It’s been a while since I’ve had a rant about something on here, but this one has been bubbling for a long time.
I’ve read several articles over the last few months relating to how Apple always seem to be ‘working’ with record labels and movie distributors to improve sales of albums and movies on the iTunes store. Most recently is the news that they may be looking to include better ‘digital booklets’, or some kind of ‘interactive digital booklet’. Now, dont get me wrong, I like iTunes. I regularly buy my music from iTunes, but mostly, it’s just singles, or the odd specially-priced EP. Sometimes even a music video. I’ve not bought a single movie or music album from the iTunes store. I also know that I’m not alone with this. There’s a very good reason I don’t buy movies or music albums for download, and one that Apple (and the record companies/movie studios) seem to be ignoring.
As an example, let’s look at the top 5 albums currently in the iTunes music store:
1. Now That’s What I Call Music!, Vol 73 – Various Artists
iTunes Price: £16.99
CDWOW CD Price: £ 10.99
It really irritates me how some applications will ’steal’ ownership of certain file types on my Mac. The biggest issue I have with this is with images. More often than not, I just want to open an image in Preview to take a quick look at it. I expect that when I double-click on an image file, it will quickly open in Preview. On several occasions, Adobe Photoshop has taken it upon itself to assign itself as the default application for many image types that Photoshop supports (.png, .jpg, etc). If you’re a Photoshop user, you’ll know that it’s not a quick application to start up.
In Microsoft Windows, you can right-click and select ‘Open with’, choose the relevant application and check the box for ‘Always use the selected program to open this kind of file’. This has pretty much always worked for me. Mac OS X has a similar right-click option, but this doesn’t always seem to work system-wide, as you might expect.
In order to make this change system-wide, you need to take a different approach. Right-click on the file you wish to always open in a particular program (the .png file in my case), and select ‘Get Info’. There is a section in the pane that opens for ‘Open with:’, and the ‘rogue’ application should be selected. Choose the required application (‘Preview’ in my case) from the pull-down list, and select the ‘Change All’ button. Confirm that you wish to make this change to all files.
Now when I double-click any .png file, it immediately springs open in Preview, and doesn’t try to launch Photoshop instead.
I’m pretty sure it’s the same procedure for Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) too.
As can probably be seen from the design of my site, and some past updates, I adore the new Fiat 500. It’s such a fantastic little car. Excellent to drive, extremely economical, and doesn’t cost the Earth to own. Over the past year, I’ve been a regular visitor and poster on the popular FIAT Forum website.
A couple of days ago, one of the other regulars on the site (who is also one of the organisers of the brilliant Isle of Wight Fiat 500 Fun Run) posted a link to the following YouTube video, which I just had to pass on:
If you missed it, the train is completely full (about 39 carriages!) of Fiat Panda’s and Fiat 500’s, as it’s leaving (if I read Google’s translation correctly) Stacja Ostrów Wielkopolski (Ostrow Station) making its way north across Poland, about 240km from Tychy (where the cars are assembled).
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1. Now That’s What I Call Music!, Vol 73 – Various Artists
2. iTunes Price:Lungs – Florence & The Machine
In order to make this change system-wide, you need to take a different approach. Right-click on the file you wish to always open in a particular program (the .png file in my case), and select ‘Get Info’. There is a section in the pane that opens for ‘Open with:’, and the ‘rogue’ application should be selected. Choose the required application (‘Preview’ in my case) from the pull-down list, and select the ‘Change All’ button. Confirm that you wish to make this change to all files.
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