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iTunes Wish

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hestaman

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OK... 6 days and counting....

As long as the touch goes to 64GB (or more) - I'm getting one (If it stays at 32 - I'm going with a boring classic) Now... on to my iTunes rant/wish...

What is it with photos and iTunes??? I mean - there is no flexibility with how photos are viewed/stored on the iPod. Has there been any speculation about better photo management given that most of the new iPods are reportedly integrated with a camera?
 

Astro_Digital

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I would think Apple does not care because while they sell music, movies and TV shows, and apps; Apple does not sell photos.

Too bad, I bet that Apple could make money selling photos. Every once and awhile I need pictures for presentations and I would pay a little for the rights to download and use them.

Really though iTunes wishes and speculations are off topic in this forum. This forum is for future hardware speculation.
 

hestaman

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... but the hardware goes hand-in-hand with the software. It seems to me that since Apple wants to integrate cameras into their new hardware release... one would think a software change might at least be considered. Anyway - what I want is better control-or at least more 'folders' to view photos on the iPod itself.

For instance, right now, my photos are stored by date. The folder contains the year. Each year then has 12 folders containing the months. Then each month contains folders for each day that I take a picture (I usually only take pictures 5 or 6 days a month). However... on the iPod-at least the classic & nano which are the only versions I have owned (and AppleTV which is worse...) once you select the year, all pictures for that year are in one giant folder under it and finding a specific picture is quite hard to do.

I would think that having the ability to drill down at least the same file structure as that on your pc should be included on the iPod itself.
 

Germansuplex

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I would love to see iTunes have photo storage. If it did, then literally all the data I care to keep around could be stored within iTunes. It makes sense to me.

It would also help the photo storage on the iPods. If you could add tags to photos and the like (i.e. small notes) iTunes could store in its database and sync to the iPods.. that would be great.
 

anypats

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The problem with photo storage and iTunes is that Apple produces iPhoto. Of course it's only available for a Mac, but that is how they would like everyone to store their photos. Then, they also would like to see people uploading them to MobileMe.
 

Galley

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With iPhoto you have plenty of control as to which photos and albums are transferred to the iPhone. I honestly don't know how it is handled on a Windows machine. A co-worker asked me the other day.
 

hestaman

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I don't think it's to much to expect that the iPod should at least keep the same file structure as that on the computer. If iTunes/iPod could do this one simple thing, I'd be much happier. I don't need yet another photo organization package (I have photoshop elements as well as Nikon Picture Project... throw in there Microsoft PictureIt and Microsoft Media Player and something that came with my HP printer... I'm overwhelmed with photo editing/management software) I simply want the iPod to reflect what is on my PC as I know how they are stored there.
 

Surf Monkey

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That's never going to be how it works. Apple's philosophy is to place media into databases. The file structure on your drive isn't important to them. It's the front end of the database they're concerned with. The interface in iTunes and iPhoto. The Apple idea is that you don't ever have to interact with the files directly.
 

hestaman

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That's never going to be how it works. Apple's philosophy is to place media into databases. The file structure on your drive isn't important to them. It's the front end of the database they're concerned with. The interface in iTunes and iPhoto. The Apple idea is that you don't ever have to interact with the files directly.
The zune looks better everyday... yawn... and Apple wonders why they are lossing marketshare...
 

anypats

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Losing marketshare in what area? They have consistently increased marketshare in computers, mobile media, and phones over the past couple years. Their marketshare in computers overall is low but their marketshare in MP3 players dominates by a huge margin. Plus, with the iPhone, they have begun to dominate and as soon as they are available on another carrier in the US, they will most likely be number one in that area as well.
 

Code Monkey

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The zune looks better everyday... yawn... and Apple wonders why they are lossing marketshare...
You have actually used the Zune software, right? Because while I would go so far as to say that even the current model Zunes, never mind the soon to be released HD, are better hardware than the iPod, the software kills it. Never mind that the Zune also only cares about database driven navigation just like the iPod.

Unless something radical changes with the Zune software Sept 15, you won't be happier, just even more frustrated. Where iTunes gives you the option of choosing how much control you want, the Zune gives you a control system geared towards the very young and the border line senile elderly (and, sadly, that's only a little hyperbolic). Further, the device UI itself on the upcoming HD has some head scratching choices that make you wonder just how on the ball their software team is compared to the hardware team.

I am not a fan of Apple, and frustration with (often recurring) bugs with iPods has led me to strongly consider jumping ship for a few years now, but then I actually try the various companies' software for their devices and I'm always left with an inescapable conclusion: no matter how flawed the iPod platform may be, it's still better than anything the competition is offering.
 

kornchild2002

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I am not a fan of Apple, and frustration with (often recurring) bugs with iPods has led me to strongly consider jumping ship for a few years now, but then I actually try the various companies' software for their devices and I'm always left with an inescapable conclusion: no matter how flawed the iPod platform may be, it's still better than anything the competition is offering.
That is kind of how I feel. Back in 2006, I was thinking about getting a Zune. The scren was larger and I head that the hardware was pretty solid. I then won a Halo 3 Zune from GameStop during the midnight release of Halo 3. I tried things out but couldn't get past the PC software (that and the screen was blurry, I don't care what people say, the 1G and 2G Zune screens are blurry). In the end, the whole iPod experience is better than what the competition offers. It doesn't matter if their hardware can playback everything and make me coffee in the morning, the iPod environment is just better.

I don't have any gripes against photo functionality and iTunes. It does what it does; copy photos to your iPod. The inclusion of photos capabilities into iTunes would complicate things. Would iTunes be able to print these photos, what about basic editing, how about saving the photos to different formats, etc? You start getting the point where iTunes is the ugly stepchild of MS Paint. That is also when iTunes becomes way too complicated for its main purpose: audio and video playback/management. It is a double-edged sword where greater photo functionality would be nice but you don't want it to get too complicated. Besides, any iTunes photo functions won't be equal to what Picasso can do (a free photo app from Google).

The one thing I want to see in the new iTunes release is access to QuickTime's true VBR AAC mode. iTunes has always used QuickTime's CBR or VBR_constrained settings, I want to see full VBR AAC files encoded by iTunes/QuickTime. QuickTime X (7.6.3) appears to have increased the quality of the iTunes AAC encoder by providing really transparent results at even 128kbps VBR. Encoding true VBR AAC files with QuickTime is just too much work. You have to open the lossless file in QuickTime, save it as an MOV file, open that in QuickTime, and then save it as an mpeg-4 file while passing the audio through. This whole process takes about 40 seconds for each song and track tags are lost in the process (so add another 30-40 seconds per song to manually enter the tags). It currently just isn't worth it to encode true VBR AAC files in QuickTime. Easy access to true VBR settings in iTunes would alleviate any previous headaches. I at least want to see three settings: 128kbps VBR (q60), 192kbps VBR (q85), and the maximum setting (q127 which produces around 310kbps VBR files). It would be better to have a visual slider so that the user can select which value to encode at but that may complicate things.

So true VBR AAC encoding is what I want to see in iTunes. I would like to see support for hardware accelerated video playback on Windows since QuickTime (and thus, iTunes) use software acceleration for playback. I have a new netbook with a Broadcom Crystal HD accelerator that can handle 40Mbps mpeg-4 AVC, VC-1, and mpeg-2 videos. I would like to playback iTunes Store purchased content on my netbook. Currently, 480p videos are even choppy when I watch them full screen and 720p playback is impossible. However, I can fire up a program that supports the HD accelerator in my netbook and get full 1080p playback without issues. Come on Apple, both iTunes and QuickTime support hardware acceleration on the Mac OS X platform. Why not give Windows users the same benefits? After all, Windows users represent over 70% of all iPod sales.

I would rather have true VBR AAC encoding in iTunes though.
 
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