Grupenet

I’ve been using Windows Vista since it was first released and have enjoyed using it much more than XP. Almost all the applications I use daily work on Vista without many problems. But there’s one exception, and it’s iTunes. Even after the many updates Apple has released since February, nothing has seemed to fix the constant problems I have with iTunes. The best way to describe the problems I am having is with pictures.

This is what I am greeted with every time I launch iTunes. I have to resize the window to get the interface to show up correctly.

Then after I have been listening to music for around half an hour and I go back to the iTunes window to change the song the interface goes completely whack and is sometimes even unresponsive to me clicking the close button.

Now I know it’s a bad idea to even be using Vista. But I got the Vista Business Edition for free from a campaign Microsoft ran. I’m getting really fed up with the crappy Vista support in iTunes and hope my experience is better on my Macbook once I purchase it.

So Apple, when are you going to fix iTunes for Vista? It’s been out for half a year already. It takes that long to fix a few bugs?

If you’ve used Windows Media Player before you may have noticed that when you minimize it, a mini-player in your Windows taskbar will appear. Believe it or not, the same functionality exists in iTunes. I’ll show you how to enable the taskbar player for iTunes.

Firstly, open up the iTunes Preferences under the “Edit” menu. In the preferences window that appears go to the “Advanced” tab. Find the option Minimize iTunes window to system tray and make sure it is unchecked.

Make your way down to the Windows taskbar. Right-click the taskbar, go to “Toolbars” and click on iTunes. Now whenever you minimize iTunes the taskbar player will appear, giving you limited control of your music without having to maximize iTunes.

NOTE: Using the iTunes taskbar player in Windows Vista will disable the taskbar transparency.

One of my biggest gripes with iTunes is that it is only capable of syncing with the iPod. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise since Apple doesn’t want you to buy any other MP3 player other than the iPod. I’ve run into several people who love using iTunes to manage their music library, but would rather use a different brand MP3 player. Up until this point there hasn’t been a solution to achieve this, at least on the Windows side of things.

Thanks to Binary Fortress Software, syncing your MP3 player with iTunes is now possible with iTunes Sync. This application is only available for Windows. If you’re a Mac OS X user, check out SyncTunes.

To date, iTunes Sync will work with most players by Cowon, Creative Labs, Dell, iRiver, JVC, Samsung, and Sandisk. A full list of known working MP3 players can be found here. Sorry Zune owners. The developer says it will be next to impossible to add support for the Zune.

Today Apple released iTunes 7.2 along with the new iTunes Plus feature which allows users to purchase DRM-free tracks encoded in 256kbps AAC. After reading the comments on the Digg story, I realized many people were unsure of how to enable iTunes Plus. Unfortunately, Apple didn’t make it very apparent how to enable iTunes Plus, so here’s how you go about doing just that.

To begin with, go to your account page by clicking the button in the upper-right with your email address. When prompted, enter your iTunes password to progress to your account page.

You should now be at your iTunes account page. As you may have already noticed, the first option on the page is iTunes Plus. Go ahead and click the “Manage iTunes Plus” button. On the next page, make sure the box is checked next to “Always show me iTunes Plus music and music videos when available” and click “Save Changes”.

That’s all there is to it! Now any music and music videos which are available DRM-free will show a plus (+) sign next to the price, which is $1.29 for each track.