crank wrote:There could be editions, it would be a good idea to maintain that custom, if only to allow consistent reference.

Of course. So it'd be good if "edition" was just a synonym for "version" in publishing. You release editions as you update or correct the material. But it's got nothing to do with the typesetting.

The 'typesetting' is algorithmic, it has to allow for various screen sizes and resolutions, with fonts varying by user choice. It can ruin some books if the author used the typesetting as part of the writing. It also makes pages problematic, no consistency from device to device even if everything else is the same.

I don't know if there are peculiar problems with e-readers, but I'd hope there would be a standard markdown/markup language solution for this. Early-90s HTML should be good enough for most novels, and Kindle's "Article mode" shows they know how to render text centric webpages beautifully for the device. That's all they need for the majority of their content, I reckon.

There is a great universal format reader/conversion program, Calibre, it's entirely free and offers some awesome capability. Trying to convert from one format to another can be a challenge, it offers copious options/adjustments and while it usually does a good job, the results can go pretty bad. I've never taken the time to really work at one of these to see if I could get it right, I usually have just tweaked until I got something readable or 'oh fuck it'ed it.

I use it to strip the DRM off my ebooks in case Amazon decide to be twats and pull books I own.

I'm not arguing any of this. Merely this

OP says Apple Music deletes music. It doesn't, at least not without user input.

This moved on to Apple taking copyright away from authors. It doesn't, it only uses DRM for its editions which seems to be an industry standard.

*edit spelling*

VazScep wrote:I don't know if there are peculiar problems with e-readers, but I'd hope there would be a standard markdown/markup language solution for this. Early-90s HTML should be good enough for most novels, and Kindle's "Article mode" shows they know how to render text centric webpages beautifully for the device. That's all they need for the majority of their content, I reckon

I reckoned this myself, but it seems to be more problematic than that. I don't have that much experience with it, but I've tried converting a fair number of books from one ebook format to another and it wouldn't play nice. It's pretty much just text FFS, I don't know what's going on, but it isn't straight forward a lot of the time. It may be in the 'hints', I use this term like it's used in front rendering, where there are various optimizing algorithms to better render fonts at different sizes, in kerning, and serifs etc. In e-books, there is the page size variable, which can be substantial, and also the issues around changing fonts and font sizes. Also how chapters are differentiated, how the 'breaks' within chapters are handled, if page numbers are in the text, there are a lot of these things I think. It may just be the markup codes are not fully implemented. or are followed poorly, in some books vs others and how the conversion is carried out.

felltoearth wrote:I'm not arguing any of this. Merely this

OP says Apple Music deletes music. It doesn't, at least not without user input.

This moved in to Apple taking copyright away from authors. It doesn't, it only uses DRM for its editions which seems to be an industry standard.

It's been a long time since I installed iTunes, my experience back then was that it did things that were unwanted, like moving files and converting them. Don''t know a thing about what it does or could do now.

This discussion started with me talking about how apple treated authors, I think it was you that mentioned copyright as regards this issue, I wouldn't have and if I did it was a mistake, clearly I was going on and on about how DRM is used to trap an authors' books. I did mention that copyright is one of Doctorow's main issues he focuses on, he was EFF's head in Europe, and recently went back to work for them in San Francisco I think. I may have been vague or careless in my phrasing and conflated the two, I don't really care enough to take the time to check.

I heard something about Apple greatly reducing it's use of DRM due to too much flak from customers. Again, don't really know, I don't buy anything from them.

I've used iTunes since the first version of the software and have never had any big problems. Yes, by default it moves files into the library and organizes them and converts them as well. One minute spent in the preferences area and you can turn that off. I've had my own custom settings pretty much from day one.

I also have an Apple Music subscription and don't have any of the issues mentioned, largely because I read most of what pops up on my screen.

I've never understood the whole "I hate iTunes" thing. Works well enough for me and better than other software I've tried including WinAmp (though the PC version of iTunes has other issues).

Its a preference more than the problems presented as far I can see.

If I install software for the first time, I'm not going to know it's going to be moving and converting. Anything that does that to my PC will never be used again. I want tracks the way I have them, what the fuck is it doing converting them and moving them? I wasn't aksed, it just did it. And then, trying to get rid of it was a chore, it left all kind s of shit behind, shit that got run at start up, like services. NO, if you have respect for your customer, you don't pull shit like that. If you have contempt for them, then you'll think like: 'my way is the only way to do it, it doesn't matter what the customer thinks, I'm going to rearrange and change file formats and take control of his library and set it up the way it is supposed to be, my way'. This is contempt, and it's not for me, nothing from apple is worth putting up with crap like that. Maybe some like the way apple does things, OK, it's just not for me.

If you can fix the problem, it's not a problem, it's a preference.

To add... I have never used any software as is out of the box. I check out options, interface setups etc. I actually doubt most do.

You can't 'fix' it if it's already happened. Having to undo all that shit? Again, this refers to what it was like many years ago. It gave me no option before it went to work, it did this in the background. Good programs will tell you as they install themselves if it's going to do something like that. You've been using it for a long time, you probably don't remember what the first time install was like. If it converted my flak files to mp3 I would never be able to undo that. And I'd be pissed.

I have never had iTunes erase the original file in conversion, it always duplicates. But that's my experience FWIW.

It's too hazy, can't remember for sure if it did that, when you said it 'moved and converted' I thought you meant it erased the orig, so I figured it must have acted that way before.. Mainly, I remember being pissed off at what it did without my explicit OK, pissed off enough to lean towards thinking it moved the files, meaning erase old and create new. It's default choice of bit rate, back then, was terrible.

I can see the appeal, especially if it's something you're used to and know how it works. It just didn't work for me. And what leads to further resentment is how so much stuff is available only through iTunes. It's the tyranny of the popular over the quality

felltoearth wrote:To add... I have never used any software as is out of the box. I check out options, interface setups etc. I actually doubt most do.

They don't. While it's pretty lazy of people to not check preferences on the programs they're using, I do think having iTunes preset to make such changes is pretty lame. It's pushy and annoying, unfortunately it's what most people who are too lazy to manage their own music and programs want. Those people certainly aren't going to look through their preferences to find and enable these features. So it's kinda hard for me to sympathize with anyone who complains about the way a program works when they're too lazy to look into what the program does. Looking at the preferences has caused me to never have any of the problems with iTunes that I always see people bitching about: no U2 on my computer, no copied and converted files. Nobody warned me about this, I just looked at the preferences like I do for every program.

My only complaint about iTunes is how it auto-fills tags while you're typing them in, making it super annoying to change misspelled band or album names.

Apple and Google are waaaay too intrusive. Itunes has gotten far too complex and basic functions like play are reduced to tiny almost invisible spots on a cluttered interface.

Very pushy on upgrades whichtoo often had issues.

One of tha mags wrote lately that while the hardware is brilliant - the software has gotten cluttered and non-intuitive on iOS an OSX.

Stupid moves like not making the drive Icon default to appear on the desktop is seriously brain dead. The machines are elegant.....the software not so much.

I have to switch back to 10.6.8 for a legacy software and it's such a relief....everything works and quickly.

Trying to blend iOS and OSX is stupid.

SafeAsMilk wrote:

felltoearth wrote:To add... I have never used any software as is out of the box. I check out options, interface setups etc. I actually doubt most do.

They don't. While it's pretty lazy of people to not check preferences on the programs they're using, I do think having iTunes preset to make such changes is pretty lame. It's pushy and annoying, unfortunately it's what most people who are too lazy to manage their own music and programs want. Those people certainly aren't going to look through their preferences to find and enable these features. So it's kinda hard for me to sympathize with anyone who complains about the way a program works when they're too lazy to look into what the program does. Looking at the preferences has caused me to never have any of the problems with iTunes that I always see people bitching about: no U2 on my computer, no copied and converted files. Nobody warned me about this, I just looked at the preferences like I do for every program.

My only complaint about iTunes is how it auto-fills tags while you're typing them in, making it super annoying to change misspelled band or album names.

Can you tell me how you check out the preferences of a program before you install it? You can't call someone lazy for not doing something that is impossible to do. The defaults cause a shit load of stuff to happen to your system immediately after install, and there is really no warning or asking of permissions before these actions are undertaken. I'm not too lazy to check my preferences, often spend a lot of time getting shit set up in particular ways, or, in linux, editing the preference files as that is the norm for that OS. Your last sentence, 1st paragraph, can't be right, not the first time you installed it, at least not the way it was installed on my PC.

Maybe I have a pretty puny music collection, but I don't see much need for a fat music player. I just use VLC and make playlists by symlinking a bunch of music files to a main music directory.

iTunes controls more than music ....it's the interface with your iPhone in a whole manner of ways.

I keep all my music in directories by artists then album, which might be outdated terms I don't even know. Usually I use foobar for playing music, and typically left click a song or range of songs and 'add to playlist'. I won't rip into any lossless format, that you can always do later. Most of the music videos I've downloaded get played with VLC, which is a great video player but does have limits. I can't stand any kind of program that tries to take over your directories, trying to gen up some 'user friendly' gui to make everything all nice and easy, for me it usually makes everything more difficult and unintuitive.

crank wrote:I keep all my music in directories by artists then album, which might be outdated terms I don't even know. Usually I use foobar for playing music, and typically left click a song or range of songs and 'add to playlist'. I won't rip into any lossless format, that you can always do later. Most of the music videos I've downloaded get played with VLC, which is a great video player but does have limits. I can't stand any kind of program that tries to take over your directories, trying to gen up some 'user friendly' gui to make everything all nice and easy, for me it usually makes everything more difficult and unintuitive.

I like the fact that I can use VLC from Emacs over its DBUS interface.

I agree with MacDoc above. iTunes has become more about the sales than anything. And if Jobs were alive today he'd probably have more than a few words about iOS 9. Upgrade pushes I kind of understand from Apples perspective. Outside of the mobile environment needing to be highly secure, one of the first questions asked in most support forums is whether the latest iOS is installed. It can be the source of a lot problems if it isn't.

crank wrote:

SafeAsMilk wrote:

felltoearth wrote:To add... I have never used any software as is out of the box. I check out options, interface setups etc. I actually doubt most do.

They don't. While it's pretty lazy of people to not check preferences on the programs they're using, I do think having iTunes preset to make such changes is pretty lame. It's pushy and annoying, unfortunately it's what most people who are too lazy to manage their own music and programs want. Those people certainly aren't going to look through their preferences to find and enable these features. So it's kinda hard for me to sympathize with anyone who complains about the way a program works when they're too lazy to look into what the program does. Looking at the preferences has caused me to never have any of the problems with iTunes that I always see people bitching about: no U2 on my computer, no copied and converted files. Nobody warned me about this, I just looked at the preferences like I do for every program.

My only complaint about iTunes is how it auto-fills tags while you're typing them in, making it super annoying to change misspelled band or album names.

Can you tell me how you check out the preferences of a program before you install it? You can't call someone lazy for not doing something that is impossible to do. The defaults cause a shit load of stuff to happen to your system immediately after install, and there is really no warning or asking of permissions before these actions are undertaken. I'm not too lazy to check my preferences, often spend a lot of time getting shit set up in particular ways, or, in linux, editing the preference files as that is the norm for that OS. Your last sentence, 1st paragraph, can't be right, not the first time you installed it, at least not the way it was installed on my PC.

It's possible that the PC version works differently (though my wife uses it on her PC and never complained about what you're complaining about), but I've never had a file copied or moved, never had a U2 album installed, and it does not try to auto-sync with any devices. In fact, I recall it asking me about these preferences the first time I opened the program after a new version was installed. Is is possible you spam-clicked the OK button without reading anything?