HiRate

Does what it says. Interesting. Thanks.

Great news: Apple has fixed the Smart Playlists bug that kept HiRate-rated songs from appearing in Smart Playlists. In iTunes 6.0.2 (free download), Smart Playlists use ratings correctly - they're included in SPL's by the displayed rating. For example, a rating of 99 shows up as a four-star song, so it shows up in a four-star smart playlist. Enjoy!

Thanks for the feedback! I've looked at the Smart Playlists problem, and unfortunately that's a problem with iTunes that wouldn't be easily fixed without a patch to iTunes from Apple. I've sent this in to Apple as a suggestion for the next version of iTunes, but obviously it's up to Apple whether this change will be made. For now, there is a workaround, albeit a complicated one... This is assuming that you want to make a playlist that includes all Country songs rated 60 to 80. 1. Make a Smart Playlist that includes all songs that are rated greater than two stars, and less than five stars. Set it so that it matches ALL of the conditions. This playlist will give you everything rated 60 (three stars) to 80 (four stars.) Name it "60 to 80" or something of that sort. 2. Make another Smart Playlist that includes all songs where Genre is Country and Playlist is "60 to 80," or whatever you named your last playlist. Set it so that it matches ALL of the conditions. This playlist will serve as a smart playlist, but with an unfortunate side effect of crowding your iTunes library with yet another playlist. This fix will likely also work with iTunes Rater or any other program that supports extended ratings.

Now if only I could put this into my smart playlists. I'd like to at least expand to 10 "stars".

Hm. Interface is nearly as big as iTunes. Now I can see why Apple reduced the percentage rating to stars.

I wrote a tip on MacOSX Hints about this type of thing, and wrote a simple program that does exactly the same as this, but mine isn't quite as 'polished'. What I did do is make the interface a bit simpler, and have it so it shows album art. Visit http://schinckel.blogspot.com/2005/02/itunesrater-01.html for more details, including a screenshot.

Just a note... this is basically the final version of HiRate. It's been tested and works perfectly for me, but I decided to mark it as a beta until I wait a few weeks for any bug reports to be posted on MacUpdate or VersionTracker. Chances are, this version and HiRate 1.0 will be very, very similar. :-)

actually looks very useful but I think i will wait for a final version. good idea!

Does what it says. Interesting. Thanks.