# iTunes 4.6 in Software Update



## Neil Yates (Aug 10, 2001)

"iTunes 4.6 includes support for playing your music wirelessly using AirPort Express with AirTunes. It also includes a number of other minor enhancements."


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## Pamela (Feb 20, 2003)

Dang! You beat me to it!

This is what happens when you work from home....nothing but time to procrastinate  

This is the first chance I've had to use my new Shaw Extreme. But I can't tell how fast it's downloading in the software update window  

hhmm....doesn't look any different to me? Maybe the UI only changes when it detects Airport Extreme?

EDIT: Yup...you're right Neil...I didn't notice it in the Audio tab...I guess I was just focued on UI changes.

Now I only have to wait till "On or before 7/15/04" to be able to use it...lol

[ June 09, 2004, 02:49 PM: Message edited by: Pamela ]


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## Neil Yates (Aug 10, 2001)

Yeah, I always get beaten to the punch, so








Hehe.

Well, with my Rogers Extreme, it downloaded it so fast, that I thought the download failed (airport etc)...


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## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

Nice... downloading now.


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## Neil Yates (Aug 10, 2001)

Yeah, in the preferences, under the Audio tab, there's two new checkboxes:

[ ] Look for remote speakers connected with AirTunes
[ ] Disable iTunes volume control for remote speakers

Other than that, I found loading an internet radio channel took less time. Haven't found any other changes yet.


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## Strongblade (Jul 9, 2001)

Geeze! Neil was 4 minutes faster than MacCentral!

Heh.


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## Neil Yates (Aug 10, 2001)

Woohoo! (dance of joy).


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## Pamela (Feb 20, 2003)

A question....

Why would apple bother releasing the new 4.6 version of iTunes when it won't be able to be used for another month? I mean we could have waited for the little changes they made till then...and we can't use the new features of 4.6 yet...

...so....'sup?


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## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

> A question....
> 
> Why would apple bother releasing the new 4.6 version of iTunes when it won't be able to be used for another month? I mean we could have waited for the little changes they made till then...and we can't use the new features of 4.6 yet...
> 
> ...so....'sup?


Probably because it was finished, so why wait to release it? No doubt Apple tested iTunes 4.6 with AirPort Express to make sure it worked.


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## Pamela (Feb 20, 2003)

I'm not convinced that it was just because they finished it. That doesn't sound like apple. Apple always has a plan...a reason...


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

It could have new plumbing particular to Euro iTMS


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## Neil Yates (Aug 10, 2001)

Hmm, I never noticed this before, and I use iTunes on the PC a lot for internet radio...

I upgraded both my mac and PC to iTunes 4.6, and now the PC sees 'Neil Yates's Music' from my PowerBook! I clicked on it, and it asked for my PowerBook iTunes music sharing password, which it accepted, and now I can play all my iPod library music on the PC !!!

I swear, I never saw this as an option on iTunes 4.5 on the PC...

Ah, and as clarification, both the PowerBook and PC are using 54g on the same router. Rendezvous in iTunes is not turned on.


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## andreww (Nov 20, 2002)

My guess is it was released to drive traffic to Software Update, and distribute the latest security patches. The last thing apple wants is for some A$$ to exploit these publicised security holes. One of Apples biggest features is that it is secure and virus free. What better way to ensure people update than to release an itunes update?


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## Eaon (Apr 27, 2004)

There would also be your standard tinfoil hat reason for them releasing it: It blocks any DRM-stripping software that has been developed to work with 4.5, which itself blocked DRM-stripping software for 4.2. Fighting pirates is a never ending battle.


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

LOL! Andreww, you might be onto something, there!


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## Strongblade (Jul 9, 2001)

I may have stumbled on another surprising tidbit for this latest release...

Go to *iTunes -> Preferences* 

Select *Importing* 

Select the pop-up list for *Import Using:* 

Check the last item on the list.

A "bronzed nothing" gift for whoever tells me what it says!


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## Neil Yates (Aug 10, 2001)

WAV Encoder ?
That wasn't there before?


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## elmer (Dec 19, 2002)

My guess is they want us to look at the new options and pine for Airport Express.


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## Strongblade (Jul 9, 2001)

I checked when i got home, since I had not yet updated from 4.5 and it was also there in 4.5, but I forgot that when I ripped all my CDs, i wasn't using 4.5 (it was 4.something though). And WAV encoding wasn't there. I'm guessing with the release of 4.5 it was added.

So, I jumped the gun a bit there...


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## iChard (Dec 9, 2002)

i'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that wav encoding has been there since the beginning. i do audio encoding every day with itunes at work and i'm sure i did wav encoding way back when...

now, sharing ipod files, i'm gonna have to look into this...
 

c.


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## Pamela (Feb 20, 2003)

Is it me or is 4.6 a mega Ram Hog!

I've got word, safari, mail and itunes open and when I'm on safari I keep getting that friggin' spinning beach ball.

I know 4.5 was a ram hog too, but I never got the beach ball when I was doing the exact same things.

Is safari having issues or is it from itunes?! 

(using 1 gig of ram)


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## Chealion (Jan 16, 2001)

I find iTunes 4.6 is using less RAM. At the moment it is only using 13MB of RAM (real memory - 149 MB VM) on my machine after running for several hours. Safari is using over 100MB in real memory however. (35 tabs are open however)

Pamela, what are you doing in Safari? As there has to be a reason it is beachballing, and I'm thinking it's not iTunes' fault.


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## Pamela (Feb 20, 2003)

Chealion, I'm not doing anything strange in safari...I'm posting comments on ehmac...doing basic research searches...checked my banking...

It was doing it all last night too.

It beachballs whenever I try to click on something...like on a link or to refresh or to click in a response box.

Could it be that it's because I'm using a POS Microsoft program at the same time? (Word)

And ehmac is bastardly slow. 

Oh, and I only have a few tabs open at a time.

How did you find how much each program was using?


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## Neil Yates (Aug 10, 2001)

Yeah, Safari 1.2.2 v125.8 is causing me huge headaches. Beachball all the time. Have to forcequit it quite often. I also find the right vertical scroll bar aqua thingy doesn't respond to mouse-clicks, right before Safari Beachballs, and especially during. This behaviour started to happen shortly after installation of the most recent Security Update.


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## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

Latest version of Safari seems to be acting normally for me.



> How did you find how much each program was using?


Activity Monitor (Applications > Utilites > *Activity Monitor*)


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## Pamela (Feb 20, 2003)

Geez...my system is really unhappy. The fan is going off all the time and I'm getting that damn beachball. I took a window grab of my CPU usage....does everything look normal to everyone?

There goes the fan again....geez.

Add my short battery life and you've got one unhappy PB owner on your hands


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## elmer (Dec 19, 2002)

I hope everyone's running Onyx after upgrading


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## james_squared (May 3, 2002)

Hello,

Yes, WAV Encoder is there is v4.5 (31).

James


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## interact (Mar 11, 2004)

I find that as the days warm in the summer, the office gets hotter and the pb gets grumpier - ie the fan turns on more. Just a thought.


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## Pamela (Feb 20, 2003)

I wish that were true here interact. Yesterday it was cold and rainy all day and my powerbooks fan kept going off


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

I'm surely mistaken, but I thought WAV. handling was there from the get-go. It certainly was there in Soundjam (what iTunes was before Apple bought it).


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

It looks like your system is very unhappy on account of MS Word, there. *25% CPU USAGE! WTF?!* might I suggest Appleworks?  

As for everything else, it's not bad at all. The Virtual Memory numbers are ALWAYS high, even on my system with 2GB of RAM -- and you're sitting pretty with 1GB. It's the page outs where you'll be stressing the system. That's when the Mac has to read FROM the Virtual memory heap (or "VM size") on disk. And really, from what Im can see in that shot (if that's all you're doing), you have Mail, Safari, iChat and a word processor going. That's pretty standard stuff, if it weren't for it being MS Word. WHAT A HOG! AND A SLUG (slow search/replace performance among others).

Anyway, once your system starts paging in and out of the disk, performance will go down and heat will build up. I would suggest just logging out and back in and relaunch your apps if it starts to get bad. But, Word will always be a thorn in one's side.


EDIT: you probably know this already, but eject any CDs or peripheral drives if you're not using them. They'll hit your battery every time you open up a Finder window.


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## TroutMaskReplica (Feb 28, 2003)

Pamela, when do you first start to notice the slowdown? Is it when you're posting here?

I've noticed the 'Instant Graemlins', when they're all being displayed in the reply form, can sometimes cause a huge slowdown in Safari. Not always, but sometimes.

Also, MS Word is consuming 25% of your processing power. When I run MS Word I get between 1 and 6%, so something may be wrong there.

I suggest running the 'Maintenance' and 'Cleaning' tabs of Onyx, followed by a restart.


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## TroutMaskReplica (Feb 28, 2003)

sorry, macaholic posted his comment while i was writing mine. please excuse the duplication of content.


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

Actually Trout, you're more correct about Word than I am. i just booted Word 2004 demo and it is taking up far less than what Pamela is showing. So, maybe Pamela has ten tons of Word documents open??

Despite this, Word is still a big resource hog. With a blank document open and a little bit of typing, it is taking up *65MB of real memory*. Appleworks, in the same state, is taking up only 27MB.

For CPU cycles, Word fluctuates as high as 4% when at rest (me not typing). When i type, it goes as high as 30% and averages between 15 and 25% -- just typing. Appleworks consumes 2% at rest and maxes at 13% and averages 7% when typing.

I ran a test myself several months ago with Appleworks and Word, doing a search/replace in identical documents. Appleworks absolutely KILLED Word in that test.


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## Pamela (Feb 20, 2003)

dp


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## Pamela (Feb 20, 2003)

Well I downloaded and ran Onyx as Elmer had suggested...and came back to ehmac to see a few more responses (thanks TMR and Macaholic).

Well I think you hit the nail on the head when it comes to thinking that it might be Word. I don't use it that often but I'm writing my thesis right now so I'm using it all the time lately. Hence the reason I'm probably noticing the fan go off all the time as well as the spinning ball.

Anyway, I ran Onyx and cleaned out *everything* and did the maintenance...restarted my computer and started up the programs I was running before and took another screenshot of the activity monitor.

If you thought the CPU #'s of Word were high before, they are going to knock your socks of now....

Word was about 10% before I had my 15 page file open (no images...just black, red and blue type) and after it shot to 50-52%.

WTF?!?!


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

Do you have Appleworks, Pam? Maybe load your thesis into it and give it a spin?

(BTW, we can't see your second screenshot)


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## Pamela (Feb 20, 2003)

No, I don't have it unfortunately.

I did notice that Appleworks came on my mom's new ibook but it didn't come on my new powerbook. Weird.

(Empty your cache and refresh your browser to see the image...I forgot to drag it to idish originally...it's there now and I can see it)

You'll find something QUITE interesting...when I am typing in word, the activity monitor says it's only using up between 7-13%....it's when i have safari active (like now) where word jumps between 30-50%. But regardless of the CPU usage, the Virtual memory and real memory stay the same.

Weird?!


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

> I did notice that Appleworks came on my mom's new ibook but it didn't come on my new powerbook. Weird.


Not weird. just Apple. they bundle Appleworks with all their consumer computers, such as the iBook. their "powerwhatevers" have NEVR shipped with Appleworks. It's dumb, but there's the reason why.


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## Pamela (Feb 20, 2003)

Ahh... that explains it Macaholic.....uumm..I think? lol


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

LOL! Yeah, I guess I didn't say WHY it is; just HOW it is -- even though I said "there's the reason why". 

What a work of art I can be at times









Anyway, that's HOW things are. WHY they bundle Appleworks with i/emacs/Books is for a complete package for the consumer, ready to go. They DON'T do this with Powermacs/Books for the probable reason that they know most people buying "Powerwhatevers" will be using Office, because it's the "serious" word processor/office suite... but it turns out it's also serious in the not-so-good ways.

How ironic.


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## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

I don't think Pamela is alone with the processor-hogging MS Word crap - I fired up Microsoft Word 2004 (retail version) and Activity Monitor, and when I start using MS Word, AM shows it's using over 30-percent of the processor, average between 20-30 percent. However, when idle in the background, it drops down to between 10-15 perent.

What a lousy pile of crap.


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

And yet, Entourage -- surely a more complex piece of programming than any word processor would be -- uses 35MB of real memory and maxes at 2% CPU when at rest. I also have fairly large user files for Entourage as well.

Anyhoo, I have never liked Word. Everything about it spells "overkill". Appleworks works fine for my needs, and is frankly pretty darned flexible!


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## Pamela (Feb 20, 2003)

Well I still don't understand why my word stats are all backwards. I mean 52% at rest?!?! and 15-30% when I'm actually *using* it??

Do I have a bum copy? Did I install it wrong?! WTH??

I've got to get my hands on Appleworks if this is going to be how it is.


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

Put it through the hoops on your mom's iBook. Although it has a lot going for it, it "apparently" isn't as industrial strength as Word/Office. Having said that, it has always worked for me, handling cover letters and invoices containing graphics and spreadsheet cells combined.

Here is Apple page on it:
http://www.apple.com/appleworks/

It'll do word processing, spreadsheet, drawing, painting, it has a flat database module as well as a presentation program -- but Powerpoint it aint!


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## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

Try deleting the preferces for MS Word and restart. Not sure if that would have any major effect, but who knows, corrupted perferences have the ability to cause weird issues.

Are you using MS Word 2004?

Re: AppleWorks - yeah, I know, I tried to convince my father to buy AppleWorks over MS Word 2004 (and it's way cheaper, especially since my father works at the University of New Brunswick - EDU discount), but no....









AppleWorks may not have Power Point, but that's what Keynote is for.


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## Pamela (Feb 20, 2003)

Thanks Lars..I'll try the pref's thing.

I'll give Appleworks a whirl next weekend at my mom's. I only need it to be a basic word processor with the ability to insert images.

Thanks for all the help everyone! Glad it wasn't itunes or my machine causing the problems


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## Pamela (Feb 20, 2003)

IT WORKED!!!!!! I tossed the prefs, loaded up activity viewer and Word is back down to 0-1% CPU when it's in the background and between 10-30 when I'm actually using it  

THANKS LARS!!

I don't care what it's sucking up when I'm using it....it was when I was trying to use Safari when it became frustrating by taking up 50% of my CPU. Sheesh. Hopefully no more spinning beachball!!

EDIT: oops. spoke too soon. It's back to it's backwards antics. Forget it. Time for a workout. Screw you Word


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## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

Wooo...mmeh.









Like a switch to Macs from the PC side of things, time to switch Word users to AppleWorks.


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## Strongblade (Jul 9, 2001)

Pamela, another possible alternative would be the built -in TextEdit program for OS X. Although it's default settings aren't great, it can import Word documents and is easily as good as AppleWorks has been.

It's also free!









Just make sure that when you first open it, go to the preferences and checkmark the "Wrap to Page". As well, I default all my docs in it to Rich Text Format. (.RTF)

If you add an image, you will have to resave it as a an RTFD. But beyond that, it should do the same kinds of things that AppleWorks or Word does.


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

> EDIT: oops. spoke too soon. It's back to it's backwards antics. Forget it. Time for a workout. Screw you Word


Oh man! LMFAO!  

What a whale Word is.


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## Macaholic (Jan 7, 2003)

Oh yeah! Panther's Textedit. Completely forgot about that one...


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## Chealion (Jan 16, 2001)

I'm not 100% sure this is new in iTunes 4.6, but when I stream my music over my network I can see album artwork now on the machine I am streaming too.

I know for sure that 4.2 wasn't doing that for me, but am unsure about 4.5. Can anyone confirm this?

I really like the album artwork being streamed too. Either that or it just decided now to work for me.


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