I was happy to see Steve return on the Apple keynote of 9 September, because boy does Apple need somebody with clear vision. The introductions on the new iPod line are all over the place. Let me tell you why I think Steve has not been running the operation for the past few months: * **Ringtones.** The price of a …

What I loved about iTunes is the three pane "Genre-Artist-Album" on top of my music list. It allowed me to quickly go through my music and find that great Anouk album I was looking for. After installing iTunes 9, it was gone. And I was sad. But I found a way to get it back. Look at this screenshot (sorry, …

A lot of companies like to sell you applications to put DVD's on your iPhone. Usually these apps are just wrappers around existing tools, and are pretty expensive if you consider you can do it for free. And you don't need to be a computer wizard either! The steps are simple: 1. Use …

I recently found an old harddisk which used to be in one of my old PC's. I discovered some FLAC files on there, which were rips of old CD's I used to have. iTunes is not too happy with importing them into my library, and the original CD's are in a box in a deep dark corner of my garage. I searched for a converter and …

Regular readers know that I've been ranting about the way the music and movie industry are selling us crippled content, which actually feels like punishing you for honestly buying your digital content. Coincidentally, a month after that rant, Steve wrote a mail to the music industry in which he stated that DRM clearly …

As I explained earlier, I think it is really important to go beyond the specs. It's really important to put care and attention in your product. The new version of iTunes has a great (little) example of what I mean. I use Itunes to play music through both the computer speakers and a stereo in the livingroom, connected …

I know you've been playing with your ultra-cool iPhones, but did you realize that it only is 6 years ago that Apple showed is the first iPod? It's amazing how fast technology advances nowadays. Today I read that 128GB flashdrives are not far away, so how about an 128GB iPhone, or even a MacBook with a solid state disk? …

Many years ago, I bought an iBead Jens of Sweden MP-100. At the time I was a Windows/Linux user and everything was fine. Now that I'm a Mac user, syncing tracks to my trusty USB mp3 player is a bit harder. I had to copy tracks by hand, and when two tracks had the same title the copy would fail. THis was all very …

Today I found an article about Norway suing Apple because music bought in the iTunes store could not be played on a non-iPod music player. If Apple looses this legal attack, it would result in an even stranger digital rights management situation than we already have. First, let me tell you why I think the whole legal …

Today I discovered Tangerine, a BPM (Beats Per Minute) analyzer for use with iTunes on a mac. I downloaded it, and it works as advertised. It scans your iTunes music library, and analyzes the BPM (and intensity of the pattern) of each track. It does this in the background, and on my Mac mini Core duo I can continue wih …