It always amuses me when people come in here and start pointing out all the ways other products are better. ... There are many more reasons to buy MC than cover art.
Yeah - I understand what you're saying, though I also understand where these particular questions/comments re:cover art are coming from too.
Precisely because of what MC9 offers beyond others apps (EphPod and MMJB being the two I've used), I've become an MC9 user. (And this week my satisfaction has increased as I no longer receive "stream error" messages starting with build .026 - I can actually sync with MC9 - yahoo!)
For me, the cover art is definitely a lower priority, but it is an aspect of my growing digital music collection. Seeing the holes in the album art views makes me want to fill as many as I can ... call it anal, unimportant, compulsive, and I'd tend to agree ... nevertheless, it is for me, part of the fun.
And so - I'd like clearer directions in MC9 help about what to do in these two situations:
1 - the art is already in the album folder but not "seen" by MC9 (for the majority of the album folders containing art files, the art file is displayed in MC9, and I can't determine what the problem is for those that aren't). What needs to be done to make the connection to the art file? I was playing around with this last night, and even when the properties view says that the image file is "inside file", the cover art isn't displayed.
2 - albums for which cover art was not obtained in the ripping process, and I've not found on my own (ie - there isn't any art on my computer for the album). Lots of times I'd find the cover art myself, save it to the album folder and in MMJB tagging, connecting the art to the album was easily accomplished. In MC9, the "find art on the internet" hasn't accomplished much (or if it has, I can't tell what) - perhaps because most of the missing art is from more obscure albums (which is why the art wasn't found to begin with?).
Sorry to bring up MMJB again, but that's where my past experiences lie. And, I agree that in the big picture of MC9, this is pretty small - other bugs, glitches, problems, should be higher priorities (the "stream error" issue for example - I'm glad that's been fixed as it was a MUCH more significant problem for me than missing album art).
I hope this makes sense (I've been interrupted a few times in the writing & may have lost a bit of focus).
So - album art - surely not a deal-breaker for me, but I do wish this aspect of MC9 was more transparent & clear.