iTunes 4 question

[Nipsy]

Okay, for those of you who are involved ADC members, or who spend countless hours on 'software preview' networks, and have obtained iTunes 4, could you check something for me?

Is the 32,000 song limit still in place?

My library is 31982 at the moment, and I have about 30 cds waiting to add...

 

[Jaykay]

Hey i didnt know they had released previews of that yet, to anybody, oh well.. Good question though.

 

[melchior]

i guess someone could possibly reply and say they have itunes 4... but i am 99% sure than ADC members don't have an itunes4 preview... things like that, that need to be kept tight (and ipods, itunes, music service are all REALLY tight) don't get issued to developers, not by being a member of ADC anyway. I am sure certain people get it, but they would be individually selected at this point and likely to adhere to their non-disclosure agreements.

sorry. and my personal opinion, what it's worth... is that itunes 4 will maintain that limit. the 32000 limit is a limit of the xml format that apple loves and i hate. (for iapps libraries anyway, not to mention the current batch of xml office document format's) though it can be changed, but it is not an easy task. i doubt apple gives a damn about the few customers who use itunes with 32000 songs. they would claim it is a consumer-level app and only a professional or pro-sumer would have anywhere near that many songs. (i have about 10,000 and everywhere i have told thinks that is a sign of some kind of problem... with me) so, it is not a priority in itself for apple, in my opinion. i would love to see apple move from these stupid sequential read/write xml files to a *DATABASE* if they're in love with xml i think it would be funky if apple used an xml database. how about a central database for your media, where it is catalogued and quickly accessed?

sorry, i turned your thread into my rant space. sorry.

 

[robbieduncan]

Originally posted by melchior
sorry. and my personal opinion, what it's worth... is that itunes 4 will maintain that limit. the 32000 limit is a limit of the xml format that apple loves and i hate.

What are you talking about. Unless Apples specific XML implementation (very unlikely) limits total file size, or the schema they are using imposes some limitation there is no reason that an XML file cannot contain data about a limitless number of tracks. XML files are simply text files with a specified mark-up structure, rather like well formatted HTML. The tags you are allowed to use are open to the developer to decide and extend. As such limits should not exist in a well designed schema unless there are reasons for this. Do not start trying to blame what is probably an implentation issue with iTunes on XML!

 

[Nipsy]

Originally posted by melchior

sorry, i turned your thread into my rant space. sorry.

Actaully, you gave me a lot of good info.

This limit in XML means I'm probably a few months away from encountering the same problem in iPhoto...

I too would love to see something more robust. Any serious music collector can hit 32,000, it just happens that I'm one of few whose done it here.

I have MP3 Rage running a duplicate scan on 35498 files at the moment, and that should get me back under the limit...but only for a while.

Now if this does indeed apply to iPhoto as well, Apple will need to address it shortly, as i know hordes of consumers with batch scanners running through many shoeboxes of photos, plus the proliferation of digital cameras. 32000 photos is not a pro amount.

With both photos and songs, I'd rather keep everything, than toss anything in the bin, aas you never know what you'll want in the future.

Do you have any documentation on how that limit can be changed?

 

[melchior]

it is not a limitation per se. but things get complicated after that point. it is a choice the developer makes, "is 32000 enough or do i have to do something that is a pain in the ass?" you're right i was blaming the format when i really shouldn't be... it's not a forced limit.

as for documentation, i really wouldn't have the faintest idea where to start with itunes, even if i were privvy to the code i have a sure feeling it's out of my league.

 

[scem0]

There was a person on MR who had iTunes 4. He has a screen-shot and everything.

 

[mac15]

That was a fake, its called iFix, look on Max Rudbergs home page, he has a screenshoot of it.

http://homepage.mac.com/max_08

As for the ADC members having iTunes 4 , well at the moment its top secret internal, even the
ADC doesn't have it available yet. Sots it only circualted through apple internal and there ain't a chance in hell anyone of us can get our hands on it and even if we did, we'd never get them to crack and hand a copy of us

 

[dermeister]

even if for some reason they wanted to inforce the 32k limit, they could simply using an additional field and add the two for a 64k limit, and so on... this is really a non-technical issue, they simply assume nobody would ever hit 32k...

 

[Bear]

32000 Song/Track limit in iTunes 3

The 32000 track limit was previously discussed to death in this thread.
Apple Knowledge Base Article 61585 documents a slightly convoluted workaround for the limit.

Anyway, as I recall, it wasn't XML that was causing the limitation, it was one of the datastructures that was being used to hold the track list.