iTunes version 12 birthing problems (esp. "lost" files)

[cuttime]

To put it another way:
http://osxdaily.com/2014/10/23/show-sidebar-itunes-12/

[cuttime]

The first thing I do after I upload a CD is to transfer as much of the liner notes as interest me for that album, since no one has ever digitized that stuff. Primarily, I like to keep track of who played, and what instruments. I insert this info in the "Notes" field.

Uh-oh, looks like someone in an office somewhere had a better idea, so the "Notes" field has gone ZAPPO and NO LONGER EXISTS!!!! This represents hundreds of hours of work lost at my end over the years. To me, this is the worst of the sins of v12 --e specially as there was no warning that they had changed the library format for the metadata.

What happens if you "Add Field" > "Comments" to the info window?

[bayswater]

Once I got my playlists to show up, I am finding that I like 12 a lot more than I liked 11.

Same here. After the initial confusion, it's ok. And better than many older versions for podcasts.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Cosmetics aside, the only issue I've had so far is that I don't need to verify purchases as before. I click buy and it just does it. Not so on the iPhone, but on the Mac Pro. Not sure how to get that back to a more secure place...

Fixed that by Resetting Warnings in iTunes.

And then there's this...

[mikehalloran]

Yes, it's confusing. Here's how I made a view to emulate iTunes 9 -- modified to eliminate all the hunting around:

Show the sidebar.
http://osxdaily.com/2014/10/23/show-sidebar-itunes-12/

In the sidebar, I found all my custom playlists but not the master that shows everything -- hence the OP.

Click on Music at the top. It will show Albums or Song List depending on the View you have selected. Song List cannot be sorted by Album, however. Hmmmm....

To change the view, go to View. Scroll down to View Options. You can click on Albums or Song List (among other views). Click on Albums.

Create a new Playlist as suggested earlier: File>New>Playlist. An empty field called Playlist will appear.

Go back to Music with the Albums view.
Recently Added will appear at the top. Ignore this.
Below All Albums, click-drag in the field to select a few (the number does not matter).
Go to the Edit menu and Select All (this will be greyed out if none were selected first).
Drag all your Albums to the new (empty) Playlist in the Sidebar.
When you open that field, everything will now appear like in iTunes 9. You can sort in the old ways by selecting the top of the column (the album icons will not appear to the left like in iTunes 10 / 11 -- oh well).

I hope this helps.

[stubbsonic]

Is there a way to disable the way it merges the store with your content? If not, that is a deal breaker. Having ads pushed into my head all day long makes my skull sore.

[billf]

Is there a way to disable the way it merges the store with your content? If not, that is a deal breaker. Having ads pushed into my head all day long makes my skull sore.

I'm not getting ads except if I am actually in the store. If I am on the Music or Playlist tab (the latter is set up to look like the old iTunes), there are no ads.

[mikehalloran]

If you have Playlists checked as I do now, I don't see the ads. I am liking the iTunes 9 look, frankly.

[bayswater]

I turned the store off. Don't recall where I did that but it was easy to find at the time.

[Shooshie]

I haven't gotten as far as checking to see if my library is intact. Geez, that would add injury to insult! But I can damnsure tell you that this new iTunes is confusing. I've finally gotten the TV shows and movies figured out, but I haven't even begun my audio collection.

"Music" evokes such wildly differing mental images in people of different cultural lineages. By "lineages," I'm not referring to nationalities, religions, or creeds. I'm referring to "classical music generation," "rock generation," "Facebook generation," and so forth. In iTunes I feel like I've got a collection of fine furniture, artwork, vases, and sculptures that I've got to somehow maintain in an environment created for grinding everything into burrito filler. I have to keep my stuff out of the grinder while finding a way to enjoy them. And some things are simply made for the burrito grinder, so when you buy or download those things, you get a taste of burrito no matter what you want.

Sorry... just free-associating. The age of computing was once exciting and fascinating. It's finally become something else. I just want my life back.

Shooshie

[stubbsonic]

OMG, Shooshie!! That was great!! I couldn't agree more. And I LOVE the analogy.

[mhschmieder]

How bizarre; my Comments field has returned. Maybe I just needed to do a couple (one is never enough anymore) reboots for the new iTunes to sort itself out better.

Still not sure how some of the previously loaded files got "lost" when their "Get Info" location field exactly matched where it was and where I pointed it to using the "set location" helper.

The flat look is hard on my eyes as there isn't enough contrast for me to read text easily and/or see how fields line up, but Apple has long been trending towards illegible as their default.

Now that the "Comments" feature is showing up again and my Playlists are accessible, I guess this isn't as bad as the initial rollout of v11.

I keep getting lost in my task bar looking for the app icon though, as I'm so wired for it being blue vs. red!

[mhschmieder]

Oh, good to know that we can turn the store off; I thought it was now mandatory.

Also, I think I now know how v12 wound up on my box, as I was curious about the new U2 album but thought it was a v11 point release as there wasn't full disclosure (as far as I can tell).

Great album BTW. But then, I've been a huge U2 fan since 1979, when I predicted they'd be one of the biggest rock bands of the next few decades (and was the laughing stock of my associates).

[cuttime]

Good news!

[David Polich]

Ya know, I'm just basically tired of Apple "fixing" things, period. Especially things that aren't
broken. Like Mountain Lion - that wasn't broken.

I did install i-Tunes 12 two days ago. Basically because I needed to back up my i-Phones and to do that I needed the latest version of i-Tunes. Didn't check to see whether all my library songs are still there. I was able to search my library for a particular song (Gino Vanelli's "Powerful People")
and it showed up.

Posts like this make me want to never update anything ever.