Initially developed by Amit Singh, MacFUSE is a plugin which allows you to extend Mac OS X’s file handling capabilities. Freshly out of Google Code, MacFUSE 2.0 brings in a whole lot of features. The update brings with it a dedicated preference pane, full 64-bit support, and several other developer-specific changes that appear to be important enough to be mentioned in their changelog. They’ve even got experimental support for Snow Leopard. 

And if you want to know what goodies await the developers hoping to exploit MacFUSE, Ars has the lowdown on that:

Many of the improvements are for developers creating file system plug-ins. In addition to support for file systems using 64-bit inodes, there are new Xcode project templates to make creating a file system even easier, and added DTrace support to make debugging easier as well. Several new callbacks for the ability to set and read file attributes, backward compatibility, and a couple small bug fixes round out the release. Detailed release notes are also available. - Ars Technica.

Now what exactly is MacFUSE? It is a plugin or architechture upon which you can build other plugins that can allow you to introduce non-native file systems to behave like part of the system. Yes, this allows to you get read/write support for NTFS and EXT3 file systems inside of OS X. Here’s another excellent implementation of MacFUSE which allows you to access iTunes from your Finder sidebar. 

There’s a guide at Download Squad that will help you set up and use MacFUSE to the fullest. Use that while we prepare our own little tutorial on using and exploiting MacFUSE. You can download and install MacFUSE from the Google Code project.

The latest entrant into the cool eye-candy list of applications for the Mac is FluidTunes. This interesting utility lets you control your music by waving your hands in front of your screen. How about that! Suddenly, I felt the Harry Potter in me. 

The UI features the familiar CoverFlow interface overlayed in front of the video feed from your iSight camera. Using your hands you trigger each large button, which look very Vista like. To scroll through the list you just move your hand across the screen and the covers scroll through. 

The app works surprisingly well. I could move around my library by waving and twiddling my fingers at the buttons to activate them. Unfortunately, it displays the covers as songs and not albums. So each album has each song displayed as a separate cover. Another big minus is the fact that it raked up around 80% (of 200%) CPU while doing most of the actions.

However, there are some fundamental issues with the UI that make this a totally useless application. The very fact that it is designed around buttons instead of gestures, means that you need to have the app open and your eyes focussed to perform any actions. Next, Keyboard shortcuts are much faster for controlling your mac rather than waving your hands, and this app proves the fact. We can see why Apple isn’t offering a MultiTouch iMac just yet. 

FluidTunes is a cool application that will be great to impress PC friends and grannies who like gadgets, but beyond that I don’t see myself using this on a regular basis. The app is a free download and works with Tiger and Leopard.

When we reviewed MetaX back in August, it was the ultimate way of getting your videos into iTunes. The application is still awesome and works for most, but it does have one little flaw – It can only add/edit tags. The video conversion has to be done by Quicktime Pro or the now defunct VisualHub.

Just a few days old, iFlicks (beta) is a video converter and meta tagging application built into a single windowed interface. The clean UI is very mac-like and sports just the right amount of controls. Continue Reading »

Mac users swear by iTunes. While Windows users swear at it.

When the Windows version of iTunes was introduced back in 2003, Steve said, ‘iTunes for Windows is probably the best Windows app ever written”. I respectfully disagree.

iTunes on Windows is something that I dread using. Considering iPod users are forced to use iTunes, it makes me wonder how the iPod became the most popular music player in the world. Similarly, mention Quicktime to any Windows user and prepare to be amused with the amount of hate this little application has. Just to be clear, on the Mac one cannot live without Quicktime. 

If you take a good look at both the applications, you will notice that both are very similar to their Mac counterparts. What makes them suck so much on Windows and work so amazingly on the Mac? And more importantly, what opinion does this leave Windows users of Apple’s applications?

No matter how much Steve Jobs complains about how difficult the Windows coding environment, the end user finds a buggy, slow application which doesn’t work half as good as the other offerings on Windows. Quicktime is only installed as a necessary evil for when the average user wants to pay a quicktime trailer. iTunes on the other hand gets installed because of its iPod fame. But even a Core 2 Duo cannot render the Cover flow interface of iTunes like a 1.33Ghz iBook G4 does.

Quicktime on Windows of course is nearly non functional. First of all are the ‘Buy Me!’ nags that show on launch (which Mac users never see). Second, hardly any formats work in Quicktime! On the Mac we have Perian and a bunch of other codecs that make playing video very easy. On Windows Quicktime cannot be customised beyond its preferences.

One thing Apple is doing right, is Safari. The browser has proven to be quite a competitor on Windows. Although it lacks support from third party plugin makers, it still is very speedy and feature rich to compete with the rest of the browsers. Most of the non-geeks I have recommended Safari to have spoken only good words for this browser. I was hoping that iTunes 8 would tell a similar tale, but alas, it just gets slower.

However, there’s still hope. Apple is putting Leopard on a diet, and will soon release Snow Leopard (that’s not how it works in nature though). With Snow Leopard, Apple is removing all the junk code, and putting in some new technologies, and rewriting some of the existing code of applications. Basically making it built for speed and the future.

I do hope that in this grand scheme of things, Apple cleans out the code of Quicktime and iTunes on Windows so that Windows users realise what they are missing (and make it more bearable when we are forced to use a PC). Make them feel like the only two Windows applications that are worth looking at, are made by Apple. Make them want to use Quicktime and iTunes, by choice, not by force. Make them want to switch to a Mac and be done with all that mess.

I was always under the impression that getting FLAC into iTunes involved some clever hackery that someone like me would never be able to comprehend. So I used AudialHub to convert any FLAC files I had to AAC and then imported them.

Little did I know that there was a utility that makes it look like FLAC was part of iTunes. Fluke, developed by designer Dmitry Kichenko, provides a bridge between the widespread lossless format and our favourite music manager. 

Fluke is really quite simple. The installer you download installs the components necessary for it to work: XiphQT, FLACImporter, and Set OggS. Fluke itself is an AppleScript saved as an application bundle. I kept the script inside the bundle editable so it’s all nice and open-saucy.

I’ve tested Fluke this past week and am happy to report that it works perfectly. Just open any FLAC file with Fluke and it asks you whether you want to import it into iTunes. Clicking ‘Yes’ brings up some windows I don’t quite understand (and make no attempt to) but they stay there for about a second, after which the track is imported right into iTunes as it normally would. 

You can then convert that track to AAC or MP3 if you want to load it up on your iPod or iPhone. And that’s all there is to it. Awesome? Yeah, baby!

The people behind the largest music store in the world have decided to start a little podcast of their own. The iTunes Weekly Rewind [iTunes link] is a weekly show by members of the iTunes music team, and boy do they know their music!

The idea behind the show is to introduce you to new music that you might have heard on TV shows, movie trailers, or music that is making its rounds on the Internet. “The music that makes up the soundtrack to your week” says one of the hosts (in every single episode, no less). Each episode focusses on a few key artists and revolves around those genres. Staying away from mainstream music that you would already know about, the hosts bring in new talent as well as the classics. The hosts are very knowledgeable about the music they talk about and give you the story behind the songs.

The production of the show is top notch, which doesn’t come as a big surprise when you consider where this podcast comes from. The episodes are all in enhanced AAC, which means that they display the artwork of the song they are playing. And if you want more info, click on the link (which is only visible when you’re listening to it in iTunes) and it will take you to the iTunes store (via your web browser).

I highly recommended this podcast for music listeners who want to discover new music [iTunes link]. With five episodes down already, I can see this podcast having a permanent residence in my podcast collection.

CNET Insider Secrets has posted a video on how to create an iPhone ringtone using only iTunes. This is a very simple trick and I’ll go through it step by step. 

For this trick to work, you will need iTunes 8, and any DRM-free Mp3 or AAC track. This includes “iTunes Plus” songs purchased from the iTunes store, the ones ripped from your CDs, or even those purchased from the Amazon music service. 

Right click on the song in iTunes and select “Get Info”. In the Options tab, enter the start time, and put the end time 40 seconds (or less) after the start time. For instance, in the example track, I have set the start time to 0:00, and the end time at 0:30. Anything more than 40 seconds and it will not work. Click OK. Continue Reading »

Someone over at Techradar has posted a piece [link] on how iTunes has become a bloated piece of crap, and offered beautiful suggestions on how Apple could change iTunes. From what it looks like however, the author is either a Windows user or has just switched over. Let’s go over the points he makes. 

1. Clean up the interface
What’s wrong with the iTunes interface? The author clearly wants only the list view, and if that’s the case, use the list view! No one is forcing anyone to use the Grid view or Coverflow. Both may be gimicky, but they work just fine for the rest of us.

I will however say that the Grid view does bring an inconsistent UI into the application, which Apple seems to be just testing out. In the next version a cleanup of the grid view would be appreciated.

2. Bar the Genius
Okay hold of a minute. The main feature of genius is playlist generation, and one that works fine. The tracks that are recommended are not necessarily those available in the store as it uses user data to generate playlists. Apple is not making any money out of Genius playlist feature. The Genius feature is also a fantastic addition for the iPhone/iPod and is something I use on a daily basis.

The Genius Sidebar on the other hand is just the rebranded mini-store and can be left out of this discussion.

3. Better file handling
While we would all like to play our pirated content in iTunes, Apple is not going to let that happen because of the record deals. So hopes of iTunes being able to play x264 and all that jazz isn’t going to get them to allow that media. Deal with it.

The author then wants iTunes to seamlessly convert video files as and when needed while syncing an iPod or iPhone instead of you having to manually convert those files (resulting in two of the same on your hard drive). This is insane! A single 200MB video file takes 15 minutes to convert! Imagine the hue and cry that will follow when people find their iPhone takes six days to sync up!

For those confused, to convert a video file (say a HD quicktime video) to iPhone format, just right-click and select “Convert for iPhone”. This creates a new file in your library leaving the original one as it is. 

4. Better handling of Multiple libraries
This is absolutely rubbish. Most users are content with a single library. And for those who want a second one, hold down the option key at startup! How much simpler can it get? The author is also aware that there are plugins for this purpose at dough’s scripts. Since this is a more advanced feature, script hunting is fair game. 

5. Better file tracking
In all my years of using iTunes with the “manage my music folder” checked, I have never faced a problem of file tracking. This is only two Windows geeks who prefer to manage their music in custom folders and then end up crying about it on the web.

And, on the Mac there’s no such thing as losing a file. iTunes will keep a track of your file if you move it or even change its name. Unfortunately, Windows is a little backward in technology hence there is no way to do this. 

6. Better database handling
Why do we have to care? iTunes is always running on my Mac, and it hardly uses 200MB to do the same. Even the startup, with my 8000 song library is very fast. I wouldn’t care if iTunes used a MS Word document as a database.

7. Better codec support
The author suggests iTunes should support WMV. Nuff said.

8. Multi-room support
The Airport Express, AppleTV and iPhone are more than capable tools at extending your iTunes library outside of the computer den.  

9. Cheaper iTunes Store
How does this apply to iTunes? In any case, 256kbps tracks are more than enough for anyone who listens to music. Simply making uninterested users download heavy CD-quality tracks does not make good sense. And at $1 per song, Apple has proven that it is a very good business model. Case to point: 5 billion songs sold already.

10. iTunes Pro
This I will partially agree with. Just as iPhoto has Aperture, and iMovie has Final Cut, iTunes should have a pro version. Something that is totally detatched from the free version of iTunes (no ads for the pro version please!), that has a lot of powerful features and expandability for those who want a little more than the basic version. This will of course never happen as there is no way Steve Jobs will allow a pro version of iTunes to be released.  

So what does Apple need to change then?
For one, it needs to improve the code. Snow Leopard is going through the shredder, and so should iTunes. Especially the Windows version (have you used iTunes on Windows lately?). Making iTunes blazing fast, optimised from the ground up, will make this application the more preferred music player on Windows, as it is on the Mac. 

I’d also like to see some improvements in the interface of the iTunes store. Tabbed browsing would be nice, wish lists, and a more responsive search (Store > Search…) feature. 

Any gripes with iTunes? Share them in the comments.

Apple has, in rapid succession, dropped 3 updates through the night. iTunes gets bumped to 8.0.1, the MobileMe control panel for Windows jumps to 1.2, and then there’s the AppleTV 2.2 update.

iTunes 8
As expected iTunes 8.0.1 arrives close to a month after the initial release. And it fixes a whole bunch of stuff. For one, the seed song will continue playing seamlessly on hitting the Genius button, much like it does on the iPod. Second, the issue about iTunes automatically deleting HD TV shows has been fixed. And third, the iPhone app update issues have been solved. It also fixes some voice accesibility and syncing issues with the new iPod and fixes some problems with updating Genius.

iTunes still hasn’t solved its high memory consumption issues, but I guess Moore’s law has taken care of that for now. Updated for Mac and Windows, I highly recommend it, even at it’s 52MB file size.

MobileMe
An update for the Windows control panel, MobileMe adds support for syncing more than the previous 2,000 contacts, and “prevents syncing of data between Microsoft Exchange Server and MobileMe, a configuration that is not supported.”

MobileMe 1.2 update will also allow you to manage your iDisk in the Windows control panel. The 1.6MB update requires iTunes 8.0.1 to operate.

AppleTV
Thanks to TUAW, we also know that AppleTV has been updated to 2.2! You know what this means. The AppleTV now has the Genius feature. Holding down the play/pause button during playback will bring up the Genius menu, much like the iPod Nano.

(Screenshot courtesy TUAW)

AppleTV also allows buying of HD TV shows directly from the interface. Apart from this it also brings in some security and bug fixes. The update can be downloaded from the settings menu.

Amidst the process of making their revolutionary open source phone OS, a direct competitor to the iPhone, Google has forgotten one important thing—the desktop part of it! 

Let’s back up to the iPhone and see what role iTunes plays in it. To put it in a single word, everything! First of all, it manages your music, movies, and TV shows and synchronises them with your iPhone in a manner unmatched by any other application from any other phone manufacturer. Secondly, it manages your applications, makes sure your contacts are sent to and fro, and manages the rest of your iPhone settings with the the trademark Apple touch firmly in place.

Let’s draw a real world example here. I have a bunch of Podcasts set to automatically download new episodes when available. Whenever I dock my iPhone, it automatically syncs any unplayed episodes to my phone. If I watch/listen to the podcast on my desktop or my iPhone, the next time I dock my iPhone it will delete it and transfer a new one instead. If I watch it halfway on my iPhone, it will transfer that info on the next sync, and resume playback at the exact same position. This is just one example of the big role iTunes plays in the working of the iPhone. 

Truth be told, I was a bit skeptical about Google’s being able to pull this off in the first place. I expected something poor and shabby, with a shabby interface to begin with. Something even half as good as iTunes would have been sufficient to impress the likes of me. But Google had to prove me wrong. Instead of making a shabby application, they have totally done away with it. 

To sum up the the Android platform, what we have is the phone (HTC G1) and the Android OS, but no software to back it up. You have to manage your contacts and emails using a Google account (Tell me, have you checked the mess in your Google contacts recently?) It is inevitable that this will result in a multitude of vendor specific software, which will confuse the hell out of the end user. Think about it: you not only have to choose among a variety of different shapes, sizes, and features from the phone perspective, you also have to ensure that the software backing it all up is up to the mark (if at all there is any in the first place). This, of course, is just one of the gazillion problems I can think of with regard to this platform, but I will refrain from venting them all out in one article (be thankful, be very thankful).

The Android platform may be in its early stages right now (the phone isn’t even available for the general public) and Google may be planning on something for later, but if this is the way things are supposed to be, it will turn out to be just like Linux was to the desktop (very powerful software but one most people, the “average” folk, choose to stay away from). And we wouldn’t want that, now, would we?