[Nobody]

I apologize here, this a question/partial vent posting..........
I'm running 10.3.0 here and I'm kind of enjoying the experience but I'm having teething problems.
In OS9, all I had to do was insert a music CD and Quicktime would fire right up and display all of the available tracks to me. I would click on a given track and a nifty little interface would pop up. All was right with the world. It looked sorta like a car stereo and if I "Just pushed play" it would play the tracks, in sequence on the CD. In Panther, I insert the CD and I click on it I am shown each individual track as an icon.
I click and a nifty little brushed metal interface pops up juuuuuuuuuust for that track. Uh...it would be nice if I could "Just push play"
In an effort to figger it out I began asking Quicktime Help how to play all of the tracks. I asked it how to use an audio CD in every way I could think of. The only thing Quicktime help wants to inform me about is how to screw with movies.

A friend of mine, a longtime and absolutely staunch Mac defender, was on the phone with me and he made a comment about how macs were "the computer for everybody" and supposed to be easy to use. Or at least they used to be that way.
And yes, I'm irritated. It's the simple things.
Have the audio duties been handed over to iTunes? Am I doing something wrong?

[griffman]

System Preferences -> CDs & DVDs -> "When you insert a music CD" pop-up -> set it to "Open iTunes"
End of problem. iTunes has replaced the CD Player of OS 9's days.
-rob.

[Tom_Diola]

Yes the CD Player is so yesterday... But we should explain that if you want to convert CD Audio files to iTunes then you have to import them ... i.e. in iTunes you Import (little button on the upper right hand corner of iTunes) and that converts them to something like mp3 format (or AAC) compressed.

[Ronaldinho]

You don't have to import tracks to iTunes in order to play them. If you click on the CD image icon on the left hand side, you can play the unimported tracks directly from the CD.

[Nobody]

yes,
a true pain in the butt, as already mentioned the audio player is gone. you must use i tunes now. i have itunes lunch at startup so i can listen as i work. you must do that in the user account under start up. you add it to the list by clicking the plus sign and then find it and select it.
once itunes is running, go to preferences and click on the one for "General" look in the dialog box and you will see about half way down and option to how to handle CDs. slect the drop down menu to read play CD on insert. you can have it import, show icon, etc. i use to play my CDs this way until i bought an ipod. i didn't want the music taking up disk space, but now that i have an ipod, i don't care.
you could import the songs you listen to the most. if you don't want them in the mac then just use the setting to play on insert like you use to do.
that should solve your issue. if you don't want itunes to lunch every time you boot, then just lunch it when you want to listen to something.