Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Fetch Art 2.1 Released, Adds iTunes 7.7.1 Support

I've just released a new version of Fetch Art.  This is the first "non-Beta" release in the 2.x series.

CHANGES in version 2.1.0:
1) Modified the code to fix a bug introduced by Apple in iTunes 7.7.1. Now this works with iTunes 7.7.1.
2) Added more logic in constructing the query to Amazon to improve search accuracy.
3) Amazon changed some behaviors with empty keywords, I've eliminated the existence of empty keywords in the search.
4) Prioritized album art so that it should find the correct album art before single releases. Earlier versions were returning singles instead of the album.


You can download it here: DOWNLOAD 2.1

NOTE:  For the first 10 hours after this post, the download was still pointing to an installer that installed the older 2.0.0 version.  I've fixed that now.  If you are still getting errors in Fetch Art, check to make sure you have the latest 2.1.0 version.

iTunes 7.7.1 Introduces AppleScript bug that breaks Fetch Art 2.0 and Earlier

With the latest release of iTunes, Apple introduced a bug.  AppleScript code that previously returned a track object now returns a list of tracks (it should return a track.)

I spent a bit of time narrowing the issue down, only to find Doug had already documented the problem here:  AppleScript Bug or Feature in iTunes 7.7.1  I sure wish I had found that before I spent a while blaming my own code and debugging.

Anyway, the next version of Fetch Art will contain a fix for that AND I wrote the code so if Apple changes the behavior back in a future version of iTunes, Fetch Art should still continue to work.  It will handle the return object whether it is a track or a list.

Stay tuned for the new 2.1 version update.  It will be available soon.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Fetch Art 2.1.0 Nearing Release

With the release of iTunes 7.7.1 Apple changed something in how you can reference a track by ID.  This has broken all previous versions of Fetch Art.

I'm testing a new 2.1 version that addresses some of the bugs that have been reported as well as this issue.

Fetch Art 2.0 has been working for many people prior to iTunes 7.7.1 and I've gotten feedback that will help improve the accuracy of the Album Art. 

It will be a few more days before I can solve this issue.

Check back here for updates and thanks for the great feedback!