driver from xlr8yourmac. It works, but when I am burning a music CD, iTunes takes between 70% and 90% of the CPU according to 'top' in the Terminal. So much for multitasking.....

MrBS · Jun 15, 2002, 05:43 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by jfinete:
If you use the Search or Browse features to list only a particular artist or album, and then press play, iTunes will shuffle between the listed songs.<hr /></blockquote>That just shuffles between random songs in the albums. I like to listen to the entire album. So I want it to play the entire albumn A, then jump to the first song of albumn X, then play through the rest of X.

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by phrenzy:
Use Folder As Playlist!

I would like to see something in the left collumn - Instead of saying 'Library'
<hr /></blockquote>That's reminds me of a couple of other things...

I really wish you could have more than one library. And there definitely should be an option in preferences to "automatically add new songs to Library" with the options being all of your libraries and NONE.</li>
And they should have "browse" view in the playlists.
</li>

One other thing that may be worth a check box in the prefs is what happens when you drag a song off of the playlist into the finder. SJ in OS9 would move the file, iTunes copies it. Moving the song makes it way easier to sort and organize your files, as the finder doesn't recognize ID3 tag information. It's a lot harder and a lot more likely you'll lose some songs if you need to copy and then go back and delete the original. To grab all of an artist's songs in iTunes you need to manually ctrl-R on EACH song and drag it into the new folder.
~BS

yellar · Jun 15, 2002, 11:29 PM

Geez... all these feature requests, and all I really want in the next version is for iTunes to actually delete the MP3 when I delete in reference in the library. Last time I actually went through my iTunes folder I must of had 50 songs in there that I thought I actually had deleted.

Other than that it works pretty well for me...

SupahCoolX · Jun 16, 2002, 01:32 AM

I'd like a customizable toolbar like other X apps. For example, I often have iTunes in its minimized state in the lower right corner of my screen when browsing the web. I would prefer to move the next/previous buttons on the right side and take out the volume slider. When in full view, I would then want the browse button, volume slider, etc.

Lower CPU usage would be good, too.

in the flesh? · Jun 16, 2002, 02:11 AM

i'd like more of a selection of encoders besides wav, mp3, aiff.

billybob · Jun 16, 2002, 12:48 PM

A lot of these are good ideas that I'd never even though of before, and it would be nice to see some of them implemented. However, I think a lot of them are much more "advanced" features, which means apple will not use them.

The only thing that really irks me about itunes is when you import from cd to mp3, there's no option to include the track number in the filename. So when you look at the folder containing the songs, they're in alphabetical order by song name rather than the track order.

Now, this doesn't really matter as long as you use itunes since it orders them by the track# tag in ID3, but every other mp3 player i use does not do that. I'm mainly thinking of winamp here, because i share mp3's back and forth between windows and mac. So when i play them on my windows machine, theyre not in the same order as on the album and its REALLY IRRITATING.

If apple would add a simple preference to do that, or just do it by default. I mean, it would be SO FREAKING SIMPLE to implement, it would seriously take like one person about 3 seconds to code. And it would be so useful.

MrBS · Jun 16, 2002, 01:37 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by billybob:
A lot of these are good ideas that I'd never even though of before, and it would be nice to see some of them implemented. However, I think a lot of them are much more "advanced" features, which means apple will not use them.

The only thing that really irks me about itunes is when you import from cd to mp3, there's no option to include the track number in the filename. So when you look at the folder containing the songs, they're in alphabetical order by song name rather than the track order.

Now, this doesn't really matter as long as you use itunes since it orders them by the track# tag in ID3, but every other mp3 player i use does not do that. I'm mainly thinking of winamp here, because i share mp3's back and forth between windows and mac. So when i play them on my windows machine, theyre not in the same order as on the album and its REALLY IRRITATING.

If apple would add a simple preference to do that, or just do it by default. I mean, it would be SO FREAKING SIMPLE to implement, it would seriously take like one person about 3 seconds to code. And it would be so useful.<hr /></blockquote>Yeah. I'm amazed that WinApp has such terrible support for 1D3 tags.
~BS

Lew · Jun 16, 2002, 05:10 PM

I'd like the option to visually set the start and end point for individual tracks. You can currently set them by manually typing in the start/end times in the 'Get Info' window, but it'd be nice to be able to set them using a waveform view (that you can zoom into for accuracy). When I rip a mixed rave CD to MP3s and then play them back there's a gap between songs (and I know that there's a crossfade option, but it doesn't work properly on music where the beat is continuous)

mrbiiggy2 · Jun 16, 2002, 05:13 PM

i'd love broadcast compatability most of all.. that's what i really miss in my mp3 player..

MrBS · Jun 16, 2002, 05:31 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by GFive:
I'd like the option to visually set the start and end point for individual tracks. You can currently set them by manually typing in the start/end times in the 'Get Info' window, but it'd be nice to be able to set them using a waveform view (that you can zoom into for accuracy). When I rip a mixed rave CD to MP3s and then play them back there's a gap between songs (and I know that there's a crossfade option, but it doesn't work properly on music where the beat is continuous)<hr /></blockquote>Yeah, they deffinately need a bit of pre-caching to allow the gap between songs to 0.

Lot's of cds blend the tracks together, and every live cd sounds pretty funny with the little breaks in between the tracks.

That may just be a shortcoming of the .mp3 format though.
~BS

MrBS · Jun 16, 2002, 05:35 PM

How about a "Dynamic Library" that automatically updates itself to reflect a folder? So you could manage your mp3s in the finder and not be left with lots of broken links in iTunes. Speaking of, is there a way to automatically remove all broken links? That would be a time saver.
~BS

Martin M. · Jun 16, 2002, 08:37 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by MrBS:
How about a "Dynamic Library" that automatically updates itself to reflect a folder? So you could manage your mp3s in the finder and not be left with lots of broken links in iTunes. Speaking of, is there a way to automatically remove all broken links? That would be a time saver.
~BS<hr /></blockquote>Find a script that removes "dead tracks" here (it is named Super Remove Dead Tracks):

<a href="http://www.malcolmadams.com/itunes/scripts/scripts06.shtml" target="_blank">http://www.malcolmadams.com/itunes/scripts/scripts06.shtml</a>

It is a great site with many useful AppleScripts for iTunes.

Martin

<a href="http://www.soft-o-mat.com/" target="_blank">Soft-O-Mat: Coffee & AppleScripts</a>

nforcer · Jun 17, 2002, 04:31 AM

What I would really love to see if iTunes restore it's hidden SoundJam abilities, since it is based on SoundJam after all. Things like:

-Ability to recognize, play, and convert variants of mod files. Formats like .it and .xm. I mostly have game music in these formats, but it's still awesome to listen to.
-Skins.

I would also like to see some audio filters that Audion has. Things like:

-Ability to speed up or slow down music speed
-Ability to have the music echo while playing

Add to that the aforementioned ability to remove music from the library when removing it from the playlist (holding down option-delete perhaps?) and significantly reduced CPU time when playing music and not visible (an MP3 player shouldn't take 20% of the CPU when hidden... players on windows certainly don't take that much unless a bunch of special options are turned on) and it seems to me it will be a pretty solid update.

Of course, someone post this all to Apple's Feedback so they know what to do

pal05 · Jun 17, 2002, 06:41 AM

Hi,

i want MPEG4 Support in iTunes, do anyone know if this comes with QuickTime6 on Jaguar?

lg

Lew · Jun 17, 2002, 07:10 AM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by MrBS:
That may just be a shortcoming of the .mp3 format though.
~BS<hr /></blockquote>I believe it is. That's why the current iTunes has the option to set the start and end times. It just needs to be improved to the point that it's actually usable though (Hmmm... Now that gap sounded like about 0.4327 of a second. Better set the end point back by that amount

). A nice simple waveform view would do the job very nicely (or for that Apple touch, surely iTunes could automatically find the end point...)

Martin M. · Jun 17, 2002, 07:11 AM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by nforcer:
Add to that the aforementioned ability to remove music from the library when removing it from the playlist (holding down option-delete perhaps?)...<hr /></blockquote>You can use <a href="http://www.schirmers.de/max/softomat/bin/click/clickmanager.cgi?dl=4" target="_blank">Wipe-O-Mat</a> to remove tracks from playlists and the library. I wrote it for a friend who was in need for such a script.

Greetings,

Martin

[ 06-17-2002, 07:12 AM: Message edited by: Martin M. ]

Martin M. · Jun 17, 2002, 07:17 AM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by waffffffle:
I made another thread about iTunes keeping track of your favorites (most played songs) and make a playlist of those tunes with the click of a button. Maybe also the ability to create favorites of each artist and genre.<hr /></blockquote>You can use <a href="http://www.schirmers.de/max/softomat/readmes/com.shtml" target="_blank">Charts-O-Mat</a> to create your personal hitlist with iTunes. I wrote it some time ago for someone who wanted to impress a friend telling that this is so far only possible on a PC

Greetings,

Martin

[ 06-17-2002, 07:18 AM: Message edited by: Martin M. ]