iTunes opens when I press the play buttom on my MBP.

ARGH!!!! This is so annoying - fix it apple! Why would apple write such an annoying feature that can't be disabled into snow leopard? Whenever im using spotify instead of itunes and want to pause it because i have a phone call or video chat, itunes pops up and gets in the way. this is really starting to annoy me now

I'm also suffering from this issue, didn't happen in Leopard, and it's beginning to **** me off :/

Can't see how it's not a fault with 10.6, and have also looked through iTunes and System prefs for a shortcut to disable to no avail.

A very simple way I got round this problem was just *__leaving all my itunes music unselected__*.

And when I do come to using itunes (once a week) i just select all my music, quickly and easily to get it playing when needed...

I totally just figured out how to sort this! It's been annoying me for ages.

Mute the volume control in iTunes (Next to the play/pause buttons at the top). When you press the play/pause keys on your keyboard, albeit iTunes will open, but you won't have to hear anything, so it's far less annoying.

Well, I'm satisfied with it. If you find an actual solution to the problem them I'd be interested to know!

Hope this helps a lot of people.

Kay

Actually, it's not a OSX 10.6 problem because it happens in regular Leopard too.

It IS a problem with VLC or any other media application. For instance, when you're watching a video in quick time, iTunes doesn't automatically open now does it? If you use the remote that came with your apple in your third party apps, the play/pause button there also doesn't open iTunes. The thing is that quick time does is lock down the use of those keys. The third party apps must do the same thing too. Since iTunes is central to the osx OS, this isn't going to be corrected from Apple's perspective, as they'd need to remove the lock from itunes.

Actually it IS a problem with Snow Leopard. What if you're not running Quicktime and press play? iTunes opens automatically, I don't want it to. I have no music in iTunes, I never want it to open regardless of whether or not I'm running third party applications.

Quick tip for Spotify users:

To play / pause Spotify tracks without affecting iTunes you can press:

Shift + Option + Play (at the same time)

Obviously this isn't perfect, but it's doing a job for me 🙂

I've found that if you mute the volume un itunes music will not be played over the top of music playing in other programmes. Temporary fix until there is a software update.

The best fix for all of us:

REMOVE THE VIRUS MADE BY APPLE!

(virus: a software program capable of reproducing itself and usually capable of causing great harm to files or other programs on the same computer)

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1224