CoverFlow aims to bring that aesthetic appeal to your mp3 collection. It allows you to browse your albums complete with beautiful artwork pulled from any sources it can find, whether that's buried in your song tags, collected via Synergy, or looked up on Amazon.
What's new in CoverFlow
Version 1.2:
Removed the tiresome expiry date
Fixed image loading from AAC files on intel
Added basic support for the Apple Remote
Fixed dumb error that prevented the window from reopening once closed
Wikipedia search added to the search engine list
Updated French & Chinese localizations, added Spanish
Added Jasper Hauser's purty icon
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Download link not active. Just shows an artists pen caption. Registered and signed in after first failed attempts. Firefox, and also tried with updated Chrome browser.
Please advise. Using OSX 10.8 without your Macupdate Desktop option.
5 stars for the idea. Please keep cover flow updated so Itunes cover flow banishment has not ruled the rest of the free world :-)
I wonder if anyone can help me a problem I'm having. I'm lucky enough to have this copy of CoverFlow, but I find that it only seems to recognize those "professional" albums you buy or download. But I have a lot of my own compilations, many of which were modified using Amadeus. (Don't worry, this is strictly a personal hobby.)
Another way to explain this that when I import songs into iTunes, iTunes will sort "my" songs into their own folders, but it seems to separate the professional songs into their own categories. For instance, lets say I have a folder titled "70s songs." When I import, iTunes will create that same folder name and put all of those songs into that folder. But if one of those tracks is an Elton John song I downloaded from iTunes, the iTunes will not put that song into my "70s Songs" folder but, instead, will put it in an "Artist - Elton John - Greatest Hits" folder.
There has to be something about how that Elton John song was "tagged" that gets iTunes to do this, as compared with my other songs that are not tagged as such. And CoverFlow will recognize the Elton John song and album but not my "70s Songs" album.
I'm assuming that "tagging" is what's going on here, although I am rather clueless about tagging, and while I've tried to do some of this with some songs via iTunes, CoverFlow still does not recognize them.
Do you know what kind of tagging (or other procedure) I'd need to do here?
Thanks
I can't tell you how happy I am that the stand-alone app is still available! I am not a fan of iTunes'integration only because it takes the smoothness (e.g. the hanging and swinging animations) and the fullscreen away.
And the iTunes verion only looks for album artwork on iTunes' library, which is not comprehensive.
The stand-alone builds its own playlist when you select an album (and you can queue other albums by command+enter (or double-click)) so that you can browse through your main library while albums are playing.
Plus it is built for people who like to listen to albums (you can set it to filter out singles and albums under "x" minutes (mine is set to 8 minutes).
The iTunes version just doesn't cut it.
Nice to see this incorporated into iTunes itself. I wish they would have given the option to use Coverflow as a Visualizer so that when playing iTunes the albums would flip through as the music changed full screen. Right now I use JewelCase for this, but JewelCase only does one album at a time.
Congratulations on selling CoverFlow to Apple!
As long as you are happy with the deal, this is what should happen to small developers who have good ideas. iTunes is the right new home for CoverFlow. Thank god it didn't get sold to Microsoft like a couple other apps I've used.
I'm going to wonder how I ever lived without this app. It truly brings back the joy of flipping through albums. This new release even grabs covers for me automatically. My current wish is for it to sync the new covers with my iTunes library in both directions.
Works great on my MacBook running 10.4.7. At first I thought there was something wonky with its handling of the Apple Remote's menu button because it seemed to cause a random jump to a different letter, and only for the albums in the background, then I realized what it was doing was toggling the sorting between album name and artist name. Cool. On the other hand, using the volume up and down to change tracks instead of volume is weird. I'd rather it worked as follows: The menu button would toggle between controlling iTunes and controlling CoverFlow, preferably with some visual indication of which is in effect (and easily seen from a distance.) A good way to do this would be to have coverflow switch to a different view when you start playback (or pressed menu), one that showed the album art, track info, play time, etc, of the current track, and the remote would control iTunes playback. When the user pressed the menu button it would go back to the library view, and the controls would then control browsing of the library. Pressing menu again would bring up the playback info again. Etc. It would be intuitive and more obvious. It would still be nice to have the ability to control the sorting via the remote, though - is there a way to handle press-and-hold on a remote button? Perhaps then a press-and-hold of the menu button would either change the sorting, or perhaps better, bring up a menu of options, including the sorting options. I realize this is all a rather tall order, though. :)
Great .app! Really great GUI! I don't have a huge use for it as I rather use Lauchbar to surf my itunes Library, nevertheless, this is really cool. I would like it if it had the features of Clutter (another great free app) which lets you copy Amazon artwork directly into itunes. Also in Clutter when you use the "Lookup on Amazon" feature it shows the results in the application as opposed to opening up the Amazon page in your web browser (as CoverFlow does). Overall... good and free.
Brilliant!
http://files.filefront.com/CoverFlowExampletargz/;4895373;;/fileinfo.html
I was so impressed I even made a video to show my Windows friends.
Love this app, but would like to see it's functionality converge with Clutter.
Things to like about Clutter:
- collect your favourites rather than having to scroll through whole list
- right click and access individual songs from the album for play (would love to see "copy to iPod" as well...)
Would also love to see a cancel button appear in the search textbox, kinda like iTunes does with the little 'x' that shows up on the right hand side. It wasn't intuitive to me to understand how to cancel a search.
Would also love to see next and previous arrows on either side of the scroll bar and auto scrolling when I mouse over the edges of the image collection.
Would love to see a filter to allow exclusion of individual albums (based on name).
Will stop ranting now. Great app all in all. Thanks and keep it up!
Great. The missing link with my music. Great. Yes, Apple should buy the code, or hire the developer - not just copy this great idea - because it's... Great!
Please someone help the developer to make a nice icon that matches the quality of the software!
Did I say its' great already?
Aesthetically this is an amazing little app - The author should be quite pleased with himself! One small critque is that I would like to see Coverflow sort albums chronologically
This app is really fantastic, and if Apple doesn't buy the guy's code then they are absolutely insane. This thing, integrated into iTunes, would be WILDLY popular.
The 3D routine used is very fast, and you can tell the feel of the 'shuffling' animation has been hand-tweaked to perfection. I spent about 10 minutes just rifling back and forth through my collection - once I had gathered all the missing covers in my collection.
Anyways, play with it, really lots of fun. If you run CoverFlow with the iTunes controller minimized below its window, you have a whole new way of interacting with your music.
APPLE - BUY THIS APPLICATION! Pay the man, he more than deserves it.
Jonathan, outstanding little app you've created!
I feel bad for you. Why? Because Apple will surely rip this idea off in the next version of iTunes and give you absolutely no credit. ;-)
I was just telling someone that iTunes needs a jukebox-like interface for parties. This would allow guests to walk up to a screen with a mouse and page through the album artwork, selecting songs they wish to hear and having them added to a queue. I hope you continue to expand the program and interface and consider making this a goal. I'm sure it would be extremely popular!
Thanks for the work.
Michael
Quite impressive app! Needs to be worked out some more, though. Would also be a nice iTunes visual effect or plug-in, possibly even a great screen saver module...
I'm absolutely gutted - I tried this program on my work Mac with limited songs and it worked great! I was eager to try this on my home system with nearly 30k songs but sadly it crashes when it gets to the letter 'U'. very saddening, especially as the way the developer words the opening message, it seems unlikely to get an update for some time.
However, when it DID work, it was a great experience = I eagerly await the time it can handle my home collection.
Great first release!
This app has such a high degree of quality, design and function that I would have thought it was produced by Apple. In fact, Apple's Front Row would benefit from this type of GUI. Anyway, I anxiously look forward to each upgrade, and I would certainly pay for the 1.0 release. (I hope that full screen gets reimplimented. It looks incredible on a 60" Sony!)
First, the idea is just brilliant. However the approach may be not right. It should be like an application like Dashboard or a plugin for iTunes, NOT just another standalone application sitting on my dock.
If it can be triggered by a function key ( or any key combination) full screen like Dashboard when I want to change my music, it will be SUPER cool. But obviously not at this time. I will definitely buy it at a reasonable price if it is approched in a nicer way. Good luck.
Won't do a thing if you're music folder is not in the default iTunes location (~/Music/iTunes...) Sorry, but I have to give 1 star to everything for having looked over such a crucial option, as I'm sure most people change the location. And it's a demo, but I see no price= No value.
WHAT IT DID FOR ME: This program is QUALITY. It has changed the way I listen to my music. Do you have a big music collection, but keep going back to the same damn singles that you've heard A BILLION TIMES? I did. This program is soooooooo fun and beautiful that I listen to one album from begining to end now. AND FOR ONCE, SOMETHING I SHOWED MY SISTER IMPRESSED HER! She has NEVER been impressed by any of the crazy/awesome stuff I got going on my iBook G4. Oh, and if you've been lazy and never bothered to go and get coverart for your music, it searches google or amazom (which opens up in your web browser), then you can just drag-and-drop the artwork in and you're set to go.
MEMORY INFO: With a collection of 2000 songs (each of which has album art attached to it), CoverFlow is using 38mb of real memory and 160 of virtual memory. So, it isn't too heavy considering how GORGEOUS it is. Not a problem at all.
SOMETHING TO CONSIDER: Apparently, this program will expire on NOVEMBER 15th. Why? I believe the creator will release an updated version as shareware, once he is sure there are no bugs (I haven't run into ANY bugs).
A MESSAGE TO THE DEVELOPER:
I don't know if this is possible, but it would be nice if CoverFlow could play songs without actually opening iTunes. Also, if you do release this as shareware, the most I would pay is $5. If you charge more, serial sharers will be all over this. HOWEVER, I propose that you make it donationware. When people are hit with the initial novelty of this program, they will be generous. They may not be so generous 10 days later. That's all I got. Keep up the good work :)
WORST SUPPORT!!!!:
"coverflow has expired... this technical demo of coverflow has expired. Please check the website for an updated version"....
there is no "updated version" available.
no, this really sucks!!!
don#t try this ware. it´s too nice, but expired its gone.
very bad!!!!
apple should integrate this applikation into itunes. then nobady will need this one anymore!!!!
JUST downloaded----great.Improves on the Clutter app whjch is itself great.Needs to abilkity to flip cover to read track listing like the JEWELCASE plugin does (http://www.opticalalchemy.com/home.html ) seems to work fine with 40GBS of music on a powerbook 1gb
Wow this looks good. Not sure it's going to be WORTH anything, but it LOOKS good. It needs to sort albums and artists beginning with "the" but the second word. Also iTunes integration would be keen. It needs to scale non-standard album art correctly, such as 4x3 or 16x9. Additionally, it's a huge CPU hog when it wants to be. Finally (I know, I'm a bastard) it would be really cool to have the album art look like an actual CD case. This is a really amazing looking program.
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