iTunes 4.6: Apple Knowledge Base bonanza
Posted by Pierre Igot in: iTunesJune 9th, 2004 • 11:52 pm
Holy Moses. It looks like Apple is trying to beat some kind of record… Yesterday saw the release of iTunes 4.6, which is nothing really remarkable unless you already have an AirPort Express and want to start using it.
What is remarkable, however, is the number of Knowledge Base articles about iTunes that have suddenly been updated or added. I am subscribed to Apple’s daily Knowledge Base changes digest and when I opened the latest digest this morning, I found no fewer than 73 iTunes articles mentioned!
It’s not really that impressive when you realize that quite a few of these articles are just updated versions of existing notes about well-known feature of iTunes. But it must still be a record number of tech notes updated in a single swoop.
I must add that I am a bit puzzled by the phrasing of this particular tech note about “Copying files to your Music folder when adding them to the library“. I always thought that this option was ON by default, but the tech note says that it is OFF by default. Maybe it’s changed in iTunes 4.6 (in which case it might have been more appropriate to say so).
What I find confusing is the following:
By default, when you import a song from a CD or drag a song to your library, a reference (or “pointer”) to the song is placed in the iTunes Music folder inside the iTunes folder in your My Music folder.
Now, correct me if I am wrong, but it seems to me that, when you import a song from a CD, iTunes doesn’t place a “pointer” to the song on the CD in the Music folder. It actually copies the song (in whatever format you’ve chosen) and the reference in your music library then points to the copy of the song on your hard drive, not to the song on the CD!
In addition, I don’t have a folder called “My Music” on my Mac OS X hard drive! In Mac OS X, the user’s music folder is simply called “Music“, not “My Music”.
Don’t tell me Apple actually took a tech note for iTunes for Windows and simply cut and pasted it into the tech note for the Mac! Argh!
June 22nd, 2004 at Jun 22, 04 | 8:14 am
(haven’t tested this but my first hunch is maybe apple means MP3 CD’s whose mp3 files you add to the library)
June 22nd, 2004 at Jun 22, 04 | 12:07 pm
I don’t think it makes any difference. If the songs are not on a local hard drive, iTunes will import them and add them to your Music folder, and then add pointers to the imported copies in your Music folder, not to the CD.