[George76]

I just got my first Mac (a 20" iMac) at the end of December last year after being a very proficient Windows user for a long time. And although I love my Mac, it seems like every included program has at least one huge glaring problem. And at the moment I feel the need to rant. If you have any solutions to the issues I discuss below, please respond as I would love to know.
OS X Shortcut icons
Why aren't the icons that represent the shortcuts on the menus on the keyboard? To make it worse, the one key is referred to by at least 2 different names in documentation and online (can't remember which one). Over time, I'll eventually remember what key that step thingy represents and the up arrow, by why should I have to? Would putting a little symbol on the key ruin the asthetic of the Apple Keyboard?
iTunes (beta) 7
Sigh, this program seems to be about as stable as an elephant balancing on a beachball. Speaking of beachball, I get the spinning beachball of death very frequently if I try to do anything while it's ripping a CD. And in general, the iMac seems to have issues reading any CD with minor scratches.
Also, does autodelete of podcasts actually work? It's never deleted a single podcast automatically for me even though it is set up to do so in the preferences. Likewise, it doesn't actually seem to update podcasts without me hitting refresh.
Two things that iTunes should borrow (steal) from Windows Media Player. Update the abilities of the Album Art Search. If iTunes decides it's not in the store, you're out of luck whereas WMP will give you a list of close matches for you to choose from. On a similar note, if iTunes finds the wrong album art (for example it gave my Shakira album artwork from a Sheryl Crow album), there's nothing you can do about it besides clearing it and finding it yourself but at least WMP you could muck up the name so it would give you some search results to choose from. Also, iTunes needs to copy WMP handling of artist names. This is more an issue on the iPod where I ended up with about 20 artist entries for just 3 Shaggy albums (Shaggy, Shaggy and Rayvon, Shaggy and Chaka Kahn, etc.). There should be a way to tag them so all songs by Shaggy will show up under Shaggy regardless of who else might be on the song. And that song featuring Rayvon shows up under a listing for Rayvon, etc. Just like WMP. I know the Album Artist tag sort of does this but like I said, it doesn't help with the iPod issue it creates.
Finally, why did they move Music Videos from being in a video section and into the Music category? This causes issues with iTunes itself, streaming audio with the Airport Express (where it basically cuts out), and the iPod. And it's damned frustrating trying to find a music video ever again. They seem to realize this because the iPod has the option to not include them when syncing the iPod (only half-hearted solution though). Why can't I have the option to either include them in the Music Section or have them as a separate list in the Library section?
Front Row (beta) 1
Two big issues: TV shows aren't sorted alphabetically (and I've tried about everything I can think of to get them to sort properly. I can't figure out what it's using for its sort). TV Shows tagged with an Artist name (like all TV shows from iTunes) show up in the Music group. The same is probably true about the Album tag as well, but I can't confirm that off-hand. And of course there's the Music Video issue where it won't play the video portion if it hits them in Music mode (I'd like an option to tell it show the video regardless or not to show up in the Music section).
iDVD
Well beyond it's almost complete lack of options, my big gripe is that the sliders for selecting button size has no labels to indicate any sort of size so making two buttons the same size is difficult. The only option is to either copy the button once you've got it the perfect size or copy its style to another button and then modify it to your liking. How about just putting a size number of some sort on the slider? And maybe tell when I put a video that it can't do anything with (like muxed mpeg or iTunes videos), tell me that it won't work or just don't let me do it? I'm sure I could find more issues but I didn't spend much time playing with this.
Mail (Mail.app)
The (not so) Smart Folders should be nice, but why doesn't the new message count autoupdate? I created one, and the new messages count was at 30 until yesterday when I finally clicked on it and it was updated to 130. Heck, I'd at least expect it to update each time the program was opened if nothing else.
Airport Express with Airtunes
When I connected it to my A/V receiver, it caused a buzzing sound to be emitted by the speakers when it stopped streaming audio (it might be there when it's playing but the music masks it). I searched the forums on Apple's site and found a rather poor solution. I had to disconnect all of the other analog connections (apparently optical digital connections are fine) to get rid of the buzz. Maybe I'd be okay if I connected the Aiport via optical but I shouldn't have to.
Please, if you have solutions to these issues, I would love to hear them.

[griffman]

Why aren't the icons that represent the shortcuts on the menus on the keyboard? To make it worse, the one key is referred to by at least 2 different names in documentation and online (can't remember which one).
I believe you can buy third party keyboards that have the symbols. Why doesn't Apple include them? Who knows, but they never have, going back as long as I can recall on the platform. And there are actually two keys with two names: the Alt/Option key, and the Apple/Command key. Newcomers tend to call the latter the Apple key, while most long time Mac users call it the Command key.
get the spinning beachball of death very frequently if I try to do anything while it's ripping a CD. And in general, the iMac seems to have issues reading any CD with minor scratches.
On all of my Macs, iTunes has been amongst the most stable of apps on the platform. How much RAM do you have, and how many apps are you typically running at once?
iDVD
iDVD is a pure consumer-level app. The obvious objective, from looking at the interface, was to take something that's quite complex (mastering a DVD) and turn it into something that anyone can do. As such, they clearly made design decisions, picking simplicity over thoroughness. iMovie shows the same design decisions, FYI. If you want more control, the next step is really to go up to the pro-level Studio, which includes DVD Studio Pro.

Mail (Mail.app)
The (not so) Smart Folders should be nice, but why doesn't the new message count autoupdate? I created one, and the new messages count was at 30 until yesterday when I finally clicked on it and it was updated to 130. Heck, I'd at least expect it to update each time the program was opened if nothing else.
Which count isn't updating?
-rob.

[George76]

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get the spinning beachball of death very frequently if I try to do anything while it's ripping a CD. And in general, the iMac seems to have issues reading any CD with minor scratches.
On all of my Macs, iTunes has been amongst the most stable of apps on the platform. How much RAM do you have, and how many apps are you typically running at once?
iDVD
iDVD is a pure consumer-level app. The obvious objective, from looking at the interface, was to take something that's quite complex (mastering a DVD) and turn it into something that anyone can do. As such, they clearly made design decisions, picking simplicity over thoroughness. iMovie shows the same design decisions, FYI. If you want more control, the next step is really to go up to the pro-level Studio, which includes DVD Studio Pro.

Mail (Mail.app)
The (not so) Smart Folders should be nice, but why doesn't the new message count autoupdate? I created one, and the new messages count was at 30 until yesterday when I finally clicked on it and it was updated to 130. Heck, I'd at least expect it to update each time the program was opened if nothing else.
Which count isn't updating?
-rob.

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I have 1GB RAM and at the moment would hardly consider myself a power user so I don't really have much open when iTunes is ripping CD's. Mail, iCal, iTunes (obviously), and Safari is about all I have open in general.
Do you have any suggestions on the podcast autodelete thing? It drives me crazy to have keep going in delete them manually.
Jumping from what was free (iDVD) to an $1100 piece of software (Final Cut Studio Pro) is a bit extreme. iDVD looks like one of the most slapped together products in the iLife group. It doesn't seem to have any Inspectors or really any options open to the user. It really seems underpowered compared to other apps in the suite.
And it's (I guess) the new message count that's shown on top of the Smart Folder icon in the Mail folder column that doesn't update until it's selected. Sort of seems to make it a bit useless to me for it not to check incoming messages automatically and file them in the appropriate Smart Folder. Not sure if it matters to how Mail handles it, but I'm using a GMail account with Mail.
Lastly, I'd like to add two things to my rant:
Safari forgot all of my settings a while back. Not sure what would cause that. Could an update from Apple do that?
Finally, sometimes my iPod fails to get recognized (in any manner) by my iMac. Like this morning, when I plugged it in to let it charge, the iMac didn't mount it as a hard drive and iTunes never displayed it in its Source list. The iPod did put up the "Do Not Disconnect" warning though. I ignored the warning and disconnected, was forced to restart the iPod. Afterwards neither the iMac or the iPod recognized the connection. I finally restarted the iMac (twice actually because the first time it stopped on a black screen after showing the circle spoke progress indicator for a while) and it was fine again.

[griffman]

I have 1GB RAM and at the moment would hardly consider myself a power user so I don't really have much open when iTunes is ripping CD's. Mail, iCal, iTunes (obviously), and Safari is about all I have open in general.
Take a look at Activity Monitor (in Applications -> Utilities). Click the System Memory tab at the bottom. Do you have a lot of page outs -- ie something to the right of the "/" on the Page ins/outs line? If so, that means you're running out of real RAM and it's writing/reading memory to disk. That would explain the beachballs, at least in some instances.
Do you have any suggestions on the podcast autodelete thing? It drives me crazy to have keep going in delete them manually.
I'm not a podcast user, so I've barely looked at that section of iTunes, sorry...
Jumping from what was free (iDVD) to an $1100 piece of software (Final Cut Studio Pro) is a bit extreme. iDVD looks like one of the most slapped together products in the iLife group. It doesn't seem to have any Inspectors or really any options open to the user. It really seems underpowered compared to other apps in the suite.
I agree it's quite a jump, and hopefully Apple will do something about it in the next release. iDVD, though, has been quite successful, basically because it does make DVD authoring so simple, and the themes they provide are quite professional.
And it's (I guess) the new message count that's shown on top of the Smart Folder icon in the Mail folder column that doesn't update until it's selected.
Hmm, I have only one Smart Folder, but its count updates whenever I get new messages that qualify for inclusion in that folder.
Safari forgot all of my settings a while back. Not sure what would cause that. Could an update from Apple do that?
Generally no. Apple updates (any update, in fact) shouldn't touch items in your user's folder. Sounds like the preferences file was corrupted. Always create a backup of your user's Library -> Preferences folder, for just such occasions. (Back up everything, obviously, but make sure you include the Preferences folder.)
restart the iPod. Afterwards neither the iMac or the iPod recognized the connection. I finally restarted the iMac (twice actually because the first time it stopped on a black screen after showing the circle spoke progress indicator for a while) and it was fine again.
I've not seen that personally, but I know others have had iPod connectivity issues at times. Not sure there's a universal explanation and/or fix.
-rob.

[d00d]

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Also, does autodelete of podcasts actually work? It's never deleted a single podcast automatically for me even though it is set up to do so in the preferences. Likewise, it doesn't actually seem to update podcasts without me hitting refresh.

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The autodelete does work. I use it daily. I'm going to assume that you've set the preferences to "Keep All unplayed episodes" or another option that's supposed to autodelete. If the option I mentioned, you need to play the file all the way through. If you stop it even a second from the end, iTunes considers it unfinished and will not autodelete it. As for updating, have you set the preferences to check periodically and not Manually?

[George76]

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The autodelete does work. I use it daily. I'm going to assume that you've set the preferences to "Keep All unplayed episodes" or another option that's supposed to autodelete. If the option I mentioned, you need to play the file all the way through. If you stop it even a second from the end, iTunes considers it unfinished and will not autodelete it. As for updating, have you set the preferences to check periodically and not Manually?

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Does it matter whether it was played on my iPod vs. the iMac? I almost never listen to the file on my iMac but on my iPod I do let it play to the very end because I had read about the issue of having to have the entire file play through.
As for the auto-update, it may be just impatience on my part. I end up hitting refresh whenever I get around to connecting my iPod. And that time varies greatly from day to day. I have noted that it shows a time when it is next supposed on the preferences.

[d00d]

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Does it matter whether it was played on my iPod vs. the iMac? I almost never listen to the file on my iMac but on my iPod I do let it play to the very end because I had read about the issue of having to have the entire file play through.

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It doesn't, but also keep in mind that it doesn't do the auto-delete housekeeping until a refresh happens.

[MikeWL]

Once you listen to the podcast, it should lose its little blue dot next to it in the podcast listing (at the next sync if listened to on the ipod, of course). I think it doesn't actually get deleted until the next refresh, which you can set the frequency of in your preferences. Make sure that setting is for every 1 hr or so and see if it takes care of things.
hope that helps.

[Curtis_McHale]

I know that my podcasts do autorefresh I just usually do it myself before I connect my iPod to make sure that I have all of the latest content. I have watched them auto-refresh once or twice though.

[madball]

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Finally, sometimes my iPod fails to get recognized (in any manner) by my iMac. Like this morning, when I plugged it in to let it charge, the iMac didn't mount it as a hard drive and iTunes never displayed it in its Source list. The iPod did put up the "Do Not Disconnect" warning though.

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I've had this happen to me when my iPod battery was completely empty. It does nothing but say do not connect for quite a while and then suddenly iTunes starts and everything is back to normal. Not sure if your iPod battery was flat, but this might be what was happening to you.

[MacCheetah3]

Hi
I never noticed if that was the reason but I've had my 80GB do that a few times now. I can tell because the Do Not Disconnect prohibit symbol isn't blinking but rather steady. I just reset my iPod and everything is fine.