Users are reporting serious "issues" with the latest version of
Apple's
iTunes
media player.
Apple released
iTunes 7 on
Tuesday, introducing a feature dubbed 'gapless playback' that eliminates
pauses between two consecutive songs on an album, allowing for smooth
transitions between songs.
Version 7 also introduced a new way to browse through a media collection by
flipping through the album art.
But users who upgraded to the latest version are reporting several problems.
"Anyone who has not yet downloaded iTunes 7, I strongly advise you to wait
until the bugs are worked out,"
recommended
one user whose iPod and iTunes ceased to function after updating to the
latest version.
Windows users complained that the songs in their library were "extremely
distorted" after they updated the software.
"It sounds like sound coming though a slowly spinning box fan,"
one
user complained on an
Apple
user forum.
Some users suggested that the issues were related to the new 'gapless
playback' feature, which requires the software to index the user's entire music
collection.
This process could take up a significant amount of processor resources,
causing the poor audio quality. Further supporting the theory, other users
reported that the media player stopped working when other applications were
running.
Waiting for the gapless indexing to finish did not solve the issues for all
users, however.
Several users running Macs complained that the application crashed when
skipping tracks. A user by the name of
ApathyJones
pointed out that
disabling
the Sound Enhancer feature dealt with the problem.
vnunet.com
was unable to re-create either of the reported problems using a dual-boot
MacBook Pro running MacOS 10.4.7 and Windows XP SP2.
Representatives from Apple did not return requests for comment.
Additional reporting by Shaun Nichols.
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