Category: Usability and HCI

iTunes 9 + Smart Playlist + Live Updating + iPhone = FAIL

itunes

Update #3: I was playing around with my smart playlists this morning and discovered an additional tidbit of information that may be useful for some. When syncing smart playlists, pay attention to which column you have the ordered the music by.

As you can see in the above screenshot I have my playlist sorted by ‘Date Added’ which is exactly how I want things ordered. Once I synced my iPhone playlist showed my music sorted by ‘Date Added’ as well.

If I were to have ‘Play Count’ selected as the column to sort by and then synced my iPhone, then that playlist would display the songs ordered by ‘Play Count’

I found this out while playing with the Apple Remote app for the iPhone/iPod Touch. The selected column to sort by also effects how playlists are displayed in the iPhone Remote App.

Update #2: New updates that came out kinda fix this problem. Read more here.

I noticed the other day that Smart Playlists were not syncing correctly to both my wife and my own iPhone.

I found one fix that allowed the sort order to be correct, but disabled the Live updating function of the Smart Playlists. Which meant that every time an attribute of the playlist was updated (Such as rating a new song for my ‘5 Stars’ playlist) nothing was updated upon syncing with my iPhone.

This totally defeats the purpose of a playlist that automagically updates my iPhone with the last 100 added, or top rated songs. ARGH!

Alas, after following a suggestion from this discussion thread (Thanks Dave Jelfs!) we now have a solution. In fact there’s even a bonus side effect for those who only want to sync music, and not video within your playlists.

Update: Joel S points out that this is not totally accurate. “In my own testing, these playlists will still include Music Videos.”

First find your Smart Playlist in the sidebar.

Screen shot 2009-09-27 at 8.11.22 PMCtrl + Click on the playlist and select “Edit Smart Playlist”

Screen shot 2009-09-27 at 8.27.49 PMA new window will appear with all the settings for that particular playlist. Add a new rule  of ‘Playlist is Music’

Screen shot 2009-09-27 at 8.11.39 PM
Click to view

You’ll notice ‘Live updating’ is still on.

Now sync your playlist with your phone. TaDa!

While is is a workaround it does allow for the playlist to be synced, auto updated and appear sorted as you wish on the iPhone.

Like my previous troubleshooting articles I hope this post will be quickly updated when Apple roles out a fix. Until then, happy Smart Playlist syncing!

As with everything YMMV. I was using the following setup.

Macbook Pro 1.83 Ghz
Snow Leopard 10.6.1
iTunes 9.0.1
iPhone OS 3.1

If you have an improvement please leave a comment.


Tweetie ‘Unauthorized. Could not authenticate you.’

tweetie-could-not-authenticate-youI saw this message earlier today after trying to get Tweetie to work on my home Mac.  I was able to setup multiple accounts with ease at work, but for the life of me could not figure out why I was getting this error message. I tried retyping my account details multiple times, each time making sure to type my password as slowly and precisely as possible.

After an apropos search on Twitter about the error I came across this tweet.

rbieber: @frumpa thats odd. This time I entered the password first (where focus defaults) and then username and authenticated fine. Bug?

A quick test confirmed that the order in which you enter your credentials for secondary accounts is a bug.  It appears  you need to enter your password first and then your username.

If this doesn’t make any sense, see the video below.

[qt:http://clkoerner.com/videos/tweetie-bug.mov http://clkoerner.com/videos/tweetie-bug-poster.mov 490 470]

I should mention despite this small bug I’m enjoying Tweetie very much and am sure the developers will remedy this. Most likely right after I hit the Publish button.

damn-you-atebits

Update: Well pretty close, atebits updated Tweetie today to 1.0.2, which fixes this problem.

Removing Twitter Weekly Updates

toomanytweets

At first I thought the weekly dump of my tweets would be something useful and interesting.  Not only to myself, but to anyone who stumbles across this site.  (Hi Mom!)

After having it up and automagically posting for a month, it looks ugly and has no real value.  If you want to follow my small bursts of wit and random links, follow me on twitter.

Side note;  The Weekly Updates are the most trafficked articles on the site.  I have no idea why.

toptweets

Remove “Show all Menu Items” From Photoshop CS4

Update: John Nack from Adobe mentions a simpler solution for this particular menu behavior.

CS4 brings back the joy of the default ‘Show all Menu Items”.  As I’ve previously written when CS3 came out, there is a way to manually modify the Edit>Menu options to enable all menu items to be displayed.  It’s kinda lame that they enable this by default and offer no simple one-click solution to show all menu items.

I’m happy to report that my custom menu file works in CS4 just as well.  Just double-click the Everything_on.mnu file and Photoshop will launch, putting the settings into place.*

<rant>

As to why Adobe has this default probably goes into issues designing the interface of a complex application.  By hiding what they believe to be the least used items, it makes things appear simpler.

However, as a professional application I find this to be a bit oxymoronish.  Why not prompt the user on first run with a simple series of questions.

What do you plan on doing with Photoshop?

  1. I’m new here, just the basics
  2. Oh, you know, family photos, work on my personal site
  3. I’m a web guy, I usually start from scratch
  4. I’m a professional pixel wrangler, show me everything

Ok, while that’s by no means an ideal set of default options I hope you get the gist of what I’m trying to say.

Ask the user, don’t make assumptions and then make it possible to easily show all menu items.

</rant>

*With my limited testing this didn’t effect palettes or keyboard shortcuts, but YMMV.