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More things to like about OS X

ziggy on 2002-07-12T22:09:42

  1. Antialiased fonts look good and readable (like they should). Antialiased fonts with recent versions of Win* look fuzzy and hard to read.
  2. Plug a camera in over USB, and iPhoto starts up, ready to help you import and organize your photos. iPhoto isn't shabby, either.
  3. Put a CD into the CD ROM drive, and iTunes starts up, queries CDDB for song titles, and is ready to play the CD, make MP3s, or whatever. Plus, the sound quality on a lowly iBook is really crisp and clear.
  4. I used to think that xmms or WinAmp were reasonable for playing MP3s. Seems like a good idea -- a nice, small window that's always around and playing your songs. I'm sold on the iTunes way of doing things: big fat window, ready to browse your collection as many ways as you want, easily hidden and just always there
  5. Want to print something? Just plug in a USB printer and you're ready to go. (I spend more time trying to think about how to print or import CDs, because I'm used to *NIX/Win* where everything needs to be configured/installed first. Eventually, I'll unlearn my penchant for running nasty little setup apps and just expect things to behave intuitively -- because they will.)
  6. Want to look at a file? Just click on it. More likely than not, Preview, TextEdit or AppleWorks will open it.
  7. The default text editor, TextEdit, knows about RTF; it also is much easier to use than WordPad, and better than Notepad (especially when something needs to be bold, centered, or underlined).
Truth be told, there are a few thing not to like about OS X. One: the "I Switched" ad campaign. Two: lack of support for some of the extra features on my overpriced, underperforming printer (like duplex printing, which doesn't work, even after replacing the duplexing unit...) Three: HFS+. Four: no telephony manager (haven't decided if this is a good thing or not yet...)

iTunes

gnat on 2002-07-12T22:48:55

I'm still not sold on iTunes. I can't get it to work with my Apache::MP3 server, and winamp et al never blinked. I don't yet have iTunes-fu strong enough to be able to slice and dice my collection the way I want.

--Nat

Re:iTunes

Theory on 2002-07-12T23:09:17

That's strange. iTunes just worked for me and my Apache::MP3 server (running on a Linux box). What browser are you using to connect?

Re:iTunes

gnat on 2002-07-13T00:03:18

Latest IE, and everything. It didn't work when my sister's iMac was here, so it must be something bogus about my server. Can you stream from http://prometheus.frii.com/mp3/ ?

--Nat

Re:iTunes

Theory on 2002-07-13T00:19:33

Almost. It loads up in iTunes, prebuffers the stream, and then does nothing. Strange. I tried it with Mozilla, which did successfully get the URL to iTunes. Same deal when I tried it with IE. It might be the iTunes decides not bo play it because it's too slow a connection, but it doesn't tell me that.

HTH,

-David

Re:iTunes

gnat on 2002-07-13T14:19:56

That's the same symptoms I see on my LAN, so I don't think speed has anything to do with it. It sounds like it's definitely something wrong with my server setup, then. I wonder what the hell it could be!

--Nat

Re:iTunes

Theory on 2002-07-16T16:06:04

Yeah, curious. If it helps any, here's what's in my configuration:



<Location /mp3>
        SetHandler perl-script
        PerlSetVar SortFields title,artist,duration
        PerlSetVar CacheDir /usr/tmp/mp3_cache
        PerlHandler Apache::MP3::Playlist
</Location>

David

I Switched

gnat on 2002-07-12T22:54:57

How can you not like this?

--Nat :-)

Re:I Switched

jdavidb on 2002-07-15T15:47:43

Whoops. That was one of those links I should have avoided while at work.

Apache::MP3 + iTunes

ask on 2002-07-12T23:11:01


uhmn, the only thing that doesn't work is the ability to zap to a specific point in the stream. Otherwise it should work. What doesn't work for you?

You obviously haven't been drinking the kool-aid for long enough when you don't like the Switch campaign. The rest of us brainwashed people are drooling over it. "Hahah, see how stupid they are. Now they know better. Now they are one of US!".

  - ask

Re:Apache::MP3 + iTunes

pudge on 2002-07-17T00:22:02

Also, it doesn't pause.

Also, it doesn't handle artist/album/name/etc. separately, making it a real pain to handle streaming files in your iTunes playlists.