/dev/null/kevin

Apple includes a new iClip with each new iPhone.  And thank goodness for the instructions!

One of my most popular blog entries (via google and comments) is one about how Apple's iTunes 7.0 broke the competing MusicMatch program (acquired by Yahoo Music).  On Friday I received a trackback comment from Tony Bove that iTunes 7.1 has now fixed the problem.  Yeah!  I verified the fix over the weekend and now have both iTunes and MusicMatch living together in harmony.

Not only is the fix cool, but the blogosphere is working as it should.

Tags:  apple | ipod | itunes | musicmatch

I may have to bury my hatchet with Apple and get an iPhone.

Tags: iphone apple

A while back I blogged about incompatibilities between iTunes and Yahoo's Musicmatch Jukebox.  That issue is still unresolved, but there were some comments about which interface is better.  In the spirit of fair play, I decided to give iTunes a try.  Note that I an not comparing the online music stores, just the players.

Summary: iTunes has more player options, but Musicmatch is a better ripper and organizer.  Musicmatch still wins, in my opinion.

Many features are available with both players and comparing those features is not really valuable, so I'll try to just focus on the differences.  I'm not claiming to be an expert with either program so if you know how to do something that I don't, let me know.

iTunes Pros:

• Lots of statistics.  iTunes keeps track of how often songs are played and can use that information to generate a playlist.  It's also easier to add your own personal ratings with iTunes since you can also do so via your iPod.


• Better "between song" features.  iTunes realizes that some songs need to be played right after other songs with no gaps.  It also has the cross fader feature that blends songs together like a DJ.
  


• "Endless" random play.  iTunes' "Party Shuffle" is slightly better the MM's "auto DJ" since it's open ended.  MM requires that you enter a total time and then generates a fixed playlist.
  


• iTunes' search is better and faster.  MM is a little clunky.

iTunes Cons:

• Doesn't play all mp3 files well!  This surprised me.  I have some older mp3s, ripped in the old days, and when iTunes plays them there is digital static for the first few seconds.  It's very annoying.
  

Musicmatch Pros:

• Tagging and super tagging.  Musicmatch absolutely blows away iTunes in this area.  iTunes only allows you to edit one song at a time.  iTunes can edit more than file at a time, but in a very limited fashion [see comments].  Musicmatch can edit multiple songs at one time, use one song to tag other songs, tag files based on the filename, and even rename the files based on the tags.  But the best feature is access to the online database of tags, and album art, that allow you to tag an entire album based on some search criteria.
  


• Mini player is better.  It's more mini.


• Fast ripping.  Very fast.

Musicmatch Cons:

• Can't update my iPod.  'nuff said.

It seems to me that iTunes is really geared towards Apple's iTunes store and playing music that has already been tagged and downloaded.  Musicmatch, while it also has a large online music store (Yahoo Music now), was written for the old school crowd (like me), who rip their own CDs and like to manage the meta data themselves.

For me, may of iTunes' "pros" aren't as important to me, so I'd like to stick with Musicmatch.  Now only if someone would fix this incompatibility problem.

Tags: itunes, music, musicmatch, apple, yahoo

 Update [12 Mar 2007]: The problem has been fixed iTunes 7.1.  Thanks to Tony Bove for the comment!

 Someone is guilty of some bullsh!t.

Forgive the strong language (lest I become the next Tim Bray), but it's called for.  For many years I have been using Musicmatch Jukebox for playing music on my computer.  I prefer it as a player/ripper over WinAMP and iTunes.  You may disagree with that choice, but hopefully you agree that we should all have a choice.  I do have an iPod and was using iTunes 6 to update it.  iTunes and Musicmatch lived happily together without conflict.  If you don't know, Yahoo! bought Musicmatch and it is now part of  Yahoo! Music.

So, the problem: I recently upgraded to iTunes 7 and suddenly Musicmatch stopped working.  It just bailed with a very generic message to reboot or contact customer support.

Customer support's response was this:

Uninstalling iTuens did "fix" the problem, but it's not really a solution, especially when Musicmatch can no longer update an iPod.  For a while (2002-2003), Musicmatch was the only way to update an iPod on Windows (and in fact, was bundled with the iPod). 

And guess what?  This isn't the first time that this has happened.  Shortly after iTunes for Windows came out (2003) there was a conflict between the two programs.  Installing iTunes disabled Musicmatch's ability to update, or even see, the iPod.

So, who it to blame?  Apple?  Are they intentionally disabling a competitor's product, or just guilty of bad programming?  Maybe it's Yahoo!/Musicmatch.  Is there code to abort if it detects iTunes?  That seems less likely since the same version of Musicmatch was accepting of iTunes 6.

This is the kind of crap that we would have expected of Microsoft during the 1990s, using its market share to bully out the competition.  Has Apple sunk so low?  I want to like Apple.  I want to buy and use their products, but they keep pissing me off.  I don't want to fully convict Apple yet, but things don't look good.

Tags: apple, itunes, ipod, yahoo, musicmatch, monopoly