Since I upgraded both my iPod Touch & iTunes to their latest versions, when I view albums in the iPod a lot of them don’t have their images.

I’d say it’s about half of the albums missing their images.  Viewing them in iTunes shows all the album covers fine, and also if I play a track the album cover shows in there too, which is weird.

I’ve re-synced the iPod a couple of times with no effect, I even tried clearing the album artwork in iTunes and re-downloading it, but that didn’t help either.  This is crazy, and really annoying.  Apparently I’m not the only one with this problem too:

• http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=783012
• http://twitter.com/tasteofyourlips/statuses/3895209853
• http://twitter.com/MattHealey/statuses/3891570956
• http://twitter.com/timothyhanson/statuses/3890323135
• http://twitter.com/EugeniaLoli/statuses/3871935161

One person mentioned that de-authorising and re-authorising my work, but I don’t really want to do that because you only get to do that five times before everything stops working.  I’ve just removed all the music off the iPod and now I’m re-syncing it back on, I’ll update once it’s done with the result.

UPDATE: Well, it seems that worked, so the solution is this:

1. Go to the iPod/iPhone in iTunes and go to the Music tab
2. Untick the ‘Sync Music’ checkbox
3. Sync the device, this will remove all music off the device
4. Go back after it’s finished syncing and tick the ‘Sync Music’ checkbox
5. Sync it again.  If you’ve got a lot of music, this will take a while.

Apple, this isn’t really good enough, I shouldn’t have to jump through these hoops!

I gave in this week & installed iTunes, purely so I could purchase Joss Whedon’s Dr Horrible’s Sing Along Blog.  Of course as all Whedon fans who don’t live in the US now know, when you try & buy it you get this

Not. Happy Jan.

So now I’ve installed iTunes for no good reason at all!

I’m really not a fan of Apple’s client software, they tend to be bloated & they have a nasty habit of installing stuff that you weren’t expecting.  Unfortunately iTunes is no exception to this rule.  After installing it I went to my Windows Control Panel & I see this little icon there

MobileMe is Apple’s new sync application for the iPhone & iPod.  Now I don’t own an iPhone or an iPod (not through lack of *wanting* one) so I’ve got no use for this software.  I didn’t do the custom application when I installed iTunes like I normally do with new software because I was in a hurry, so there may have been an option to not install it there.  Either way, I never said to install this & I’ve got no use for it.

Removing it

Removing it is actually fairly simple.  Go to the Control Panel & click on Add/Remove programs (or whatever the Vista equivalent is).  You should see an entry for Apple Mobile Device Support. Click the remove button on that.  It may complain if you have Outlook open, but you can ignore that.

Once that’s finished (it took a surprisingly long time on my computer) refresh the control panel & the application will be gone.

From the SMH:

Apple iTunes users in Australia can now buy television shows – some of which have long been offered for free elsewhere – for the first time at $2.99 each.

After a protracted tussle with local networks and the studios for rights to distribute episodes to Australians via the internet, Apple has secured deals with the ABC and Nine networks in Australia, as well as Disney, ABC and MTV in the US.

Local shows on offer include Summer Heights High, McLeod’s Daughters, Canal Road and Sea Patrol, while US favourites are also available including Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, The Hills, South Park, Pimp My Ride and Scrubs.

Single episodes cost $2.99 but unlike overseas there are no discounts for buying full seasons. In the US, where TV shows have been available through iTunes since 2005, individual episodes cost $US1.99.

‘bout time.  Hopefully this is the beginning of some better online entertainment content for Australia