How to Get Apple to Remove/Disable Gapless Playback from iTunes

September 24th, 2009 | Posted by i.nconspicuo.us in Tech/Web - (5 Comments)


It’s been quite awhile now, and Apple still has not answered the huge problem that Gapless Playback has been causing. For some reason, Apple seems to think that Gapless Playback is a wanted (or needed) feature, though I can count hundreds of emails and comments that I’ve received complaining about Gapless Playback. Ever since the release of iTunes version 7 (and beyond) Gapless Playback has been causing huge problems for those people who have large music libraries and those of us who have all of our music stored and shared across networked drives.

Gapless Playback got so bad for me that everytime I opened up iTunes, it would literally lock me out of my system. It’d take at least 10-15 minutes before iTunes would respond to me clicking the small X in the menu to stop “Determining Gapless Playback”, and I know others have had the same problem, and some have had it worse. I’ll admit, it could be a cool feature, but is it necessary, absolutely not. It’d be great if Apple would just make a system-wide setting in iTunes that would allow Gapless Playback to be turned on/off (enabled/disabled). That way, each and every song in the music library wouldn’t have to be tagged as being part of a Gapless Playback album. That would make peoples lives a lot easier!

As I mentioned above, Gapless Playback has gotten so bad for me that I’ve stopped using iTunes to manage my music. I’ve found two strong alternatives that are really growing on me:

  • MediaMonkey
    The thing I like about MediaMonkey is they’ve found a way to allow you to manage the songs on your iPhone from within the MediaMonkey interface, however, each time a new version of iTunes comes out, there is some small lag time as the MediaMonkey program is updated. MediaMonkey does natively support updating iPods. Music playback and music management is great from within MediaMonkey and that’s what makes it my favorite alternative to iTunes, but if you’re solely a Mac user, you’re unfortunately out of luck on this one.
  • Songbird
    Songbird is great because its built on the Mozilla platform and allows all sorts of user developed add-ons, plugins and themes to be installed. The good thing about Songbird is that it comes for Windows/Mac/Linux.

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System extension cannot be used – _ClassicNotSeize.kext was installed improperly and cannot be used.

September 23rd, 2009 | Posted by i.nconspicuo.us in Tech/Web - (0 Comments)


As you may know from reading this blog, I’ve recently purchased a Mac, and love it for the most part. However, I recently was updating iTunes and I received the following error message:

System extension cannot be used
The system extension “/System/Library/Extensions/CNQL1213_ClassicNotSeize.kext” was installed improperly and cannot be used. Please try reinstalling it, or contact the products’s vendor for an update.

I’ve never seen this error before, I’m unsure if it has anything to do with my recent update to Mac OS X Snow Leopard. I was upgrading from iTunes 9.0 to 9.1 when the error occurred. Here’s the biggest problem… I can’t find the solution because errors on Macs are so few and far between as compared to similar issues with PC’s. I’ve tried Googling the error and cannot find anything that seems to be related. After that error message, the iTunes update continued, and apparently installed successfully because I got the following message: The update was installed successfully.

Update

This issue is potentially caused by a Canon scanner driver issue. If you have a Canon scanner, particular any of the LiDE series Canon scanners, you may want to check and see if you’re able to update/remove this driver.

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iPhone 3.1 Tethering Fix and Official Tethering Release Date

September 21st, 2009 | Posted by i.nconspicuo.us in iPhone Tips & Tricks - (6 Comments)


I’m not sure whether it was Apple or AT&T who decided to disable the iPhone tethering hack with the release of the 3.1 iPhone software update, but regardless of who it was, tethering has officially been disabled. My guess is that AT&T required Apple to update the iPhone firmware in order to be able to measure internet tethering usage so that they could bill the user accordingly. Take a look at the following screenshot, after installing 3.1, you can go to Settings > General > Usage and you’ll now see Tethering Data at the bottom of the Usage screen.

iPhone Tethering Data Usage

Whether my guess is even close to accurate or not, we’ll just have to wait and see when AT&T decides to release their approved Data Tethering rate plans. Until then, we’ll just have to wait for our good buddy BenM to come out with an iPhone 3.1 Tethering Fix. Come on BenM… get us that 3.1 tethering hack!!!

In the meantime, the only real fix that will allow you to enable tethering if you have iPhone OS 3.1 is to downgrade to iPhone OS 3.0. iPhone OS 3.1 officially has killed internet tethering.

Gmail Manager Not Working – Has Your Gmail Manager Stopped Working Too?

September 21st, 2009 | Posted by i.nconspicuo.us in Random Stuff - (37 Comments)


For the last couple of years now, I’ve been using Gmail Manager as my main mailbox management tool. I’ve actually replaced Outlook with Gmail Manager too! I use it on my office computer, my home computer and on my laptop. Gmail Manager allows me to manage 7 different email accounts within my browser (which is always open).

Recently (about a week ago now), I noticed on my office computer that my Gmail Manager was no longer working. All 7 of my Gmail (and Google Apps for Domains) accounts now show a 0 message count, and when hovering over the icon, it reads:

username@gmail.com is logged in.
Inbox has 0 unread messages.
Space used 0 MB (0%) of your 0 MB.

Here’s the kicker… when I’m at my office, all of my accounts say the same thing: Inbox has 0 unread messages… etc. However when I’m at my house, everything works perfectly. Could this be an issued caused by the ISP? At work, we use Verizon DSL and at home I have Time Warner. Everything else has been working as it should, with the exception of my Gmail Manager.

If you’ve encountered this problem, please comment below and let me know what ISP you are using. I’ve tried clearing my cookies, cache, etc. with no luck. I’m really missing my Gmail Manager! If you haven’t yet tried Gmail Manager, I highly recommend it: Gmail Manager.

Enable Tethering on iPhone 3.1

September 17th, 2009 | Posted by i.nconspicuo.us in Random Stuff - (1 Comments)


I had enabled tethering on my iPhone awhile back, even though I didn’t use it too often, I figured it’d be a good feature to have, and it actually saved me a couple times while I was traveling – allowing me to download a file that I forgot to bring on my laptop, and I also was able to book a plane ticket using tethering and my MacBook.

Anyways, I recently installed the iPhone 3.1 software update and my days of tethering are no more. I also just realized that since installing the 3.1 update, the updated carrier settings from the tethering enabling mobile config file had caused my visual voicemail to stop working (again). I’m waiting on a fix from our buddy Ben M who released the first mobile configs that allowed tethering to be enabled, but it appears that Apple and/or AT&T have made things tougher this time. The one thing that concerns me is the fact that the settings screen now traces tethering data transfer… I’m assuming that AT&T will use this to hit you with a hefty bill anytime you’re using tethering data transfer.

Has anyone found a workaround to get tethering working on iPhone 3.1?

Using F5 Key to Refresh/Reload Page in Mozilla Firefox 3.5+

September 15th, 2009 | Posted by i.nconspicuo.us in Tech/Web - (6 Comments)


I don’t know why, but I recently noticed that the F5 key no longer refreshes the page (reloads the page) when using my Mozilla Firefox web browser. I’m a web developer, so I am often refreshing/reloading pages to see what changes look like as they are completed. I don’t know when Firefox changed (maybe with the release of 3.5), but I now apparently have to press Ctrl + R in order to refresh/reload the page that I’m on.

Has anyone else encountered a problem with the F5 key not reloading the page in Mozilla Firefox? Is there a workaround or a way to map keys in Firefox?

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Enabling iPhone Tethering on AT&T Network

September 3rd, 2009 | Posted by i.nconspicuo.us in iPhone Tips & Tricks - (0 Comments)


Well, after a few weeks of the tethering hack being released, many people have enabled it on their iPhones and I have not yet heard of anyone receiving a bill for anything above normal. I still haven’t enabled tethering on my iPhone because I was worried that AT&T would try to slam me with a massive bill, so decided to just wait on the sidelines and see what happened to all those who had enabled tethering. The only real “problem” that I’ve heard of thus far is the loss of visual voicemail, which already has a fix/workaround to get it back up and running. I’ve been reading about how to enable tethering and I’m amazed at how easy it is. I’m going to enable tethering on my iPhone tonight and I’ll post about it in the next day or two to let you know how it went.

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Halo 4 Will Be Called Halo Reach

September 3rd, 2009 | Posted by i.nconspicuo.us in Gaming - (1 Comments)


There will be a next version of Halo, but rather than being called Halo 4, it will be called Halo Reach. There are no real specifics on the game yet, but it supposedly going to be released in the fall of 2010. It appears that our “friend” Bill from Bungie was entirely wrong and all of his posts and comments were totally unwarranted (click here to read all previous speculation), however they were fun, and caused quite a bit of stir in the comments. ;-)

What would you all like to see in Halo Reach?

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