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

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

  1. Ham Sandwich

    Ham Sandwich Senior Member

    Location:
    Sherwood, OR, USA
    Also a good idea to not allow millennials who have never owned a CD or classical music redesign music software. Let the old guys with experience and knowledge of classical music be in charge of a project like that.
     
  2. Veni Vidi Vici

    Veni Vidi Vici Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago, IL
    Let's not turn this into another thread about demographics, which is irrelevant to how professional software developers work.
     
    BruceS, fishmonger and wgriel like this.
  3. Ham Sandwich

    Ham Sandwich Senior Member

    Location:
    Sherwood, OR, USA
    The demographics and experiences of the development team is important. Especially in project management where the software features and design gets planned out. If the project management team is younger and doesn't understand classical then you can end up with decisions to do things like remove the ability to search on composers.
     
    SeanRichard likes this.
  4. Veni Vidi Vici

    Veni Vidi Vici Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago, IL
    You don't have to "understand classical" to design a good music player. You have no idea of the team's demographics, or their music tastes, so why even speculate there is a connection? And project managers don't design software, they manage people. The software will be designed by the developers working with the product managers. The issue with Apple is that they have released the software before it is feature-complete; I am sure they will get around to improving the search functionality with a later update, but in the meantime it's just irritating. They haven't only released without the ability to search specifically on composer, but also on artist, album and song title - the new search functionality aggregates all the tags (song name, album title, artist, composer), and searches that, rather than allowing the specification of the individual tags as it did before. It has nothing to do with the developers somehow forgetting they "understand classical". Rather, they have reimplemented in the new app one of the two different ways that search could be performed in iTunes, and have yet to implement the other, which is more useful for large collections with curated metadata. You can see this if you run the iTunes and Music side-by-side and compare them.
     
  5. Rolltide

    Rolltide Forum Resident

    Location:
    Vallejo, CA
    In the fantasy world in which Apple is determined to deliver a free software program for their less profitable OS that plays great with music you didn't buy from them, age is nothing but a number.
     
    Stone Turntable likes this.
  6. spliffTONE

    spliffTONE New Member

    Location:
    California
    Pardon me if this has already been addressed but has anyone been able to find a Catalina friendly option for syncing your iTunes library from your desktop to an Android device? I used iSyncr for years and their updated Catalina version of the app is basically unusable for a power user like myself (79,000+ songs, 300+ playlists). What used to take 3-5 minutes and work fine every time now takes 4+ hours and fails 80%+ of the time.

    So sick of Apple screwin' with my music collection.
     
  7. Barbazul

    Barbazul Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Mexico
    Hey there! I took the risk and bingo! All artwork in my 21,766 songs library is back! My library is physically located in my Airport Time Capsule and Catalina recognized it without a problem. When you launch the Music app for the first time it won't show any artwork but in the bottom left of the screen there's a text indicating "Uploading artwork" (spanish translation) and slowly will be incorporating the magic! In my case, it took almost 2 hours to finish the uploading (MacBook Pro 13' 2015). If it's useful for you and want to give a try, first I updated all versions for the previously Mojave MacOS (10.14.6), made a backup and then proceeded.

    What's left is to rip some CDs and transfer the files to my iPhone and iPod (yes, I still rip CDs and have an iPod :D) and also upgrade another MacBook Pro I have and play there my shared music library (Airport Time Capsule). I'll report later if all went as expected.

    I was really patient. Well done Apple!:bdance:
     
  8. Barbazul

    Barbazul Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Mexico
    Ok, I'm reporting back. Yes, I can rip CDs (still having my Airport as fileserver) and the file transfer to iPhone & iPod can be done seamlessly :righton:

    I just found two issues:
    1. Once my iPod/iPhone is connected, I can't use the search box on the Music app to find a track, artists or album. The box only works within My Library, Apple Music & Apple Store. :thumbsdow
    2. If you rip a CD you have two options to add the artwork: use the context menu over the album and choose the "Get artwork" option or select the album and chose "Get info" and go to the Artwork tab and drag or paste the album cover. The first option will show the artwork on the Music app but won't be embedded in the file. The second option will do it. So if you still rip CDs or you want to update the artwork to your albums on the Music app, take this into consideration.

    Cheers!
     
  9. BruceS

    BruceS El Sirviente del Gato

    Location:
    Reading, MA US
    Well- and concisely stated. S/w devs work within the specs they are given. It's a hard enough task to begin with, without getting into any extra twisty little passages on one's own. Still, someone might come up with a suggestion, or SQA might find a flaw. I can see unloading on whomever at Apple is responsible for any grief we users might experience (in the context off app/system design), but it's kind of a leap to place the blame on youthful unworldliness.
     
  10. cdash99

    cdash99 Senior Member

    Location:
    Mass
    If you rip with XLD the artwork can be embedded at that stage.
     
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  11. Weaviewonder

    Weaviewonder Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Reading
    Hey, just to confirm to everyone, if you now update to MacOS Catalina 10.15.2 then you will find that the 3 column browser has been restored in the Music app. Yeeesssssssss!
     
  12. Dubsonic

    Dubsonic Active Member

    Location:
    Sarnia, ON
    After holding back for a few months I have officially made the upgrade to Catalina. My 49,505 track library seems to have transferred over without any major hitches. Below is a brief list of my first impressions.

    Pro's
    1. As an Apple Music subscriber I am pleased to say it's much more responsive as part of this new app. I hope this new software goes a long way to help integrating some of the great features that Spotify already utilizes.
    2. The software seems much more responsive overall. This maybe attributed to the fact that it has been stripped right down to an elemental level.

    Cons
    1. Doug's scripts don't appear to work anymore. It will take a bit of time to get them integrated again.
    2. Album artwork no longer appears under song view.
    3. "OPTION+I" no longer functions as a hot key when opening the information of smart-playlists. This was a simple but handy shortcut.
    4. All my playlists have reverted back to "playlist" view instead of "song" view. To this day I have no idea why hollow playlist view is default.

    Overall: This just feels like a 1.X app. It's devote of any useful tools or extras at the moment. Moving forward I hope to see more integration between local libraries and apple music without apple accosting my local library.
     
    wavethatflag and btltez like this.
  13. Veni Vidi Vici

    Veni Vidi Vici Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago, IL
    See my post up thread, there is a very quick and easy fix for them. Note that they will need to be copied to a new location ~/Library/Music/Scripts/ to be visible to the app.
     
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  14. cdash99

    cdash99 Senior Member

    Location:
    Mass
    If this proves to be a 1.x app, it means that the cycle of slow building app bloats starts anew.
     
    Dubsonic and wavethatflag like this.
  15. Downsampled

    Downsampled Senior Member

    The 10.15.2 update fixes a few crucial things: (a) It restores the multi-column browser, (b) it makes the iOS Remote.app work again... and (c) fixes a terrible UI bug where, in Album view, you click into an album and then back out, and you're scrolled back to the top. That last bug made browsing for an album to play really unpleasant, and was driving me nuts.

    Taking it all together, I'd say they just shipped it too soon. I'd guess they were well aware of these problems (and probably others I haven't noticed) and just agreed to get it out the door and fix them later with a "fast follow" release.
     
    JediJoker likes this.
  16. canyelles

    canyelles Forum Resident

    Location:
    United Kingdom
    Actually that bug is not quite fixed properly. If you have a big enough library (sorry can't be more specific) and scroll to near the end you return somewhere near the end but not where you were before.
     
  17. Veni Vidi Vici

    Veni Vidi Vici Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago, IL
    Well spotted, I just reproduced it myself. Thus proving that Apple don't even perform elementary testing on their products before releasing. I mean, this is now the second maintenance release of Catalina. Their quality control is way worse than Microsoft's at their 90's nadir. @schnitzerphilip should be summoned to this thread and questioned about this debacle.
     
  18. JakeKlas

    JakeKlas Impatiently waiting for an 8-track revival

    Location:
    United States
    Just starting the process this holiday of moving from an old iMac to a new Mac Mini and that’s meant moving to Catalina.

    I’ve never been fond of the migration tool because a fresh install of apps and data can be a good thing. And part of that is manually moving all my music to the new Music app.

    I mentioned before that I’m going to take my time and just drag/drop artists one-by-one, make sure the artwork is good, etc.

    Very happy that the Column Browser was put back in.

    One funny bug is that I first went through and “Hid” all the iTunes purchases I’ve made over the years. I had moved them into my own library, so I don’t need them duplicated when I drag in my versions.

    The only thing that won’t go away is the free U2 album Apple gave people years ago. I “hide” it, then add a new artist only to see the U2 album has been “unhidden”. It doesn’t really bother me to have it in my library. It’s been there for years even though I don’t listen to it. Just find it funny that I can delete all my iTunes purchases from the app, but by golly Apple is going to make sure Songs of Innocence is always there.

    I think Apple did create a method to ditch it because some people were so ticked off with getting the album.
     
  19. Downsampled

    Downsampled Senior Member

    Ugh, yeah. Super weird. Luckily it gets me about 95% fixed, which I can live with until they figure out a 100% fix.
     
  20. Leviathan

    Leviathan Forum Resident

    Location:
    461 Ocean Blvd.
    Wish I had read this thread before updating.

    I had to re-download XLD for 64-bit, but now I can’t get the files to automatically import to my iTunes Library like I could before. I messed around with the settings but can’t figure out how to do this.

    I can do it by manually importing through iTunes after I’ve ripped a CD but not without that extra step.
     
    Last edited: Dec 26, 2019
  21. Veni Vidi Vici

    Veni Vidi Vici Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago, IL
    Latest bug I've found - the Recently Played smart playlist doesn't always sort in order of Last Played. In fact, it's not clear what "Playlist Order" means for a smart playlist. Imagine being one of the biggest software developers in the world, with a product more than a decade old, and having the simplest concepts underlying its functionality still undefined and causing unpleasant surprises for users. This is how low the company has fallen under Corporate Man Tim Cook.
     
    DreadPikathulhu, major-tom and rod like this.
  22. BruceS

    BruceS El Sirviente del Gato

    Location:
    Reading, MA US
    Worst Catalina bug I have yet heard: Computer (late 2012 iMac) will not shut down or restart unless Power button is pressed. Working on this for a friend. Tell you what...between that and all the iTunes/Music woes I've seen here, I'm sticking with Mojave for now. Kinda wondering, too, what the future of iTunes on Windows looks like. (Mixed systems here.)
     
  23. Dubsonic

    Dubsonic Active Member

    Location:
    Sarnia, ON
    After a few weeks of usage I have ran into a few more subtly annoying quirks since using the software.

    Cons Update
    5. When playing smart-playlist songs on shuffle they intermittently stop playing after a single track.
    6. There is no clear indication SHUFFLE is on. Seemingly my only option was to use the menu CONTROLS > SUFFLE > OFF in order to disengage it.
    7. When clicking on the outside of bottom the left/right scroll bar the is no action. The only way to move the bar left or right is manually on the bar itself. What appears to be a bit of lost functionality from iTunes.
    8. When searching for a song it does not appear in a "song" view. "Song" view should be the default view in general IMO.

    Unfortunately I haven't really noticed any new Pro's.
     
    JediJoker likes this.
  24. JakeKlas

    JakeKlas Impatiently waiting for an 8-track revival

    Location:
    United States
    Over the Christmas holiday, I moved over to a new computer that had Catalina, so I manually moved all my music into the Music app one artist at a time.

    I noticed two minor things, one my fault and one an apparent bug.

    The bug is that when I start ripping a CD into Music, the app starts playing a song. Not even a song from the CD I’m ripping. You have the “what the hell?” moment when you’re hearing a random song playing when you know one shouldn’t be.

    My fault was forgetting that my artist music folders include albums I no longer want in iTunes/Music, so I had to go back and figure out which stuff I needed to delete out of the app. This comes into play with bands like Deep Purple where I have a lot of unofficial live releases. At various points I went through and deleted poor audience recordings from the app, but not the folder in Finder. When you have a ton of those recordings, it’s hard to remember what’s what. So still having my old computer, I went through and did a comparison of what was on the old computer and matched it to the new. Time consuming, but on the other hand, playing around with your music isn’t such a bad way to spend time.

    Ah... a few other negatives that I just though of...

    1. Very minor, but Search is now on the left of the app. Didn’t realize how much I was used to it being on the right.

    2. Search no longer keeps a list of the last five or six searches you did. I actually found that useful. Hardly a deal breaker for using the app... just a feature I miss.

    3. This is my biggest gripe and hopefully I can explain it well...

    Go to an Artist page. In my case I’m using Deep Purple.
    You see their picture at the top, and for Albums, there’s a scrollable list of albums.
    On the right, you can click See All.
    When you do that, you get a boatload of albums listed.
    Click on any album to go to that album’s page.
    Now, click the left arrow button to go back to all the albums.

    In the past, you’d go back to the See All view. Not anymore. Now you go back to another page that has the Singles, Albums, Videos. You have to click See All again to get a view of all the albums. I hate this!! It’s inefficient if you want to take a look at multiple albums like I do with a new artist... I want to sample a bunch of individual albums and use the back-arrow button to easily get the full view of albums. Now I'm having to take the extra step of clicking See All.

    I know... first-world problems. Just annoys me when something that wasn’t broken gets “fixed.” But... we have the Column Browser and for that I’m happy!!
     
    DreadPikathulhu, Dubsonic and btltez like this.
  25. btltez

    btltez Forum Resident

    Location:
    I'm From Detroit
    I'm still not touching Catalina.
     
    primoridal_ooze and Dubsonic like this.

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