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M-Beat 3.0

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(2) 3.375

Places iTunes controls in the menu bar. Shareware ($10)

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The Little App Factory

M-Beat is flexibility for iTunes. You're in the driver's seat with the ultimate iTunes Companion Application, featuring one-click menu items, hot keys and floating windows. Best of all, it's completely customizable.

Features:

One click access to basic controls
Announcer
Fast search
Hotkey Controls
Artwork retrieval from Internet
Playlist Access
Volume Control
iPod Syncing
Scrolling song information in the menubar
Song rating from the menubar
Future song listing
Floating window to display song information how and when you

What's New

Version 3.0:

[Feature] - Fast Search groups songs by artist, sorting them by artists with most songs
[Feature] - Added Fast Search to menubar by clicking artist name
[Feature] - Added Fast Search to floater by clicking artist name
[Feature] - New floater - "MiniFloat" - small and cute!
[Feature] - Added the option to pause iTunes if the screensaver is activated
[Enhancement] - Enhanced interactivity with iTunes - more reliable, much faster
[Enhancement] - Cover art screen provides more information
[Enhancement] - Previous, Next and Pause/Play not shown in menu when menubar controls are shown
[Enhancement] - Floating windows are more customizable, allowing user to control resizing of window
[Enhancement] - Floating windows can be repositioned at any time
[Enhancement] - Cover art can be changed multiple times within one search
[Enhancement] - New hotkey options for display preferences and rate song 0 stars
[Enhancement] - Clicking playlists in menu can play the playlist from the start
[Enhancement] - Floater options moved to the "Floater" pane
[Enhancement] - Includes improved Crash Reporter and Updating
[Enhancement] - Floater text can intelligently resize to try and fit in a fixed width floater
[Enhancement] - Simplified menu, including Play and Pause condensed from two options into one
[Bug Fix] - Cover art loading does not lock the program
[Bug Fix] - Announcing the song title does not set iTunes to mute
[Bug Fix] - No cover art results handled without continuing to search
[Bug Fix] - Rating a song makes announcer start again
[Bug Fix] - Floater disappears when no song is playing
[Bug Fix] - Changing floater type gets song details correctly
[Bug Fix] - Duplicate Theme button works correctly
[Bug Fix] - Fast Search database updates when iTunes changes, not just on startup
[Bug Fix] - Cover art search works from startup, whenever a song is playing
[Bug Fix] - Identifies songs correctly when played through a network, iTunes radio, iTunes store and podcasts
[Bug Fix] - Preferences window was not opening on occasions
[Bug Fix] - Missing song information on launch now available

Version 3.0:

[Feature] - Fast Search groups songs by artist, sorting them by artists with most songs
[Feature] - Added Fast Search to menubar by clicking artist name
[Feature] - Added Fast Search to floater by clicking artist name
[Feature] - New floater - "MiniFloat" - small and cute!
[Feature] - Added the option to pause iTunes if the screensaver is more...

Requirements
PPC, Mac OS X 10.3 or later, iTunes 4.8 or later.

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M-Beat User Discussion (Write a Review)

ver. 3.x:

(2)

Your rating: Now say why...

Overall:

(21)

sort: smiles | time

Anonymous reviewed on 16 Oct 2005

About the only thing I really use M-Beat for is the rather cool menubar iTunes controls (reverse, pause/play, forward). That is snazzy as all get out. Saves me from having to have the itunes controller floating around on my screen. Also allows me to quickly rate songs. As far as downloading artwork is concerned, the only app I've found that is consistant is Clutter. As a for instance, a funky old 30's jazz tune was playing while typing this. M-Beat came up empty for artwork. Clutter found it.

Overall, I think M-Beat is worth registering.

[Version 3.0]

Anonymous reviewed on 10 Aug 2005

Uses too much RAM.

Butler is far better and free :-D

[Version 3.0]

Anonymous reviewed on 25 Apr 2005

Appears to have a severe memory leak with Os 10.4. after running for several hours the mBeat memory partition will balloon to several hundred megs active memory and 7-900 megs virtual memory!

I hope an update is in the works.

[Version 2.6]

1 Reply

Anonymous commented on 11 Jul 2005

No update for months- questionable tiger compat. I moved on to iMote- a great alternative.

Anonymous reviewed on 21 Feb 2005

I currently use Synergy and probably will continue to do so. This app has some nice advanced features, but it needs to solidify the basics first. It is NOT completely customizable like they claim. Synergy gives you more control over the items you see in the floater, transparency, size and duration. M-Beat doesn't do any of the latter. Plus M-Beat's floater uses black test with a black drop shadow, which makes it difficult to read. Synergy is more elegant in this regard. Also, In its "X" Floating window style, no song info appears, only the album cover. I'll keep my eye on this, but it's not quite ready yet.

[Version 2.6]

Anonymous reviewed on 19 Nov 2004

I downloaded this and used it for a little while and thought it was a nice little app. Very similar to Synergy though i like the fact that it is skinnable.

I currently use Synergy although will be keeping and eye on this one just because of the ability to skin. The price is right too!! Perhaps i might swap over at some time.

[Version 2.5.2]

Anonymous reviewed on 28 Sep 2004

I've read what seems to be mostly negative comments about this application. First, I tried all of them - Synergy, You Control Tunes, etc. Try as I could, I could not get Synergy to show anything other than playlists; I could not get it to show specific songs within playlists. Both M-Beat and You Control allowed me to select specific songs, so that ruled out Synergy for me.

I found You Control to be buggy, despite it being free. It seemed to load slowly, and sometimes it would forward to a song in a different playlist. (I looked for some kind of "random song" option that perhaps I had missed, but I couldn't find one.) Again, I ruled that program out.

M-Beat has been perfectly stable on my system, and I use a lot of shareware enhancements. I've also found the developer to be very responsive to requests; he wrote back to me almost immediately about a feature request, and he wrote back and forth several times.

The program works fine for me. At least try it out. The price seemed pretty reasonable as well.

[Version 2.5.2]

Anonymous reviewed on 08 Sep 2004

The previous poster's comments are what motivated me to write this review (as I don't usually take the time to do this sort of thing). First off everything the previous poster said M-Beat is missing is completely and totally wrong. M-Beat has everything the previous poster pointed out as 'missing features.' I suspect the previous poster didn't even download the application.

M-Beat is an amazing application that although being the oldest of these types of applications has only recently reach maturity. It has some really innovative and unique features that you will not find in synergy or any other application, and yet all the while it maintains the core set of features that one has come to expect in itunes controllers (hot keys, floater, menubar buttons, etc). In order to get this same set of features you would need to download and install a dozen different applications, and you would still miss out on the really innovative stuff like announcer. I don't know what else the dev could possibly add, but with each major release we see another feature that has all the copycats scurrying to duplicate.

The updates just keep coming, and although a couple releases have been buggy the bug fixes have been released in days if not hours of the initial bug reports. Go to the guy's forums and you see him immediatly addressing issues customer have and adding features people request. this level of support is something I have only seen in a small handful of other shareware apps and it has always been the deciding factor for me in whether I buy the app or not.

Before you bad mouth this guy again claiming his app doesn't have features that are only in another app because they were copied form this app i suggest you actually download the darn thing and take it for a spin. The App factory has been a trend setter in iTunes shareware and even if you don't use mbeat or ipodrip because you prefer a competitor you should at least acknowledge these apps as the inspirations for the dozens of clones out there.

[Version 2.5.2]

Anonymous reviewed on 07 Sep 2004

Not as good as Synergy. First of all, this app hows an icon in the dock, which is annoying because it should only appear in the menubar. Second, unlike Synergy, it has no cool semi-transparent floating display that shows the track playing plus cover artwork. Plus they want just $3 dollare more than this app, which is great. However, I feel that this app has a more polished look too it IMHO.

[Version 2.5.2]

1 Reply

Anonymous commented on 07 Sep 2004

Feel free to remove the dock icon via the general preference pane.

Also we do have a floating window that has the cover art as well as track information. Take a look in the floater preference pane.

+153

JimW commented on 07 Sep 2004

While admittedly I have not a big supporter of You Control, given their pricing and bundling policies on some of the software they took over, in all fairness it should be said that You Control has released its ITunes Controller as freeware to all which does just about anything this does and more. I suggest that users interested in ITunes controllers take a look at it before paying money for any product in order to make an informed decision.

[Version 2.5.2]

Kevin26 commented on 16 Aug 2004

Nice, but butler is much better, and free, too.

[Version 2.5]

Pairaka had trouble on 08 Sep 2003

I like this app--but it won't work for me. I experienced the same type of behavior as a previous reviewer: While trying to set some preferences, they suddenly locked up on me in such a way that I could no longer access the controls. I tried to "right-click" on the menu controls and nothing happened, plus the M-Beat icon was gone, leaving me with nothing but the player controls (skip backward, skip forward and play). Also, there is no graphic for the "Turn iTunes on/off" button should you wish to have it displayed in the menu bar.

I wish this were a little less buggy because it's a exactly what I was looking for.

[Version 1.3]

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