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One way to use iTunes when it's blocked by a progress dialog Apps
Fri, Oct 30 2009 at 7:30AM PDT • Contributed by: eableson
Have you ever had to move your iTunes library, or done any other task that popped up a lengthy progress window? If so, you know that this dialog prevents you from using iTunes, as you can't get to any of its menus or controls.

This is very annoying -- especially as I'm currently consolidating my library to a network volume over a wireless connection. Although all the songs have all been moved, iTunes is checking them all. Thus, I'm looking at being locked out of iTunes for about 10 hours.

The good news is that iTunes is extremely multi-threaded. So even if it's busy on some task that blocks the UI, you can use the iPhone's iTunes Remote application to control music playback (or connect from another copy, and play from there). It also responds to AppleScript events in this state, so you still use most alarm clock software as well.
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One way to use iTunes when it's blocked by a progress dialog
Authored by: osxpounder on Fri, Oct 30 2009 at 9:12AM PDT
Wow, this sorta suggests it might be possible to use a Dashboard widget, too, to control iTunes playback, while consolidating files... but I don't have a huge pack of files to use as a test (to tie down iTunes long enough to make a good test of this, I mean).

[ Reply to This | # ]
WARNING! - Dont use this when updating iPhone firmware
Authored by: mat79 on Fri, Oct 30 2009 at 9:22AM PDT
Dont use this trick while iTunes updates your iPhone Firmware!

I did it, and my update went bad. i had to restore my iPhone from a Backup!

(Apple Bug #6825716)

[ Reply to This | # ]
WARNING! - Dont use this when updating iPhone firmware
Authored by: johnsawyercjs on Sat, Oct 31 2009 at 1:06AM PDT
How is it even possible to run ANY application on an iPhone while iTunes, on your Mac, is updating the iPhone's firmware? During the firmware update process, you can't do anything with the iPhone--it automatically restarts into update mode, displaying just a black screen with an Apple logo, and a progress bar.

[ Reply to This | # ]
WARNING! - Dont use this when updating iPhone firmware
Authored by: mat79 on Sun, Nov 1 2009 at 7:32AM PST
I didn’t run an app on my iPhone,

I sent iTunes a „Play“ via script while it updated my iPhone

[ Reply to This | # ]
One way to use iTunes when it's blocked by a progress dialog
Authored by: mmnw on Sat, Oct 31 2009 at 3:53AM PDT
I've actually been using Salling-Clicker's iTunes controls on my Nokia Phone to achieve the same. Guess it works with everything beside iTunes' own interface ...

[ Reply to This | # ]
One way to use iTunes when it's blocked by a progress dialog
Authored by: emoody on Sat, Oct 31 2009 at 12:14PM PDT
Another solution:
ln -s /Volume/<Network_Source>/Music/iTunes /Users/<your_username>/Music/iTunes
This will make a symbolic link to the network share.
So that iTunes will not noticed that the library has moved and will not check the library.


[ Reply to This | # ]
One way to use iTunes when it's blocked by a progress dialog
Authored by: ever on Sun, Nov 1 2009 at 8:37AM PST
The transport keys on Apple's keyboards also work. This is especially useful when entering track data into Get Info windows, which also block the interface.

[ Reply to This | # ]
One way to use iTunes when it's blocked by a progress dialog
Authored by: richiesmit on Mon, Nov 2 2009 at 1:41PM PST
You can also squiggle-N and squiggle-P to go to the next and previous tracks while Get Info is up.

[ Reply to This | # ]
Modal dialog boxes
Authored by: leamanc on Sun, Nov 1 2009 at 5:57PM PST
Does anybody know why iTunes still has these modal dialog boxes in the first place? You know, the kind that we were very accustomed to in OS 9 and earlier, that don't let you do anything else until it's gone?

iTunes is the only OS X app I can think of off-hand that still exhibits this type of behavior. Is it because there's also a Windows version, and this a result of keeping the codebase of the two different platforms as close as possible? Or is it just a nasty hold-over from the classic Mac OS?

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