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Check this out-Email from MusicMatch
- Thread starter Frisco
- Start date
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break http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=break
1. To destroy the completeness of (a group of related items) Or in this case a group of provided services
2. To vary or disrupt the uniformity or continuity of
I'd say by installing iTunes it has "destroy the completeness" of Music Match or if nothing else it has disrupted the provided service of Music Match. Apple doesn't have some automatic right to do whatever it wants on your computer. If the next version of MS Media Player integrated with the iPod and did the same thing iTunes is doing Mac users would be raising holy ****
I'm one who prefers MusicMatch. While iTunes has a nice, consistent design, it's not a very feature-rich app. iTunes doesn't automatically tag my MP3's like MusicMatch's super-tagging does. I often rip CDs on my laptop when I'm not connected to the Internet. When I get back online, I can just use MusicMatch's super-tagging to automatically go look up the tagging information and fix up everything in my library. iTunes doesn't do that and I miss that feature. Also, iTunes' radio stations are pretty poor in my opinion. MusicMatch's artist-on-demand radio is so much better.
Also, I don't like the idea that I have to create a new playlist every time I want to play some songs while browsing the library. In iTunes, if I start playing something in the library and then do a search, the search results can actually affect what gets played next. This is my biggest frustration with iTunes. Why don't they offer a separate playlist window? I realize that you can double-click on a playlist name to fire another window off, but then it looks like you have two versions of iTunes running and it's confusing what's what and it takes up too much screen real estate.
In addition, I hate that three-pane Browse view that iTunes uses to display Genre, Artist, and Album. I like seeing the songs under each artist or album like MusicMatch displays them.
I realize that some people seem to like iTunes, but I'm not a big fan. The PC is all about choice (well, if the DOJ can keep MS in line), and it would be great if the PC offered a number of different programs to interact with the iPod. If Apple wants this to be the most popular player out there, it's a mistake to offer only one app to support it. In software, one size does not fit all. I wish Apple would learn that lesson.
Why is this a problem???
Why is this a problem???
Think about the facts and you should realise Apple is doing so to protect it's customers.
1]. MusicMatch does NOT support AAC at the moment.
2]. if people buy iPod and are a PC user, unless very new they would of had to install MM as it's syncing / jukebox program.
3]. And if after the person installs iTunes (knowing it's from the maker of iPod), and they ended up buying from MM (say, by mistake) and realise iPod don't support WMA - and looking from another perspective (see point 1].), who do they blame?!!
4]. Apple is making sure the end user would purchase from iTMS (which is the whole intent of iPod) and what ever he or she purchase is playable on iPod.
And MM is trying to reach it's base and trying to persuade them to purchase from MM - which is uncompetitive gesture if you ask me considering they don't make iPod and don't support the format iPod supports.
Why is this a problem???
Think about the facts and you should realise Apple is doing so to protect it's customers.
1]. MusicMatch does NOT support AAC at the moment.
2]. if people buy iPod and are a PC user, unless very new they would of had to install MM as it's syncing / jukebox program.
3]. And if after the person installs iTunes (knowing it's from the maker of iPod), and they ended up buying from MM (say, by mistake) and realise iPod don't support WMA - and looking from another perspective (see point 1].), who do they blame?!!
4]. Apple is making sure the end user would purchase from iTMS (which is the whole intent of iPod) and what ever he or she purchase is playable on iPod.
And MM is trying to reach it's base and trying to persuade them to purchase from MM - which is uncompetitive gesture if you ask me considering they don't make iPod and don't support the format iPod supports.
Ummm, we're all forgetting the major point here. The iPod Plugin for MM is an APPLE program. They wrote it. They bundle it with MM. It's not a part of the MM program. MM still works fine, albeit very crappy, as it did before. If Apple removes the iPod plugin's functionality from Music Match it is within their rights though they should offer a solution or a disclaimer saying that iTunes will not be able to sync an iPod while MM is set up for it because it would be total chaos for both programs to acces an iPod at the same time. Still, being a former MM, then ephpod, now mac iTunes user I can say that no one in their right mind besides a newbie computer user would have the desire to even keep Music Match on their system. I mean just try to create playlists and rearrange songs in them. I don't even think it had drag capabilities in playlists so you had to go through tons of BS to rearrange a playlist if you didn't drop the songs in it in the right order. Actually I think you could rearrange them but it kept their "track numbers" with them so the list was still, in effect, the same. No one would use MM over iTunes if they fully understood both programs. MM is one of those windows programs that makes ignorant mac users (don't read mac users in general) believe that even XP sucks...
Except, the provided service of Music Match is Music Match itself not the iPod plugin which is provided by apple. Music Match still works, other than it's other flaws.
I don't know how iTunes isn't feature rich...also you could alternatively put all your CDs in while it's online and then rip them whenever you want. Personally I'm too much of an audiophile to let any program name anything for me so I really hate that about MM. I guess I must be the only person who ever manually enters CD info instead of bothering to go online to get it (unless it's for more than a few CDs). With MM, doing that doesn't tell it hey, this is the correct CD info and when you go online it comes up with however many CDs you've entered in manually over your lifetime and takes forever to look up the info. And it's not like the internet has perfect info so you have to go back and make sure it's correct. Which leads me to another pain in the ass MM un-feature. It handles about as many genres as ID3v1 and I do like music from other genres that fall into other categories that ID3v1 doesn't have like music in other languages and stuff like alternative. If you classify half of the music you listen to as alternative you're screwed and have to manually edit it. Also I don't remember whether or not MM does batch processing of ID3s. I don't think it did and frankly didn't care as I used WinAmp for everything even MP3 tagging by hand until I found Dr. Tag.
I might as well just censor myself. Music Match has one of the crappiest, most useless interfaces I have ever seen, especially it's iPod view. You can't get any info on Multiple copies of songs when you manually add them to your iPod. It doesn't do anything about copies. It's terrible, but hey, it's what Apple had to work with and they did a cut up job with it. You'd have to call it cut up when Apple had to sew the pieces of Music Match together to work with such an instrument of precision like the iPod.
Sorry for the non-brevity of my monologue/rant. I just friggin' HATE Music Match. It brings the quality of windows software down, WAY DOWN.
I think you're missing the point. I don't care if it's within Apple's right or not to do this. And, who cares what anyone thinks about MM? That has nothing to do with the issue here. The issue and question here is: why is Apple so adamant about there being only one *official* software program available on the PC that can sync with the iPod?
They should be taking the opposite approach... providing an iPod SDK free of charge to anyone willing to write software for it. There should be iPod plugins for WMP, Real, Winamp, as well as MusicMatch or whoever else.
If the point of the music store and iTunes is just to sell more iPods, then I really don't see why Apple feels they need to be the only Windows app that supports it, given that they certainly aren't making any money off of iTunes and very little off of the music store.
Don't get me wrong... I like Apple... but I just keep seeing them making the same mistakes over and over. Stop shutting people out and open up the iPod ecosystem instead.
No, you missed the point again. If they release an SDK people building programs for iPods will logically end up inadvertently messing a few up. When that happens who do you think they're going to call up to fix their broken iPods? Not only would it be cost-prohibitive for Apple to go doing repairs on iPods that people have screwed up by developing for them but also trying to figure out what people did to them in the first place. Also, it's perfectly within Apple's rights to not release an SDK for their own hardware. Keep in mind I'm Apple-Neutral....I complain about them and I love them. And I was just demonstrating how crappy an app MM is with my rant.
The superior tagging is what I like about MusicMatch, too.
This isn't a whole lot differnt from MusicMatch. You can't play songs in it unless they're on a playlist, whether saved or not. There's no way to play your entire library in MMJB unless you create a playlist with every track in it. And I can't play just the trcaks from a given artist, or album, or genre without making a playlist of them first.
All I have to do in iTunes is click on the desired genre/artist/album (or combination) and the library narrows down to just those tracks.
Assuming you're not playing an actual playlist...
A separate playlist view would be handy when building a new playlist.
My biggest frustration with MMJB is the playlist window gives you squat information! It doesn't tell you how long a track is, or the entire playlist. Oh, wait. I can click on and playlist frame and find out how many tracks there are on playlist. If I want to set up a playlist to burn to CD I have to just pick 17-19 tracks and then send them to BurnerPlus to see if they fit. It's stupid.
That's the best part about iTunes! It's playlist/library view is easier to jump to track you want with, and it's column view is as sortable as a database!
MusicMatch has 18 different sets of metadata to use for column views, but you can only display 7 differnt columns at a time. iTunes has 20 metadata sets and you can display all of them at once. Meaning you can sort songs any way possible in iTunes without changing prefs.
...and you can show/hide a column by simply deselecting it with a right-click command. MMJB only lets you change the column's data type.
The scolling artist/album list (even when collapsed) is just cumbersome for large collections. Plus it means extra mouse clicks to get tracks onto the playlist.
You didn't mention MMJB's cumbersome dialog box, one-file-at-a-time, searching I notice.
It's about controlling the whole experience, the same reason the Mac is a proprietary hardware platform for the OS. Control limits choice, but helps insure quality.
Because then tech support would have to play the finger pointing game with anyone who has iPod problems with a third party syncer.
Because music store songs are in AAC and MMJB doesn't support it perhaps?
The music store is less a money making venture than a brand identity enhancer. It's also about exposing people to the Mac way of doing things.
Since the job of the iPod syncing software is to match the iPod's contents to the library's, if I sync an iPod in MMJB that has AAC songs on it the AAC songs would get deleted. Plus it's also an issue of support for Apple, why spend development money to stay current with MMJB's changes when you have you own in-house soultion you'd rather have people use.
MusicMatch could write their own iPod plugin if they wished, ya know. iTunes isn't the only Mac MP3 player that can interface with an iPod, Audion can too.
No, you're not getting it.
First of all he means the Deferred CD Lookup feature, not SuperTagging.
But anyway, what he does is rip all of his CD's, with no tracknames on them, to his library. So they all say "track 1", "track 2", ect.
The next time he launches MMJB while connected to the net MMJB goes and retrieves the song information for all the CD's at once, using the traits gracenote uses for identifying discs (MMJB saved them while he was ripping the discs). So he can rip all his tracks, connect to the net ONCE, and label everything.
To retrieve the tracknames in iTunes he'd have to be connected to the net on each disc insertion before he started ripping.
As a side note, I notice the same guy wrote both posts I replied to. He hates iTunes, and then complains about Apple wanting to control iPod interfacing. That given the fact he's new spells TROLL to me. Otherwise, why doesn't he just delete iTunes and restore the MMJB syncing with the instructions at the start of this. No need to complain if you want nothing to do with iTunes anyway after all.
You can play your entire library in MusicMatch by right-clicking in the library, and selecting "Play My Library." It will randomly play tracks from your library. I won't argue with you on that point though... MusicMatch should have a way to easily play selected tracks from the library without having to add them to the playlist window.
As far as the other point, perhaps I didn't explain the problem well enough. The problem I have with iTunes is that if you play from the library, the current context of what you're playing in your library is easily lost.
Yes... all you do is click on the desired genre/artist/album to narrow the selection down. But if you start playing those search results (without first copying them into a playlist), you will most likely screw up that list if you do any other browsing or searching in the library.
I just wish there was a way that iTunes automatically persisted that list without me having to physically create a playlist (READ: hit the "+" button, type in a name, select the tracks in the library -- which by the way sometimes hangs the iTunes UI if you select more than just a few tracks, and then move everything over to that playlist node), and then having to delete it when I'm done.
And while I'm nitpicking ;-) I hate how iTunes uses that single tiny little speaker graphic to denote the song that's playing (i.e., there is no special highlight on the song that's playing). It's so hard to pick up that little speaker on a big screen when you're looking for the song that's playing in the library.
Maybe it's just me... but with iTunes, I often wonder what song is playing in the library and what song will play next. Notice that if you're playing a song in a playlist, and you happen to browse to that song in the library, it doesn't show you that that song is playing.
I can see what Apple is trying to do... to allow you to treat your library as a playlist. But a library is also for browsing, searching, and filtering, and things get confusing when you try to play from your library (or from your search or filter results in the library) and then do somehthing else in the library. If I'm doing anything in my library while playing from the library, most often I find that the music just stops and it's frustrating to get back to the song that had just ended and play the next one.
And, if we're going to talk about missing features in the library column headers, how come Apple didn't use a standard Windows list view control for their library? If you place the mouse cursor between the column headings (so you get the little resize cursor), clicking the mouse should cause the column widths to autosize to the widest entry in that column. iTunes doesn't do this. Also, the keyboard interface for multiple selection isn't implemented properly. So, iTunes isn't perfect either.
And yes, MusicMatch definitely needs a better search.
What I do is insert all the disk I want to rip while I'm online and eject them stright after I get the track names online - iTune remembers the disk.
Then at a later date - when I'm not online, I can just re-insert the disks and rip away.
I find the above method works great if you are on a dial-up and you can't be online while iTunes rip your music
I'll report tomorrow...
I persuaded two of my friends just yesterday to download and install iTunes on their PC's alongside MusicMatch just to compare them. I didn't know iTunes screwed the connectivity between the iPod and MM, though. I guess I'll hear about it today, so I'll report about their thoughts tomorrow. And yes, both these PC-using friends have iPods, while I don't have one; darn!
I persuaded two of my friends just yesterday to download and install iTunes on their PC's alongside MusicMatch just to compare them. I didn't know iTunes screwed the connectivity between the iPod and MM, though. I guess I'll hear about it today, so I'll report about their thoughts tomorrow. And yes, both these PC-using friends have iPods, while I don't have one; darn!
Okay... I don't *HATE* iTunes. I've just been using other jukeboxes/players (MusicMatch, Winamp, and Siren Jukebox) for years and I guess I'm used to those interfaces. Like I said, I can see that some people really like iTunes. And that's a "good thing." It's all about choice and personal preference. iTunes just doesn't work the way I'm used to. (Nothing personal!)
Getting back to the original point... I really like my iPod and I'm a bit upset in that it seems that Apple wants me to use iTunes instead of the player of my choice. If Apple made an SDK available to whoever wanted to program for it, we'd probably see a lot of innovative software appear that supported the iPod (and maybe my favorite program would get even better at supporting it).
Music Match like iTunes encompasses a number of services including audio playback, music downloads, and external audio device support. Attached is the license agreement for the pd_AppleiPod_1s.mmz plug-in. I read over the Apple agreement. Unless I'm blind, in the case of legal mumbo-jumbo I could be, I'm not seeing any rights for apple to change, alter, or manipulate the software after then fact.
The closest thing you see is
And arguing that even that gives apple the right to tweak the plug-in is stretching it.
Actually we really dont have any clues as to how far this integrates with MM, what internal agreements Apple and MM have. So all of this is speculation. But on the surface its smells like something Microsoft would pull.
PS- I love half way down the lic agreement
LOL Im not sure what scares me most. That they HAD to include that or that someone actually thought up such a phrase to be included.
Re: Re: Check this out-Email from MusicMatch (discouraging iTunes)
I don't know, is it legal for apple to claim that OS X.3 is the world's "most advanced operating system"?
I love and use OSX and its GUI, but it is still outclassed at the OS level by linux. Here's hoping it catches up.
As far as advertising claims go, I think that as long as consumers can't prove harm because of it, they can spout whatever nonsense they want.
I don't know, is it legal for apple to claim that OS X.3 is the world's "most advanced operating system"?
I love and use OSX and its GUI, but it is still outclassed at the OS level by linux. Here's hoping it catches up.
As far as advertising claims go, I think that as long as consumers can't prove harm because of it, they can spout whatever nonsense they want.
I'll add my two cents in then. First, I'm not a big playlist person - I generally have my music play just high-bitrate, random. Same with the iPod - so just about anything can sync files.
On a Windows PC, I actually prefer WMP as my "playing" jukebox software. Minimizes nicely to a control pod in the taskbar, doesn't look too bad (after adding window borders, etc), and works very well for my purposes. CD ripping is crap, though - for that I tend to use MM.
When I rip CDs with MM, it tags the files the same way that pretty much every piece of audio software I've seen likes to see them. Album art is consistent, etc. When I'm playing these files in WMP (or anything else), it finds the artist, albums, etc very consistently.
I installed iTunes and ripped a few CDs. Nice enough interface, a little annoying that it (by default) puts the music into its own directory, but that got fixed pretty quickly. Still mucks up the "My Music" folder rather than storing its own files into "Application Settings", but hey, there are many reasons why its not a well behaved Windows app. When tagged, these tracks have a high failure rate in other apps. They can read the tags alright, but the album information, etc, is often not retrivable from other databases. Kind of annoying. So, back to ripping in MM.
Add to this the fact that the interface continues to bug me on Windows (as a software designer, I tend to abhore programs that don't follow well-defined standards, just as the Mac crowd used to). Sadly, most MP3 players don't follow existing GUI standards, but iTunes is one of the worst (even changing window resizing). Its as annoying on an XP box as it would be if MSFT had written Office X to use the Windows standards on a Mac.
As for syncing, what would be ideal (for me) on a Windows box is a little daemon that just synced the "My Music" directory. Silently. After all, that is a well-followed Windows standard place for your music (unless ripping through iTunes defaults) that every other piece of software respects. And it fits the "data-centric" Windows approach better - use whatever program you wish to create or access the files, and you should be fine, as long as the file structure itself is respected. This is the opposite of the way that the Mac is moving to - and there are good and bad parts about both approaches, they're just different.
Just my two cents.
-Richard
iTunes control...
Duhhh.... Although Apple may want to post a warning that iTunes will be the default iPod sync (to avoid being accused of a Microsoftism), if there is not a single sync to your iPod, isn't the sync function pointless? MusicMatch still functions, just not as the sync.
If MusicMatch wants to regain their edge: write better software. Unlike Microsoft, Apple's (usual) credo is to "build a better mousetrap" (yes, they've done a couple of corporate stongarm tactics before too, but less).
Duhhh.... Although Apple may want to post a warning that iTunes will be the default iPod sync (to avoid being accused of a Microsoftism), if there is not a single sync to your iPod, isn't the sync function pointless? MusicMatch still functions, just not as the sync.
If MusicMatch wants to regain their edge: write better software. Unlike Microsoft, Apple's (usual) credo is to "build a better mousetrap" (yes, they've done a couple of corporate stongarm tactics before too, but less).
Re: iTunes control...
Work with me on this one. Assume, for a minute, that there are people who aren't big fans of iTunes and who don't use something other than MM to sync. See if you can follow this flow:
- User buys iPod, installs MM, likes his Apple experience so far.
- User sees iTunes ad, and downloads it to try it out.
- User doesn't like it, and closes it.
- A day goes by.
- User fires up MM, just like he always has, and trys to sync his iPod.
- User gets annoyed at the fact that his "iPod has broken"
- User finds out that Apple removed bits of a previously working solution, and he has to jump through hoops to get back to where he was before.
[/list=1]How do you thing that Mr. User feels about Apple now? More to the point, how likely is he to trust Apple software in the future? Is he going to check out "iPhoto for Windows" if it might remove part of the (lesser, but simple and fast) integrated software that came with his copy of XP? How does he know that it wouldn't?
And its not like Windows (at least XP) doesn't already have a mechanism for multiple programs to share devices - for example, when you plug in a digital camera for the first time, you get a list of programs that have registered that they're interested in digital cameras (including native XP programs). You pick which one, if any, you want to autolaunch on that piece of hardware and you can change it whenever you want to. That sort of user-level choice is expected these days, at least for well-behaved software (but apparently the best Windows program written doesn't have to follow the rules if it doesn't want to, or has a hard time competing without breaking them).
-Richard
Hehe I think it's funny.
A good friend of mine that's an avid PC user just tried iTunes per my recommendation. He's was a huge musicmatch fan, but he and his friends really like iTunes..
I've used musicmatch. Can't imagine why someone would choose it over iTunes, but we all have are preferences.
A good friend of mine that's an avid PC user just tried iTunes per my recommendation. He's was a huge musicmatch fan, but he and his friends really like iTunes..
I've used musicmatch. Can't imagine why someone would choose it over iTunes, but we all have are preferences.
I get it, and I agree it's aggressive.
But I think this is a unique situation... and not quite the same as "taken over by a completely different product".
Apple is taking over software that they provided to the end user.
If you have an iPod + MusicMatch... Apple gave both of those to you. Is Apple in their rights to upgrade MusicMatch to iTunes? I personally think so - but barely.
If someone goes out and buys an iPod from the store, they get iTunes. MusicMatch is not an option. Just like if I go buy a Palm, Palm Desktop 2.0 is no longer an option.
iPod + MusicMatch is simply no longer an officially supporting config by Apple.
arn