Tewha Links and writings on software development, mostly for iPhone and Mac OS X.


iTunes zoom behavior

iTunes prior to 9.0 used a click on the zoom widget to convert to the mini player, leaving people like me who actually like to zoom a window option-clicking it.

iTunes 9.0 finally fixed this. A click on the zoom widget actually zoomed the window!

iTunes 9.0.1 changed it back to the old behavior. Many people were happy, I imagine. But people who wanted to zoom iTunes windows (or, I imagine, valued standard behavior) were left sad.

It turns out you can get the click-to-zoom behavior back:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes zoom-to-window -bool true

Tip of the hat to zadr on Twitter for this tweet.

Minimized iTunes player

Paste this into AppleScript Editor:

tell application "iTunes"

	repeat with b in browser windows

		set the minimized of b to true

	end repeat

end tell

Save it in ~/Library/Scripts. And while you're in AppleScript Editor, turn on Show Script menu in menu bar and Show Computer scripts. Now you have a command to show iTunes's mini player at any time.

If you've got a good way to launch AppleScripts, you can install it there, too.

Update: Apple has changed this back in iTunes 9.0.1. See iTunes zoom behavior if you liked the iTunes 9.0 way.

Palm doesn't need iTunes to sync music to the Pre

Palm's USB trick to get iTunes to load the Pre was a clever, if unethical1, hack.

Today, iTunes 8.2.1 broke that. But despite the ridiculous accusations of lock in, Palm doesn't need the Pre to sync music to the iTunes.

iTunes saves its entire music index as an XML file in iTunes Music Library.xml. It's XML. Palm can open it, read it, and get whatever they want.

New music is unencumbered by DRM. There's an exception, music bought before DRM was removed, but Palm wasn't able to play that before.

And, of course, the USB bus is available to any Mac or Windows application programmer.

So, then, nothing stops Palm from shipping a Pre Music Sync program. All it would have to do:

  • Read the XML file.
  • Grab the music using standard file I/O.
  • Send the music to the Pre over USB.

If Palm is less dumb than a sack of hammers, they expected Apple might fix how they validate the iPhone to exclude the Pre's tricks.

If Palm is less dumb than a sack of hammers, they would already have a Pre Music Sync program almost ready for deployment.2

In fact, this should have been their solution all along. Why wasn't it? Well, assuming Palm isn't a bunch of idiots3, Palm probably didn't have their music sync program ready. Ship the hack or slip the date? And somewhere along the line, some marketing type probably decided that impersonating an iPod was a good idea. They wanted a bullet point that it worked without installing software. Well, now Palm is going to have to write software and get users to install it.

They just did an entire OS. I think they can handle Pre Music Sync. And if they can't, I'm sure Markspace can handle it with The Missing Sync.

  1. Yes, I mean unethical. Of course it's unethical to promote a feature you have no control over that could disappear in instant. And especially when it probably will. [↩]
  2. But Palm being Palm, you should probably expect a Pre Music Sync program some time in October or November. [↩]
  3. And, again, this is Palm. [↩]

Are you sure?

My biggest pet peeve in iTunes is undoubtably how it asks you "Are you sure?" before doing anything, and always in an unhelpful way.

As an example, I mentioned to my wife a Christmas album I used to love. I spotted it in the iTunes Store and clicked Buy Album1. iTunes "helpfully" asked me:

This is a completely useless confirmation screen. If — and we're talking hypothetical here — I considered $7.99 a big purchase and needed a confirmation screen for it, wouldn't I want to know the price, too? Wouldn't this dialog make more sense as:

Are you sure you want to spend $7.99 on an 80s Christmas album?

Really, you're being a bit impulsive here. That's cool, we'll take your money, but we want to make sure you've checked with your wife first.

(Okay, not actually those words. But something involving the price.)

But instead, I'll shake my head at the idiocy, of click "Don't ask me about buying albums again," and never see the warning again. What was the point, then?

  1. After discussing it with my wife, of course. [↩]

Could the MSN Music shut down have been calculated?

Macworld | A year after iTunes Plus, Apple faces stepped-up competition - Page 2

Music services shutting down may let DRM finally shows its teeth.

[...]

Microsoft is one company that’s recently had to deal with just this sort of problem. The company’s MSN Music venture stopped selling music in 2006, but only recently announced its intention to shut down the servers that let users continue to play purchased music at the end of this summer. Past that point, those users will only be able to play their music as long as they keep using the same computer and operating system. But if they upgrade either hardware or software, they’re out of luck.

Wait, wait. Back up just a bit. Is it possible that Microsoft shutting down MSN Music wasn't just stupid, but calculated? There's no question that MSN Music's shut down has raised the profile of DRM a bit. At this point, could the labels themselves want people soured from DRM so they're soured from the iTunes store?

Just a crazy conspiracy theory, right?