Greetings readers! This is my first post in the MAC forum since I only became a MAC user about 5pm today! Just bought an iMac and would like to know how to get iTunes to pick up the music from my external hard drive please? The songs are all in the My Music folder on the disk but it won't import them in and I don't know why. Also, looking at the competition thread from yesterday I notice that Alex wrote in a post that you can refresh the screen by pressing the Apple key and R. However, I don't have an apple key! It is a wireless keyboard and mouse, does it not have one? I must say the keyboard is useless. I have to type really slowly on it and the uppercase key doesn't work very well. Is this a common problem or am I just unlucky?

Thanks, Simon. 

I am going to ask a silly question! How did the songs get there? What you can do is drag and drop. Open a Finder window and grab the Music Library file and drag it to the My Library bit on iTunes. Should load up then. Never heard of problems with wireless keyboards - I however always use a wired one.

Is this an Apple wireless keyboard? If so, it should have the same layout as an attached one. The Apple orcommand key is the one with the "tourist site" squiggle on it, next to the space bar.

You should be able to type hyperfast on it (if you can type hyperfast!) :-)

You can either drag your library, or import the files through the File Menu ...
 

WMA files don't work in iTunes - WMA is Microsoft's format and I can't see them licensing it to Macs for quite a while. If you have a Windows machine available, you can drag the WMA files into iTunes and it will convert them (one thing you can't easily do under OS X).

Apple, rather strangely, decided to remove the Apple icon from the new wireless keyboards, but it's the key next to the space bar with a little kinda 'flower' on it (kinda like a square with four little circles at the corners).

What do you mean by the uppercase doesn't really work? I was really impressed with the new keyboards when I used one.

What else do you have going through bluetooth on your iMac? Do you have any bluetooth audio headsets going etc...? These might make it 'lag'. The other thing to check is that there batteries in the keyboard have plenty of charge (not sure if it comes with them or not) and that the keyboard isn't too far away from the computer (although I've successfully used one over the range of a few metres). Other than that, I can't think of anything else.

You'll get used to it, believe me. You'll realise why all the Mac users go on about it all the time after you've got used to OS X. You'll use a Windows machine and be like 'urggg, how did I ever live with this?' (or at least, that's what I found). I personally didn't touch my Dell for a month or two, and never used a Windows machine, and afterwards, realised just how good OS X is.

One other thing I forgot to say...

PC users often set it up so they have complete control over where all their files go. For example, ignoring iPhoto and just sitting the files in folders, and turning off iTunes' ability to manage your music folder and copy settings.

Let the computer do that for you. Macs are very, very, very good at managing files, believe me. I used to manually manage my iTunes library, and it didn't give me anything other than missing songs and more hassle. If you let iTunes manage your music folder for you, and make use of iPhoto, you'll find things really work much more smoothly.

In iTunes, go into iTunes (menu bar item) > Preferences > Advanced > General (usually highlighted already) and make sure 'Keep iTunes music folder organized' and 'Copy files to iTunes Music Folder when adding to library'. It's really miles better than managing them yourself.

Alex:

WMA files don't work in iTunes - WMA is Microsoft's format and I can't see them licensing it to Macs for quite a while. If you have a Windows machine available, you can drag the WMA files into iTunes and it will convert them (one thing you can't easily do under OS X).

Apple, rather strangely, decided to remove the Apple icon from the new wireless keyboards, but it's the key next to the space bar with a little kinda 'flower' on it (kinda like a square with four little circles at the corners).

What do you mean by the uppercase doesn't really work? I was really impressed with the new keyboards when I used one.

What else do you have going through bluetooth on your iMac? Do you have any bluetooth audio headsets going etc...? These might make it 'lag'. The other thing to check is that there batteries in the keyboard have plenty of charge (not sure if it comes with them or not) and that the keyboard isn't too far away from the computer (although I've successfully used one over the range of a few metres). Other than that, I can't think of anything else.

You'll get used to it, believe me. You'll realise why all the Mac users go on about it all the time after you've got used to OS X. You'll use a Windows machine and be like 'urggg, how did I ever live with this?' (or at least, that's what I found). I personally didn't touch my Dell for a month or two, and never used a Windows machine, and afterwards, realised just how good OS X is.

Hi Alex and many thanks for your comments which have been a great help. I can see the key you mean next to the space bar. In fact there is one either side of it, both have cmd written on them too. My files were all WMA and as you say it worked OK with iTunes on my PC which is why I assumed it was a different problem. OK, I will use my PC to convert them to AAC then get iTunes to pick them up that way. Its interesting Alex don't you think that Microsoft and Apple play these silly childish games with each other in the business world, the very same points we are discussing in the other thread but on a larger and more costly scale. I really do find it ridiculous as its always the consumer who misses out. I have no doubt that you are right about me realising how good the MAC OS over a period of time but I would never be a 'convert' or play party to such thinking. I like MACs and PCs equally, both are powerful and continue to push the boundaries of computing which is the part I am more interested in. Anyway, thanks for your comments in both posts, you make valid points are argue them very well, I like that.

Simon. 

are you insinuating that microsoft have made a propietary product that only works on their os ?

 

next you'll be saying they're anti competition and are being sued by the US gov for acting like the mafia.. 

 

i thought only that beastly evil apple were capable of such a loathsome trick !! 

 

funny how people review the ipod / iphone ( that usleless show the gadget show was the last culprit ) and claim only apple itunes music works on the ipod etc

??

so all those dozens of cds i ripped from my collection that happily play in itunes and on my 3 ipods must be scotch mist ..

Flappo, that is not helping at all.

It was actually me who said that these things happen.

I completely agree Simon, Apple and Microsoft both behave childishly when it comes to not supporting each other's formats etc. An example of Apple doing it would be in Leopard, when you browse round networks, Windows computers appear as a CRT displaying a blue screen of death (a typical windows trait). It's mildly amusing, but not funny enough to have left in the final release version and just push Windows and OS X users further apart. Disappointed in Apple there.

However, I do think Microsoft are worse. Apple at least supports most of Microsoft's formats, and keeps the Windows versions of their software up-to-date with the Mac version. Microsoft seem to keep MOST of their software a few versions behind for Macs (such as MSN, currently on version 5 for Mac, and 9 for PC, at least 6 year's worth of features missing from the Mac version).

What confuses me with Microsoft, is that they seem mostly interested in making sure that every part of what you see or use on your computer is in their own proprietry format. People complain Apple do this, but they very rarely do - Microsoft do it far more.

I've found that I can open any kind of 'proprietary' Windows/Linux file on my Mac, but I cannot open a lot of Mac/Linux files on Windows. Just about the biggest issue I've come across in terms of lack of software on OS X is for Microsoft Publisher (Microsoft make no Mac version). Thankfully the Windows version runs in OS X under Cross Over Mac (check it out) non-emulated which is pretty handy.

Now I know you could probably find an example of me saying 'PCs are rubbish', but they really aren't. There are some very very good PCs out there. IBM make some absolutely bulletproof machines, and Windows is a good OS. However, with time you'll come to realise that MacOS is really quite a huge step ahead of Windows in terms of it's usability and power. It's difficult to appreciate at first...

and they can't even make half decent hardware , don't get me started on the 360 and it's infamous red ring of death

apple may have made the pippin* ( pre steve ) but i bet they're still working !! 

 

*arguably the worst product apple ever made along with the IIvx and the 'portable/luggable' 

Their mice aren't half bad actually, I tend to think they're quite good. Agree about the xbox though. A friend of mine has been through five of them.

They have something like a 38% failure rate, absolutely insane...

Alex:

Their mice aren't half bad actually, 

The Apple Mighty Mouse is the pits. I have 3 with scroll balls no longer working. Read the reviews on the Apple site.

and bluetooth on the mac pro is seriously messed up

http://www.mcelhearn.com/article.php?story=20060926112812529 

see ? even the wonderful apple mess stuff up sometimes !! :) 

Britpop:

Alex:

Their mice aren't half bad actually, 

The Apple Mighty Mouse is the pits. I have 3 with scroll balls no longer working. Read the reviews on the Apple site.

Have you tried to press down the scroll ball quite hard, while rotating it? I think the design invites for grime, etc. to get trapped in the recess the ball is resting in. My scroll ball mouse started scrolling intermittently. Pressed hard, rotated the ball, and now it's as new. 

That method only worked once. I took the whole thing apart to clean once, never again. You wouldn't go down that route twice.