I never need a music database. Well I do, and iTunes works immaculately. I have a little under 10,000 songs, spread across 976 albums / EPs, 185 Artists and 60 genres. I'm an intelligent person who works in IT, and even for me it would be physically impossible to keep my music library organised. But looking beyond my own collection and looking at most people, who usually have smaller collections, I still cannot see why they believe sticking everything in folders and right clicking them is an acceptable way to do things. And I have CoverFlow. I have that many, am also an intelligent person who works in IT, and I don't have a problem keeping my library organized Helps when you have to clean the hdd as well, I don't have to search for stuff. edit: my safari usage hasn't really brought anything interesting up yet. One of the big adjustments of switching to iTunes (and, to a greater extent, OSX in general) is learning to let go of control of your files: just let the OS do it for you. I was that guy who spent hundreds of hours organizing his thousands of files in folders and labeling them... I know how it goes. Then (before I got my first Mac) they released iTunes for Windows and I started using it. At first I was repulsed by the fact that it fucked up all the sweet-ass tagging and organization that I spent years doing... and then I realized that if I just let it do it's thing (and organized it within iTunes), then I wouldn't have to deal with the files or folders themselves anymore. I haven't done it since, and I've no urge to, because for my purposes (and my large library) iTunes is more than satisfactory. And finding the files is easy should you ever want access to them, as they're organized fairly logically anyway (and you can always just right click "Show in Windows Explorer/Finder" anyway). I had to make the same adjustment when I got my first Mac and started using iPhoto, and it's been great since I got used to it. iPhoto does make it a lot harder to find the actual files though, as its organization is really cryptic. Just let the software do the organization for you. I agree that's Apple's idea with these things. "We'll organize everything for you. You just sit back and use the app." Sad things is, theres no reason with their system that you can't have both. Apps can keep a nice database of files and metadata taken from those files, and you should still be able to have your nice, clean, understandable, custom file structure if you want to. Theres no reason you can't have that. Winamp has it for music. Picasa has if for photos. Apple's just been dragging their feet on that one.

I never need a music database. Well I do, and iTunes works immaculately. I have a little under 10,000 songs, spread across 976 albums / EPs, 185 Artists and 60 genres. I'm an intelligent person who works in IT, and even for me it would be physically impossible to keep my music library organised. But looking beyond my own collection and looking at most people, who usually have smaller collections, I still cannot see why they believe sticking everything in folders and right clicking them is an acceptable way to do things. And I have CoverFlow. I have that many, am also an intelligent person who works in IT, and I don't have a problem keeping my library organized Helps when you have to clean the hdd as well, I don't have to search for stuff. edit: my safari usage hasn't really brought anything interesting up yet. One of the big adjustments of switching to iTunes (and, to a greater extent, OSX in general) is learning to let go of control of your files: just let the OS do it for you. I was that guy who spent hundreds of hours organizing his thousands of files in folders and labeling them... I know how it goes. Then (before I got my first Mac) they released iTunes for Windows and I started using it. At first I was repulsed by the fact that it fucked up all the sweet-ass tagging and organization that I spent years doing... and then I realized that if I just let it do it's thing (and organized it within iTunes), then I wouldn't have to deal with the files or folders themselves anymore. I haven't done it since, and I've no urge to, because for my purposes (and my large library) iTunes is more than satisfactory. And finding the files is easy should you ever want access to them, as they're organized fairly logically anyway (and you can always just right click "Show in Windows Explorer/Finder" anyway). I had to make the same adjustment when I got my first Mac and started using iPhoto, and it's been great since I got used to it. iPhoto does make it a lot harder to find the actual files though, as its organization is really cryptic. Just let the software do the organization for you. I agree that's Apple's idea with these things. "We'll organize everything for you. You just sit back and use the app." Sad things is, theres no reason with their system that you can't have both. Apps can keep a nice database of files and metadata taken from those files, and you should still be able to have your nice, clean, understandable, custom file structure if you want to. Theres no reason you can't have that. Winamp has it for music. Picasa has if for photos. Apple's just been dragging their feet on that one. Fact is that if everything is tagged correctly, there's no reason why it can't organise it for you either. That's what I did with The Godfather, and it did it very well.

I've never used ITunes before (or any other music buying type thing) but why does it just put stuff in a database and not also make a directory structure. I'm stuck in the past and still rip CDs to get songs onto my computer and the program I use to do that even puts stuff in nice directories.

I posted this in the SE version of this thread, but I'm actually really liking the horror-themed Asylum browser. From the developer: Welcome Horror Fan's, I'll get strait to the point! Asylum Explorer WebBrowser is Awsome. It is a Webbrowser in the Horror Genere. It has all the main features that is found in Internet Explorer 3.0 and later Plus Some. It's main features are: Back, Forward, Refresh, Stop, Home, Email, Find, Search, Save, Print, Print Preview, Resize, Enlarge, UnEnlarge, Favorites, History, Properties and Internet Options. Plus a few others I did not mention. Asylum Explorer is IE Based which means that it uses the Internet Explorer Engine. You must have internet Explorer 3.0 or later installed on your computer in order to use this browser. It may work with Netscape but I am unsure being I have never Tested it with netscape. Asylum Explorer is colorful and contains Gore. Michael J. Hardy, the developer, has a bunch of other GNU-related apps, you can read more about them on his bio here.

I've never used ITunes before (or any other music buying type thing) but why does it just put stuff in a database and not also make a directory structure. I'm stuck in the past and still rip CDs to get songs onto my computer and the program I use to do that even puts stuff in nice directories. Go to the advanced tab in the iTunes preferences. If you check "Keep iTunes music folder organized", then iTunes will keep everything in a nice directory structure. CD's you rip automatically get put into the iTunes music folder, so all your CD's will be organized. If you want iTunes to organize all the rest of your music into this directory structure, you will also need to check the box "Copy files to iTunes music folder when adding to library". The only hassle is if you already have all your music imported into your library. You will have to delete and re-add your songs.

I've never used ITunes before (or any other music buying type thing) but why does it just put stuff in a database and not also make a directory structure. I'm stuck in the past and still rip CDs to get songs onto my computer and the program I use to do that even puts stuff in nice directories. Go to the advanced tab in the iTunes preferences. If you check "Keep iTunes music folder organized", then iTunes will keep everything in a nice directory structure. CD's you rip automatically get put into the iTunes music folder, so all your CD's will be organized. If you want iTunes to organize all the rest of your music into this directory structure, you will also need to check the box "Copy files to iTunes music folder when adding to library". The only hassle is if you already have all your music imported into your library. You will have to delete and re-add your songs. Or use "Consolidate Library." Copies everything not in the iTunes Music folder into it. Then get rid of the old copies.

I've never used ITunes before (or any other music buying type thing) but why does it just put stuff in a database and not also make a directory structure. I'm stuck in the past and still rip CDs to get songs onto my computer and the program I use to do that even puts stuff in nice directories. Go to the advanced tab in the iTunes preferences. If you check "Keep iTunes music folder organized", then iTunes will keep everything in a nice directory structure. CD's you rip automatically get put into the iTunes music folder, so all your CD's will be organized. If you want iTunes to organize all the rest of your music into this directory structure, you will also need to check the box "Copy files to iTunes music folder when adding to library". The only hassle is if you already have all your music imported into your library. You will have to delete and re-add your songs. Or use "Consolidate Library." Copies everything not in the iTunes Music folder into it. Then get rid of the old copies. Jeez, didn't know that. Thanks for teaching me something new!

I think this is a fundemental difference between PC and Mac MP3 Players and their history. See, you PC users grew up on WinAmp - a nice app, but in the days of thousands of MP3's a little ridiculous. You could skin it, and it was basically a CD player interface. Mac users either grew up with Audion (by Panic) or SoundJam (later iTunes). Audion was like WinAmp if you somehow didn't like an application "messing" with your arcane MP3 folder file structure, you used it. You could skin it and it was pretty. SoundJam was acquired by Apple to become iTunes. It realized that with the huge amount of music people were getting you needed a nice database interface to see all of it and search/browse/etc, and "seeing" your little player in the corner of the screen was increasingly unnecessary as the novelty wore down. It was an ugly app, but with a lot of MP3's it's what you need to use. Now, you see why iTunes is the way it is. I love it, and it seems to work just fine. Coverflow is slick, I never had an issue on my XP laptop, and on the Mac it's perfect. And I'll never go back to a gimmicky, skinnable player again. Are you seriously saying that iTunes even HAS a UI? That alone is laughable. It's a list. A searchable list, but it's still a goddamn list. You can't even divide it out by artist or track or anything. You can't make a temporary song queue, at least in any immediately obvious way, you either play the search results or make a permanent playlist. And for all this lack of features, it's slow as hell. I'll take Winamp 5 thanks, which does everything iTunes does, but more, and quicker. click the "browse" button on the bottom right. Be amazed how you can divide by artist/album/genre. and the playlists are only permanent until you delete them. Dynamic playlists work too. Well hot damn, how did I miss that? Ok, that takes away my main complaint against iTunes, I stand corrected.

I think this is a fundemental difference between PC and Mac MP3 Players and their history. See, you PC users grew up on WinAmp - a nice app, but in the days of thousands of MP3's a little ridiculous. You could skin it, and it was basically a CD player interface. Mac users either grew up with Audion (by Panic) or SoundJam (later iTunes). Audion was like WinAmp if you somehow didn't like an application "messing" with your arcane MP3 folder file structure, you used it. You could skin it and it was pretty. SoundJam was acquired by Apple to become iTunes. It realized that with the huge amount of music people were getting you needed a nice database interface to see all of it and search/browse/etc, and "seeing" your little player in the corner of the screen was increasingly unnecessary as the novelty wore down. It was an ugly app, but with a lot of MP3's it's what you need to use. Now, you see why iTunes is the way it is. I love it, and it seems to work just fine. Coverflow is slick, I never had an issue on my XP laptop, and on the Mac it's perfect. And I'll never go back to a gimmicky, skinnable player again. Are you seriously saying that iTunes even HAS a UI? That alone is laughable. It's a list. A searchable list, but it's still a goddamn list. You can't even divide it out by artist or track or anything. You can't make a temporary song queue, at least in any immediately obvious way, you either play the search results or make a permanent playlist. And for all this lack of features, it's slow as hell. I'll take Winamp 5 thanks, which does everything iTunes does, but more, and quicker. click the "browse" button on the bottom right. Be amazed how you can divide by artist/album/genre. and the playlists are only permanent until you delete them. Dynamic playlists work too. Well hot damn, how did I miss that? Ok, that takes away my main complaint against iTunes, I stand corrected. glad to help. That was the biggest feature introduced in iTunes 5(remember, the one that was out for like, 3 weeks before iTunes 6 =/) but the browse feature was a lot "easier" to find. even had this bar where you could select album/artist/whatever. I liked it a bit better than the one in iTunes 6/7, but it still does the job. I just wish the button was a bit more obvious. unless you click on it, the little eye doesn't mean much to people.

Wow, count me among the people who never noticed the browse button in iTunes. You're exactly right, I had no idea what that little eyeball was and absolutely no desire to click it. Maybe they should replace it with the word browse or something. I never could get Safari to start on my Vista machine, but hearing of the potential security issues with the windows version, I'm leery anyway. I still like Safari from my time using it on Macs and I'm eager to try it on Windows, maybe...next build?

ya, it's actually a feature in iTunes a lot of people bitch about that they want, and it's there, just apple doesn't exactly flesh it out. You think they would with how many people bitch about it. Safari did start fine on my Vista box, ran it for 5 minutes, and turned it off, probably won't play with it again till it hits the final version. This software is too much beta for me.

Well, having used Safari on Windows for a while now, I like it. The look grew on me, and the only thing from Firefox I really miss is the spellchecker. I certainly haven't had any lock-ups or crashes so far.

Does Safari have an kind of gestures? That's one thing I can't live without. Gestures and the ability to freely scroll through my open tabs anywhere on a page by holding down the right mouse button and scrolling (Right mouse button + scroll).

Does Safari have an kind of gestures? That's one thing I can't live without. Gestures and the ability to freely scroll through my open tabs anywhere on a page by holding down the right mouse button and scrolling (Right mouse button + scroll). I just tried that, and right mouse button + scroll does work.

Wow, count me among the people who never noticed the browse button in iTunes. You're exactly right, I had no idea what that little eyeball was and absolutely no desire to click it. Maybe they should replace it with the word browse or something. It used to be.

Heres a quick setup scheme to make firefox load really fast if you have broadband 1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries: network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading. 2. Alter the entries as follows: Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true" Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true" Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once. 3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

Heres a quick setup scheme to make firefox load really fast if you have broadband 1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries: network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading. 2. Alter the entries as follows: Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true" Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true" Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once. 3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives. Setting maxrequests to 30 won't make 30 requests at once. The max Firefox supports is 8. And it probably won't speed you up that much. (Enabling pipelining may speed things up, but you can leave maxrequests at its default amount of 4.) Apparently the nglayout thing is a bit of a myth as well. Here are Mozillazine wiki articles on the two preferences.

Wow, count me among the people who never noticed the browse button in iTunes. You're exactly right, I had no idea what that little eyeball was and absolutely no desire to click it. Maybe they should replace it with the word browse or something. It used to be. Yes see, that makes more sense. I am quite late to the ipod/iTunes "thing", having bought my first iPod just this last December. So I would probably have never noticed the eyeball if it weren't for this fine forum!

Setting maxrequests to 30 won't make 30 requests at once. The max Firefox supports is 8. And it probably won't speed you up that much. (Enabling pipelining may speed things up, but you can leave maxrequests at its default amount of 4.) Apparently the nglayout thing is a bit of a myth as well. Here are Mozillazine wiki articles on the two preferences. There's a lot of wiggle room in quantifying the browsers speed too. From what I've seen Safari blazes through most pure JavaScript or DOM speed tests, but when put against real world web pages/apps, it doesn't look like its fairing that well: http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/20...news_benc.html Its pretty arbitrary regardless. If a web browser feels slow to you, then you should probably look for a faster one. If it doesn't, then be happy with what you got.

I miss the days of iTunes 4, I really do

Heres a quick setup scheme to make firefox load really fast if you have broadband 1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries: network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading. 2. Alter the entries as follows: Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true" Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true" Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once. 3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives. No, just no! This makes web servers cry. You initiate multiple connections that would be otherwise utilised for other visitors, then the transfers take longer because you're trying to download everything at once, meaning you keep those connections tied up for longer than you normally would. So you make more connections that take longer to open up, and you end up slowing or restricting access to the server for everybody else. Way to go, dickweed

Heres a quick setup scheme to make firefox load really fast if you have broadband 1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries: network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining network.http.pipelining.maxrequests Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading. 2. Alter the entries as follows: Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true" Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true" Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once. 3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives. That's pretty much what faster fox does ... gives you a GUI access to those attributes, plus a few presets. (snip) No, just no! This makes web servers cry. You initiate multiple connections that would be otherwise utilised for other visitors, then the transfers take longer because you're trying to download everything at once, meaning you keep those connections tied up for longer than you normally would. So you make more connections that take longer to open up, and you end up slowing or restricting access to the server for everybody else. Way to go, dickweed How would downloading things faster tie up connections longer? Even though this means your sever will spend more system resources on an individual user, it also means that your web server will be done dealing with that user more quickly and can then move on to deal with another user. Opening up one connection then pulling HTML then an image, then another, then another ... is retarded if I can just tell it to open multiple simultaneous connections. And if you think that's "killing" your server or denying service to other users then either your server is woefully misconfigured or you're just assuming it will because you haven't thought it through.

Fasterfox is retarded (article's a bit old, but most of those prefs are still in there, judging by the screenshots on the Fasterfox site). Plus, if you have prefetching on, it prefetches basically everything apparently, which is a really dickish thing to do and does without a doubt increase bandwidth usage for both you and the server you're looking at.

You can't make a temporary song queue, at least in any immediately obvious way, you either play the search results or make a permanent playlist. if you double click a playlist it pops up as a new window. if you go to party shuffle and futz around (it can be completely random orr not random at all...)i think you get your temporary playlist. EDIT: and you missed the browse button because it is the most unadorned botton of use in the last few years of UI design. i use macs. i like macs...but i ignored that button for a loooooooong time.

(snip) No, just no! This makes web servers cry. You initiate multiple connections that would be otherwise utilised for other visitors, then the transfers take longer because you're trying to download everything at once, meaning you keep those connections tied up for longer than you normally would. So you make more connections that take longer to open up, and you end up slowing or restricting access to the server for everybody else. Way to go, dickweed How would downloading things faster tie up connections longer? Even though this means your sever will spend more system resources on an individual user, it also means that your web server will be done dealing with that user more quickly and can then move on to deal with another user. Let's say you could open 30 connections to the server at once, and this server can comfortably handle 500. 1. HTML page 2. Image. 3. Image. 4. Image. 5. Flash application. 6. etc. Imagine downloading 30 things at the same time, from the same site, each one utilises bandwidth, so downloading others at the same time lowers the average speed of transfer per item, meaning that connection stays open for longer for the file transfer to complete. Once it's complete, it can close off the connection, and there's another one free for other transfers, whether they be for other users, or for yourself if you haven't finished downloading the site, let's say the page takes 10 seconds to load all of the items, think of it like this: At 0:00: 30 connections open At 0:01: Page downloaded, 2 images downloaded, new connection opened for the 31st item on the page, 28 connections open At 0:02: 4 more images downloaded, 24 connections open At 0:03: 2 more images downloaded, 22 connections open At 0:04: 4 more images downloaded, 18 connections open At 0:05: 4 more images downloaded, 14 connections open At 0:06: 6 more images downloaded, 8 connections open At 0:07: 2 more images downloaded, 6 connections open At 0:08: 4 more images downloaded, 2 connections open At 0:09: 1 more image loaded, 1 connection open At 0:10: The last connection was a large flash app that's just completed, loaded! Now consider if this was limited to just 4 connections for your browser: At 0:00: 4 connections open At 0:01: Page downloaded, 3 images downloaded due to higher average transfer per file, new items started, 4 connections closed, 4 connections started, 4 connections open At 0:02: 4 more images downloaded, 4 connections closed, 4 connections start, 4 connections open At 0:03: 3 images downloaded, 3 connections closed, 3 started, 4 connections open etc., you get the point; you only utilise a maximum of 4 connections at any one time, saving server strain. Making so many concurrent connections leaves less space for others. It's true, opening concurrent connections can drop the final load time of the page, but whilst it means the server may spend less time overall serving a single person, more connections are utilised for longer periods in order to do so, leaving less connections available for other users. You might think 'So what? The server can handle 500 connections!', but then consider what would happen if a larger number of visitors used those hacks/faster fox. Plus you need to consider that a large number of sites are on shared hosted packages, or run on Virtual Dedicated Servers (multiple servers running on a single piece of hardware), and must share server resources with other hosted sites and servers. Cue overall server rapage. Opening up one connection then pulling HTML then an image, then another, then another ... is retarded if I can just tell it to open multiple simultaneous connections. And if you think that's "killing" your server or denying service to other users then either your server is woefully misconfigured or you're just assuming it will because you haven't thought it through. Limits are in place for a reason, the maximum number of concurrent connections is limited on the server in order to ensure that the server continues to run at optimum speed and cabaility: Maintaining said connections and transferring information puts a strain on the server hardware, by removing limits, you risk the chance of overloading the server hardware and making it become unresponsive, or crashing it. So why not just upgrade? Why not have a farm of web servers for one site to better cope with the strain? Upgrades can only go so far, for a start, and server farms are generally not an option over connection limiting, because such an operation costs a lot more money to build, configure and maintain, additionally, more rack space and connectivity for the servers has to also be purchased, unless a company is lucky enough to maintain its own datacentre. When it comes to the choice of installing additional servers, attempting to upgrade the current setup, or just limiting the number of concurrent connections, the most cost effective solution will always pull through.