“Users on Apple’s web forums and our own tipsters are reporting that some new nanos aren’t being recognized in Windows iTunes 7, music being played through iTunes 7 sounds ‘scratchy’ at times, CoverFlip doesn’t always entirely download properly, and there are allegations that iTunes 7 has become, slow, bloated, and a resource hog. Some of us here at Engadget who have installed iTunes 7 haven’t noticed any bad playback or other slowdowns,” Cyrus Farivar reports for Engadget.
Full article here.
“Although Apple has yet to respond to these claims, its record in fixing iTunes problems has hitherto been very good,” Simon Aughton reports for PC Pro.
Aughton reports, “One issue that is has addressed is that of Mac users who have found that they can no longer stream music via AirPort and AirPort Express. Apple explains that the problem occurs where IPv6 networking, which is on by default, has been disabled. AirPort is restored once IPv6 is re-enabled via the Network System Preferences.”
Full article here.
Related articles:
Apple debuts iTunes 7 – September 12, 2006
no problems on my 1999 g4 or my MacBook Pro
One thing I disoovered is that if you select multiple songs and then try to drag album cover art into the “Drag album cover art” box in the lower left hand cover it doesn’t import the art like it used to do in previous versions. You have to “get info” on all of the selected songs and drag the art to the little box in THAT dialog to get it to work.
sabotaged the windows version? lol
One thing I don’t like about the iTunes version of CoverFlow (not “CoverFlip” as the article calls it) is that you can’t drag images right onto the album representation in the CoverFlow window. That was so much easier in the standalone CoverFlow app. I also wish you could import images from the original app into iTunes–would save me a lot of time with albums that iTunes doesn’t have. I believe CoverFlow originally searched for images on Amazon, which has a much wider selection.
No problems here. Streaming through Airport Express fine.
What is CoverFlip? Do they mean CoverFlow?
Does anyone else notice that watching a movie on a portable drains the battery?
It takes forever to load my library now. And it hasn’t found album covers yet for a lot of things…..
I’m hoping once it finishes the Gapless scan, it will be speedier.
7.0 takes 2 mins to launch on my pc. Before, there was no problem.
I can’t find the new Search Feature on my nano and I have the latest software. 1.2 Does anyone know anything about this?
No problems at all on 3 Macs here. Can’t speak for the Winblows version though…
I’ve noticed considerable hesitation on my Mac mini running Tiger…. It’s somewhat annoying, actually…
It’s actually a big speed improvement for me. Better look, and the cover art thing is cool. Store loads quicker too.
But I do get a weird doubling sometimes when using shared library from my other mac. I’m sure it’ll be fixed on the next update.
The problems I am experiencing are:
A change in volume during playback, and
I was playing a song today and added the cover art and the song immediately lost its good sound and became tinny, sort of mono sounding. Very strange.
I also noticed this has happened to a few other songs as well. They seem to have lost their soul.
7.0 feels pretty bloated to me. It hasn’t found a lot of artwork that I expected it to find (though that doesn’t kill me). AirTunes has been spotty, but it’s always been kind of spotty for me (I wish Apple would release an AirportExpress with a 1 or 2GB flash drive, so it can have a nice big buffer, like the iPod.
HOwever, almost all of my complaints are nullified by the fact that it does gapless playback. That’s awesome.
DO NOT INSTALL IT YET, is my advice.
It has been a sputtering dog on both my DP G4 1.25 ghz PowerMac and 1.0 ghz G4 laptop, both running 10.4.7. I have 4000 songs and some video clips in the desktop. The laptop only has about 30 songs in it.
– The interface moves VERY slow and the screens do not draw correctly. It crashed repeatedly until I un-checked the “remember view setting for each source” in the general preferences.
– CoverFlow looks great but it tends to stick as I try and scroll through the cover art.
– Adding artwork to multiple albums does not work like it did in previous iTunes. I need to do it to each song individually.
– I can no longer crop the cover art image like previous versions. I went to Amazon to get cover art, but now it has a white border around them and I cannot crop the image to get rid of it.
Expect an update from Apple very soon.
No issues here at all. The CoverFlow feature is a resource hog (I got it up to about 731MB of active memory, which is more than a lot of people have in the first place), but I have 2GB of RAM so it’s clearly a non-issue for me. All of the memory is promptly released once you switch back to a normal view.
I’m predicting an iTunes 7.1 here in the next few days. That should fix a lot of the problems.
It isn’t what it should be on current Apple hardware. Cover Artwork does not load as readily as it should. Maybe it’s because I have a large library.
Mine seems to be working fine, from Alan Jackson to Wolfmother, on my iMac Core Duo w/1.5 megs RAM. Not all the album art has loaded, but the speed seems okay. I have the last two episodes of “Weeds” to watch, as I haven’t checked the video side out yet. My two pesos worth.
feels every bit as fast as 6 did on my intel mac mini – and just a HAIR slower on my girlfriend’s pentium 4 2.4ghz laptop. for some reason, cover flow won’t work on her laptop. it just says her computer can’t do it. it might be the lousy built-in sis graphics. other than that, we had no problems upgrading her ipod or itunes.
mw is great – the improvements in the 1.2 firmware are great, to say the least =)
I experienced the “scratchy” sound problems on my MacBook Pro. I restarted the app then it worked fine. It could be the new version of Quicktime?
Also noticed lip sync drifted out of sync off on the Pirates movies I downloaded. Paused the movie and when I started playing again, it was all synced up fine. Minor glitch.
To avoid the same cover art being shown multiple times in the Cover Flow view, (happens for something like a soundtrack with multiple artists), select them all and turn Compilations on. Then only one cover will show. Nice.
Yes, expect minor update in a few days.
“One thing I disoovered is that if you select multiple songs and then try to drag album cover art into the “Drag album cover art” box in the lower left hand cover it doesn’t import the art like it used to do in previous versions. You have to “get info” on all of the selected songs and drag the art to the little box in THAT dialog to get it to work.”
Yes, I noticed the same thing.
I’ve also had other problems:
1. Scratchy music (somewhat resolved by changing EQ settings)
2. Gapless playback is gapless, but appears to change the volume or some other sound as it shifts from one song to another. Gapless, but not seamless
3. Yep, it’s a resource hog.
Hoping for a bug-fixed, streamlined download soon!
Have not noticed much negative difference on Dual G5, but Dual G4 reveals a noticeable slowdown – not horrible, but noticeable. When scrolling on the G4 the graphics get weird, and Video Trailers and Previews will not show on the G4, I can hear the audio, but no video.
I really like the looks of iTunes 7, but I have to agree that it feels bloated. Oh, and still no choices when it comes to iTunes audio meters – What’s up with that?
Oh yeah: I’ve got a new MacBook with 1GB RAM and a PowerBook G4, also w/ 1GB. Coverflow is pretty slow, and really should work better on the brand new MacBook. Dare I try on the Powerbook?
Love Coverflow – but it crashed my Powermac Quad at work today. Had to restart using the power button.
From: Nick Holla
Sep 14, 06 – 11:48 am
Does anyone else notice that watching a movie on a portable drains the battery?
No shit, retard
mdn word: per, as in per haps you should get a clue.
Simon works for MacUser, not PCPro. Confusion is down to unfortunately sharing servers with PCPro, the sister magazine.
Sometimes going to http://www.macuser.co.uk takes you to PCPro in error.
The only problem I’ve noticed is that it sometimes takes several tries before it finds the album artwork.
I will agree with the resource hog comment. Seems the processor load is now ~15% (PowerBook 1.33GHz) compared with the <5% in previous versions.
This is VERY BAD news – upgrades to iPods and the iTunes Store was suppose to be evidence of Apple’s devotion to quality hardware, software, and customer care.
NONE of that seems to be the result.
That is what happens when there is no competition. Arrogance & customer abuse. Very bad.
Mr. Peobody
I have the same problem, can’t watch the movie trailers in iTunes, just get audio. Sometimes it is the same when viewing trailers at Quicktime on Apple’s web site. Can’t watch small form video but can watch medium or large video. I think it is a problem with Quicktime, not iTunes. Never happened before this current upgrade. Also just watching a movie trailer now maxes out my CPU. Of course I am only running a 466mhz G4 with 10.3.9. Otherwise all else is fine.
I have a 2005 PowerBook G4 with 1 MB RAM & noticed the following:
1. iTunes 7 – locked up and crashed twice (1st time iTunes has ever crashed on my computer).
2. CoverFlow does not automatically get all the album covers. But its a simple process to get them from Amazon and drop them into iTunes using the new View.
3. iTunes 7 – does seem to slow down the system resources, definately noticing the spinning beach ball a lot more.
4. iTunes 7 on my windows pc at work hasn’t had any problems, although my music library is much smaller.
Finally, is there a forum for reporting these problems to Apple?
Steve should return to the stage and apologize!
Damn.
Works OK on my MacBookPro — found lots of nice album covers too.
I’m having trouble viewing movie previews. The screen does not redraw properly. Instead of an area for the preview, some text sits there and I can only hear the audio for the clip. Anyone else have this issue?
I’m on a Sawtooth G4 upgraded processor to 2 Ghz.
What happened to the CMD-2 shortcut to open the EQ window? And what’s with the “Explicit” tags, how dumb. Apple (and American society) get a clue: Children already know about stuff by the time they’re 12. It’s all the violence they shouldn’t be exposed to and desensitized by. Puritanical mind control is self-defeating because it is basically a fantasy.
I’ve read elsewhere that the “scratchy” sound is cured with the installation of Quicktime 7.1.3, which I did before installing iTunes 7, so I haven’t heard any audio problems.
Peterson….
You are such a loser drone….. better go wipe yourself just to be safe!
‘Gapless’ works well in iTunes 7.
Does anyone know if this will be available for iPods (pre-video)?
I imagine it is just s simple software upgrade to do.
I think it’s apple conspiracy to sabotage our pcs when using 7.0 so we will switch to Mac. Jobs is a crafty devil.
I have a very different problem: I put sheet music for each tune into the artwork spot, so I’m not having artwork automatically uploaded (don’t want to lose all that sheet music).
Problem: CoverFlow doesn’t show artwork for the particular track; it shows the artwork for the first track on the album the tune came from.
I wanted to use CoverFlow as a digital book of tunes, but won’t happen unless I can find a fix.
Any suggestions?
Let me rephrase that…..watching a DVD uses about half as much battery life. And its a new battery, seems to be way too demanding in my opinion.
Wow. Hadn’t realized that people were having problems.
CoverFlow is smooth and flawless for me… And I have a 3-year-old 1GHz G4 PowerMac! Mind you, I don’t run a ton of high-powered apps on it, but still, if my ancient 1GHz machine can run it with no problems, I’m stunned that more recent machines would stutter.
I have noticed the problems in downloading artwork. One album’s cover downloaded only after five tries. My guess is that Apple’s servers are swamped, and that iTunes does not display a message when a download attempt gets cut off.
I haven’t actually listened to any music, since I mostly just iTunes to listen to internet radio, buy stuff from iTMS, download podcasts, and sync my iPod. I should test music playback.
Thank God for first adopters, you lab rats make life so much better for the rest of us.
Problem: CoverFlow doesn’t show artwork for the particular track; it shows the artwork for the first track on the album the tune came from.
More accurately, it display the artwork for the first track on the album that has art. I found out the hard way that iTunes will sometimes download the wrong art. You have to delete the art on all tracks on the album before the artwork will disappear from the view.
As for using CoverFlow to display art for each track? Edit the MP3 tags so that each track is it’s own album. Only way I can see to do it, because CoverFlow displays albums.
Once the Gapless scan finishes (took a bit with 6,000+ songs). Nice and crisp on a last gen G4 iBook.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
No problems for me so far, except that the “near DVD quality” movies aren’t even as good as an old VHS tape.
LordRobin:
What exactly does it mean to “Edit the MP3 tags so that each track is its own album”?
How about the pref, “Keep ITunes Music folder organized” under “advanced”? Would unclicking that do as you sugest?
Thank You!
dmv: “Keep iTunes Music folder organized” copies your music files into hierarchical directories in your Music folder, renaming the new copies for ease in identifying them. It doesn’t change the MP3 tags.
If you Get Info on a track in iTunes, you can see the MP3 tags as the information for Title, Album, Track number, and so forth. iTunes groups every track with the same “Album” tag under that Album. If you were to change the “Album” tag for each track to a unique value, iTunes would consider each track to be an album all by itself. This in turn would cause CoverFlow to display art for each “one-track album”.
That clearer?
Since when has a new version of iTunes been released there haven’t been problems on either side? This will happen! Get over it! It’s now in the wild on millions of computers, much more than Apple could possibly test in a lifetime. And as usual, these problems are happening to some people but NOT all….
MacMini 1.42 GHz, 1 GB RAM
12,000+ songs
Library now takes 10-15 seconds to load once iTunes opens. Scrolling up and down through the library
is also slower than with the previous version.
CoverFlow is interesting, but as I was flipping through to see what cover art had been loaded, it
did cause a couple of brief hiccups between the tracks that were playing.
Cover art – I added in some myself using the Get Info method, but 1 cover had a problem. The cover was 4th or 5th in the upcoming list and I noticed the cover would load and unload in the back ground continuously. I also noticed that loading the cover art led to the track playing to stop about 5% of the time.
iTunes found about 1600 covers to load, but after a several hours it is only about a thrid of the way through.
I suspect some of the sluggishness is related to the still incomplete job of downloading and assigning cover art. However, the size of the library may also be part of the problem right now, though the previous version had no problems with it.
Overall, I like the changes. Hopefully the sluggishness and glitches will clear up once the cover art downloading/assigning are done or at least after the first update.
The “Explicit” tags are part of Apple’s parental controls. You can block your kids from listening to explicit songs purchased from iTunes – you can also restrict TV and movie ratings as you see fit.
I have not had a single problem with iTunes 7.0 on my MacBook Pro. I notice that it uses 220MB of active RAM when I’m using the new graphical cover art flipping mode, and that it’s slightly choppy for the first couple of seconds while it loads the cover art into RAM.
No more command-1 or command-2 shortcuts, but whatever. You could probably edit that in the GUI editor if you really wanted to.
Mac Mini PPC
iTunes 7.Slow
– Very Slow loading
– CoverFlow doesn’t work at all (the original CF app did)
– Can’t unmount my nano
I do like the new iPod interface though.
Please Apple fix quick!
I loaded it on my pc and it seems to run fine. I did note that artwork for other than AAC files did not show. So mp3 versions of song that I have loaded up show no artwork. i think if I load the AAC version it may find them.
Super cool effect vs flipping thru your record albums to find a song. Takes me back to vinal (sp) records.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
I wonder if iTunes 7 got pushed a little to be able to derail Windows Zune efforts.????
N.
Talk elsewhere around Apple forums includes the possibility of Apple temporarily suspending music store until these problems have been cleared up.
MDN: have you seen or heard this?
I haven’t had a problem besides fullscreen videos or CoverFlow at a certain size are not showing up right, if at all. Other than that, it feels faster to me. Only bounced once and it was running on my mini, and my sister’s G3 is running smoothly too.
I think we all just need to get more used to they way things work now in iTunes. Wtf is with the buttons/scrollbars change though? That’s the only thing that bothers me. I’m even getting past the whole blue icon thing.
I have a very fast Cable ISP Mr Jobs, and the 2 movies I have bought loaded slower than frozen molasses. It wasn’t at my end, as I had other apps on the net that had bandwidth to burn. One I loaded late the other night and the 2nd earlier today– neither what you would call peak load time for iTMS. Time to call Akami and buy more capacity.
I was able to install iTunes 7 with no problems on my iMac G5/17″ 1.25 GB RAM, it did the gapless scan, and started downloading album covers and everything worked fine; UNTIL I restarted my iMac (cause I moved it from one place to another) and when I relaunch iTunes 7 it won’t load and gives me this error message:
<bold>The iTunes application could not be opened. There is not enough memory available.</bold>
I deleted the prefs, repaired permissions… everything I could think of, to no avail.
Anyone else have this problem? Any help would be greatly appreciated; I realize now how addicted I am to iTunes and I’m seriously jonesing now, a day later with no solution in sight…
MDN Magic Word: period
As in, is iTunes having its period?
No problems for me on Windows at work.
Did anyone notice that movie trailers are downloaded now rather than streamed?
I’m running a 2.0GHz Macbook Pro with 1Gig RAM and coverflow is very very slow to load all the artwork. I loved the new format for iPod syncing, but I found this morning at the gym that for some strange reason it hasn’t transferred some of my music (the music I wanted!) I can’t find any reason for this and its really really annoying.
It pinned my dock to the left its on the bottom but instead of being in the middle its on the far left.!!! URg!
I downlaoded it yesterday on my computer and iTines found bvery little comver art. I downladed it this afternoon on a friends computer and it was busy dowlading covers. I came home and hit download cover art and now it is busy downlaoding some 900 covers. Apple must not have had database finished yesterday. It is pretty slow going though.
the store has been dowlading cover art for over a half hour. And I have a pretty fast dsl connection Cover flow is really wonderful. What a great way to search. I had forgotten how much I looked for music that way.
I have iTunes7 on both macs (PPC and Intel) and pcs, there are some issues.
1) Video stutters on the pc (video podcasts)
2) mysterious waits.
3) stops responding sometimes.
4) Slow performance.
5) had to force quit a few times on the mac (PPC and Intel)
Hope they get fixed soon.
No slowdown on my old G4s or my G5.
Does anyone know why you can’t burn an album directly from the album view? Seems like that would be a great feature.
Also, there should be some default album covers for cases where a song sits in the “Unknown Album” Folder.
I had to re-format my hard drive recently because of some issues. But, when the updates recommended going to iTunes 7.
(Since I purchased my computer Summer of last year, my computer came with iTunes 4.)
Well, I will be stuck at iTunes 4 until they fix version 7! Cuz that is one bloated, buggy POS and it’s not worth being on my computer!
Peterson: “Steve should return to the stage and apologize!
Damn.”
Dude, I totally agree… but, we all know there is a fat chance of that.
Why in the heck did Apple buy CoverFlow in the first place? It was better as a stand-alone product.
That darn Zune Marketplace is looking better and better….
:~)
my ipod can’t connect to itunes cause i can’t restore it, and itunes 7 is updater together..now my ipod is useless!
o yea! and sometimes i play my songs, dere is scratchy sounds!
My biggest gripe with 7.0 is that it took away my ability to create mix albums. Which is to say, a song that I bought from the iTunes store and relabeled as part of a mix album no longer recognizes the new track # I have assigned it. Sounds minor, but it is pretty annoying as I have assembled a lot of “Best of” compilations. Is there a fix for this?
i was bold (aka stupid) enough to upgrade now to iTunes 7.0.1 and experience now glitches for every 4-5 seconds of a song, which even freezes the rest of what’s running, e.g. browser.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”hmmm” style=”border:0;” />
switched off the CoverFlow, disabled volume adjustment, started praying and lit some candles… without success… this is really frustrating. i had hoped that with 7.0.1 the problems would have gone… anyone else having this joy with freezing of the system for a couple of secs?
my itunes is glitching too marty. whenever a song is playing it cuts out momentarily which is frustrating. i have no clue how to fix it. i downloaded 7.0.1 last night and i wish i never did, dang it.
The new Itunes is the worst thing that apple has ever made.
I have never had any problems with my mac until I downloaded it. As soon as I open it the gapless playback crashes and I have to force restart my comp. So I cant even use Itunes anymore.
I hope this isnt a start of a downward trend for apple