So I'm sitting at work today lamenting (as usual) the lack of queue-it-up or full random play in my iTunes, at least as far as I can find. I was considering installing winamp or loading the library into WMP - although I'm a bit scared at how the Apple-organised library will "play" with other apps f***ing around in its musak. I spent a lot of time making the library Apple-happy!

Anyway, in a moment of weakness I decided to give the Genius s*** a go, fully expecting it to be arse dongles.

Well, it seems to work well. Like, really well, its ability to throw together a playlist from my library based on a song I'm liking seems to be pretty good. I'm almost ashamed to admit it but I'm considering putting iTunes on my HTPC to play music just for this feature.

Am I slowly being infected with the Apple-gay? HELP!

Does anyone know of an iTunes remote app for the iPhone?

ahah had to happen eventually.

as for iTunes remote, there's one by Apple called.. Remote.

Ha I didn't even bother looking I just asked the QGL :( I suck.

Its what everyone does... Have you seen Whirlpool lately? ha

I open up itunes, grab every song in its window and drag it over to winamp, winamp handles it just fine and plays them no problems. I do this mainly because itunes lacks a feature that lets me export my playlist to a human readable format like html. I'm not sure how it goes if I just drag the entire music directory because I've only ever done it to export my playlist to html so I only want songs specific to my current playlist.

Also I don't think winamp alters the files like windows media player does and I'm pretty sure WMP just adds/removes ID tag type info & stores your ratings in the files which I know you can turn off so I wouldn't worry too much about winamp breaking anything though if you're worried just drag a few songs over to it & play them for a few hours to see what it does. I've never had any issues though.

Am I slowly being infected with the Apple-gay? HELP!

That's how it started with me, I installed itunes as a way of buying songs, not long after I got an ipod and now I'm seriously considering a mac. FML

last edited by whoop at 15:41:22 29/Aug/09

lamenting (as usual) the lack of queue-it-up or full random play in my iTunes

It used to have something called party shuffle that can queue up tracks but I can't seem to find it anymore, as for full random, it's right there as plain to see at the bottom left, 2nd bottom on the right.

It's not really random though, if you hit the previous song button it'll go back through the songs it just played, then it'll play them again. It seems to be more of a randomize on start & stick with that list type of thing. A better idea would be if you hit the previous button and get a song you haven't played yet, then when that one's done it'd play another song you haven't heard.

A better idea would be if you hit the previous button and get a song you haven't played yet, then when that one's done it'd play another song you haven't heard.

You know you can hit forward and get that same effect?

as for full random, it's right there as plain to see at the bottom left, 2nd bottom on the right

Yeh that doesn't seem to work too well for me for some reason, unless I'm in a playlist. I'm pretty good at failing at Apple applications though so no doubt I'm doing something that it doesn't expect (or vice versa).

Anyway this was intended as a tongue-in-cheek backhanded compliment of the software ... I'm not sure why you would think I would be having a go at iTunes?!

My gripe with itunes is that when you choose random, it's just really creating a randomly generated play list. Which sucks balls when some fag at a party decides they have to listen to a song that second and randomly chooses the last song in the random playlist.

How random is that!

You can just hit shuffle again twice - it turns off shuffle then re-shuffles starting with the song that is currently playing. This takes care of the previous song problem whoop mentioned.

But like hogfather has discovered, just use the brilliant intuitiveness of Genius.

Except when it does a reshuffle, previous songs that have played will play again at some point. What Whoop mentioned isn't even an issue and the only time I hit back is if I actually want to hear the previous song (Or else you just go forward to go to a new song).

iTunes' Shuffle isn't any sort of magic smart remembering shuffle. All it does is create an internal randomised playlist and when moving either past the last track of back from the first track, it reshuffles the playlist.

last edited by 3dee at 21:47:26 29/Aug/09

Genius is almost as good as some of the 3rd party add ons that have been around for a while now.

Apple is gay. itunes has many flaws. But anyone that thinks winamp or media player is better is pretty stupid.

foobar, media monkey and a few others I'd say yeah ok. But when someone says Media Player is better then itunes it's pure anti fan boi.

But anyone that thinks winamp or media player is better is pretty stupid ... But when someone says Media Player is better then itunes it's pure anti fan boi.

Trolling (yet) again Obes? Just piss off.

I am also close to throwing my iPod Touch at a wall. It randomly turns on and flicks between thinking its charging/need to be connected to iTunes. Curse you Apple.

Genius is almost as good as some of the 3rd party add ons that have been around for a while now.

I've only tried one other program (can't remember the name, but it was posted in an iTunes thread aaaages ago), which I think was the one that kinda invented the idea of a shuffle that selects music based on what you're currently listening to. I was impressed, but the iTunes version s***s all over it.

Pretty nice that you can use Genius on your iPod/iPhone as well.

The main strength in Genius is that it uses an worldwide database of "similar music" and updates it every so often so that its more accurate. Everyone's iTunes sends up their listening style observation then its processes and sends back the results, so I'd say it'd be more accurate now than it was when first introduced.

Either that or Apple is sending personal information to themselves...

last edited by 3dee at 12:43:17 30/Aug/09