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iTunes 12: Pressing the Spacebar Does Not Play or Pause Music

One of the basic playback controls in iTunes has always been the spacebar: press it to either play or pause music. This works in your Music library, in a playlist, when you’ve selected a CD, and also for playing videos, podcasts or audiobooks.

But in iTunes 12, I’m finding that this doesn’t work all the time. I’d not had this problem – ever – in iTunes 11 or earlier, and today I realized what is preventing the spacebar from controlling playback. It’s this:

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It seems that if you accidentally press Command-F, and iTunes highlights its search field, and you need to back out of that field. There are two ways to do this: press the Tab key, or click in the iTunes window, on a different library, or on a playlist if the Playlists sidebar is visible. You can also press Command-L to return to whatever track you’re currently playing. If Command-L moves you to another location in your library, pressing that shortcut is enough to get out of the search field.

Book Review: The Book of Strange New Things, by Michel Faber

A1YYI+0ngIL.jpgI first read Faber back when his Crimson Petal and the White was published. It was a Victorian page-turner, nothing at all that suggested that he would turn toward science fiction. I read half of Under the Skin, and was bored by it (I also felt that the movie, which was quite different from the novel, was a failure). But the premise of The Book of Strange New Things (Amazon.com, Amazon UK) seemed interesting.

The publisher’s blurb sums it up quite well, avoiding spoilers:

“Peter Leigh is a missionary called to go on the journey of a lifetime. Leaving behind his beloved wife, Bea, he boards a flight for a remote and unfamiliar land, a place where the locals are hungry for the teachings of the Bible – his ‘book of strange new things’. It is a quest that will challenge Peter’s beliefs, his understanding of the limits of the human body and, most of all, his love for Bea.”

Two things bothered me in this book. First, it was overly wordy; Faber could have cut 100 pages from the novel without impacting the story. And it wasn’t just longer sections that could have been cut; many paragraphs could have been halved, or at least trimmed. It seemed like this was a draft, without any serious editing. Or, that the author just wanted to ramble a lot.

The second was the message of the book. It’s not clear if this novel is intended to present a Christian world-view, or simply to use Christianity as a vehicle for examining the relationship between humans and an alien species. The fact that this species accepts Christianity so willingly – we later learn that a previous missionary had started the process – is odd, and isn’t explained. For, after all, wouldn’t that be the most interesting element to examine? How did a single missionary – before Peter Leigh – manage to convert some of these aliens? How could he have made parallels between the teachings of an Earthly religion and their own existence, when they don’t seem to have the same existential questions as humans regarding such things as death and the afterlife? What universalities are there between these two species? The aliens merely parroted the words they heard; they showed no true understanding of the teachings that Leigh gave them.

A large part of the book is made up of emails that Peter exchanges with his wife Bea. There’s a big deal made around these emails, going through a device nicknamed a “Shoot.” (We’d just call it a computer…) And, at one point, a character explains that these emails cost $5 million to send or receive, which is simply ludicrous, given that this is a world where a company on Earth has colonized another planet. If they could afford all that the colonization represents, clearly they’ve mastered the technology that allows them to send and receive text messages. Then, near the end, Peter finds that one of his emails has been censored; it did contain some bits that the company might not have want shared, but why did none of his previous email get censored? And why didn’t his wife’s? She was telling him some pretty terrible things about events on Earth. It seems the censorship thing was just a poorly thought up plot mechanism prodding Peter to make a decision, but it showed a lack of overall attention to the plot.

I admit that, in the last quarter of the book, I was skimming more than reading, as it had simply become tedious and there was little going on; it was just more of the same after the halfway point. The ending was somewhat anticlimactic, and really doesn’t say much about the character, or his situation. I won’t say more about that, but the book simply fizzles out at the end.

I’m not disappointed I read this book, but it’s not very memorable. It’s part religion, part science fiction, and it’s just not a good enough story; and I’m not sure if there’s enough science fiction to appeal to fans of that genre, or enough religion to please those who seek that.

Amazon UK Promotes Bob Dylan Bootlegs

It’s one thing that Amazon sells bootleg recordings; I understand that it may be hard for them to police all the stock they get from “record companies,” and third-party resellers. I’d noticed quite a few Dylan bootlegs in the past couple of years. These aren’t 50-year old recordings, which are fair game in the European Union, these are just plain old bootlegs.

But it’s another thing when, in an email promoting the latest Bob Dylan release, Amazon also promotes four bootleg albums. I got this email this morning:

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I assume Amazon would say it’s not their responsibility; they trust the companies to sell legal recordings, and these emails are generated by algorithm. But, still; it’s pretty lame.

Turn off iMessage for Your Phone Number, Using Apple’s Web Tool

There’s an annoying glitch with Apple’s iMessages on iPhones. For some people, when they turn off iMessages, and switch from an iPhone to another device, it’s impossible to receive SMSs from iPhone users. Something in an Apple database has registered their phone number and won’t release it.

Apple has had to set up a web tool to allow users to free themselves from this blocking.

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Go to this page, enter your phone number, then enter the six-digit code that Apple sends to the phone via SMS. Click Submit, and this should update Apple’s database.

This has been an annoying problem for many users, and for a very long time, and, seems to have only found a way to fix it after they faced a class-action lawsuit. It’s good that Apple is fixing it, but I think it’s a bad sign that they’ve had to go the route of a special web page for users to de-register their phones. It suggests that they simply don’t have a grasp of how their own system works, which is supposed to de-register numbers as soon as you sign out of iMessages on an iPhone.

Book Review: Revival, by Stephen King

revival.jpgFor more than thirty years, I’ve been fascinated by Stephen King’s unique realism. With stories that sometimes reach extremes of horror and fantasy, his novels are nevertheless grounded in reality. So much so, often, that it’s hard to not identify with their characters. In Revival, King’s latest horror novel (Amazon.com, Amazon UK), he depicts the childhood and teenage years of one of the main characters, Jamie Morton, so perfectly that I felt as though parts of it were my own life experiences. (Some of them were, in fact; especially the parts about playing guitar.)

Morton meets a new Methodist preacher, Charles Jacobs, when he is six, and this minister becomes his “fifth business.” As King says, “In the movies this sort of character is known as the fifth business, or the change agent.” Jacobs will be linked to Morton for the next 55 years, and this novel tells the tale of the links between them.

Jacobs is a sort of scientific dabbler. He plays with electricity, and sees the occult power of electricity as the key to the universe. He gives up on god early in his career, after a tragedy strikes, and sets out as a carny, then letter a traveling preacher, building a name for himself healing people. But the first person he healed was Jamie Morton’s brother Connie, and, somehow, this event links the two men.

As Jacobs wanders in his desert, Morton does as well, playing rhythm guitar for second-rate bands, and developing a jones that will end that career. He meets Morton again at the sideshow of a state fair, and sees him perform a “miracle,” before getting help from Morton.

They again go their separate ways, but are always linked by others. As the novel slowly develops, it is more of a curiously muted story of a fallen priest and the people he has healed, but in the end, Morton and Jacobs end up together, in a horrific scene that turns the tone of the book from mild science fiction to Lovecraftian horror.

In a Rolling Stone interview, King said that religion is “a very dangerous tool that’s been misused by a lot of people.” And in this book, he raises that issue several times, as characters question the use of religion as a way to simply dupe people. And, in the end, the evil that the two characters discover goes far beyond that of religion, causing Morton to question his very existence.

It’s hard to say much about this book without spoiling the plot. You’ll read more than 300 pages and wonder when the horror is coming, but when it hits, in the last 30 pages, you’ll realize how important the slow build-up was to the denouement of the story. This is one of King’s most interesting novels in years.

The iTunes Guy Looks at More iTunes 12 Questions

itunesguy-thum-100004188-gallery.jpgWith more and more users updating to iTunes 12, I’ve been getting a huge number of questions about how to use this new version. In this week’s column, I look at more questions about iTunes 12. (The last column was a Special iTunes 12 edition.) I discuss adding artwork to files, deleting artwork, and changes to the iTunes Store’s Wish List and My Alerts section.

Read this week’s Ask the iTunes Guy at Macworld.

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