New Mac user frustrations
 

I just got my new Mac Mini about a month ago. I was pretty excited about it. But I'm a little jaded now and here's why:

Macs are supposed to be the best platform for audio, video, graphics, all the artsy stuff. BUT...

Quicktime, the original movie player for Macs by Apple drops frames while playing movies. Why?

To play MPGs and WMV files, I had to install Microsoft Windows Media Player. Why?

Playing mp3 files. iTunes copies the mp3s to its own library directory. Why?

Playlists. iTunes and Whamb both keep persistant playlists. Why?

And the Whamb playlists are sorted alphabetically. Why? If I add a new song to the playlist that is alphabetically before the last song played, it doesn't play.

And Themes are apparently very difficult to implement in OS X. Why?

You know, I had far fewer problems doing all of the above on a $200 Linux box than on this $730 Mac Mini.

What am I doing wrong? I realize that this is the cheapest Mac available, but come on, it has a 1.42 GHz processor, 512 MB of RAM, and an 80 GB hard drive. And a 200GB external firewire drive that is a whole 'nother can of worms. Everybody says firewire is faster than USB, but I haven't had nearly the problems with my USB devices as with this firewire one. And last but not least, this Apple keyboard hates me.

:o
Toney.

hmm...mpgs should play fine in Quicktime. are they divix (mpg4) files?wmv files? dunno if that was Apple excluding the MS format, or MS excluding Apple. From my experience though, VLC is a much better app for wmvs.

iTunes copies mp3's to it's own directory as a "feature", but you can disable that in the iTunes preferences.

USB2 is faster than FireWire, USB1 is slower. Even with USB2, when working with large files FireWire will spank it. It depends on what you're doing with it. IIRC, USB2 excels when working with many small files.

dunno about WhamB, or the mini vs a $200 linux box but if you're at the level where you can setup your own multimedia linux station, then you should have no problem tweaking OS X to meet you needs. Out of the box it caters to the luddites, and non-technical peeps.

What other software is running at the same time? Open Activity Monitor (in the Utilities app folder) and see how busy the CPU is. For huge files and/or high frame rates, it is possible that the notebook CPU in the Mini just can't keep up.

Well, WMV=Windows Media Video, so...

Because Apple assumes that computer users are ignorant and can't organize files on their own. You can disable this behavior in the advanced properties. I believe it's called "Copy files to library" or something like that. Also note the option (default to on) which re-organizes the files and names according to the media info.

I don't know what Whamb is, but I don't understand your question. Should playlists disappear? What do you mean?

Yup. You might want to go back to Linux, it certainly is more customizable. I live with a Linux user who hates Macs. It's certainly funny watching her spend an hour accomplishing the simplest of tasks, compiling, downloading dependancies, and all that fun. She sure can make it look like anything she wants, after a few hours.

What problems are you having? FW is very reliable and fast.

Details?

Dunno. My 500 MHz G4 Powerbook plays QT movies withouth dropping frames, and it's not exactly an accelerated-video machine (it is, in fact, an accelerated WallStreet). Are you RAM-deprived by any chance?


Same reason Windows users have to install Apple QuickTime Player to play QT movies?


Mostly because iTunes is an annoying program that thinks it knows better than you do how to manage your music. Get Audion instead.


I have no more clue what a persistent versus transient playlist is than previous respondents. Whatever it is, try Audion, as I said.

Dunno what a Whamb is.

You got a point there. Reason is mainly because Apple didn't implement them and it's hard to pull off using 3rd-party hacks. I'd switch themes from time to time if it weren't so; instead, I set it to the appearance I want and then never touch it again.

Well, you can compile X11 apps and tweaks to the X11 environment, and command-line utilities, for the Mac, too. Whereas you can't buy so much in the way of shrink-wrapped mainstream commercial apps for your Linux box.

Want the world's best keyboard for your Mac? Score an ADB "Extended Keyboard" or "Extended Keyboard II" — not the cheap later ADB "AppleDesign" keyboards but rather the older ones with the Caps Lock keys that physically stay down when you invoke them. (That's not what's cool about them, it's how you recognize them). Use a USB-ADB adapter and put one of those on and type in style. Find out what a true 110-WPM keyboard feels like under your fingertips. These suckers retailed for $216 or something back in the day, more than some computers cost in their entirety.

LOL!!! That has to be the funniest, most heart warming comment I've ever seen. I couldn't have say it better myself.






( :rolleyes: On a side note, I'm glad you didn't listen to me when I say the same thing to you about Windows.)

I have to agree with the previous posters, with just a few additional thoughts:

A large movie on the slow Mini hard drive could be a problem.

Playlists stay until you remove them. Why wouldn't they? You can sort them any way you like. Just click on the field header. If you change the sort while playing a song, iTunes will continue playing in the original sort order, but if you set it to repeat all, eventually it will play.

Oh, and I too would like to know what Whamb is!

Here's the skinny on Whamb.

Wow, you guys are fast! I will try to address all the points above.

Quicktime: Not sure if they were mpeg4/divx files or not. I think Quicktime would give me errors on some files so I tried VLC. VLC would not allow me to fast forward/rewind/random access files. The picture would stop and the audio would proceed from the pointer. Same thing with WMP, too.

Other software running: usually just Mozilla and Yahoo Messenger and whatever else OS X runs in the background. With the old Macs, the "About this Mac" thing would tell you how much memory was available, the new one just tells me how much I have. Top says: PhysMem: 61.3M wired, 151M active, 149M inactive, 361M used, 150M free, with mozilla, terminal, and YIM running.

iTunes: Good to know that can be turned off, I'll have to give it another shot.

Whamb is another mp3 player I got from Versiontracker.

Playlists: I guess they confuse me because I cannot understand why anyone would want to listen to the same list of songs over and over again. I just pick a bunch I want to listen to and usually pick them one at a time or a few at a time as I find them and I just don't get why the player wants to rearrange them as I add them to the current list. OK, I guess I'm used to Winamp and XMMS. The next time I play mp3s, I expect there to be a blank list there waiting for me to populate it.

I understand your amusement with your roommate and that is exactly what I am trying to avoid by getting a Mac. I want to play some mp3s or video clips every now and then and I don't want to download and complie something every time I want to do that.

Firewire: Sometimes when the Mini goes to sleep the firewire drive misbehaves afterwards. I have to shut everything off and bring it back up before it all plays together again. You may say it is my weird brand of firewire drive, but I have read many threads on this forum about misbehaving firewire drives.

Keyboard comment: Attempt at levity. I very often have to go back and capitalize the letter "I". It makes me feel small. :)

Themes: Having read this forum for about 4 weeks before I got my mac, I am reluctant to install the Application Enhancer stuff. And it just doesn't feel right from an experience point of view, either. And the other Theme changing software hasn't been much better. So I've been staying away from that sort of thing. But the Mac just seems so sterile and quiet when it should be vibrant and alive with light and sound. The only sound that I can seem to coax from it is the <dink> sound when I get an e-mail or the <bonkbonkbonk> sound when I type in the wrong window.

And I have thought about going back to Windows and Linux, but I really would rather not. I could give up but I think that I haven't given this little box enough of a chance, yet. And I'm cheap, I spent too much money on this thing to give up this soon. I think my Wife is just waiting in the background for me to give up and let her have another Mac. She has a beige G3 (233 MHz) and a dual 1.25 GHz G4 already, she doesn't need another Mac!

:)
Toney.

Hang in there, Toney. I think we can help you work things out.

You'll find many users who swear by Shape Shifter and who haven't had any problems with Application Enhancers. I fiddled around with themes for awhile, then decided to just stay with the default one in Panther, as it was a little easier on the eyes than the previous striped ones. But if you can back up your system, go ahead and do so, then give themes a try. I never had a problem with them.

It sounds like maybe you're still in the very early stages of learning to use your Mac. There are many benefits you'll find, I'm sure, even if you don't resolve all the problems you've listed above. Give it a chance. As one who uses both Windows and Macs every week, there's just a different feeling with Macs and it's hard to pin it down. It just feels more reliable and easier to use, overall.

:eek: The thing about the way some people encode movies is that there are codecs that are... well, out right hostile to Macs. For example, MPEG4 was supposed to be a new standard (one which Apple contributed a lot of intellectual property to). Within weeks of it's ratification Microsoft had already made two variations on MPEG4 that were Windows only by design.

If you are downloading, well, things people may not want you to be downloading, don't expect them to play nicely with Macs. Odds are they were produced in some dark back room on a PC using what ever codec they could find.

Also the concept of keyframes also seems to be a thing of the past now. Originally Quicktime (which was really the first multimedia player) would watch for keyframes that were linked to sections of the sound track. Using these, Quicktime would adjust the frame rate to what ever it needed to match the audio output. It was an amazing way to get good quality video even on slower/older systems.

If you want to change the order of a playlist, click on the column above the song number. You should then be able to arrange them in what ever order you want.

The concept behind playlist is that you may have a different set of songs for different moods. I have three play list for studying, two for working out, and a handful of others for yet different moods I might get into.

If this is something you don't want, then after making a playlist and finishing with it... click on it and hit the delete key. The playlist is gone. I can't think of anything easier than that.

The application environment in Mac OS X is very restrictive to completely avoid the type of problems that have plagued X Windows almost from the beginning. That being developers going off and redesigning the GUI for every app, and making hacks on the system's window management to get their app to do what they want.

X Windows was never really finished before it was given to the world at large. As an unfinished product, it had a lot of holes which people worked around.

Apple has worked to make the Mac a finished, polished environment.

One of the reasons that I've stuck with proprietary UNIX systems (like my SGIs) over Linux is the fit and finish on those system. There are, of course, open source apps that don't even come close to fitting in with the rest of the operating system, but on the whole, there is a unified... method behind how most of the apps work. Same idea with Macs.

Also, it can not be understated enough that Apple is very protective of their themes. They fight to keep Mac looking like Macs, and from letting other operating system from looking like Mac

Honestly, the first thing you need to do is not fight how things work on a Mac.

I spend a ton of time on a bunch of different operating systems, and the thing I learned very early was that if you try to force your habits on one system that you learned on another, your heading for trouble.

Computers are a lot like people... or pets. Every one has a different personality. If you try to fight that personality, it'll fight right back! But if you learn to make friends with it, it'll be friendly right back too (most of the time :eek: ).

I'm sure that not all your friends have the same personality, but you have learn to get along with then. Same thing here. Don't fight your Mac, try making friends with it first.

If it doesn't work out, it sounds like your Mac and your wife may have a lot in common. ;)

I have ~5500 songs in my library, and thank the nice designers regularly for incorporating a feature whereby any song I download/burn/record/whatever gets put into the folder Music\iTunes\[Artist name]\[Album name]\[Song name] automatically - and, furthermore, is renamed as appropriate if I change the song info in the .mp3. What else would I want? 5500 songs scattered around my drive? Naaaaah.

Playlists - especially the smart ones - are very useful for organising songs and keeping track of what you've got. I've got various playlists filtered on date, title, etc. which I use more for reference rather than selecting and playing (I'm a "play whatever song I want at the time" sort of person too). They're ultra-useful if you've got an iPod which can't hold your whole library, as well.

I really hope you grow to love your Mac. They're beautiful, friendly machines once you get out of the Windows mindset and learn to appreciate they way they do things.

Instead of having the computer sleep when you're not using it, why not run a distributed computing project as a screen saver? That way your drive won't be a problem and you'll be doing some good. Here are a few sites:
http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/folding/
http://www.d2ol.com/
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/

Sounds like you might want to try Party Shuffle in iTunes. I use it more than playlists while on my G5. I use the playlists more at work on my iPod.

Paul

I'm a wondering a little why so many people seem to be upset about iTunes' organization of the actual MP3 files. Do you really go looking on your hard drive to find the file you want to play? Or do you just go into iTunes and play it?

I personally do the latter. So I couldn't care less how iTunes organizes the files. They could all be named according to file length sorted by year with a unique identifier. Things like 143568532487543.mp3 for all that it matters to me. As long as the song is easily found in iTunes, I don't care about the behind-the-scenes name.

Obviously there are people who don't feel the same, so I'm asking for explanations. Why do you want to know where the exact file is?

Note this should not be taken as criticism, just an honest question.

One that I'm interested in too. There's been a spate of related threads about this lately, and I'm curious why it makes a difference. Personally, I hated MacAmp and Audio (back in the day) and having to navigate to the song I wanted to play, such a waste of time.

i'm another one who has no need to find files in the finder. let iTunes do what it may.

for the new converts, check out the browser in iTunes. it's kinda hiddnen. i run across long-time users who dont know it's there. (main library or any playlist except party shuffle--hit command-b).

actually, the search field at the top of the iTunes window is how i browse most of my stuff. if you know anything about the song/album/artist you can usually find it very quickly.

and, if for some reason i do want the actual file, it's just right-click->show file.

That's definitely something that throws new users off in iTunes at first. I've seen more people import/burn albums as Playlists in the left column of the iTunes window cause they don't realize you can organize by Artist anyway (apple+B ... or edit>show browser) ... makes things way clearer.

If you're on a laptop (or tower w/ small hard drive) once you get 10 or 20+ gigs of songs/mp3's on your HD it is nice to just dedicate a small, fast external Hard drive (2.5" fw/usb2) and just make that your entire iTunes Library ... so your laptop HD space doesn't get eaten up. In that case, you can just set your iTunes library to the external drive in iTunes Music folder location in Advanced Prefs.

Or just click on that big circular "eye" button on the top right that says "Browse". How is that hidden?

i actually do that on my desktop machine with an internal 160GB drive, too. i prefer to keep the internal drive 'OS Only'. so i symlink my docs, music, movies, etc. all to an external drive. makes upgrading to larger drives simpler, too.

hrmf--never noticed it before really. i use cmd-b. i'd actually prefer it wasnt there...now i feel like i'm being watched ...i swear it's following me around the room :/

No it's not. USB2 has a fast burst speed, but cannot sustain that speed the way Firewire can. And that's with Firewire 400. Firewire 800 is much faster than USB2.

Try editing some video or audio using USB2 and see for yourself!

I agree with you. I sort my iTunes Library by artist, so it's easy to find who I want to listen to. Or alternately type a name in the search field, or use the browser.

When I have some new CDs I make a playlist, so that finding them is easy, and of course the playlist is on my iPod too.

Why would people want to make a playlist and listen to the same songs over and over? I often make a playlist of artist I like, with just the songs I want. Or my wife has her "kickin' driving music" playlist when we use the iPod in the car, and one for dinner parties when we use the iPod attached to our home sound system.

If you really want to know where the song file is, control (right) click and select show song file! I think it's great the way iTunes organizes the files, with folders for artist, album, etc. What could be easier to find?

I see new Mac users complaining about this, I guess because they are so used to spending a lot of time looking for files, that it seems the normal way to use a computer. It isn't.

I also have my iTunes Library on a separate hard drive.

Huh? The big round thing on the top right of my iTunes window says "Burn Disc" on mine. When you click it, it opens (looks like a camera shutter) to reveal the typical burn button. I'd never seen the browse feature either.

As far as organizing songs...I don't listen to MP3 files any more, just internet radio, unless I'm away from internet coverage (on a plane is about the only place). I've never used playlists, they don't make sense to me. But I certainly can't understand why you'd want playlists that disappear automatically!

As far as the file organization, I want to be able to burn data CDs holding the music, in the logical arrangement that I use, so I can play them on the motorcycle and in the car. When I let iTunes do it, it made a mess. Sure, they looked fine in iTunes, but it was a mess when playing them in the car/bike players.

It says "Browse" if you have the main Library selected, "Burn Disc" if you have a playlist selected, and "Refresh" if you have a Radio list selected.

I use the iTunes window like the Finder to find things fast (you know how you can type the file name while in a directory and be taken to that file). Click on the top of a column (Artists, for instance), and now start typing who/what you are looking for (Eagles, for instance), and you'll be taken to the first song relevant to what you typed. Click on the 'Song Name' column heading and type 'Layla' and you'll be taken to Layla, etc. [Not all of my music is that dated (listening to 'Dream On' (Aerosmith) while typing this), really!] I only wish I could navigate betwen columns via the keyboard.

I also let iTunes organize them however it wants.

You said it well, RacerX. It is the same if you are migrating from OS 9. There was no looking back once I let OS X suggest to me how to do things through the natural course of using it. It is not like it is dictating to me how to do things, but an OS, like a person, cannot be useful if it tries to be everything to everyone.

Who said that his wife wasn't working out. :)

With two Macs to her credit, I'd say she was working out just fine! :)

Hey! Continuing the Finder similarities, I just figured out (perhaps the last one to do so) that holding down on the shift key and pressing the down or up arrow selects (consecutive) songs until you release the arrow key. Before, I'd always been annoyed by having to select them one at a time (to make a playlist, for instance)...holding down on the command key and dragging the mouse over them never worked.

it was a good quote. but, it was RacerX's, not mine.

Apologies, everyone. I fixed it above.

You remind me of what happens every time I work on an OS 9 machine now and hit CMD-N to open a new Finder window.

Get to trash a lot of 'untitled folders' afterwards. Intuitive still equals "what you've become used to." :D

I beg to differ. You don't have to accept the default behavior or appearance of your Mac. I would never use MacOS X without Default Folder, XRay, FruitMenu, QuicKeys, Duality4, X-Assist, WeatherPop, a few plist modifications to do things like make Command-N create a new folder not a new window in the Finder, and the forcible removal and exile of the Dock.

I've got something that looks and feels like MacOS 9 but with protected memory, preemptive multitasking, and a robust Unix kernel running the show, and that's exactly what I want.

(Of course I don't run MacOS 9 in plain-vanilla unmodified form either. Ugh. Can't imagine MacOS 9 without Default Folder, Escapade, QuicKeys, FinderPop, Open With App, OtherMenu, Snitch, etc.)

Well, it's unlikely that I would want to make my customers' working environment adopt my modifications, any more than I would care to adopt theirs (or yours, for that matter). ;)

You're right! I was incomplete in my post. I didn't mean to suggest that one had to live with what they got out of the box...they can adapt it any way they want (as you have) because it is theirs and they know how they can be most productive. What I meant was not to ditch an OS because it doesn't work the way you are used to. I suggested letting it show you its own flow, but unfortunately I wasn't complete enough to mention add-ons to adapt its flow to your individual tastes as needed.

I myself use LaunchBar and VirtualDesktop. LaunchBar is my replacement for the venerable FinderPop (twice I bought Turly some Beamish, I appreciated it so much). I hardly use Expose because of VirtualDesktop. Now and then I dust off DragThing out of loyalty, but I don't find that I use it except for keyboard shortcuts to an array of AppleScripts.

[Apologies to the OP and the mods for further dragging this thread off topic.]

Agreed! Considering the wide range of individual user preferences and tastes, the out-of-the-box MacOS is a pretty good starting point.

Dude, just how many free CPU cycles does your machine have? ;)

I have two of these and wouldn't give them up for a lot more than $216. I'm so stuck on it that I keep the second one as a spare. I think it came with an SE/30 or something else back in the '80s. The best keyboard I use, and unfortunately, I use a lot of them. Word of caution: you can't hot plug (or unplug) them without some risk.

++

i've still got 2 spares and a parts keyboard (for broken keys, etc.). anyone got the disposable income to try one of these yet?

Thanks for the Audion suggestion, I think that is my answer to my MP3 playing blues. As for the rest, I'm trying not to get too frustrated by it. As many of you mentioned, I'm just going to give it some more time and see what happens. This may be the best machine in the world, but it may also be more trouble than its worth.

:)
Toney.