Don't "upgrade" to Catalina if you have a large iTunes library

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by pathosdrama, Oct 8, 2019.

  1. JakeKlas

    JakeKlas Impatiently waiting for an 8-track revival

    Location:
    United States
    I think there has already been at least one Catalina update, so for me, my first task would be applying every update that’s available before doing anything else.
     
  2. Mylene

    Mylene Senior Member

    I went to Music > File > Library > Get Album artwork and it updated Abbey Road (the remix), The Legend of Paul Revere, Rubber Soul Jazz and All the Leaves Are Brown. It said it couldn't match artwork for 141 titles (which already had artwork previous to the stoopid update).
     
  3. SamS

    SamS Forum Legend

    Location:
    Texas
    Yes, it’s fine. I have 4 Macs running it now. No issues so far, and a few things work better than Mojave.
     
  4. BayouTiger

    BayouTiger Forum Resident

    I have some weirdness with the display on my iMac Pro. Really haven't beat on it much yet. My laptop is my work machine and I haven't installed it there yet.
     
  5. Bachtoven

    Bachtoven Forum Resident

    Location:
    US
    Thanks. I plan to use it strictly as a music server, so I doubt that I'll be doing any updates.
     
  6. rockin_since_58

    rockin_since_58 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Simi Valley, CA
    After upgrading my my late 2015 iMac to Catalina, nothing is the same. It hangs and crashes constantly. It is so bad that I ordered a new 27" 5k Retina iMac that says it comes installed with Mojave. Hopefully this is the case. It is out for delivery now. I expect it will take a good part of the day to get it fully up and running.
     
    Kristofa likes this.
  7. musicman9999

    musicman9999 VDC Vinyl & CDs

    Location:
    Braselton, GA
    I did the same, just purchased a new iMac Pro with Mojave. Catalina's Apple Music does not work on my 2015 iMac. It is very slow and the ap hangs up every time I do a search. It seems to reload the artwork each time, sometimes hanging up for a 1/2 hour. For me the Apple Music ap is a non-starter. Hopefully they'll spend some time come up with some updates for it.
     
  8. rockin_since_58

    rockin_since_58 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Simi Valley, CA
    It takes close to an hour for to get it up and fully running. It may work for a few hours then things start to take a very long time to load and then it finally completely quits responding and then the 1 hour startup process begins again. I figured it is going to be much easier to just start with a new computer than to try to downgrade to Mojave. The thought crossed my mind to get a PC this time around but I have been using a Mac now for more than 10 years and I figure the PC learning curve would just bee too much. Also it could be a mental thing but the music through the Mac with Catalina does not seem as lively as what it was with Mojave. Could be due to the system being overloaded and related to everything running so slow but I will soon find out.
     
  9. primoridal_ooze

    primoridal_ooze Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    As an Apple nerd (in the ecosystem for 20 years), a music nerd (with 1000+ albums), AND album artwork nerd (who has owned many scanners), I will say this is the finest thread I have seen on these Forums. Kudos to all, including @btltez, @JakeKlas, @keyse1, et al. So, this is my first Post on SteveHoffmanForums. I agree with dozens of you here that losing the Column Browser is an insane punch in the gut for non-streaming folks who have large curated collections, BUT ALSO... another feature lost in the "iTunes killer" Music app, which has barely been mentioned yet in this thread:

    *Displaying "Fit to Screen" full-size album artwork*

    How to enable this feature on *iTunes*: Command-Click (while holding the Command button, click) on the tiny album artwork square up in the iTunes header. This pops up the album artwork medium-large and center on your screen. Then, right-click that, and choose "Fit to Screen". Myself, I then drag this huge artwork window to become the right-hand half of my iMac's screen, while the iTunes program main display occupies the left half of my iMac's screen, where it has been set, unchanging, at the proper width to work like this, for many years.) The album artwork updates as you play different albums & artists, which really adds to the iTunes experience. (Why is Tim Cook not showing people that they can do THIS on their beautiful widescreen iMacs? That would sell it for me! Is looking at tiny artwork & bloated amounts of white space really more appealing?)

    Simply put, listening to Lossless audio while seeing a "slideshow" of full screen album artwork is a very fun way to use iTunes, and I will miss this terribly if it is gone forever from the new Music app. :-(

    You see, I have manually inserted high-quality UNIQUE ARTWORK FOR EACH SONG, not just for each album. So for example, for The Rolling Stones/Beggars' Banquet, I have 10 songs and each song has it's own artwork (I can insert anything in there: different album cover versions, sleeve photos, scanned lyrics pages from the CD booklet, photos of the band, famous concert posters, etc). This way, playing an album on iTunes -- with the full-height artwork up -- is like a music & visual jukebox.

    Does anyone know:
    1.) How to do this in the new Music app?
    2.) If any of the alternative programs can display album artwork LARGE and UPDATING (when the album changes, or when the song changes if you have different artwork for each song) on the screen like this (preferably full-height of the screen)?? Swinsian, J River Media, Roon, Audirvana?
     
  10. JakeKlas

    JakeKlas Impatiently waiting for an 8-track revival

    Location:
    United States
    First, welcome to the forum... and, you’re welcome. Happy to help.

    I never knew of this Fit to Screen feature. With some artwork of really old stuff, I couldn’t find hi-res covers, so seeing this feature with some of those covers is, well.... ugly! But yeah, it is cool when you’re looking at hi-res stuff from the little test I just did.

    Can’t answer your first question since I haven’t upgraded yet. For the second, I can’t see that in Audirvana which is the one I have a bit of experience with.
     
  11. Atmospheric

    Atmospheric Forum Resident

    Location:
    Eugene
    Apple is Sony 2.0. It will meet the same sad fate.
     
    sunspot42 likes this.
  12. Atmospheric

    Atmospheric Forum Resident

    Location:
    Eugene
    OpenOffice is free open source and better than either Apple or MS equivalents. The draw app is very much like MacDraw.
     
  13. BruceS

    BruceS El Sirviente del Gato

    Location:
    Reading, MA US


    Hmmm...I have a couple of late 2015 iMacs, 21.5", 2.8 GHz i5...is that what you're running? I haven't updated to Catalina yet and want to be aware of possible issues. How about you, Rockin? Feeling like when I do upgrade, might not be a bad idea to Carbon Copy Clone current OS (Mojave) + data, just in case. Wondering if it's the late 2015 or if it's something not inherent to that. Seeing that two of you have the issue makes it a "take a good look at it" situation.
     
  14. Atmospheric

    Atmospheric Forum Resident

    Location:
    Eugene
    One issue I have with iTunes versus other suggested replacements is play metadata. Apple locks other apps out of updating played metadata via the iTunes API. I'd be happy to start from scratch, but that would require a Mac OS app and compatible IOS client that know about each other and could update play counts in the database.

    Currently, I have a playlist in iTunes that functions like my own personal radio station. It includes everything but Christmas music. It is reverse sorted on last played date. So when I'm out and about I get a pseudorandom stream of music strictly based on the longest time between last play. I love that. It's how I consume my listening library the majority of the time.

    I'm not upgrading to Catalina until iVolume comes out with an update. That tool and DROffline are indispensable to me.

    It pains me no end that Mac OS is becoming a bloated cutesy (P)OS when all I really want are robust tools for doing what I need to do and which run on *nix. I have plenty of experience with Windoze, I just despise it even more than Mac OS. I swear sometimes that it seems engineers all got their degrees in Cracker Jacks boxes.

    So much could be improved with Mac OS and its apps. I could start an entire thread about improving Calendar and Mail alone. Just obvious stuff that would make those apps work so much better. I can't imagine that it would take more than 20 developers and one development cycle to do it. What the heck do all those Apple employees do with their time?
     
    mr. suit likes this.
  15. Veni Vidi Vici

    Veni Vidi Vici Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago, IL
    Play and skip counts can be directly set via AppleScript; see Doug's AppleScripts UPDATED: New Play Count v4.0 » Doug's AppleScripts
     
    JediJoker, btltez and Atmospheric like this.
  16. Atmospheric

    Atmospheric Forum Resident

    Location:
    Eugene
    Counts don't quite solve my problem. It's the play DATE and time that I need. I reverse sort by date and time, not count. But yeah, Doug's scripts are great.

    Plus presumably you'd have to fire off a script manually every time, or attach it to cron.

    Wow. I just want to play my library the way I want to.
     
    primoridal_ooze and JediJoker like this.
  17. Veni Vidi Vici

    Veni Vidi Vici Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago, IL
    Interesting - what specifically are you trying to do with the dates that you can't do? Presumably you would like to manipulate the Last Played date in a way to cause a given track to be sent to the back, or brought to the front, once the reverse sorting is done? If so, you could work around the issue by setting a "magic" value in the Comment field, that a smart playlist looks for and uses to override the date value in some way.
     
  18. Bachtoven

    Bachtoven Forum Resident

    Location:
    US
    Well, the MacBook is a crushing disappointment. At first, DSD files were pure fuzz and JRiver kept freezing. Both problems magically disappeared after a while and all was well. This morning, it didn't recognize my McIntosh's DAC and JRiver started freezing again! I rebooted, turned my amp on/off--nothing worked, so I'm returning it. Oh yes, another problem: I can't restore it! I've followed the directions of shutting down, tapping the power button and holding down Command and R until the Apple logo appears, but it never takes me to the Disc Utility menu, and I can't simply go to the menu and erase the HD...that option is grey out. I did notice a message this morning that there was a "problem" and it had to reboot. Maybe I got a lemon, but I'm done with Mac.
     
  19. Atmospheric

    Atmospheric Forum Resident

    Location:
    Eugene
    No manipulation. You can sort a playlist by any column value. When you play a song, last played date is changed.

    I’m on a mobile device right now. I hate typing on them. But you’re entirely missing the point. Perhaps re-read my previous post.
     
    JediJoker likes this.
  20. btltez

    btltez Forum Resident

    Location:
    I'm From Detroit
    Sure it's not a user problem here? Kinda sounds like it. I've never had any of those issues happen and I've had many, many Macs between home and work. Perhaps take it to the Apple Store Genius Bar?
     
    primoridal_ooze and JediJoker like this.
  21. Veni Vidi Vici

    Veni Vidi Vici Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago, IL
    Just trying to help, but it's not clear to me what issue you are having. You seem to be saying it's a problem for you that other apps can't directly update the Last Played date, it can only be updated by actually playing the track via the Apple APIs - is that right?
     
  22. Rolltide

    Rolltide Forum Resident

    Location:
    Vallejo, CA
    As a guy who has been called on to help people with computers his entire life, I recognize the signs of "It had one chance to get it right and its failed me for the last time". Never make the mistake of trying to help people who adopt that posture.
     
    Synthfreek likes this.
  23. rockin_since_58

    rockin_since_58 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Simi Valley, CA
    Would definitely recommend not upgrading to Catalina if you have a late 2015. It completely killed mine. I am working through getting my new 2019 27" 5k Retina machine up and running now.
     
  24. DreadPikathulhu

    DreadPikathulhu Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    I totally depend on last played and play counts for several playlists on my phone for tracks that haven’t been played yet or haven’t been played in a while. Switching to another music management app isn’t an option.
     
  25. Atmospheric

    Atmospheric Forum Resident

    Location:
    Eugene
    Yes, per Apple API.
     

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