Sort this!

Even though we made some significant changes, today's new Early Access release 4 is probably not very exciting from a user's point of view. A biggie for us is the complete removal of any QuickTime for Java (QTJ) dependencies. QTJ lets Java programmers easily access one of the most powerful multimedia libraries out there. Unfortunately, as part of the 64bit-Carbon-abandonment, Apple decided to drop all QTJ support in the 64bit-only Java 6 VM and as a result, we'll have to slowly migrate away from it. As of now, beaTunes 2 is still dependent on (native, Carbon-based) QuickTime and will only run in a 32bit JVM. But at least we got rid of the QTJ code as a first step.

In the Windows world, this move away from QTJ will have positive side-effects. For quite a while now, the iTunes updater tended to mess up the QTJ installation. Many users weren't even able to install beaTunes properly without technical support. With QTJ out of the way, we're looking forward to many happy Windows users and fewer support cases.

But enough with the technical whining - there are other neat little improvements contained in this release. First of all, beaTunes now finally supports iTunes-style sorting utilizing sort name, sort artist, etc. We added a corresponding info dialog pane and, probably best of all, some new inspections designed to deal with wrong or butchered sort names.

As you might know, iTunes determines sort names mostly automatically. If, for example, a song title starts with the word "an", it is assumed to be an indefinite English article and therefore dropped from the sort name. Unfortunately, languages like German also have a word "an", which happens to be a preposition, not an indefinite article and should not be dropped from the sort name. beaTunes now has the ability to detect such errors taking advantage of its language field. So for best results, run the language analysis before inspecting sort names.

We also got to improve the typo inspector - it should now do a better job with short names. Another goodie: Searchboxes now have a little popup menu that let's you specify the search mode. E.g., you can now limit a search to the artist field.

So - here's the obligatory warning: Before downloading and installing this, please make sure you understand what Early Access means:

• Absolutely no warranty for whatever
• Features may or may not work, appear, and disappear
• It may not be possible to migrate data to future versions (even though we make a reasonable effort)
• This version will cease to function 2 weeks after its release
• You cannot buy this version

Just so that there is no doubt about it: EA4 isn't even a beta version.

And here are the download links:

• beaTunes-2-0-0-EA4 (OS X)
• beaTunes-2-0-0-EA4 (Windows)

Note for EA3 users

EA4 changes the database schema first introduced in EA2. During the update, beaTunes will display a dialog box. Please be patient. The update may take a while.

UnsatisfiedLinkError: beaTunes, Leopard and Java 6

A little while ago, Apple finally released Java 6 for Leopard. Unfortunately, the 64bit Java 6 does not support QuickTime for Java anymore. Why? QuickTime for Java depends on Carbon, for which Apple is dropping support in 64bit environments.

What does this mean for beaTunes? In the long term we will move away from the QuickTime for Java API on OS X. We already utilize CoreAudio in parts of the application, which will not be affected by Apple's discontinued support for Carbon based APIs. We will replace the remaining code that is still using QuickTime.

Are users affected by this right now? Yes, unfortunately they are. As beaTunes works quite nicely with Java 6 on Windows, the current OS X version of beaTunes (1.2.9) will also start with Java 6, if it is installed. And this will fail due to the reasons mentioned above with an UnsatisfiedLinkError. To fix this, one needs to edit the file Contents/Info.plist in the beaTunes application bundle and replace the existing JVMVersion string with the value 1.5* (instead of 1.5+)

We will release an update next week, which contains this fix.

OS X 10.4.11 solves iTunes Plus-CoreAudio problems

It looks like the recent OS X 10.4.11 update solved a couple of issues with opening iTunes Plus files with CoreAudio. Previously, CoreAudio APIs were often not able to even open an iTunes Plus file even though no DRM was employed. For beaTunes users this was pretty annoying, since they had to fall back to a not as fast QuickTime implementation of the same code, that had to be manually enabled.

beaTunes 1.2.5 released

We just released beaTunes 1.2.5. This release fixes a couple of Leopard UI issues. Furthermore the delayed commit progress dialog now refreshes correctly, the recently-added-songs logic was improved and unnecessary fallbacks to QuickTime are now avoided. Mac users should definitely update.

Enjoy!

Problems with iTunes 7.3.1 and QuickTime 7.2

A couple of days ago Apple released iTunes 7.3.1 and QuickTime 7.2.

beaTunes works fine with both new versions, if they are installed correctly. Unfortunately it looks like the iTunes/QuickTime update procedure doesn't always work the way it should. Long story short - some of you might have encountered the following error when starting beaTunes:

A fatal error occurred during initialization: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError:quicktime/internal/jdirect/Linker

If you are on OS X, you will need to re-install QuickTime. Just download it from Apple. Install it. Things should be fine.

If you run Windows, re-install beaTunes, try whether it works, if not, re-install QuickTimes and re-install beaTunes again.

If you are still encountering issues, please email our support.

iTunes 7.1 is out

On 3/5/07 Apple released version 7.1 of iTunes. The probably coolest new feature is the full screen Cover Flow. Apple definitely took a step in the right direction. You've got to check it out!

The iTunes update also includes an update of QuickTime to version 7.1.5. If you are using beaTunes on Windows, you might need to re-install beaTunes, should you run into any problems. Mac users should not have any problems.