Trout

iTrader: (1)

Or it could be Wintel 1 Macbook 3 User -4?

Anyway - Wintel laptop, put CD in slot, close drawer, headphones on, CD starts playing.

Macbook, put CD in slot, lots of whirring noises. iTunes starts, iTunes does nothing for a few minutes. iTunes stops.

Open CD folder, no option to play all songs in folder (I got that from Windows Media don't you know ). Select all songs to play with Realplayer - it opens RealPlayer for each individual song

So other than playing one track at a time what the fork handle do you do to play a CD on a Macbook.

I thought these things were supposed to be idiot proof.

Rannoch

PS I tried reloading the CD and second time iTunes didn't even bother getting out of bed

RichB

Is the CD a 'backup'?
It *should* just appear in iTunes so don't know what's going on there...
Does it appear on the desktop?
Using the latest iTunes it appears under 'Devices' on the left. I hit play and off it goes...
If you can see the CD, what happens if you double click one of the tracks? - Mine opens quicktime player and simply plays it.

My old Powerbook used to regularly struggle reading CDRs, I remember something a while back about if the drives weren't used often they had issues... How old is the MacBook?

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Macbook is a few days old - iTunes is the latest release.

CD is brand new not a 'back up'. Tried different CDs same result.

It seems to be trying to back up the CDs but can't for some reason and so gives up. All I want to do is play the damn thing!

If I open the CD folder and click - nothing happens unless I 'Open With' and use Real Player.

I thought these machines were for idiots who didn't understand computers - it certainly has made me feel like an idiot.

Windows Media has definitely scored a point here

Markus

I assume the CD mounts on the desktop with a CD icon? Open it up and then select "As Columns" from the "View" menu in the Finder, it should list the files on the CD in a column. Click on one of the files and in the next column to the right it should, in theory show a small quicktime control bar which would allow you to play the music.

I'd be inclined to go into iTunes, open up the preferences, then go to Advanced -> Importing and check what "On CD Insert" is set to. If you think it's trying to import it then I'd guess it might be set to "Import CD" or "Import CD and Eject". Change it to "Show CD". Whilst you're in there I'd enable the "Use error correction when reading Audio CD's" and see if that makes a different.

I'd then go into System Preferences and have a look at CDs & DVDs and see what the "When you inderst a music CD:" option is set to. Mine is set to "Ignore" or in other words just mount it. From the sound of things you've got it set to "Open iTunes", so you might want to change that to "Ignore" then close System Preferences.

Now pop the CD in, open iTunes and see what happens.

It's odd that it's wanting to use RealPlayer for the files though. Can you select one of the files and use the "Get Info" command on the file and expand the "Name & Extension" field and let me know what the full name, including extension is. Sounds as though iTunes does not know how to deal with the file, which could explain why it's not actually doing anything.
What you could do when you have the Get Info window open is to open the "Open with" option and have a look what application it is set to use. From what you've said, sounds like it's set to Real Player. What I would do is click on the little menu, select "other" then go and navigate to your Applications folder and then select "iTunes" (if you want to use iTunes for this/all of these types of files).
You then have two choices, just close the window and the change will effect that single file, or click "Change All" and it will change the default application for any file with the same extension to iTunes (or whatever app you selected).
If the other CD's use the same type of files then if you selected "Change All" then, in theory, when you insert another CD it should pick up the default application correctly.

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Markus,

thanks again for your comprehensive input

It kind of underlines my point - I thought I would just be able to put a cd in the slot and it would play!!

It was not defaulting to Realplayer - it was the only application I could open with that would actually play anything. Quicktime would not play it and iTunes would not play it. And this was with any CD as they are all new

All is now resolved - I set found the iTunes preference to Play CD on insert rather than Back-up and it now opens the CD, shows me the tracks, and plays them.

To my mindset it just seems odd that playing the music is not the default and it took me a long time to work out what to do.

Rannoch

Markus

Glad to be of service

I can't honestly recall what the default option for CD Insertion is with iTunes, could well be it's to import a CD. Might have a peek later as it really should not be set to that by default, as you say, why not have it configured to play music as the default.

RichB

I would say because the point of iTunes is to store your music on your machine hence the most logical thing to do to encourage that is to automatically import it... Doesn't explain why it did nothing first time round though...

Markus

Just had a look and iTunes 4.7.1 is set to "Show Songs" as a default when a CD is inserted and the CDs & DVDs setting in System Preferences for Music CDs is set to "Open iTunes" (this is on a 10.4.0 clean install, upgraded with 10.4.8 PPC combo updater)

I just installed iTunes 7.0.2 and checked the "On CD Insert" option and it has changed from "Show Songs" to "Ask To import CD". Perhaps there's a bug in iTunes that causes it to select something at random on upgrading from a previous version, and in your case it's happened to pick the option to automatically import the CD.

Trout

iTrader: (1)

My conclusion is that it defaulted to 'Import CD' and then went to look for track/license information which it could not find. Then it gave up.

Not sure why when I tried a second time it did not open at all, or why QuickTime would not play the cd

I was stuck as I am new to Mac and so had no idea where to look to even change the defaults - in the end I Googled it to find a solution.

Anyway - it is all working now

Still think that Import as a default is odd - unless it is to encourage iPod sales

Rannoch

cottonfoo

It defaults to playing, I've got a recent OS X install after a hard drive failure and iTunes plays a CD on insertion.

Trout

iTrader: (1)

As posted above it defaulted to 'Import CD'.

Strange as inserting a DVD it simply played it

cottonfoo

Well that's ok, by default my Tiger DVD didn't install iPhoto, the "color" picker, and I presume other stuff I don't use