we get it... daily
November 10, 2005
Stuff that just works...
We love stuff that just works. iTunes isn't one of those things, much as Apple would like to say it is. We won't get into the stench of thoughtless simplification over taking on real design problems that hinders it, but we will talk to one of the neater tricks around its problems.
Album art is cool when it's coordinated with your tracks. But it's a pain in the ass to get in there. Yeah, iTunes, you do the drop zone attach, but why the fuck don't you do a better job of just going out and getting a picture? We just never bothered to do this, it's too much like stamp collecting and we're waiting for the onset of senility to start playing with the licking and pasting.
Free software to the rescue. Go download Konfabulator. (Yeah Mac guys, the Apple Dashboard officially sucks, #1 of 20: Why not up all the time? It needs to be released from it's own layer. Just retarded. You fucking copied Konfabulator, why did you miss that?) Then get yourself iTunes Companion for Konfabulator (it's written by this guy Knut August Johansen - weird name, probably lives in Arkansas.) This thing watches what you're playing and then silently hits Amazon's web site to download the album art. Then it sticks said artwork into the iTunes database. Done. Your only job from there on is to listen to the music.
It just fucking works. Thanks Knut, you rock.
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Wow, we're big on the parenthetical comments
today. Wonder what brought all the anger
on? Oh yeah, that Apple smugness. Fuck, if
they'd just drop the pretentious black
t-shirt navel gazing we might forgive them a
little stupidity in their designs, but they're
so damn annoying!
Note to selves, shut up and write about that later... |
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