iTunes

How to match your iTunes library in Spotify

I’m a fairly happy Spotify user, it’s a great service with a fantastic selection. What has always bugged me was that the songs, albums and artists I have in my iTunes library didn’t appear in the main Spotify library, that is the Your Music section. The idea was how I could consolidate my iTunes library in Spotify.

The reason for it was simple, I didn’t want to manually fill up my Spotify library with all songs that I already enjoyed in iTunes. Thanks to the instructions at WonderHowTo, consolidating the iTunes library in Spotify is very easy. You need to:

  1. Open Spotify –> Settings –> Local Files. Make sure that only iTunes is checked.
  2. Still in Spotify, click on iTunes on the left pane, and then select all songs in the right pane (press Command + A).
  3. Drag the songs to Your Music –> Songs on the left column.

From now on, all songs you own and that Spotify hosts in its service will appear in Your Music section of all devices you own, ready to be streamed wherever you have an Internet connection.

QA problems at Apple?

The Mac Observer on the iTunes 11.2 upgrade causing the ’/Users` folder invisible:

Apple’s QA process should have caught this. How can an engineer test the installation of a new version of iTunes and not test all the related areas? That is, users may not be aware of the impact of having Find My Mac (FMM) turned on, but OS engineers are expected to be aware of secondary effects via their expertise.

Yes, and no. It all depends on where you assign your resources. Right now they’re all busy testing iOS 8 and OS X 10.10. No QA process is perfect, and you cannot test everything.

iBooks, PDF files and iTunes sync

In a recent thought-provocative post titled “Where does Tim Cook store his PDF files” I argued that if you live in the Apple world and don’t rely on 3rd party software, it’s very difficult to have a unified solution to store and sync PDF files.

I concluded that post with the hope that OS X Mavericks and iBooks would solve the problem. In this post I’ll discuss where we stand.

OS X Mavericks solution

Right now you can store PDF files in the iCloud space of:

  1. Preview.app
  2. iBooks

iBooks is very elegant and finally users can store books in PDF in a separate application from iTunes.

The confusion of this system is that:

  • PDF files stored in iBooks still open in Preview.app
  • In order to sync those PDF files with an iOS device you still need to use iTunes.

Confusing eh?

Considerations

My take on all this is twofold. Firstly, Preview.app remains the default open-all-files application in OS X. It would have been overkill to duplicate Preview features in iBooks. In this way iBooks can remain a streamlined application to only store and organize iBooks and PDF files.

Secondly, synchronisation remains an open discussion. There are two reasons for this:

  1. Contacts and calendar sync with an iOS device through iTunes no longer exist in iTunes 11.12. This makes me think that Apple now sees iCloud adoption high enough to consider it as the only point of sync.
  2. AirDrop between OS X and iOS is not enabled.

Conclusions

We can look at the two previous considerations in two different opposite ways.

During the presentation of iCloud Steve Jobs said that Apple was demoting the Mac to a normal device. The centre, the truth if you will, of all documents is iCloud. iCloud sync is robust enough to allow Apple to introduce iCloud sync in iBooks also for PDF files in the near future. The days of iTunes sync are definitely counted now.

The alternative solution would be to have AirDrop extended to allow document transfers between OS X and iOS. The question is if Apple sees this solution worth the effort. If this is Apple’s preferred solution we might have to wait another year for the release of iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 (?).

In the meantime I’ll continue storing my PDF books in iBooks and sync through iTunes.

iRadio ready to be launched at WWDC 2013

AllThingsD has just published an article saying that Apple has reportedly signed a deal with Sony Music. Sony is the last of the three major music companies agreeing with Apple’s terms for a music discovery service linked to iTunes.

At this point it’s likely that iRadio is going to be introduced at WWDC 2013.

How to transfer videos from an iPhone to iMovie for iPad

Easy to say, difficult to do. How can you transfer your videos from your iPhone to your iPad without going through an iTunes sync?

The task gets even more difficult if you plan to edit the video on your iPad with iMovie. In this case the problem is difficult to solve because iMovie doesn’t appear in the Open In menu of Dropbox or any other cloud solution (anyone have heard of iCloud?).

The best solution I’ve found is , a EUR 2.69 universal app. The app allows you to transfer pictures and videos between two iOS devices using WiFi (if on the same network) or via Bluetooth.

You could also purchase the but I am not a big fan of new cables/connectors to carry around.

Via How To Get Videos from iPhone to iPad Without iTunes Sync | iPad Insight.

Apple releases iTunes 11.0.3

. These are the improvements listed in the read me file:

  • New MiniPlayer. MiniPlayer now includes a beautiful new view that showcases your album artwork. In addition, a progress bar is now built right into MiniPlayer.
  • Improved Songs View. You can now enjoy your album artwork while in Songs view.
  • Multi-Disc Albums. Albums with multiple discs now appear as a single album.

You can upgrade to version 11.0.3 either through the App Store or downloading it from .

Genius mixes available to iTunes Match subscribers

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With iOS 5.1 Apple makes Genius mixes available to iTunes Match subscribers. That is a nice feature that I’ve been missing a lot since subscribing to the excellent Apple service.

iOS 5.1 also allows you to select if you want to use your cellular data with iTunes Match. The good just got better.

The best feature of iOS 5, so far

Well, to me the best feature – and there are a bunch of them that could be the best – is to have freed all iOS devices from the USB cable needed to sync them with iTunes.

It’s a pure pleasure to be able to create a playlist on iTunes, click on Sync and let iTunes transfer wirelessly the music to your iPhone.

Of course, thanks to iCloud and you can now transfer the pictures taken with your iPhone to iPhoto in the same seamless way.

iTunes 10.5 is out

Things are starting to move for the official iCloud release and the different piece of the puzzle are falling into place.

Today Apple has released iTunes 10.5. This is what you can expect to find:

  • iTunes in the Cloud. iTunes now stores your music and TV purchases in iCloud and makes them available on your devices anywhere, any time, at no additional cost.
  • Automatic Downloads. Purchase music from any device or computer and automatically download a copy to your Mac and iOS devices.
  • Download Previous Purchases. Download your past music, TV, app, and book purchases again, at no additional cost. Previous purchases may be unavailable if they are no longer on the iTunes Store.
  • Sync with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iOS 5.
  • Wi-Fi Syncing. Automatically sync your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iTunes any time they’re both on the same Wi-Fi network.

You can download iTunes 10.5 from Software Update or the . The update weighs at 60.9 MB.

A few other pieces are missing:

  1. iOS 5 that is going to be released tomorrow
  2. Mac OS 10.7.2
  3. iWork update for iCloud

I would have bet that 10.7.2 was going to be released today but we still have time. It’s only 6.30pm here in central Europe. Let’s keep on running Software Update.

How to get a refund for an iTunes or Mac App Store purchase

If you have accidentally purchased a song, an iPhone app or a Mac application on the Mac App Store, it is very straightforward to get a refund from Apple.

These are the simple steps you need to follow:

  1. Wait to receive in your inbox the receipt from Apple
  2. Under each purchase you will see a link saying Report a problem
  3. Click on the link
  4. You will be redirected to iTunes
  5. Login with your Apple ID
  6. You should be now presented with a list of purchases 1
  7. Click on the Report a problem link beside the wrong purchase
  8. From the pull-down menu choose I inadvertently purchased this application
  9. Fill out the form making sure to include the Order Number from the receipt

In my case Apple has replied to my query in less than an hour and reversed the charge in about 15 hours. The money is usually accredited to your account in 5-7 business days.

Once again my experience with Apple support has been positive and pain free. One of the reasons I stick with Apple product and services is because I know from past experiences that if I had a problem, that would be solved quickly by an Apple representative.

1: The steps might be slightly different if your Apple ID is linked to a non English iTunes store. With my Italian Apple ID I am redirected to a normal Apple web page instead of iTunes.