Ian Eisenberg
Veteran Member
Try hide other applications under the app menu. You can even assign a keyboard shortcut for it.
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Your MAC, what does it need from Windows/Linux/etc
- Thread starter RonFlash
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Alpha Doug
Veteran Member
Yes, of course OS X is not perfect. And yes it is sometimes worth doing a thread on "what would you like to have changed in OS X", with the hope that someone from Apple reads these forums (actually, I know they do). But the original poster is thinking about switching to a Mac. So you can take one of two approaches. Mention that there are a couple of things you do miss, but for the most part you are happy you made the switch, or you could only mention how much you miss feature A or B, without any comment on your overall experience. The first approach would be a good one if you really wanted to see another PC user switch. The second approach would be a good one if you wanted to scare them away. I'm not sure which side I come down on. I like to see a person switch and be very happy, of course. But sometimes it is disappointing to hear about folks who switch, then spend all of their time lamenting the switch, and trying to make their Mac work just like a PC. At least on a newer Mac you could do just that. Just load Boot Camp, boot into Windows, and use it full time.
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Only my opinion. It's worth what you paid for it. Your mileage may vary! ;-}
http://www.dougwigton.com/
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Only my opinion. It's worth what you paid for it. Your mileage may vary! ;-}
http://www.dougwigton.com/
Mixtapes and the like can be achieved easily with playlists. I admit that you are much more limited in the organisation of the playlists within iTunes than you would be with folders in the Finder (area for playlists is pretty small, gets complicated with too many playlists per folder; cannot search the playlists, limited to sorting by name, etc.).
But the benefits of playlists very much outweigh these negatives.
But the benefits of playlists very much outweigh these negatives.
gaussian blur
Veteran Member
The sidebar for playlists can be widened, playlist and playlist folders folders can be nested, searching works in a playlist, and playlists can be sorted by any column -- just click in the column header, just like in the main library. In fact, some columns, such as Album name, have multiple ways to sort, including Album, Album by Artist and Album by Year. Also, the multi-column browser works in playlists.
Computer systems come and go. Software comes and goes. My music collection is forever. I'm not about to trust my collection to one software application that may or may not let me get my music back out of it again. It's called a single point of failure. And that doesn't even get into the portability factor. I can take my collection from my Mac to a Windows machine to a Linux box with no issues. Try that with your iTunes-managed files. The same arguments apply to my photos and Aperture. Are those enough reasons for you?
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Yes, I know. I already nest my playlists but I keep closing and opening the album art window. With sorting and searching I meant searching for the name of a playlist (which is not possible) and sorting the playlists themselves (not the songs in the playlists) by anything other than name is not possible.
Alpha Doug
Veteran Member
Danegeld,
I'm not sure I follow this argument. Let's take the Aperture argument first. It is a popular myth that if you commit your images by importing them into the SQL lite managed library, that somehow you will lose control of them. Nothing could be further from the truth. At any time you can export and set of images back out of the library. But more importantly, you don't have to import them to use Aperture. You can manage them by reference to the folders in which they reside. Works very much like iView Media Pro. As long as you don't dive into the folders and start manually mucking around with the images, or move the folders, or manually delete files, you are just fine. Just like any other image manager. Your original images, and your modified, adjusted images are always available to you and easily backed up and movable from one system to another.
I'm not a big user of iTunes. I do have a pretty good selection of music, most of which comes from my own CD collection. After import, I can, at any time, burn a playlist of songs to a CD, or I can export the songs as MP3s, AACs, or full Aiff files back into a folder on my disk. The only songs you can't do this with (and you can burn a few CDs)is the rights managed songs you have purchased. You will remember it wasn't Apple who insisted on rights management. It was the distributors who thought people would mass distribute their albums and put them out of business. But they are now re-thinking that paradigm, and a lot of the music on iTunes is DRM free. And you can go back in and convert any of your DRM music to non-DRM if it is supported.
I think most of the paranoia about "commiting" your files to a managed database is FUD.
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Only my opinion. It's worth what you paid for it. Your mileage may vary! ;-}
http://www.dougwigton.com/
I'm not sure I follow this argument. Let's take the Aperture argument first. It is a popular myth that if you commit your images by importing them into the SQL lite managed library, that somehow you will lose control of them. Nothing could be further from the truth. At any time you can export and set of images back out of the library. But more importantly, you don't have to import them to use Aperture. You can manage them by reference to the folders in which they reside. Works very much like iView Media Pro. As long as you don't dive into the folders and start manually mucking around with the images, or move the folders, or manually delete files, you are just fine. Just like any other image manager. Your original images, and your modified, adjusted images are always available to you and easily backed up and movable from one system to another.
I'm not a big user of iTunes. I do have a pretty good selection of music, most of which comes from my own CD collection. After import, I can, at any time, burn a playlist of songs to a CD, or I can export the songs as MP3s, AACs, or full Aiff files back into a folder on my disk. The only songs you can't do this with (and you can burn a few CDs)is the rights managed songs you have purchased. You will remember it wasn't Apple who insisted on rights management. It was the distributors who thought people would mass distribute their albums and put them out of business. But they are now re-thinking that paradigm, and a lot of the music on iTunes is DRM free. And you can go back in and convert any of your DRM music to non-DRM if it is supported.
I think most of the paranoia about "commiting" your files to a managed database is FUD.
--
Only my opinion. It's worth what you paid for it. Your mileage may vary! ;-}
http://www.dougwigton.com/
richiebee
Veteran Member
Not necessarily... drivers can be a problem.
richiebee
Veteran Member
We don't all work the same way. We don't all have a 30" screen (nor would want one). If I hide other apps, I still have the desktop. It loses focus in what I'm using - If I could maximize and take up the whole screen, I know that everything I do on that screen is in my application. No accidentally clicking on the desktop and losing a toolbar or whatever. It's just cleaner. With some applications, this is more important than others. I hate floating windows... in some applications, you click on something and it opens a new window... hiding others doesn't hide the other windows of the same application. It's messy. Maximizing a window and blocking out everything else is easy in Windows (at least it was in XP... I don't know about Vista).
richiebee
Veteran Member
richiebee
Veteran Member
Thanks... that worked.[/U]
I'm not sure I follow your arguments either. Ever hear of putting all your eggs in one basket? It also comes down to preference. I have a directory/file-naming structure that I've used for media management for over 15 years. It works perfectly for me and I don't NEED an application to manage my files. I have selected parts of my photo collections in libraries in Aperture, but it leaves my files where I put them, not where it thinks they should be. Believe it or not, I sometimes use other applications to work with them besides Aperture.
DRM has absolutely nothing to do with my music collection (it's 100% DRM-free). I'm not a big fan of iTunes even though I do use it to get files onto and off of my iPods. I don't, however, use it as a media player. Like my photos, I have the entire collection organized the way I want it, not the way iTunes or any other application wants to organize it. I always mistrust software that says, "Trust me. I know how to take care of your files better than you do." Ever try to do a backup from iTunes? Good luck with that.
I'm not saying media management software is a bad thing. For people who aren't computer-savvy and who don't really understand how files and file systems work, it can be a good solution. For those of us who have experience with managing large media collections, it just isn't necessary.
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Alpha Doug
Veteran Member
Well, I guess we will have to just agree to disagree. Different strokes for different folks. When I first started up my freelance photography business, I kept track of all my commercial product photography files in a folder hierarchy that I constructed. If I really needed to find a specific file I could use spotlight to quickly find them. And I manually backed everything up to mulitple outboard sources. But it finally became very cumbersome to track everything. Now, I use Aperture as a tool to help me track all my image files. It just makes things easier. But if I had a large studio, with mulitple helpers processing and filing images, or I worked for a large creative agency, I would be using something more industrial strength like Extensis Portfolio, or Canto Cumulus. I think my viewpoint might be skewed by the thousands of image files I need to keep track of and find instantly, and the fact that I tead a digital asset management class.
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Only my opinion. It's worth what you paid for it. Your mileage may vary! ;-}
http://www.dougwigton.com/
--
Only my opinion. It's worth what you paid for it. Your mileage may vary! ;-}
http://www.dougwigton.com/
N
Najinsky
Guest
The above is a very confused string of statements. The last thing this forumn is is a dictatorship to say this is how you must do this, this is how you must do that. It's an area for people to exchange information and chat.
But surely there is sense in looking at why you do X or Y?
For me the BIG discovery of the OS X based Mac was the complete transformation from managing the system, the applications and the media into Using the applications and Media. In fact, the home computer use finally became media centric. Media was the focus. And the more I learned about Mac, the more I learned this was by design.
From a creativity POV I was amazed with my achievements in My first 2 months with OS X.
Sure you are free to ignore what it gives for free and look for commercial or other alternatives that better fit your mode of working, but, for example:
Doesn't explain anything about why you do X or Y.
The Eggs are your MP3 files. The Basket is your hard drive. It's irrelevent how they are organised on the dirve, thats just different patterns you stack them into. They are still eggs in a basket. It doesn't matter if you stack them yourself or get an assistant to stack them for you automatically, they are still eggs in a basket.
I do a weekly backup of all my eggs, MP3 flavour, CR2 Flavour, mbox flavour, everything. My additional itunes data, and all other data also gets backed-up, and I'm sure it doesn't run on luck, just a spare external drive.
iTunes is simply my assistant that stacks my MP3 flavour eggs and in doing so gives me an additional 20 benefits for free. And it doesn't prevent any other app using them either. It's the Mac way.
-Najinsky
In some cases, particularly in large operations with lots of people, DAM has a place. I've worked in software and web development for a very long time and wouldn't dream of starting a large-scale project without version control software. It all has its gotchas and I learned to gauge its necessity based on the size of the project and the number of people involved. If other people were using my collections of photos and music, then yeah, I probably would use some kind of management software. But for only a few hundred thousand files, directory structures and naming conventions are perfectly adequate. Not to mention a whole lot faster and less prone to problems if you're accustomed to working with large numbers of files. Many years ago, I lost three months' worth of files to the oft-reviled Polytron version control system. Not just current files were corrupted, but it had routinely been corrupting backups as well. That catastrophe was what first made me look at DAM with a skeptic's eye and use it only when absolutely necessary. There was a guy I used to work with who had a sign on his desk that said, "Version control software is like bad underwear. It's uncomfortable and has holes in it, but it covers your butt."
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http://www.pbase.com/tmalcom/
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http://www.pbase.com/tmalcom/
FunkyEmu
Forum Enthusiast
It can be a great solution for those of us who have a very good understanding of files and filesystems, too.
Going between Aperture on two different Macs has me perfectly comfortable with it managing everything. I have local and off-site backups if something goes wrong.
I do understand that some want to be more in control though, and am glad Apple added the ability in iTunes/iPhoto/Aperture to just manage by reference.
FunkyEmu
Forum Enthusiast
There certainly used to be lots of MP3 players for the Mac, before iTunes 3 or 4 got almost everything right. I seem to recall a program called MacAmp that was a pretty straight lift of WinAmp. Audion was the player I used before I finally switched to iTunes, and you can still download a PPC/OS X from Panic, IIRC.
er, I cut and paste filenames all the time. Do you mean files? as Mac OS X doesn't do file cut/paste like Windows, though I really don't mind it not being in OS X, as it seems to handle multiple windows so much better than Windows (where not having it would drive me more bonkers than it does already)
FunkyEmu
Forum Enthusiast
Almost all the software that I like to use in Linux can be had via Ports ( http://www.macports.org/ ), such as wget, w3m, nmap. I sometimes miss virtual desktops, but my copy of Leopard has shipped, so, huzzah to that. (The third party virtual desktop software for Mac OS X I've tried over the years just hasn't worked as well as I'd have liked).
The only thing I miss from Windows is a couple of games and the ability to rename files from open/save dialogue boxes.
The only thing I miss from Windows is a couple of games and the ability to rename files from open/save dialogue boxes.
I'm not trying to tell anyone how to handle their media. If keywords, indexes, and media browsers work for you, by all means use them. I'm just saying that there are risks in entrusting all of your media to one system or application and more complicated tools and players are not necessarily better. When I want to listen to music, I'd rather have a simple media player I can drag a directory onto and have it start playing than have to compile a library, make playlists, and then find what I want in it. I don't care about ratings, how many times a track has been played, or how it's tagged. I just want to listen to it without any fuss.
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http://www.pbase.com/tmalcom/
I tried Audion but had problems with it and the ancient MacAmp won't even run on my Mac. I'm using Whamb, but the playlist window is pretty funky.
No, I mean being able to cut a part of the filename when the filename is in edit mode. You can't. You can only copy and then delete. I don't ever cut/paste files even on Windows...I don't trust my fingers (and brain) enough to paste it where it needs to go. However, I've always managed files via drag and drop, including on Windows, so Finder works for me just the way I want it to.
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http://www.pbase.com/tmalcom/
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