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iTunes will never work well

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Re: iTunes will never work well

#201

Post by dmytrish »

jrcii wrote: post #56
mikeroher wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's awesome. Do you have any others??

Sure. There are a lot of streams available on shoutcast.com, just click the download icon and copy the URL, some stations list their stream URL on the site, just google the call letters + "m3u" or "pls" etc, then there is this site which is the best directory I've found so far radioroku.com. If you use iOS there's also a great app for playing these streams called fstream. Here is my list: alias wor='/Applications/VLC…

Thanks for a great list of streams!

I did a similar thing (using `mplayer` though) for me, wrapping it in a script that takes shortcuts for stream names:

https://gist.github.com/EarlGray/d64514459892650881353a465c4...

Re: iTunes will never work well

#202

Post by reitanqild »

lake99 wrote: post #111
reitanqild wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So tell me how am I supposed to find a route between x and y from my phone without being on x or y first? It is doable, but how is it supposed to be done? (For context: IIRC there used to be a shortcut to navigation for that feature. And yes I think ux designers mindlessly copying each others or Apple are at least partially to blame.(

Hit the directions button. You see two text fields, with the first one already filled out as "Your location". Change that. Enter the destination next. This was on Android. Is your UX any different?

There is no "directions" button that I can see in Google Maps on my Android.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#203

Post by reitanqild »

fpgeek wrote: post #107
reitanqild wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So tell me how am I supposed to find a route between x and y from my phone without being on x or y first? It is doable, but how is it supposed to be done? (For context: IIRC there used to be a shortcut to navigation for that feature. And yes I think ux designers mindlessly copying each others or Apple are at least partially to blame.(

1. Search for x (or y). 2. Ask for directions 3. Replace your location with y (or x). 4. Reverse start and end if necessary. Personally I think is flow is better than directly entering start and end for two reasons: - The common case (go from where I am to somewhere else) is faster. - I don't have to think about how to enter "my location", which isn't obvious (over the years I've seen - typing "my location", searchin…

> - The common case (go from where I am to somewhere else) is faster.

> - I don't have to think about how to enter "my location"

IIRC at some point this where solved rather nicely by offering you start location pre-filled with your current address.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#204

Post by majewsky »

labster wrote: post #164
knodi123 wrote: post #58

The single worst thing about itunes, in my opinion, is the way it handles duplicate songs. It has a "detect duplicates" feature, but all that does is show a list of groups of songs that it thinks are duplicates, and it has false positives! But the one thing it can't do, is detect when you've added multiple copies of the exact same file in the same directory . My music collection needs to by synced across computers, a…

fdupes is your friend in cases like these — it finds duplicate files fast. As usual, the CLI tools are much better at solving problems than a terrible GUI like iTunes.

You don't even need a separate tool for that:

  find -type f -name \*.mp3 -exec md5sum {} + \
    | uniq -dDw 32

Re: iTunes will never work well

#205

Post by majewsky »

flukus wrote: post #42
mrsteveman1 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never truly understood how the people who gave us Safari and OS X gave us iTunes - they couldn't be more different. They're almost certainly from completely separate teams, I've always heard that Apple operates like a bunch of disconnected groups that rarely ever interact with each other, perhaps that has changed recently. But regardless of the details the end result is very often as you describe, and it's odd…

> They're almost certainly from completely separate teams, I've always heard that Apple operates like a bunch of disconnected groups that rarely ever interact with each other, perhaps that has changed recently. Every company of non-trivial size operates like that.

A company is usually a tree-like structure, where the branches are connected by the root node. Too bad that this particular company's root node was garbage-collected in 2011 while there were still live references to it.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#206

Post by kccqzy »

dx034 wrote: post #147
eklavya wrote: post #108

I don't know about the UI or anything but it's 2016 and iTunes still makes me re-download any firmware from start in case of any network issue. So if you are downloading a 2.5 gigs file and that screws up even once in that whole download at any place, iTunes says fuck you. This becomes a problem when they screw up iOS 10 update and brick your iPhone and the only way to fix it is restoring from iTunes and then iTunes…

Not only that, when I had to re-download the firmware due to the failed iOS10 update, even pausing the download caused it to restart..

And interesting if it's downloading some purchased content from the iTunes Store, this doesn't happen. Also, those downloads don't throw a modal dialog when it's trying to "contact the server". It just seems like downloading firmware doesn't reuse existing code for downloading content.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#207

Post by kccqzy »

AJRF wrote: post #134

The failure of iTunes is intrinsically linked to the unsuitability of WebObjects as a modern application framework. iTunes isn’t bad because Apple is inept, far from it, but to make it fine at this point would require a rewrite and I assume at Apple there is a tradeoff between “Is this crappy to use” and “Well, does it at least work?”, with the latter being a stronger motivator (or in this case, demotivator) of chang…

WebObjects is a server side technology. iTunes doesn't directly use it.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#209

Post by csydas »

striking wrote: post #23
jheriko wrote: post #11

i don't understand how apple have a reputation for good ui... all of their stuff is terrible. the main problem: zero discoverablity - i need to google how to do things, then get some snotty fanboy answer about how easy and obvious it is, but there is literally no way to infer the functionality from the design. they do love to steal context too... and interrupt your flow... ... i could go on and on, but having zero-di…

Their reputation stemmed from the days where everything was discoverable. Want to delete a file? There's a trash can glued to your dock. Need to perform a function but don't know the name? Look it up in the Help menu's search box. Now, though, they've done the Windows 8 thing of overloading gestures and hiding behaviors. Want to see your notifications? Two-finger swipe to the left, starting from the edge of the touch…

I take some issue with this because you're describing one method to resolve a task when there are many.

You can also see notifications by just clicking on the omnipresent icon in the Finder Bar, or act on the notifications themselves by clicking them as they appear.

Like, I agree that the versatility of the trackpads is a blessing and a curse - beyond a few common ones, most gestures are unintuitive and it's probably why not too many applications take use of them on non-mobile devices. But the issue isn't with Apple having hidden behaviors here, it's that one method is less visible than others which are very accessible. The issue with the Windows 8 charms was that all means of accessing them were obfuscated. You had to move to a certain corner or swipe from a certain way on trackpads that often had poor sensitivity (or conversely, were overly sensitive) and the behavior was erratic and unpredictable.

It's fine to dislike aesthetics, but that doesn't make it unusable. In the case of the text buttons, I can't think of an instance off the top of my head where the text wasn't clearly marked as button with either a drop down arrow or ... or some other item.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#210

Post by majewsky »

TD-Linux wrote: post #93

Do you still have to use iTunes to transfer music to iPhones? Can't you just copy files over and use some other playback app on the iPhone? The author sounds makes it sound like they are "forced" to use iTunes. (disclaimer: the newest Apple product I own was manufactured in 1983)

> Do you still have to use iTunes to transfer music to iPhones?

Don't use an iPhone myself, but if I did, I would try if KDE Connect on iOS supports file syncing over Wifi like it does on Android.

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