iTunes: the program formerly known as cool

[Gregita]

Thanks to everyone who have added suggestions.

You have given more response than a computer company. Of couse, that may not be saying much.

Today I viewed commercials from Apple's new ad campaign. I think they are hokey in a way, but they could work. It could convince someone to switch.

On the site, www.apple.com/switch, there was a link for people who used to be on a pc to tell their conversion stories.

I decided to email Apple and tell them mine.

I told them I switched to a Mac....because I wanted to be able to use iTunes...and burn cds. I then told them....how burning cds was something my Mac did in the past. How it didn't do it anymore. I suggested they should share my experience along with the rest to provide a more balanced perspective.

I told them I doubted that would help them sell Macs, though.

[Koelling]

I tend to agree that iTunes used to be cool. But if you base your whole judgement on this one program, you are sick in the head

iTunes is simply a poorly ported Carbon App. Because of this it takes up way too much system resources. It's pretty and for encoding and burning I can't think of a better solution (sorry for your problem, but it is an isolated occurrence). But if I want to run iTunes while surfing the web then I can expect every thing to be twice as slow. Add in Chatting and project builder and Mail.app and others and my poor little iMac can't keep up.

I wouldn't mind seeing it updated and maybe even aquafied but thank god there are other options until that happens. I find that OroborOSX plus xmms uses less processor power and with the right skin it looks more aqua than iTunes does with brushed steel.

iTunes used to be cool, but the cool thing now is that we have UNIX software to replace it.

oh by the way, mpg123 is cool too.

[xaqintosh]

what is mpg123?

[bigbadbill]

Gregita—

I have never experienced any problems burning cd's with iTunes or OSX. I have done so using an original iMac 266Mhz using an external CD burner, a new iMac 800Mhz, a G4 466Mhz using both external and internal CD burners, so i've pretty much covered the gammut. So I don't believe that it is the product that should be in question here, but rather your individual configuration.

You say that you were burning cd's fine and one day problems started. That makes me think that this is a software issue.

If you could post your system information including what version of iTunes and OSX you are running, I'm sure somebody here will be able to solve your problem.

P.S.: Ya, what is MPG123?

[Koelling]

what is mpg123?

mpg123 is the command line mp3 player. It's in the Fink unstable tree. I think it belongs there because it does have some bugs but it's still a lot of fun. I found it when I was trying to set up a cron alarm clock since this one is command line but I never got it to work(the alarm clock, not mpg123 because that does work).

If you want any more explanation I'll watch for someone who opens a thread in the Darwin forum because I don't want to get too far off topic here.

[Gregita]

I have posted my system information.

There is a thread on Apple.com that asks for people having problems to post a copy of their system profiler report... So I did.

I have a G3/600. 256 MB of RAM. 40GB HD...

10.1.5 is my OS. It is not as OS X exclusive problem, however. Same problems and errors in OS 9...no matter which version of OS 9 I was running.

As I have said on Apple.com, I am not using an external drive. I am using the drive that shipped with my Mac.

I don't have Toast or any other program like it installed.

I use either cds made by Imation or Fuji...the same cds I used successfully for months. They haven't changed the cds in that time. They are the same length...with the same capacity.

Software restore doesn't remove the problem, either. I have ran software restore a couple of times. The cds will burn normally once or twice..and then the same error message (-7932) will appear. This even happened in the orginal version of iTunes that came installed on my Mac in both OS 9 and OS X.

The only way I can burn cds is by following Apple's suggestion..and setting the burning speed down to 4X...and keeping the gaps between the songs at 2 seconds. If I set the burning speed at 8X or at maximum speed, the burn will stop every time.

I am doing nothing different, either. I burnt over a hundred cds before all this started happening...I don't do anything different now than I did then.

I am also not the only person having this problem. The number, at last count, has grown to almost 300 people....last I checked. That is the number of people who have posted messages on Apple.com. That is not counting the ones who have yet to come forward.

Anyway, I will continue burning cds at 4X speed...until the solution is found.

[hulkaros]

Look Gregita, Testuser IMHO gave you the best advice and it would be my advice too! I am a technician for PCs and Macs too, and I've seen the problem you mentioned and solved it (without going and asking around things) with the EXACT advices that testuser gave you

Anyway, I don't know what's your relation with computer knowledge in general and how deep that goes but for someone who knows and understands, this problem was clearly NOT iTunes bad behavior but a NOT good-set parameter/media setting

However, I know from my experience that in ANY iMac G3/500 with 128 RAM our customers and/or family members can browse the internet, listen to their MP3 iTunes music, have word or excel loaded, another one or two small apps there too AND burn CDs either in Toast or iTunes and ALL these at the same time... How? Because they choose good CD media and have their apps' settings customized for perfection instead for whining here and there

My advice to you after all the above LONG intro is:
Before feeling bad about your computer's misbehavior, be it PC and/or Mac, try:
1. Not to panic
2. To calm down
3. To clear your mind
4. To play with its settings/preferences that are most close to your problem and VOILA: Problem dissapears --at least most of the time that is

[Gregita]

I agree that Testuser did give some very good advice to solve the problem.

I have lowered the burn speed in iTunes. I have mentioned that in almost all of my posts. So, being told that again was hardly a revelation. Someone who had the same problems called Apple and talked to tech support, and that was their official stance.

My question is why did it used to burn at 8X with no problem?

I have played around with the preferences. Some people found that their privileges had been changed when they installed iTunes 2.04. Once they changed them back to read and write for all, the program worked again.

However, my privileges were never changed, so that is not part of the problem.

I am able to burn cds with the burning speed set down to 4X in iTunes.

I am still not able to burn MP3 cds or data cds using disk burner.

The cds I have don't have a bluish back, either. They are silver. (This was another of Testuser's instructions.)

As I have said before, Apple is well aware there is a problem.

They have asked people to post their system profiler information on Apple.com so they can look into it further.

Seems to me if it was all human error and poor quality cds, Apple wouldn't waste it's time trying to solve the problem.

Perhaps Apple chooses not to blame consumers for their software mistakes. In which case, they more than live up to the "think different" slogan.