Filed under: iPod Family, Bugs/Recalls, iTunes
iTunes 7.1: Are sorts breaking scroll-by-letter?
TUAW reader Rae tipped us off that the new iTunes 7.1 sorting features are causing problems with the iPod's scroll-by-letter functionality. Items that start with the word "The" (like "The Breakers" or "The Danse") are sorted by their main phrase ("Breakers", "Danse") and not by "The", but when you scroll through your music, the iPod gets mixed up and the letter 'T' keeps flashing almost randomly.
I sorted out my music, synced my iPod and saw exactly what Rae was talking about. When scrolling by All Artists -> Albums, the following items "In Your Eyes", "The Innocent and the E Street", "Innocent Man", "The Instigator", "Invincible Summer" caused my iPod to flash "I", "T", "I", "T", "I". Very annoying!
Rae pointed us to a couple of discussion threads over at Apple's boards about this subject.

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Andrew said 5:15PM on 3-12-2007
i noticed it today
Reply
Adam said 5:20PM on 3-12-2007
I do love this new sorting feature since it fixes all my "the"'s however its also causing a lot of frusteration by creating duplicates of albums being listed on my iPod - for example by Fatboy Slim "The Greatest Hits" is showing up like this
Greatest Hits (a different album)
The Greatest Hits
Greatest hits (same album from before)
The Greatest Hits
its really strange.
And its doing similar things in artist mode. anyone else have the same issue?
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Harry said 6:31PM on 3-12-2007
I changed a track by 'James Brown and the Famous Flames' so that the sort artist was 'James Brown'. The sorting works, but now, using browse mode in iTunes, there are three artists:
James Brown
James Brown And The Famous Flames
James Brown
which is a bit pathetic. Selecting either James Brown offers the same choice of tracks, I just don't want him appearing twice in the list.
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Adam said 7:01PM on 3-12-2007
Yup, same here Harry. It's quite... annoying.
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thomasupton said 4:05PM on 3-13-2007
The same thing happens with numbers. If you have an artist or album that begins with a number that you have sorted phonetically, the 1,2,3 overlay will show up as you scroll, too.
Annoying, to say the least. I'm not really sure how Apple can get around this on the iPod, though.
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