WebOS Itunes Remote - new user, bugs, impressions

[tim447]

Rob -

glad to see that you're on WebOS now!  Long time user and lover of many of your apps on several generations of Treo.  I just found your iTunes Remote app in the app store, and knowing your track record made it my first purchase.  Some thoughts from my first use:

My setup: 1.6GHz PPC G5, OS 10.5.8, Palm Pre w/latest software, Remote 0.1.3, iTunes 9.0.1 w/12.5k songs (massive library, lots of playlists).  Also running Airfoil to send to remote speakers, although I don't imagine that makes a difference to your app.  While doing testing, I was in a playlist with 75 songs.

* I like the fact that its actually using the iTunes pairing method (ie officially supported, not via a web server hack).

* The pairing method itself seems a bit odd - the first time I tried, the helper app showed me a three-number password (731).  Inputting that one the Pre worked fine, but iTunes wants four digits.  I tried 7311, and it accepted that.  The second time I had to pair, it showed a four-digit passcode.
* Clicking the playlists button does nothing for me - nothing happens at all.  This is even after starting a smallish (75 songs) playlist on my mac.
* The iTunesRemoteHelper just crashed on me randomly...  I have a crashlog if you'd like it.  This was a minute or two after pressing the playlist button - maybe that caused a problem?
* Despite the fact that Remote is running on the Pre and connected, under Devices in iTunes iTunesHelper is shown... but clicking on it still has the "Add Remote" screen with the passcode prompt.  Is this normal?
* Hmm - another segfault - after tapping the shuffle button (it was on when I started the app - tapped it once to turn it off, that worked, tapping it again to reenable shuffle had no response, but I soon stopped seeing the current song position change, and then got the segfault msg on the mac and restarted iTRH.)  Again, I have the crashlog.
* Along those lines, after re-enabling shuffle via the mac, Remote on the Pre doesn't reflect the change, even after restarting the app.  Tried restarting iTRH to see if that would catch the shuffle status, and that didn't work either.
* The Repeat icon in Remote has some odd behavior too - changes made on the mac aren't reflected in the icon on the Pre.  However, when the icon on the Pre is lit, it does loop a single song, but the change doesn't show in iTunes.  Am I right in guessing that you're handling the playlist shuffle/repeat on the Pre, versus toggling it in iTunes?  Or is there something else going on?
* Hmm - just tried clicking the Playlist icon again, and this time it came up immediately.  Clicked into a playlist with 77 songs, and the list came up quickly.  Loading the thumbnails took longer (and I noticed that it seems to request covers one at a time, even if there are multiple songs from the same album in the list?).  There are also a few songs with 19-digit numbers instead of names?  There doesn't seem to be anything they have in common - one is an aac, one an mp3.  One called "Cry Baby", one called "Multiply".  There are 5 songs in that list with the problem.  Clicking on a song works - itunes switches to it as you'd expect.

Some ideas:
* Any chance of the app being able to pause or turn down the volume on the music automatically when a call comes in, then unpause or restore volume when it hangs up?  Maybe a preference to enable?  I would *love* this, since I'm using the Pre to control my music server in another room.  (At least with the Pre's multitasking I can switch to Remote, pause, and switch back to phone to answer, but that's a time-consuming pain when the phone's ringing.)
* When iTunes doesn't have cover art, the Pre shows just a small white-bordered empty box.  It might be nice to see the ? album cover like iTunes shows or something similar - the small box looks a bit silly.
* The IMDB button doesn't make too much sense to me, at least not while playing music.  Why not Amazon's music store, a internet music database (cddb?), lyrics, or something similar?
* When dragging the song position slider, it temporarily jumps back to its original spot, then jumps back to where you moved it.  I assume that's because you're sending the new position info first, then just letting the actual position update as it normally would, but its seems odd from the user's perspective.  Less a bug, more of an idea.

I've always been impressed by your support and updates in the past, so while this is still buggy I know it will improve over time.  And in the meantime, its working (with a little bit of love).  Thanks - good luck with the development, and let me know if you'd like any further info/crashlogs/etc.

-Tim

[tim447]

* Just had another segfault, this time I was in the "Help" scene, and somewhere between the Pre turning itself off and my turning it back on, iTRH died...  After starting iTRH again, Remote didn't pair automatically with it.  Restarted Remote - no luck.  Setup Pairing on the mac, Auto, enter the passcode on the Pre, now we're working again.  For what its worth, I went back into iTunes and entered this passcode, and the "Devices" entry in iTunes went away.
* Shortly afterwards, iTRH crashed again - had to redo the pairing again in both iTunes and on the Pre...  not sure if that was related somehow, but its working fine again for now.

[ConfusedVorlon]

wow - lots here.

First thing to say. There is a lot wrong with the first version. Particularly huge memory usage. Unfortunately I didn't have a device when I developed it (not available in the uk) so I missed a lot of problems.

I have a much improved new version which is just awaiting palm's approval.
You can see a review here

http://forums.precentral.net/webos-app-reviews/210982-itunes-remote-review-hobbyist-software.html


so - comments below.

* I like the fact that its actually using the iTunes pairing method (ie officially supported, not via a web server hack).

>well - not officially supported by apple unfortunatly. But it is using the same interface as their remote.

* The pairing method itself seems a bit odd - the first time I tried, the helper app showed me a three-number password (731).  Inputting that one the Pre worked fine, but iTunes wants four digits.  I tried 7311, and it accepted that.  The second time I had to pair, it showed a four-digit passcode.

>two things here.
1) pair the helper with iTunes (use any 4 digit code)
2) pair the pre with the helper. Helper generates a number between 0 and 9999 . Your 731 was that number.


* Clicking the playlists button does nothing for me - nothing happens at all.  This is even after starting a smallish (75 songs) playlist on my mac.
* The iTunesRemoteHelper just crashed on me randomly...  I have a crashlog if you'd like it.  This was a minute or two after pressing the playlist button - maybe that caused a problem?

hold for the next version and let me know if that doesn't work properly! (I'll say this a lot!)

* Despite the fact that Remote is running on the Pre and connected, under Devices in iTunes iTunesHelper is shown... but clicking on it still has the "Add Remote" screen with the passcode prompt.  Is this normal?

yes - the helper is permanently 'available for pairing'. just ignore it,

* Hmm - another segfault - after tapping the shuffle button (it was on when I started the app - tapped it once to turn it off, that worked, tapping it again to reenable shuffle had no response, but I soon stopped seeing the current song position change, and then got the segfault msg on the mac and restarted iTRH.)  Again, I have the crashlog.
* Along those lines, after re-enabling shuffle via the mac, Remote on the Pre doesn't reflect the change, even after restarting the app.  Tried restarting iTRH to see if that would catch the shuffle status, and that didn't work either.

hold for the next version and let me know if that doesn't work properly!

* The Repeat icon in Remote has some odd behavior too - changes made on the mac aren't reflected in the icon on the Pre.  However, when the icon on the Pre is lit, it does loop a single song, but the change doesn't show in iTunes.  Am I right in guessing that you're handling the playlist shuffle/repeat on the Pre, versus toggling it in iTunes?  Or is there something else going on?

I have noticed that. Seems the later versions of iTunes just don't show the update...

* Hmm - just tried clicking the Playlist icon again, and this time it came up immediately.  Clicked into a playlist with 77 songs, and the list came up quickly.  Loading the thumbnails took longer (and I noticed that it seems to request covers one at a time, even if there are multiple songs from the same album in the list?).  There are also a few songs with 19-digit numbers instead of names?  There doesn't seem to be anything they have in common - one is an aac, one an mp3.  One called "Cry Baby", one called "Multiply".  There are 5 songs in that list with the problem.  Clicking on a song works - itunes switches to it as you'd expect.

not sure what those numbers mean - but they really are in the playlists. My gues is that they are podcasts or something like that.

re albums - I have to say something like 'get me the album for song id 12345' - so I don't know if several songs have the same cover

[ConfusedVorlon]

part II


Some ideas:
* Any chance of the app being able to pause or turn down the volume on the music automatically when a call comes in, then unpause or restore volume when it hangs up?  Maybe a preference to enable?  I would *love* this, since I'm using the Pre to control my music server in another room.  (At least with the Pre's multitasking I can switch to Remote, pause, and switch back to phone to answer, but that's a time-consuming pain when the phone's ringing.)

yup - nice idea.

* When iTunes doesn't have cover art, the Pre shows just a small white-bordered empty box.  It might be nice to see the ? album cover like iTunes shows or something similar - the small box looks a bit silly.

yup - I need to figure out how to do that.

* The IMDB button doesn't make too much sense to me, at least not while playing music.  Why not Amazon's music store, a internet music database (cddb?), lyrics, or something similar?

good point. I did it for movie, but that's not a big usage for iTunes.


* When dragging the song position slider, it temporarily jumps back to its original spot, then jumps back to where you moved it.  I assume that's because you're sending the new position info first, then just letting the actual position update as it normally would, but its seems odd from the user's perspective.  Less a bug, more of an idea.

odd - I thought I handled that. Will check.

I've always been impressed by your support and updates in the past, so while this is still buggy I know it will improve over time.  And in the meantime, its working (with a little bit of love).  Thanks - good luck with the development, and let me know if you'd like any further info/crashlogs/etc.

yup - the next version should be much better-  and it will get better from there!

thanks for the detailed comments.

[tim447]

Another nice-to-have: the ability to see and modify the star-rating of the current song.  I have a playlist for "unrated" song that I like to have running in the background to help me get my library rated over time.  It'd be nice to be able to set the ratings from wherever I happen to be listening from...

And thanks for the quick responses!  Let me know if there's anything I can do to help/test things out.