Bug-fixin' iTunes 7 upgrade on the way?

Most of the Apple fan base is busy chatting about the latest iPod releases, the possibility of laptop spec bumps, and the when-the-hell-is-it-coming-already iPhone, but not all is well and good in Macland, as certain folks have been experiencing all sorts of problems with the just-released iTunes 7. Issues range from broken podcasts to unrecognized hardware to crappy-sounding audio, and although some of the bugs have seen successfully troubleshooting from crafty consumers, everyone is still waiting on word from Cupertino as to how it's going to address the multitude of problems. Well for those of you who've been forced to listen to your old transistor radio for the last few days, AppleInsider has some potentially good news, claiming that people with "ties to Apple" say that the company is well aware of the many glitches (as well as the public outcry) and are "toiling feverishly" on an update -- as in, both Mac and Windows users can expect version 7.0.x ASAP. We bring you this news not only to buoy your spirits in these times of despair, but also as a heads up to certain individuals in the programming community; after all, since QTFairUse struck back so quickly at iTunes 7, don't think that Steve and friends aren't spending at least some of their time trying to break that annoying little piracy-enabling patch for good.

[FurryJello @ Sep 20th 2006 11:24AM]

This is good to hear.

[Ebzy @ Sep 20th 2006 11:25AM]

aw shucks
an I thought it was worth getting all that apple gear
oh well looks like i'll have to stick to disney

[Jnetty @ Sep 20th 2006 11:26AM]

I haven't been to Apples forum but yeat Itunes 7 its got issues.
It detects my iPod Nano correctly, but once I sync it ejects the connection and Nano no longer seen. Have to unplug and connect again. Last night I just notice that while charging my iPod Itunes keep coming up on its own. Older version never did that.

[Pete_L_P @ Sep 20th 2006 1:53PM]

Jnetty

Itunes has been doing the auto eject after syncing for years now, provided you've chosen "auto sync" and provided you HAVEN'T checked "use iPod as a disk"

Pete

[heath @ Sep 20th 2006 11:28AM]

thank god. cant get my 4g ipod to be recognized by the new version since i "upgraded".. maybe i should switch to disney..

[Franco Colon @ Sep 20th 2006 11:29AM]

Thank God!! I havent been able to use my iTunes at all since the update. It just quits as soon as I play a song. Ive been over to the Support Forums at the Apple site and a lot of people are having the same problem. Unfortunantly none of the suggested fixes have worked at all. This fix is music to my ears.... Hahahahaha.

[Andy @ Sep 20th 2006 11:31AM]

This is definitely needed. I like some of the updates in iTunes 7, but if it doesn't work then what good are those updates. Though I would like to see them get rid of the ugly color scheme.

[Miranda Kali @ Sep 20th 2006 11:33AM]

The sooner they fix that beast, the better. I know my good 'ole HP is archaic at 3 years old, but iTunes 7 wont even play video smoothly when it's the only program running.
For the first time since I started using iTunes (back in '03), I'm retrograding. Sure 6 does'nt have that niffty album art browser, but at least it works.

[intheknow @ Sep 20th 2006 11:37AM]

iTunes 7 blows up when I try to add a new music folder. It scans about 15GB of files then errors and closes down.

[Andrew @ Sep 20th 2006 11:37AM]

Does anyone know where I can get iTunes 6 for PC? 7 is a flea ridden mess, update badly needed. It essentially rendered my nano useless, I can't run the updater, as it says I am not connected to the internet, and iPod updater has a 'not supported anymore use iTunes 7 message" so I am Fubar'd until a fix is released.

[Kansei @ Sep 20th 2006 11:41AM]

GOOD!

I'm sick of having to close itunes, kill ipodservice, reinstall the ipod service, and restart my computer to get itunes to show my ipod. My computer can see the damn thing fine.. why don't I hear ANYONE with 5G ipods complaining about this issue, it seems to just be people with minis, 4G ipods, etc... want us to upgrade, eh apple?

[Jon @ Jan 3rd 2008 3:37AM]

Hi, We've just bought two for Xmas, 80gb classics, and I've never been so disappointed, I'm getting all the problems everybody is describing. Non recognition, 100% cpu usage, hanging of the system (with XP!). We bought these things to enjoy life more not make it misery in front of a computer. Apple..........rotten apple more like.
Might even sell them yet, money can be spent better elsewhere, it's a ridiculous case of fraud on the scale of the Emperors new clothes.

[EbonyDad @ Sep 20th 2006 11:48AM]

Yeah... I am happy that they are admitting that there are "problems" with iTunes 7. iTunes 7 isn't recognizing my 4G click wheel iPod. I spent 3 hours on the phone with Apple support, and at the end they had me roll back to iTunes 6.

Maybe I will go to a Zune if I win the contest.

[SD @ Sep 20th 2006 11:51AM]

I would hope they also activate the new search functionality on the original 5G iPod. Apparently it was part of the 1.2 update but it is disabled when it detects you are not using the newer 5.5G iPod. Why give 5G users the ability to adjust brightness and download games but not the search function???? Sounds like Apple hired a bunch of people from Microsoft...

[irdepesca @ Sep 20th 2006 5:21PM]

I totally agree!

[Desert @ Sep 20th 2006 12:02PM]

Is everyone here having problems using a PC?

I havn't been reading the forums, but iTunes 7 on my powerbook has been working great. I love the new look and features.

[Lee Gibson @ Sep 20th 2006 1:15PM]

I've had no issues on my Powerbook (4G iPod pulling from a 50gb library) or on my lady's PC (iPod mini pulling from a 100+gb library).

I'm glad that Apple is fixing the issues people are seeing, but I'm even gladder that it's working great for me.

[NicleT @ Sep 20th 2006 12:05PM]

Finally !

[Phil @ Sep 20th 2006 12:22PM]

I just got an iPod 60 GB last week and installed iTunes 7 on my PC (an 18-month old Dell but a week-old Windows XP install). I haven't noticed any problems with iTunes 7 so far. It updated my iPod to the 1.2 firmware and I've been using iTunes extensively over the past few days to re-tag my music. Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones, or maybe I don't see any problems with iTunes because I didn't have it installed before on this Windows installation.

[Craig @ Sep 20th 2006 12:25PM]

i'm using iTunes 7 with both revisions of the 5G iPod. the problem i'm having is manually transferring anything directly to the ipod. i never really use the library, i simply drag-and-drop mp3s to the iPod via iTunes. since iTunes 7, the ipod and itunes act like they're working, but nothing transfers. i now have to put everything into the library, and then into the iPod, which is a hassle. this applies to music, videos, and album art (and perhaps more...)

also, i can't connect my new 5G iPod to my computer at work (also iTunes 7). it says the iPod is in recovery mode and needs to be restored. it works fine at home. i'm guessing it's having trouble connecting to a second computer.

has anyone else had these problems? apple, are you listening?

[Craig @ Sep 20th 2006 12:28PM]

ps, i'm using windows xp pro at home and work

[Daniel @ Sep 20th 2006 12:35PM]

I haven't really experienced this problem either.

[@ Sep 20th 2006 12:38PM]

...trying to break that annoying little piracy-enabling patch for good

Uhh, QTFairPlay only works on tracks bought from ITMS. So it's no more piracy-enabling than the CD burn feature in iTunes.

[Nate @ Sep 20th 2006 12:42PM]

I updated both my work computer and home computer. The home computer seems to do what it's supposed to do, for the most part. It has trouble with large downloads, and the whole find album art feature is spotty at best. But, at least I can sync my iPod. I don't listen to musc through iTunes, so I can't speak for playback quality.

The work computer gets the the dreaded "Can't view album art on this computer" error, then completely crashes. I basically can't do anything video related on that machine.

Overall, I'd say I love the new features. I just wish they'd work. This iTunes really doesn't seem like it's ready for prime time.

[Chester Loy @ Sep 20th 2006 12:45PM]

The article in this weeks Economist sheds some light on why there is no iPhone
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7921934

[golden @ Sep 20th 2006 12:56PM]

I don't have any problems except with album-view(both kinds) it shows to much pics of the same album and some albums are seperated into loose songs.

[rupbert @ Sep 20th 2006 1:07PM]

Suggests the unvieling of iTunes 7 was rushed?

[@ Sep 20th 2006 1:13PM]

Speaking of serious iTunes 7 bugs, the Sync Outlook Calendar feature is really bad. It is absolutely buggy and untested. iTunes 7 will take over your entire CPU (100%) in some sort of endless loop (I'm running WinXP in case Apple folks are listening). After trying to use this feature over 10 times, each requiring a reboot, I gave up. The next time I hooked up my iPod, I had to be quick to uncheck the feature and hit Apply button. I suspect that this feature also has a serious memory leak based on observations, but I am not about to try it out again -- too much of a headache.

Again, I would advise using the Sync Outlook Calendar feature at all costs until an updated iTunes 7 is released!

[Andrew @ Oct 21st 2006 7:28PM]

"Again, I would advise using the Sync Outlook Calendar feature at all costs until an updated iTunes 7 is released!"

I'm guessing you mean advise "against"

At any I have the crashing problem when trying to sync Outlook calendar, though it did sync, but Outlook contacts would not. In addition, I get a hard crash, even though it will sync the Calendar portion of Outlook. I too had to disable the Outlook syncing to use iTunes.

I also had to reset my iPod get iTunes 7 to work properly. I've never had to do this with any of the 6 series versions.

[Jough Dempsey @ Sep 20th 2006 1:32PM]

There are some known issues/bugs that are broken in both the Windows and Mac version of iTunes. Those who post things like "Don't see any of these errors - everything works great for me!" must be Mac fanboys who put on the blinders whenever anything from Apple isn't absolutely perfect, or else just don't use many of the features of iTunes that are broken, like adding album artwork to multiple songs (like, say, when you want to get the artwork for a whole album, which isn't uncommon) or in Windows trying to add more than one file in the "Add files to library..." menu (nothing happens).

There are some bugs with the new nano's firmware, too. If you have more than 1000 songs on your player (pretty easy to do with the 8Gb version) you can't add more than one album to the on-the-go playlist. Some podcasts cause the iPod to freeze or reset (some bug with chapter marks, it seems).

I know the Windows version has *more* bugs than the Mac version does, especially with the iPod Service that loses track of an iPod after iTunes is closed, but there are issues that affect the iPod devices themselves and every version of iTunes too (another one - iTunes downloaded artwork isn't transferred to the iPod unless you also edit some ID3/Get Info field in the track) and to say "no problems here!" doesn't do anything but point out that you're oblivious to the demonstratable, repeatable problems with the iTunes/iPod combo.

I have no doubt that they'll get these issues worked out with software and firmware updates - and with the Christmas season coming up, they can't really afford to have the bad word of mouth publicity where people are telling their friends to hold off on buying a new iPod because the software is buggy.

[Christopher @ Sep 20th 2006 8:51PM]

another ipod related problem is that apple has added a new "feature" that is on by default on every downloaded podcast, i.e. you have to manually change setting on all podcasts everytime you download them. which is very very very poor design usability by apple

feature is called "skip when shuffling" making it impossible to listen continously to podcasts in for example on the go, unless you remember to change settings for podcasts everytime you download

[@ Sep 20th 2006 1:33PM]

The "too much pics of the same album and some albums are seperated into loose song" issue can be fixed by selecting all of the songs together and marking them as a 'compilation'. If that doesn't do the trick then make sure all of the songs don't have an "Artist Album" entered.

My problem is that the album art is sometimes wrong on the ipod but looks fine when viewing in iTunes.

[Noir @ Sep 20th 2006 1:38PM]

I am trying to revert back to itunes 6 as
itunes 7's new graphical features do not work
on my 3 year old PC (ancient - Sony Vaio RX640 w/integrated graphics card- that no updates exist for). I updated the ms directx software and have the latest version though I still cannot view cover art and itunes 7 crashes moments after attempting to view movies or tv shows. I unistalled itms7 and QT and attempted to re-install itms6 though once installed and I attempt to open the itms6 icon I get a message stating I cannot use it because of "itunes library.itl is using a newer version". I tried uninstalling again then installing QT seperately - no luck. Can someone please tell me how to put itms6 back on my pc? I even miss the radioactive burner tool (why would they remove that??- it was in a word iconic) Apple is king of style but they should have kept the best elements of itms while adding thouroughly tested new features to itms7 - surely these "bugs" would have come up for testers if the new store was thoroughly tested. Someone please provide the steps to help me return to vers 6 as I don't believe itms 7.1 will solve my tech issue. Thanks in advance.

[interfear @ Sep 20th 2006 2:03PM]

gGreat!

I just gave up iTunes 7 to Foobar2000 since it eats so much of my cpu/memory.

[Dave Johnson @ Sep 20th 2006 2:23PM]

iTunes and Quicktime: the perfect beta testing program for Apple. Nice job. Took a decent program, added limited elements of dubious use and managed to hose a large number of consumers.

The most ironic statement coming out of Cupertino: "it just works."

I've got a new marketing slogan for y'all: "it just sucks."

[Jason G @ Sep 20th 2006 2:53PM]

ya my sound went out after this install. I had to redo my sound card driver to fix the problem...

[AJ @ Sep 20th 2006 5:08PM]

Am I the only one who actually likes the interface, doesn't see the bugs, and has iTunes working on my Mac?

Because I'm loving the new interface and like the new blue color compared to the green color.

AKBlade13

[Trey @ Sep 20th 2006 5:30PM]

Now I'm stuck in the middle...

Heres the skinny.

Had a Sony HD player, kinda loved it. SonicSage CP is finally a great piece of software but Sony's attitude, to it's customers, sucks.

I defected and bought a Alu-Nano. Big mistake. iTunes 7 has caused me nothing but trouble. Album art gets lost. Changing Album art manually means that the art won't be updated on your iPod. iTunes may start but then again it may freeze your computer!

An the Alu-Nano what a piece of crap that is. It feels cheap, it feels fragile, it sounds awful and what is with all the cheap plastic and white cables - thats just wrong?

I've just Ebayed the Nano and for the time being I'm going back to the Sony NW-HD3. I'm considering either a Walkman phone or even a Zune. Apple are all show no go. Not sure how they win design awards, with products thats are as badly designed as the Nano? Peace out.

[PJ @ Sep 20th 2006 6:09PM]

I've had iTunes running for about a week now, most of my music was on my previous 60gb ipod (now replaced with an 80gb). Until now, having to reload all my music, I wasn't aware that you couldn't individually drag an item over and put it on the ipod. I think that's sort of retarded.

I was also under this impression that all new ipods would come with at least some of the new games, rather than none.

Also, when updating video, tv, or podcasts, the only option seems to be to sync, rather than just dragging and dropping certain ones. Along the podcast line, there are no options to only sync checked items, it seems to only offer a few options. I check my podcasts that I want synced and there's nothing that offers that option, it's either withint a certain time period, or only unlistened to. What happens if I only listen to 10 minutes of a podcast and connect my player to sync it? I end up losing the podcast and have to figure out how to get it back on there...lame...

[Leonard Lipkin @ Sep 20th 2006 8:16PM]

I have no trouble with iTunes 7 (PowerPC G5, OSX, 3G iPod)

[keith waddington @ Sep 20th 2006 9:40PM]

The fact is MOST people are having no problem with iTunes. The guy above who said every one is having problems and if we think we are not it's because we are too dumb to find the problems is obviously a total idiot, because only idiots think they are smarter than every one else and their problems are the worlds problems.
Most of the problems (not all) are with Windows machines. Big surprise there. many of them have nothing to do with iTunes: sound card set to 24bit etc etc. Go read the Apple trouble shooting document and every issue they list is Windows only stuff. Haven't you every noticed that Windows is awful and cheap PCs are a disaster waiting to happen? Is this really news to you? Any way many solutions are probably waiting for you if you take the time to read the document instead of just crying like babies and blaming Apple for issues YOU may have created.

I have 72 gigs of LEGAL music on a G5 tower. EVERY feature of iTunes works. Everything works great and the album art view is absolutely the cats meow. I love browsing as with my actual CDs. It scanned all my songs for gapless playback in about 10 seconds.

Most people, especially using Macs but certainly Windows users too, are having no problems and probably love the new iTunes as much as I do. Previous versions never impressed me much; but now I'm really happy I took the time to rip all my CDs.

For those of you having problems, stop acting as if Apple did this on purpose just to piss you off; or that this is proof how bad Apple is etc etc. It gets tiresome. When Microsoft manage to release software with no bugs, then you can start crying about Apple. Go back to the previous version until an update is released, read the Aple support document--or buy a computer that works and stop acting like damn babies.

Finally: album art. If you have stolen music many of the names will be wrong. The art will therefore be wrong or none found. But hey, why not cry about how useless Apple are again? If you have obscure albums as I do, iTunes will not find the art. Mac users should download a widget that gives you several different sources of album art, including google image. Using that I found 99% of the art i needed, and I have some very weird stuff. The final 1% I searched for on the web.

waddo
http://www.waddo.net/

[Craig @ Sep 21st 2006 7:37AM]

waddo, you're obviously an idiot fanboy. i've had the same windows pc for almost two years running itunes. itunes 7 is noticeably more buggy than any previous version. it's not the pc, it's itunes. i know it's hard to believe that apple might actually release a rushed, buggy product (that�s always been bloated anyways), but it's true.

also, the album art has nothing to do with whether or not the albums are named correctly. it has to do with whether or not they're named in such a way that itunes recognizes them. for example, itunes couldn't find "Office - Q & A", but it could find "Office - Q&A". also, Jay-Z's Black Album returns the acapella version, which is just plain wrong.

And your mac did not analyze 72 gigs worth of songs in 10 seconds. stop lying.

[Tim Quernemoen @ Sep 21st 2006 2:00AM]

Personally I don't believe it. Everyone knows all apple hardware and software always work great with no problems. Duh, haven't you seen their commercials?

[keith waddington @ Sep 21st 2006 10:00AM]

Well, yes I may be an idiot, but at least I know how to read. I did not say there were no bugs in iTunes. I simply said that most (not all) problems are on Windows and that the problems may (or may not) be related to a persons computer. Did you understand what I said this time?

You should read carefully instead of throwing a fit with you fanboyisms. I'm not a boy. And I'm way too jaded to be a fan. And I'm certainly not a fan of neologisms spouted ad nauseam by people otherwise unable to express themselves.

The facts are simple: most Mac users are NOT having problems. I am one of them. Some Windows users are having problems. Not all. neither you not any one else writing on this board did any of the programming so we cannot know why some people are having trouble, but sound cards erroneously set to 24 bit and old garbage computers etc are obviously playing their part.

I said nothing controversial except suggesting that people stop acting like cry babies and blaming everything on Apple. I did not say Apple is perfect.

I consider your reply childish rant, like most of the others.

And I really don't need to lie. All my albums are Apple loss-less rips and on an external raid. Maybe it wasn't exactly 10 seconds. maybe it was 5. Maybe 15. All I know is I noticed the progress bar and then it was pretty much over. Maybe the raid made it faster? Again I don't know, and neither do you so please don't accuse me of lying just because your experience was different to mine.

i really don't know why I bothered responding. It's always pointless.

waddo
http://www.waddo.net/

[Patrick @ Sep 21st 2006 6:57PM]

Why is it that in previous versions of iTunes I could play songs directly from my docked Nano through iTunes, but in 7 I can only play the songs that are in my library? When I click the iPod icon it wants me to sync my music and won't show me the music already on the iPod. Am I missing something? This is only the biggest frustration I have with the new buggy iTunes. BTW, this is on an older Toshiba Satellite running XP Home Edition.

[Jesse Prince @ Sep 21st 2006 11:37PM]

For whom it may concern I discovered a quick fix until they update iTunes if your having the problem of iTunes not detecting your iPod.

(I used this on Windows XP)

Press Ctrl-Alt-Del and when the task maganer pops up, go to the processes tab. Scroll until you find the task 'iPodservice.exe', click on it, then click End Task. Once you've done that plug in your iPod, then open iTunes and (for me at least), the iPod shows up without having to re-install the iPod software every time, you may have to do this every time you unplug your iPod or restart your PC.

[SPC Michael J. Sanchez @ Sep 29th 2006 10:39AM]

Piracy enabling patch? How about freedom enabling patch? You know, I COULD order CDs online and wait for them to get to me in Iraq, but then I have the problem of having more stuff than I got here with, not to mention it's just a hassle. Instead, I thought it was much easier to buy music from iTunes. Mistake? Probably. I can only play my music in iTunes or on my iPod... what kind of crap of is that? iTunes 7 SUCKS, and why does a simple music player use up to 50 mb of RAM? Sure, one could blame me for choosing to buy an iPod, but did I know that that decision meant selling my soul to Apple. No way. I should have made the better choice and waited for the Creative Zen Vision. ohhhh I know all you fanboys are cringing, but even the oldest Zen STILL wins over the iPod in music quality. Too late now... do I want to buy another portable music player in the middle of my deployment only for it to get all scratched up again even with a case on? oh... maybe its only the iPod that does that, too.

[Harry Cambridge @ Oct 20th 2006 9:26AM]

It had to happen sooner or later, Apple were doing too well and couldn't put a foot wrong til now.....This supposed trusted download has my itunes quitting (a lot!) and worse, I transferred ALL my music to the HD to be listened to via a wireless streamer. Yeah, you guessed it...no librarys found. Not sure what to do right now. Have been toying with the idea of loading previous version.

[Rick V. @ Dec 9th 2006 4:34AM]

iTunes 7 has not only stopped the Outlook Calendar Sync but MS Online Crash Analysis says the error is with Symantec WinFax Pro. Only thing is I don't and never have had WinFax on this PC!

[Mark McLaughlin @ Jan 29th 2007 11:46PM]

I sure hope the widescreen ipod WAS worth the wait!!!
Also, NO ST-TNG, ST-DS9, or Star Wars films on itunes,
yet!