[mcullinan]

Or select all songs and under advanced--> get album artwork.

[Danny Richie]

I did both of those things and it still did not work.

So I downloaded some software from the iTunes Store and have manually downloaded some artwork.

[mcullinan]

Danny,
This is a mystery to me... I think some of the more esoteric albums wont be under iTunes. Maybe it has to be in their library to work.. hmm.. You are signed in?
Mike

[JoshK]

your frustration thus far mirrors mine whenever i touch a friend's mac.  if you are good with a pc you are in for being frustrated with a mac, and likely visa versa.  i don't like that you have to do things the 'apple way'.  i am not about assimilation and trends.

[Danny Richie]

Yep, I am logged in.

And yes and am pretty good with a PC so there is a learning process.

[chrisby]

your frustration thus far mirrors mine whenever i touch a friend's mac.  if you are good with a pc you are in for being frustrated with a mac, and likely visa versa.  i don't like that you have to do things the 'apple way'.  i am not about assimilation and trends.

gee,  when we started from scratch on a PC*,  didn't that entail learning to do things the "MS way"?   

*and how many times over the past 2 decades did a "new and improved" MS OS not amount to a restart on the learning curve, and/or the requirement for new hardware?   



I use both, and certainly prefer my iMac/ Tiger at home.  Thank goodness we resisted "upgrading" to Vista on our office network - and we'll probably wait at least 6 months before looking at "7"

[JoshK]

your frustration thus far mirrors mine whenever i touch a friend's mac.  if you are good with a pc you are in for being frustrated with a mac, and likely visa versa.  i don't like that you have to do things the 'apple way'.  i am not about assimilation and trends.

gee,  when we started from scratch on a PC*,  didn't that entail learning to do things the "MS way"?   

*and how many times over the past 2 decades did a "new and improved" MS OS not amount to a restart on the learning curve, and/or the requirement for new hardware?   



I use both, and certainly prefer my iMac/ Tiger at home.  Thank goodness we resisted "upgrading" to Vista on our office network - and we'll probably wait at least 6 months before looking at "7"

while not to start an argument, but i was introduced to computers on an apple iie.  then 386, 486, pentium, ibm mainframes, solaris on sun boxes, unix, linux and then back to pc.  i find that the rest have more commonality with eachother than mac/apple.  mac seems to be the outlier from my perspective.  learning the original windows took a little getting used to, but you could also fall back on dos. 

i just find myself having to really search and search to do something simple like search for available wireless networks with my friends macbook.  they didn't know how to do it, so it wasn't that easy userfriendly.   i am no pro in linux, only having played with it very briefly but it would have taken me less than a minute to figure it out on most linux guis.  solaris, same story.  in fact, i might have had an easier time on the older mac os. 

[PhilNYC]

your frustration thus far mirrors mine whenever i touch a friend's mac.  if you are good with a pc you are in for being frustrated with a mac, and likely visa versa.  i don't like that you have to do things the 'apple way'.  i am not about assimilation and trends.

gee,  when we started from scratch on a PC*,  didn't that entail learning to do things the "MS way"?   

*and how many times over the past 2 decades did a "new and improved" MS OS not amount to a restart on the learning curve, and/or the requirement for new hardware?   



I use both, and certainly prefer my iMac/ Tiger at home.  Thank goodness we resisted "upgrading" to Vista on our office network - and we'll probably wait at least 6 months before looking at "7"

while not to start an argument, but i was introduced to computers on an apple iie.  then 386, 486, pentium, ibm mainframes, solaris on sun boxes, unix, linux and then back to pc.  i find that the rest have more commonality with eachother than mac/apple.  mac seems to be the outlier from my perspective.  learning the original windows took a little getting used to, but you could also fall back on dos. 

i just find myself having to really search and search to do something simple like search for available wireless networks with my friends macbook.  they didn't know how to do it, so it wasn't that easy userfriendly.   i am no pro in linux, only having played with it very briefly but it would have taken me less than a minute to figure it out on most linux guis.  solaris, same story.  in fact, i might have had an easier time on the older mac os.

Isn't it a contradiction to say "I'm not into Mac because I'm not into assimilation and trends", then say "Mac is an outlier"...?

[mcullinan]

These arguments are all good and well, Mac is a new operating system (for PC users) and is very intuitive, BUT it still takes a certain amount of time to learn how everything functions. There is no magic bullet. I would pick up a manual from a book store or Library to learn Leopard and the ins and outs.
Mike

[JoshK]

your frustration thus far mirrors mine whenever i touch a friend's mac.  if you are good with a pc you are in for being frustrated with a mac, and likely visa versa.  i don't like that you have to do things the 'apple way'.  i am not about assimilation and trends.

gee,  when we started from scratch on a PC*,  didn't that entail learning to do things the "MS way"?   

*and how many times over the past 2 decades did a "new and improved" MS OS not amount to a restart on the learning curve, and/or the requirement for new hardware?   



I use both, and certainly prefer my iMac/ Tiger at home.  Thank goodness we resisted "upgrading" to Vista on our office network - and we'll probably wait at least 6 months before looking at "7"

while not to start an argument, but i was introduced to computers on an apple iie.  then 386, 486, pentium, ibm mainframes, solaris on sun boxes, unix, linux and then back to pc.  i find that the rest have more commonality with eachother than mac/apple.  mac seems to be the outlier from my perspective.  learning the original windows took a little getting used to, but you could also fall back on dos. 

i just find myself having to really search and search to do something simple like search for available wireless networks with my friends macbook.  they didn't know how to do it, so it wasn't that easy userfriendly.   i am no pro in linux, only having played with it very briefly but it would have taken me less than a minute to figure it out on most linux guis.  solaris, same story.  in fact, i might have had an easier time on the older mac os.

Isn't it a contradiction to say "I'm not into Mac because I'm not into assimilation and trends", then say "Mac is an outlier"...?

I was talking about two different things.  I said Mac was the outlier in terms of its UI, but assimilation was about how they make you do things there way.  Anyway, Macs have their place and I am glad people like them.  I was originally replying to Danny as I understood where he is coming from.   My experiences with Macs is they are counter-intuitive rather than more intuitive but that is probably my PC dominate background and left-brained mentality showing.

[JohnR]

i just find myself having to really search and search to do something simple like search for available wireless networks with my friends macbook.

Click on the circular wireless icon in the menu bar (right hand side). I'm not sure how much more obvious it could be made to be. I believe this is related to what is called "idiom" - see Donald Norman.

Personally, I will spend my own money on Macs - I'm not a Mac fanatic, I've used all sorts of computers and OS's since the early 80's. I want Unix of some kind on my servers; I will pay for OS/X on my personal machines (and it's Unix under the hood anyway). I use Windows because I get paid to do it.

I really wouldn't consider myself a "right-brained" person

[PhilNYC]

i just find myself having to really search and search to do something simple like search for available wireless networks with my friends macbook.

Click on the circular wireless icon in the menu bar (right hand side). I'm not sure how much more obvious it could be made to be.

On a similar note, I have a friend who went from PC to Mac earlier this year.  We were talking a few weeks ago, and he complained that he couldn't figure out how to uninstall an application on his Mac...kept looking for things in the Preferences panel, Utilities software, etc. (on a PC, you uninstall software using a tool from the Control Panel).  I told him "I think you just drag the application to the trash."  He looked at me somewhat dumbfounded before saying "yeah, I guess that's pretty obvious...."

[mcullinan]

Macs Rock! I started out on a PC, my Dad was in the Computer field so we always had something around. He used to brink the paper punchout cards home with which I played. These were actually data punched out onto a card. So I started on DOS prompts and green screen. My first Mac was 66 MHz of 7100 PowerPC computingness. Sweet.
Mike

[JoshK]

i just find myself having to really search and search to do something simple like search for available wireless networks with my friends macbook.

Click on the circular wireless icon in the menu bar (right hand side). I'm not sure how much more obvious it could be made to be. I believe this is related to what is called "idiom" - see Donald Norman.

then the jokes on me.     but i don't recall seeing any such icon and i do remember looking for an icon that would be associated with networking.  maybe that is why my friend couldn't figure it out. 

[Mike Nomad]

Some of the lines being thrown around on this thread are making my teeth hurt.

You do not need to create an account, open an account, or give a credit card number to be able to use iTunes.

Letting iTunes manage our music library is the easiest way to do things. You can rip using iTunes (as a matter of fact, you can upsample on the rip. I recommend it.), or you can import files into iTunes.

The following directions assume use of the latest version of the OS, Leopard (10.5.7) and the latest version of iTunes (8.2.1).

If you want to upsample the rip, you have to change the settings before you start the rip. Start iTunes, then click on iTunes creating a drop down, and select Preferences.

Under General, in the section "When you insert a CD:" click on the Import Settings... button.

For Import Using: I use AIFF, but WAV is among the options available in the drop down.

For Setting:, click on "Automatic" and change it to "Custom." The pop up window will then allow you to set things up for 16/48 sampling.

I also suggest checking the "Use error correction..." box.

Otherwise, you can import files by starting iTunes, clicking on File, and selecting "Add to Library...". From there, you get prompts on what files you want to pull into the library.

Other Preferences you might want to consider: Under Preferences > Advanced, check the "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" button, along with the "Copy files...when adding to library" button.

It is easy to tag files that the CD database doesn't have. With the iTunes View set to "List" (left button), you can Ctrl + Click (or if you are using a real mouse, Right Click) on an individual track, select "Get Info", and notate to your heart's content. Multiple tracks can be selected by clicking on the first one you want, and while holding down the shift key, select the last track you want. Click on the highlighted block of tracks as mentioned above, and...

And, a note about file organization. When you've sorted and tagged your music, you can look in your iTunes Music folder and see all your tunes organized in folders. There is nothing keeping you from copying the folders and dropping them onto another machine. All the files will play.

Hope at least some of this helps.

Mike

[funkmonkey]

You do not need to create an account, open an account, or give a credit card number to be able to use iTunes.

Correct, but to the best of my knowledge you do need to open an account (which requires a CC#) to be able to download album art and other metadata via gracenote (iTunes CD database).  4-5 years ago when I got an iPod and started using iTunes that was the case.  And just a few months ago, when I replaced my iMac, I had to re-log into my existing Apple/iTunes account (which was originally set up with a CC and email address) to enable automatic retrieval of track-names and album art.

Is anybody able to get metadata without an Apple account?

[Mike Nomad]

[Is anybody able to get metadata without an Apple account?]

I get CD track names, etc. all the time, and I do not have an iTunes account. However, I don't download album art.

[funkmonkey]

So, it would appear that it's just the album art that requires an account then...  which is what the OP was having trouble with.

[Mike Nomad]

[So, it would appear that it's just the album art that requires an account then...]

It would appear not. I just conducted a little experiment. I grabbed two CDs:

Miles Davis - Kind of Blue

Grateful Dead - Road Trips (Fall '79)

and ripped the first track off both of them.

All of the track info came in for both of them.

However, I could only get the album art for the Miles record. Album art is possibly being pulled from another database.

[Nels Ferre]

The way I see it is simple: if the album is offered for download from the iTunes  store, artwork will be downloaded when the CD is ripped. If the store does not have the album, the artwork needs to be added manually.