I’m liking iTunes 10 but I can’t say I’m a fan of the vertical control buttons, which some are calling ‘traffic lights’ since well, it resembles traffic lights. Sure it saves space but it breaks away from the standardized UI convention. Thankfully we can change back to the classic horizontal buttons without much effort.

If you want to get the classic horizontal close/minimize/maximize buttons back in iTunes 10, type the following into the Terminal and relaunch the iTunes app:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -1

If you want to reverse the changes back to the newer iTunes 10 style vertical buttons, use this:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -0

Again you just need to quit and reopen iTunes 10 for the changes to take effect.

A big thanks to Paster who provided this tip in the comments on how to change the iTunes 10 icon back to the iTunes 9 icon style.

If you haven’t downloaded iTunes 10 yet, it’s a worthwhile upgrade and the Ping social music system is fun to play around with.

It seems like it was just moments ago that iTunes 10 became available to download, but already there are some complaints about the new blue button icon. 6ix Passions points out that it looks awkward in their Dock and offers a simple solution; revert back to the old iTunes 9 icon. Here’s how to get the old iTunes icon back:

• Go into your Applications folder, select iTunes.
• Right click on the file and select Show Package Contents.
• Go under the Resources folder and make a copy of iTunes.icns on your desktop (for backup purposes).
• Replace it with the old iTunes.icns file from the previous iTunes version (9 and below).
• Start or restart iTunes.

Now you’ll have the old iTunes 9 style icon back, featuring its music note layered on top of a CD. Perhaps it’s just that people don’t like change, or maybe they’re still attached to their CD’s, who knows.

Apple has released a new iPod touch that has all the great features of the iPhone 4 (minus cell), and along with any new iPod release comes a new commercial. The newest iPod touch commercial is called “All kinds of fun” and it shows the iPod touch shooting video, in FaceTime calls, and using other cool new features on the device. Of course there’s a catchy song playing in the background, and that song is about to get really popular per the Apple Commercial Effect.

What’s the name of the song playing in the new iPod touch commercial?

The song is called “Come Home” by the artist Chappo, and it’s off of the ‘Plastique Universe EP’. You can listen to the full song below.

Read more »

Some users are experiencing problems trying to download iTunes 10, and there’s even a few rumors circulating that iTunes 10 will not be available to download yet – these are not true, iTunes 10 is available to download now. If you encounter problems with downloading iTunes 10 from Apple’s iTunes site, you can try one of these direct download links from Apple:

iTunes 10 Direct Download links

These direct download links have been verified to work as of 7:20PM PST, the files are on Apple’s servers and are not rehosted or mirrored elsewhere yet.

iTunes 10 for Mac OS X – Download now

iTunes 10 for Windows 64-bit – Download now

iTunes 10 for Windows 32-bit – Download now

iTunes 10 has been announced and will be available to download starting today via Software Update. Featuring a fancy new icon that finally ditches the CD, iTunes 10 also has a more attractive album management system and a built in social network.

iTunes 10 Ping

Perhaps the most interesting feature of iTunes 10 is Ping, the new social music discovery network from Apple. Built directly into the iTunes app, Ping allows iTunes users to follow artists and other users, get concert listings, discuss music, share your music preferences, and more. With 160 million existing iTunes users and the ability to access Ping on your Mac, PC, iPhone, and iPod Touch, Ping is looking to quickly dominate the social music scene. Ping’s feed looks a lot like Facebook and I’d expect a way to cross-publish between the two shortly. Ping will only be accessible via iTunes 10.

iTunes 10 download

To get the newest version of iTunes 10, go to either Apples iTunes download website or load up Software Update from the Apple menu, it will appear as an available download.

Apple’s iTunes download website is here, you do not need to enter your email address, you can just click on ‘Download Now’ and the download will start.

Update: Some people are reporting problems downloading iTunes 10 or that they can’t download iTunes 10. If you are having troubles downloading iTunes 10, refresh the iTunes download page and try clearing your cache. I can confirm that it is available for download.

Apple just released a new iPad commercial called “iPad is Delicious” that features the text “iPad is…” followed by images of someone browsing a pictured recipe book, playing games, reading books, writing on a virtual chalkboard, etc, the video is posted above if you haven’t seen it yet.

Playing in the background is a piano song with fingers snapping to a gradually increasing energy level and soon come handclaps, a bass line, and the whole shebang… of course since it’s an Apple commercial this song is about to get very popular and two people have already asked me what the song is.

What’s the name of the song in the new iPad commercial?

The song is ‘Never Stop’ by Chilly Gonzales, from an upcoming album titled “Ivory Tower” that will be available on September 14. There are actually two versions of this song available, a ‘rap mix’ and the ‘original mix’ which is an instrumental version.

Where can I get the song?

You can pre-order the full album now directly through the record label for $9 (cheaper than the iTunes Store!) and the album comes as an MP3 download.

You can also download the “Never Stop (Rap Mix)” here for free at their website.

A quick note: If you like the song used in the iPad commercial you should buy the full album, it includes both versions of “Never Stop” and the other songs are just as good, providing a solid mix of funky piano riffs, catchy beats, smooth instrumentals, and electronic goodness.

Can I listen to the full song online?

Yes you can. Here are the full songs in both versions (via YouTube videos)
Read more »

I recently encountered a strange bug where iTunes refused to add a song to it’s playlist and wouldn’t play the original source MP3 file either. Interestingly enough, the mp3 file played fine with Quick Look and even was able to play within the Finder preview, but no matter what I did I could not add or import the mp3 file to my iTunes playlist.

Fix for iTunes not playing/adding songs and MP3s

I came up with a fix that involves opening the song with QuickTime Player and then re-saving it as an iTunes compatible format to play as usual, here are the steps:

• Launch QuickTime Player
• Drag or Open the MP3 file into QuickTime Player
• From the File menu select “Save As”
• Select “iPhone” as the Format
• Click “Save” and let the mp3 file convert to an .m4v iPhone movie file

• Locate the newly created .m4v file and rename the .m4v extension to .m4a to ensure iTunes treats it as audio, and drag that file into iTunes
• Play the song in iTunes as usual

If you want, you can take this a step further and then select the song and convert it to AAC or MP3 with iTunes from the “Advanced” menu. Likewise you can use a third party utility like All2Mp3 and convert the song to MP3 that way as well.

If all else fails, you might want to learn to repair MP3 files, it’s not complicated and it will fix most other problems.

iTunes Smart Playlists are a widely underused feature in iTunes, which is a shame because it’s a powerful way to create custom playlists based on a variety of parameters, including artists, genres, dates, ratings, play counts, and more.

I’m often guilty of only listening to whatever is newest in my iTunes playlist since I’m usually pulling music from various new music blogs. But what about all the music that I was listening to a few months ago? Sure you can select shuffle, but why not take it a step further… create a smart playlist! Go to the File menu and down to “New Smart Playlist” and set your parameters and off you go.

I got the idea for this a while ago after reading a nice article on The Apple Blog which walks us through the process of creating a smart playlist based on music age and skip count, allowing you to build a music playlist based on what you used to listen to and liked. Definitely a nice way to rediscover your older, and still enjoyable music.

You probably knew that you can navigate around music from the iTunes Dock icon, but did you know that it also includes a list of the ten most recently played songs? Just right-click on the iTunes dock icon and you’ll see a “Play Recent” list with the songs that you can then select from to play immediately.

It seems the iPhone “Other” section always takes up at least 200mb, which suggests it’s system files: the iPhone OS, database files, contacts information, settings, SMS data, core data, pre-installed apps, etc. The “Other” portion grows from there, so as you install more apps, add more contacts, send more text messages, and generally just create more data and caches for your phone to store, the system section grows just like any other operating system.

There are known flukes where the “Other” capacity starts taking up huge amounts of space, up to 8gb of this “Other” space has been reported. In this case it’s possible that the iPhone OS is misreporting files and categorizing something like a Movie as Other, this is most likely to happen after a failed sync. This is a good time to backup and sync your iPhone and then format/restore the device so that you’ll have a clean start.

The only known way to clear the “Other” iPhone/iPod Touch usage is to completely restore the iPhone through iTunes. Remember to sync and backup your iPhone otherwise you will lose your contacts, settings, music, and other data.