Filed under: Multimedia, Internet Tools, iTunes
iTunes makes your life better
UsingMac has posted an exhaustive look at iTunes from the perspective of making your working life better. From basic tips like shuffling songs and shuffling movies to more advanced tips like using Terminal to set a half-star rating, it's well thought out.My favorite tip involves browser mode. Many people (in my experience at least) overlook this feature. I find it to be a killer way to categorize and find just what you're looking for, across genres, years, styles, etc. Of course, I'm that annoying guy who gets all excited over tags, charts and graphs, so keep that in mind.
Check out the article and feel free to share you own.

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
schroef said 1:16PM on 4-09-2009
"Of course, I'm that annoying guy who gets all excited over tags, charts and graphs, so keep that in mind."
Haha, I'm exactly the same! I even use Lostify to edit the release dates of my ripped movies and tv shows. Love to have the right tags!
Somehow I always love to make graphs of things, like how many applejuice I drank in a week..
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Galley said 1:40PM on 4-09-2009
I've been using the half-star rating trick for a while now.
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Tom said 1:42PM on 4-09-2009
I also want to organize everything in iTunes. I started out with my music collection and now have all my movies and tv shows in there too. For that I use VideoDrive. Great tool to add and tag videos without reconverting first.
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Jo Jo the Dancer said 1:44PM on 4-09-2009
The article talks about iTunes PRO vs. the FREE version.
Um, ok ....
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Jay said 2:31PM on 4-09-2009
That's what I was saying! There is no pro version of iTunes. The author of this article has no idea what he's talking about.
dean said 2:35PM on 4-09-2009
Itunes has completely changed the way I find and enjoy music, podcasts, and news. I've written a couple articles on my blog about it
here:
http://deanandyou.blogspot.com/2008/07/ultimate-guide-to-itunes-smart.html
and here:
http://deanandyou.blogspot.com/2008/09/creating-great-discovery-playlist-in.html
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spiceweasel said 2:58PM on 4-09-2009
I'm always pretty shocked to find out how many people do not know about the browser mode. For me, it's one of the main features that makes iTunes so worthwhile. I know a lot of people who drag albums into playlist. Browser mode makes that unnecessary.
Also I wonder how many people are aware of the "group compilations" feature (not sure about the exact term, since I use iTunes in another language). It definitely helps de-clutter the artist list in browser mode, since artists that only appear on compilations will not appear in that list. As far as I know, iPods have been supporting this since the 3rd or 4th generation, however, iPhone does not, which is a major bummer for me. I wonder if I'm alone with that feature request?
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joe said 4:09PM on 4-09-2009
"Of course, I'm that annoying guy who gets all excited over tags, charts and graphs"
Which is exactly what iTunes is. A giant fucking spreadsheet. Lame.
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mark said 5:31PM on 4-09-2009
And why, exactly, is that "lame"? Because you don't care about your music being organized?
I look forward to seeing the "non-lame" iTunes-alternative app you're developing. In the meantime, please let us know what it will be like and why it'll so much better than iTunes.
Thanks!
john.youngberg said 2:35AM on 4-10-2009
Anyone else think of BSG when they saw this picture?
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Andrew said 8:06AM on 4-10-2009
How could someone NOT know about the browser? If you have any decent amount of music, it's almost a requirement! Didn't it used to be default on? I've noticed it's not in newer builds, but I don't remember if it used to be on by default, or if I've always just turned it on.
The EQ is harder to find now too, but that's very nice if you're not passing through some external post processor and just listening on computer speakers like most people.
I know iTunes has gotten a lot of crap, mainly for Apple's terrible coding on the Windows platform (which is getting a little better), but I love iTunes on my Mac.
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Garry Schafer said 10:17AM on 4-10-2009
Nice to see a Mission UK fan.
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