Sort Coverflow by Album not Artist

a)I agree Coverflow isn't "Required" to enjoy the music but then what is??More importantly,Apple is marketting this feature as a selling point.So it would be great if it works as most people would expect it to.

b) Also i could make adjustments to the song name to include artists...on ALL the 8193 tracks i have, but nor do i have the time, or the interest in doing that.And why should i have to include Artist name under Song name?? just to make a feature work??...which as pointed out, isn't essential anyways?
Why not just get it right to start with and give people something what they will enjoy and can REALLY use?

There is no point seducing existing customers into getting new products with newer features (essential or non-essential), and have them not work as efficiently as could be expected.
My complain isn't about making a fuss about a non-essential feature, its about the principle involved!

.k.

Apple I will not buy an iPod until the classic CoverFlow view has the option to sort by Album.

Well then, I would agree in your particular case it seems the work around would be a real hassle. I have a modest number of compilations, so for me it's not really a problem. I would venture to say that's the case for most folks. I do have over 1,000 cd's in my collection and it's sure nice to have them all available in my pocket.

I think it's more reasonable to say it's poor judgement on the part of apple to design coverflow as they have than to say it's worthless. Although maybe in your case, with so many one off artists, it is worthless 🙂

The point is, any "assumption" potential buyers made regarding the sorting scheme was simply that, an aasumption. I don't recall reading anything specific. I agree it would make sense that the ipod coveflow should mimic itunes coverlfow, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I just don't see the big deal that many others are making over this. It's still an amazing little device that's meant to provide enjoyment. So load up your tunes and start diggin' em.

jt

JT,

there's a much easier way to do this without changing the artist... highlight all of the tracks in iTunes, right click properties and go to Get Info. At the bottom, there's a dropdown labeled "Compilation". Change this to Yes and click OK. Once it saves the ID3 tags for all the tracks, you should end up with just 1 album cover in Cover Flow. In iTunes, this album will appear, for example, with "Various Artists" as the artist.

However, there is a bug in the iPod version of Cover Flow that uses the artist name of the first track as the album artist. Hopefully they'll fix that soon.

Rob

apple made a REALLY big deal about cover flow for iPods at launch. i think it's bad business to make such a big deal out of a feature you don't even plan to release in a fully working state. and make no mistake, the way cover flow works right now is BROKEN, and that's not debatable. Why? Because it's not acceptable to go through every compilation and change the individual artist to some common name, not when that was not unnecessary in previous iPod generations (though without coverflow) and not when my iTunes library can display these albums properly in cover flow on the desktop. Why shouldn't i expect the same kind of behavior? For my hard earned cash and an Apple product "That Just Works" why should i be expected to go through all my multi artist compilations to get them to display right in apple's big deal feature? Why do i have to corrupt the value of my meta data? if that's not broken i don't know what is.

Broken means it doesn't work. Coverflow works, just not the way you want it to.

Everyone should just stop their cryin' and move on man.

IMO, If you bought your ipod strictly for the coverflow feature you made a lame choice. I upgraded from a 3rd gen. because I couldn't fit all of my collection on a 20 gig. unit. I could have bought an older version or a close out, but I chose to go with the latest and greatest. My first thought on seeing coverflow was "gee, that's pretty cool". My second thought was, "does it really work that well?" and "how long before that thing breaks down?". But ya know, I bought one anyway, because at the end of the day I've had good luck with my first ipod (2-1/2 years now and going strong) and I had a reasonable expectation the new one would perform the same. So far so good, for me at least.

You guys act like the darn thing is crippled because you can't sort your album covers and artists like you want. If you let that get in the way of your enjoyment of your music on a portable player, well than so be it. I'll keep rockin' on.

jt

If you look upthread you'll see MustardParty used the term "broken". Also, there are numerous other threads on this board where people are endlessy ******** about coverflow issues. Not to mention the thread where a bunch of people were kind enough to start numbering the supposed "defects" of the new ipods. At last check they were up to 25 or 30 "issues". It's probably higher by now. The way I read the list, many of the "issues" are plain bogus, or certainly minor enough not to merit complaining on a message board.

At any rate, my contention is if your ipod is truly defective, return it and get it repaired or replaced. If you are merely unhappy with the way it works, oh well. Return it or sell it and move on if it's that important to you.

I've been coming to this board for a few years now as I've entertained the idea of buying a mac after years of using a pc. After I bought my first ipod I started getting some good tips and general information from the board. It's kinda cool to read about an issue and get a solution that works. It's kinda of a drag to read b.s. that doesn't go anywhere. Like this thread 🙂

jt

Rob,

Yes, I'm aware of what you describe. The issue of course is coverflow displays compilations as individual album covers for each seperate artist listed. So my Rhino 70's box set showed up as 150+ album covers. The wrk around I described merely consolidated them all under one cover.

jt

well, let's hope that this thread does lead somewhere -- is there an official Apple bug report form on their website? I would hope that the folks at Apple pay attention to threads like this and will provide a fix for the ipod software soon for some of these issues...

i agree with you that this issue does not constitute a "broken" ipod, but it IS a pretty major software bug that needs to be fixed soon, IMHO... it should be a fairly easy fix since Cover Flow in iTunes already works properly... they just need to share code between departments 😉

Rob

gotcha... yeah, I decided not to go to the extreme that you did, as I spend a lot of time making sure my ID3 tags are correct and I would be heartbroken if I thought I would have to overwrite the artist tag for a bunch of tracks just to make Cover Flow work properly. I'm hoping instead that Apple will provide a software update soon to fix this fairly obvious bug. Everything looks good in iTunes -- I want it to look the same way on my iPod 😉

Rob

Ease off there sparky.

If you took the time to read up thread, I jumped in here to try and help out with my work around to a minor issue (IMHO of course). I have no horse in this race. I'm merely trying to balance out all of the b.s. that's flying around here regarding the new ipods.

You made the following statement: "coverflow is worthless as it stands". You didn't say "in my opinion" it's worthless.

So to clarify, it's not broken, it's just worthless. Got it.

I don't think it's worthless. It works for me. It's all good.

If your intention is to bash this poster, then move on please. What are you, the den mother here?

john

p.s. what the **** do you need so many ipods for?