iTunes 7 turning out to have major glitches
By Cyrus Farivar 
posted September 14th 2006 10:31AM
posted September 14th 2006 10:31AM
When we were deep inside Maestro Jobs' reality distortion field on Tuesday, all these new additions to iTunes 7 seemed like significant improvements over its previous version. But not quite 48 hours later, all is not quiet on the iTunes front. Specifically, 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, CoverFlow 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, but have been dissappointed that very few of the albums on our machines have successfully downloaded album art. Furthermore, The Sydney Morning Herald called iTunes 7 a "lemon" yesterday and went on to report that: "Both Mac and PC users appear to be affected by the glitches being reported, and numerous different threads on the Apple discussion forum have described a range of technical issues." Oh, and did we mention that many professionally produced podcasts -- including CNET's Buzz Oud Loud, Popular Mechanics, and our own -- are reportedly not working. If Apple doesn't do something about this pretty soon, people might start calling it iCan't -- as in: "I can't play my music anymore."[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Read - The Sydney Morning Herald
Read - Apple iTunes Forums
Read - Possible solution for nano issue in Windows
Read - Podcasts are broken
Read - Roku SoundBridge iTunes support broken (workaround here)
It's messed up my collection.
I'll click on a song and a completely wrong song plays!!! This seems to have affected a small amount of my collection (10%) but it's 'really' annoying.
I am one of the 'stupid' ones that didn't backup first!
I don't know where Mac got this reputation as the worlds best programmers. My Quick Time is always flaking out. Lots of their apps are boggy slow and unresponsive. Living in their perfect little hardware garden they throw stones at programs in the real world. As Mac regains some market share and they are forced the face the inherent incompatibilities that come from trying to support the worlds computing needs, we will see how truly behind they are. If you think living under a M$ global monopoly could you imagine a Mac dominated industry. *shudder* Too frightening!
I've experienced just a few, tiny, problems. It slowdowns in one of the certain playlist views (the 2nd one), and has problems downloading cover art. Doesn't really bother me though.. since I already have all the cover art, and I use a different playlist view. And my podcasts work perfectly...
Major glitches? No, just minor ones that you can pass by.
LMAO i didnt even think of checking the ram its using 113megs of memory... and people say wmp is bloated lol
OK, the new release of iTunes is causing problems, it's software caught in the middle of a major battle for market share and media control dominance. Did you really think it was going to be flawless? I would hope not considering Apple has taken major shocks in the suit against Creative, Windows release of WMP11, which also supports DVD playback and supports anything PlayForSure. M$ is threatening Apple's stranglehold on integrated OS interfaces with Vista, while Creative, iRiver and Sansa are hitting at the PMP market. It was a salvage attempt. But don't think it will remain buggy, everyone puts out crap software when it comes to media management, from Xbox developers to M$ to Apple, everyone, no one is exempt, and over time they fix it. Why complain anyway? The software was free.
My iTunes will not even stay open. It imediately crashes as soon as it opens. Seems like its related to the "determining gapless..." funciton running. I can't even figure out how to downgrade to 6.0.5 again. Has anyone found a fix for this? The only way I can even get iTunes to stay opened is to remove my library file (i.e. rename it)
Indeed, my 5g iPod was 'restored' without touching a single button within iTunes 7, also the music went nuts when scrolling within Windows Live Messenger and it is a major resource hog. Album art, it's not downloading any. I started using iTunes 4 till 6, no problems. I hate version 7! Boo Apple!
I have experienced the interference with tracks. I noticed it happens when using another program which is memory intensive. i.e. Adobe Photoshop
No problems here, although Cover Flow has inspired me to spend some time making sure all my tracks have album names and good quality artwork.
I haven't had a lot of time to play with it, but I have found it does a terrible job of picking cover art for compilations by various artists. It appears that it picks one random album from one artist on the compilation and then applies that cover art to all the tracks on the album. Stupid. Some of these compilations are very commonly available -- "No Alternative," for instance, has stupid Matthew Sweet cover art for every track. Why isn't it smart enough to download the No Alternative cover?
disciple: yes its free... but the ipod wasnt and since u "technicaly" need itunes to use the ipod properly its a moot point, not to mention those that paid for songs via itunes ... just because the software is free doesnt mean the task it does is free. And the error is causing that task for many to be undoable or problematic
Memory usage is up - iTunes 6 was using about 52MB on my XP machine on Monday, iTunes 7 is close to 140MB, despite my having added one song in four days. I can't say I've noticed a slowdown, but then again, the computer is a little on the new and fast side, so I couldn't say. Syncing seems okay, but then again, I don't have the latest and greatest.
I had the scratchy music thing and someone recommended to change the audio settings in the preferences in Quicktime to 28hHz, 16bit and it made my scratchy sound go away. This is on a Windows PC. iTunes is still annoyingly slow, but I like most of the new features.
Mac Mini G4 1.4Ghz 1GB ram
works fine, downloaded some cover art, more the next time i ran it. only ran it twice, but i bet it will have most of my albums with art.
are ppl tagging their mp3s correctly? if the album title says "kazaa b00tl3gz0r g-unit NEW ALBUM great quality" then of course it wont find the album art.
My issues revolve around playing shared music from other machines. 7 wants to keep playing the last track it played while it buffers the stream for the next track, so i sometimes have to wait though listening to a song once or twice before it actually advances the tracks. And then very occassionally, it will buffer the same song twice and play clearly overlapping streams.
I'm using WinXP, not sure if this is a more common problem - but I'm headed back to iTunes 6.
It installed and runs perfect on my ibook G4, no problems noticed at all. Unfortunately, on my Dual 1 gig G4 tower, with way more specs than the minimum required, the equalizer will not show up (shows as a blank white window), and has problems showing the previews of the movies. Sound, but no pic. (it will work with some fiddling, but not as its supposed to) I am wondering if some of the problems are related to how many times Itunes has been upgraded. On my tower, its been upgraded since almost the beginning. Only a couple of updates on my Ibook, as its relatively new.
- Album Art Not Downloading -
Be sure that the spelling of the album in your iTunes matches iTMS. The CDDB isn't perfect.
- Manually Adding Art to Many Songs-
Highlight the multiple songs.
Go to menu item File > Get Info.
Click on the check box next to the place for art, and drag your art into the provided box.
You can change many things about a group of songs this way. This information is also in the "Help". RTFM!!!
Many things in Apple software are not quite as expected to prevent potentially large errors from being caused by simple actions.
The playback issue occurs when someone runs their cursor back and forth through the menu options at the top of the screen. I originally thought that it was just the "clicking" sound when you highlight or select a menu that was distorting the playback, but it is much more. It is indeed a glitch.
iTunes 7 + Windows Vista RC1 = rolling reboots, refuses even to get past the logon screen. Thank god for System Restore!!!
Yes, I know, the usual disclaimers apply to beta software but a BSOD upon introduction of Apple software does not make me a happy iPod user.
I have a 1G Nano and a 5G iPod. Oh very happy with the 1.2 software update for the Video iPod, saved me getting the 80Gb one!!!!
You would think apple did something revolutionary with their coverflow/album art...haven't you guys ever heard of amaroK for KDE. They have been allowing users to download cover art for quite some time now, with almost absolutely no glitches. Also it syncs beautifully with the iPod allowing transferring of songs, movies, etc. Go linux!
First try and playing songs in 7 and all kinds of scratchiness and pops. Feels like an MS release to me.
Just for the record - I love iTunes 7. I have not run into one problem yet. The new album views are awesome. I'm rather strict when it comes to my album art, but iTunes made everything look great. My current art and the art that I needed for my daily song update.
Sorry for you all having problems - good luck.
People complaining about glitches after software is upgraded? Everyone assuming that if it's happening to them, it must be the rule and the software is a POS? People taking an opportunity to bash apple? Shocking. That has never happened before. Well except for when iTunes 6 was released. And 5. And 4 and 3......
I wasn't surprised that the Black Eyed Peas albums I have were the first and some of the only album covers that loaded up correctly (and U2 of course).
I cant seem to get any visualization size options bedises fullscreen. When I upgraded i had iTunes 6 det to fullscreen. Now I can't jus see it in a window I can't figure out how to change it. I might just be retarded and if thats the caes could someone point out how to change the visualization size options.
Had some problems on my system too, at the end of the install it caused Internet Explorer to crash on my Win Xp SP2 machine with a "The instruction at "0x1001cd11" referenced memory at "0x1001cd11". The memory could not be "read".
I then got a blue screen of death complete crash. The first one ever on my laptop...
I'm on a powerbook and iTunes 7 is definitely slow.
Try to play any ressource intensive game (like world of Warcraft) on PC while playing music on iTunes and you will notice that the music suddenly speeds up and skip likes a CD player gone crazy.
I'm having issues downloading artwork. Originally, it would download artwork and then stall. I'd have to start all over again and never got beyond getting only half.
Now, when I try, it's agonizingly slow and still stalls.
I gave up finally and decided to wait wait for a patch.
The worst problem I have encountered so far is that it was playing two songs at once. I skipped to the next track in the middle of another track and the next track started playing on top of the other. Also I have noticed that the cover art displayer sometimes gets stuck on a album and does not change when I change tracks. I am not suprised that it has a few bugs since it is a 7.0 release but I am a bit dissapointed I started runnning into them within an hour of install. Maybe a little more in house testing apple?
Playback of audio is intermittantly garbled for me. Reading the Apple iTunes forum, there are many, many people using PC's and MAC's suffering the same issue. Think it's a given that we'll see a 7.01 in the next few days.
Had to do some real voodoo to recover my 5G ipod after it alledgedly installed the updated firmware , and then wouldnt recognise the iPod.
Cover Flow sporadically displays "Album Art cannot be displayed for this machine".
I like the backup facility - looks a neat idea.
Obviously not tried any TV / film playback as I live in the UK, and we wont get any of that until 2009 - prolly.
"Buzz Out Loud" be working for me... *Episode 9/13/06 discusses it, kind of harshly imho.
(Mac 10.4, iTunes 7, G4 30gb iPod)
Apple will probably have a fix for this, soon, nonetheless. Expect a major upgrade to iTunes 7 after that within the next month or so; this kind of thing has happened with iTunes 5...
The coverart issue definitely needs to be addressed. If Synergy can "gestimate" cover art when not all the id3 info is there, iTunes should be able to do the same. Also the "auto-find" for track art seems to be not so automatic.
I've had 2 problems with my 5G ipod that I updated and iTunes 7:
1) When I select certain podcasts the ipod just resets! The only way I've found round this is to select the track before, press pause, then move forward to the problem track and forward it on a few seconds then press play.
2) When I plug it into my work computer (also running iTunes 7) the ipod shows as a 480GB External Array!!! and no songs are shown!
I'm really glad you guys posted on this -- I was beginning to think there was some kind of conspiracy keeping it out of the press.
I've had a nightmarish experience with iTunes 7. I've had the scratchy audio problem, and I've also noticed that the app seems incapable of recognizing multiple iPods connected to the same system (I've tried all the fixes, but no joy -- each time you connect a new iPod, the old one vanishes). And what the hell is up with the whole "I'm going to add new shortcuts to your start menu every time you start iTunes" thing? I'd expect something like that from Microsoft -- at their absolute worst -- but coming from Apple it's hysterical.
If only one of these problems had also broken the DRM, we'd have had a fix by now.
Since I installed this iTunes 7 I have only managed to update my 2nd generation iPod Mini 6GB twice. All other time iTunes does not find the iPod. on its diagnostics tool it says there is an error message regarding my iPod.
on the Apple support site it tells me to try several options (one of them nearly wiped my whole pc out) or to restore my iPod (how am I supposed to do this when the ipod updater is now inside itunes and that piece of bugged crap can't my iPod!!!)
I like Apple a lot but this itunes 7 feels like its been rushed and not tested at all.
fix this crap ASAP!!!!!!!!!!
I have never been so pissed off with Apple in my life.
Fix it or I'm buying an iRiver, Sansa or anything but iPod!!!!!
For those with album art issues. I've been screwing with it, and the name of your file have to match the music store EXACTLY. The track name, artist, album artist, album, and track number have to be there, or it get's confused, and won't pull the art. For those that are making MS comparison, that's a typical reaction. MS stuff can be buggy as all hell and blow up your house, and you'll still be waiting with baited breath for Vista. Apple has an issue, that you can't figure out in 5 seconds, and it's time to rag on them. I realize that Apple has a reputation for better products (hence the expectation that it should work right the first time), but give them a freakin break already.
I had the same issue with the games. For some reason I had to authorize my computer again, which I hadn't done since the upgrade but thought that since it was just an upgrade, my account info would remain intact. Anyway, after authorizing, the games synched just fine. Loving Tetris :)
It works fine for me, on both a Mac (work) and PC (home). Judging by most of the other comments here, this all sounds like a lot of FUD to me.
There might be a few bugs (that's nothing new for a major iTunes release), but I haven't experienced any of them, and obviously neither have a lot of other people here.
CoverFlow does require a good 3D graphics card. It works great on my GeForce 6-ish Mac at work (not sure exactly what it has), but is terrible on my PC at home with its shared 3D graphics RAM and Intel chipset. No big whoop; you can go right on using the old views if you want - CoverFlow and the new album view (whatever they call it) are just additional features, not replacements for the way iTunes used to work.
As for album art, I've still got some missing art too, but a) iTunes actually has to have the rights to the albums in question (and they don't have everything), and b) you have to actually name your albums and artists in a way that it expects. Some of my longer albums are abbreviated, for example (like the "GTA Vice City Soundtrack") and it obviously isn't going to pick those up even if it has them. So this sounds like it's probably a case where people are expecting magic, rather than anything that's actually realistic.
Has anyone noticed the lack of visualizer on 7?
I've had random unexpected quits of iTunes 7 on my Mac since install. In several years of using Apple software daily I have never seen them release something this buggy. I would think it's my machine, but others seem to be having simar problems. Let's hope that 7.1 is not far away.
Working fine on both my Mac and my PC altough... WHY DID THEY KILL AQUA?!!!! :'(
And what's with the ALL UPPERCASE sections (Library, Music Store, Playlists)?
Pretty sloppy redesign, other than CoverFlow - buying & integrating it into iTunes was a good idea :)
you know what I have noticed... Engadget no longer being fun and loving of all consmer electronics but alot of really hardcore put downs for everyone...from apple to microsoft... from LG to moto... just overall negativity... kinda sucks...
as for itunes 7 no problem on my g4 mac with 533mhz... and thats saying something because i only have 600 some in RAM... only slowdown I got was the album art download... and gapless update... after that worked fine... as for the album art it hasnt found... turns out alot of my mp3s that I have gotten through "friends" have mispellings and do not match up to iTunes music store titles... hence they do not download them...
Video playback is kaput in Windows XP for me and many others. Also the same thing in OS X for some. There are some Apple discussion forums but I still have no clue how to report a bug like this to Apple officially.
iTunes has been a resource hog for a while now, are these people just noticing?
btw, as to the problem with iPods not being recognized, unless you didn't have this problem before with the exact same hardware, my guess is this is actually a hardware issue. I had the same problem with iTunes 6 when I first got my iPod, and it turned out that while Windows would recognize the iPod and it looked like everything was working right other than iTunes, actually trying to transfer files to it never worked properly even in hard drive mode. Updating the firmware similarly crashed every time.
Solution? Rip out my USB card and install a new one. Problem solved.
The iPod is finicky about USB ports. My old card worked fine with my digital camera, but not with the iPod. My current setup works fine, though. I wrote about this in my blog a while back and I still get tons of hits to that page, so my guess is a lot of people are having this exact same problem. But it's got nothing to do with iTunes - it's the interaction between the iPod and the USB port.
Ii iii I havee ee e Nnn nn n No no ideeeaaaa wwwhhaa aaa aaatt t t t you u uu gg g g uys arr rr taalkin n nnn g abb bb bout.
Ok maybe I do.. I can no longer listen to any of my music in iTunes. I had to load WMP! *sobs*
Win XP here
The good: I got wonderfully looking album art / flow. For free. For absolutely nothing. Gapless playback at last! For - nothing! Yeah!
The bad: Some albums have the wrong covers. Rolling Stones "40 Licks" disk 1 is "Tatoo You". Hm. I understand it's not finding some of my albums but wrong positives are just bizarre.
The ugly: Flipping though my 270 albums back and forth two times, iTunes now uses 320MB of memory. No typo: Three-hundred-twenty. Woo-hoo!
I have run into the resource problem with iTunes 7. It is using up 100% CPU when downloading my podcasts in the morning. The previous version did not use as much CPU.
iTunes 7 has frozen both of my G4s about 3 times each.