If you haven’t already upgraded to iTunes 4.9, our advice is to hold out unless you desperately MUST have the latest iTunes from Apple.
User reports have been on the rise. It seems that the introduction of the ability to play movies within iTunes has caused several issues in iTunes 4.9. You may want to take a quick read through this article as upgrading to iTunes 4.9 can result in a serious inconsistentcy in your current iTunes library.
The main source of contention stems from iTunes 4.9 wantonly changing the format and tags of some of your tunes that were already resident on your Mac before upgrading to iTunes 4.9.
User issues range from:
- Erratic Air Tunes usage where the playing of songs stall and play on the Mac’s local speakers instead of the remote speakers connected to Airport Express;
- Inability to transfer certain songs, that previously could be transfered, to iPod;
- loss of album art being replaced by ‘ablum art not modifiable’;
Once iTunes 4.9 alters your existing song format and/or tags iTunes 4.9 no longer views it as a song file but rather a movie file and all the inherent characteristics of the file being a song is some what lost. Although, you may still be able to play the song in iTunes, Air Tunes play and album art support is effectively lost.
There is no cure from Apple to date but here’s an interesting fix by Charles Minow which provides an AppleScript that changes the file formats of your songs back to a usable format by iTunes 4.9. Use this fix at your own risk, Macriot does not provide any support following the use of this AppleScript.
Otherwise, you might want to consider sitting this one out and wait until Apple comes out with an update that might cure this prevailing issue.
If you don’t already have iTunes on your computer, you can download iTunes 4.7.1 which was the last known reliable version of iTunes prior to iTunes 4.9. Otherwise, once you’ve upgraded to iTunes 4.9 its not advisable to attempt to remove it owing to its complex file structure that is seeded all over your Mac’s hard drive.
To check which files have been affected after upgrading to iTunes 4.9. activate the Kind view by going to iTunes Edit menu/View Options and check the Kind box.