Steve:
Just some random issues and requests.
1. I'm still getting periodic freezes on the Sync Status dialog. It doesn't always happen, but tonight I fired up MC, clicked my iPod, selected sync and said OK. I hadn't made any changes to anything. It went to song 66 of 2505 and froze. It then completed fine. The only thing I did do was before sync I clicked on one of my Smartlists called "Random Day of Tunes" which is a random 8 hours of music. I do this to refresh it before sync so it gets updated (don't know if I have to do that by the way). **EDIT**: just did another sync and I got a freeze again--it eventually complete, just the status stops. Did something get broken? I'm using .34.
2. Per my above statement, the syncing on a playlist didn't achieve the desired results. Here is what I do: I have a playlist that is very simple: 8 hours of music, sort=random. In
theory what I would expect is that if I re-sync that playlist would automatically get updated with a new list of 8 hours of music. I just did a sync (first clicking on the Playlist in MC to "update" it). And the playlist has the same songs on it from before the sync. Why would this be? Is it expected that I first delete the playlist? Seems to me that that goes against what a sync should do.
3. It would be nice if you could add a Sequence column to the Playlist view of the iPod. That way you could tell what the order is going to be. My suggestion would be to make this the default sort order.
4. Formatting an iPod that has a lot of songs on it results in the status dialog getting stuck still. It stops at 1/3 and sits there. It should progress more evenly.
5. Would love to get some advance word on what you think about updating playcounts from the iPod. Any news on that?
6. I had put a post in a while ago on a suggestion for setting up MC so that it could detect whether or not an iPod had been formatted for MC. If not, a wizard would launch, walking the user through the format process. To refresh your memory, my suggestion was to put a file on the iPod, then on launch of MC (or focus brought to the iPod in MC) a query would be done to determine if the file is present. If not, launch the wizard. This is basically what Xplay does. Just thought that would help the newer users (what with Xmas coming, there will be a lot of them).
7. Any possibility of getting rid of the requirement to name the iPod's volume name "iPod"? I understand the requirement, just so you know, Xplay's setup wizard (mentioned above) has you "Name" the ipod. If it's a strict requirement to have MC know the name of the ipod, it's possible that you could have this as part of the Format for MC wizard noted above. That way you'd kill two birds with one stone as they say.
8. Where the heck are those pretty iCons (
) Man, I want a nice little iPod there.....
10. Strangely you haven't heard me screaming for Album/Artist sync anymore. While I still would think it's a great idea, I've gone over to the dark side (my young Skywalker) and am using smartlists. Kurt would be proud of his Padawan learner.
11. Please: get rid of the ugly old "uploading" status dialog could ya?
Make it match our friend the Sync status dialog. OK, if anybody disagrees, I'll consider giving in.
12. Now that it looks like we have the Update Tags option working, can I ask maybe a silly question. Other folks chime in on this one: Why would you ever uncheck this box? I mean, is there an instance where you wouldn't want the tags to match the changes you made in MC? If that's the case, suggest this option be defaulted to "ON" and the checkbox just removed. Make it do it every time you sync. I like the option to check/uncheck the Delete Files option. Keep that one, but the other one...well, I just think it should be always on.
13. On that note: at one point you said the Sync dialog would "remember" your last options as far as Update Tags and Delete Files. That doesn't seem to be working
14. Is it possible to auto-expand the Playlist tree when the sync dialog is displayed so that tree items that have Playlists pre-selected are automatically displayed?
15. Suggest that you remove the Auto Smartlists (Video & Image) playlist group from the sync dialog. Can't use it, why should it be there right?
16. Would really love to see some method other than write clicking to get to iPod functions. Hey, what about adding toolbar options? Could you add a new toolbar group as part of the portables plugin? Man, would *that* be cool. I can see it now, even with nifty iPod iCons. iSaw Kurt start writing like this and iRemember him saying that it was hard to stop. Now iKnow what he meant.
. OK, iMoving on. Really though, any way to get some BUTTONs instead of right-clicking would be cool.
17. If possible, is there a way to prevent the "Cannot Find Plugin" if you don't have the iPod selected and you try and sync off of it. Minor issue, but new users will be confused and really, it shouldn't do that.
Guess that's enough, sorry for the novella.
Adam