TuneUp

Macs are solid machines, but just like their owners they have a tendency to get lethargic as they age. Launching and switching programs takes longer, simple tasks become arduous, and the dreaded beach ball of doom appears more often. The Operating System just starts to feel crufty, and can get worse over time. I see these issues in my IT consulting business regularly.

You may be asking, why does this happen? There are many reasons, but some are more common than others. Sometimes your hard disk (or SSD) gets too full and interferes with normal computer operations. Crashes or misbehaving programs can corrupt the disk directory or application cache files. Remnants from old software may still be running behind the scenes, or you don’t have enough RAM to deal with your OS and workflow.

OK, so is there some sort of tune up or spring cleaning you can do that sorts it out? Your tech always tells you to just reboot the computer, but there’s got to be more than that. The good news: yes, there are some things you can do. And, perhaps, adopt some more efficient computing practices for yourself along the way.

There’s not many people out there who can claim that their iTunes library is in pristine shape. In fact, more people will admit that it’s a bit of a mess – or even a chaotic one. That’s where TuneUp Version 3 can come to the rescue…no matter how messy your iTunes is. And Cult of Mac Deals has it for only $29.99 for a limited time.

Tired of scrolling through endless songs from burned CDs from years ago and having no idea what each one is because the tracks didn’t quite register with iTunes? Wish you could have more cover art in your collection? Is your iTunes Library teeming with duplicate tracks? This Cult of Mac Deals offer will magically eliminate what ails your iTunes because TuneUp transforms your music collection. Automagically™.

With over 12 million downloads, TuneUp is the best iTunes companion app in the industry, and in a just a few clicks your entire music collection will be fresh and clean. And Cult of Mac Deals has it for only $30!

Tired of scrolling through endless songs from burned CDs from years ago and having no idea what each one is because the tracks didn’t quite register with iTunes? Wish you could have more cover art in your collection? Is your iTunes Library teeming with duplicate tracks? This Cult of Mac Deals offer will magically eliminate what ails your iTunes because TuneUp transforms your music collection. Automagically™.

With over 12 million downloads, TuneUp is the best iTunes companion app in the industry, and in a just a few clicks your entire music collection will be fresh and clean. And for a limited time, Cult of Mac Deals has it for only $30!

Tired of scrolling through endless songs from burned CDs from years ago and having no idea what each one is because the tracks didn’t quite register with iTunes? Wish you could have more cover art in your collection? Is your iTunes Library teeming with duplicate tracks? This Cult of Mac Deals offer will magically eliminate what ails your iTunes because TuneUp transforms your music collection. Automagically™.

With over 12 million downloads, TuneUp is the best iTunes companion app in the industry, and in a just a few clicks your entire music collection will be fresh and clean. And for a limited time, Cult of Mac Deals has it for only $30!

We’ve had many deals of note here at Cult of Mac for quite some time, but this is one is “noteworthy” in the most literal sense of the word!

The Ultimate Music Mac App Bundle offers 8 top music mac applications (including TuneUp Media Lifetime) for a fraction of the regular price. You’d normally pay $355 for all of these apps, but Cult of Mac Deals has it for you for a mere $39!

We’ve had many deals of note here at Cult of Mac, but this is one is “noteworthy” in the most literal sense of the word!

This Mac App Bundle offers 8 top mac applications (including TuneUp Media Lifetime, T-Pain Engine, Boom, and MegaSeg DJ) for a fraction of the regular price. For starters, I mean, who doesn’t have a messy list of songs in iTunes? Use TuneUp Lifetime to keep them organized and categorized by name, genre, and artist automagically, forever!

You’d normally pay $355 for all of these apps, but Cult of Mac Deals has it for you for a mere $39!

We’ve had many deals of note here at Cult of Mac for quite some time, but this is one is “noteworthy” in the most literal sense of the word!

The Ultimate Music Mac App Bundle offers 8 top music mac applications (including TuneUp Media Lifetime) for a fraction of the regular price. You’d normally pay $355 for all of these apps, but Cult of Mac Deals has it for you for a mere $39!

We’ve had many deals of note here at Cult of Mac for quite some time, but this is one is “noteworthy” in the most literal sense of the word!

The Ultimate Music Bundle offers 8 top music applications (including TuneUp) for a fraction of the regular price. You’d normally pay $355 for all of these apps, but Cult of Mac Deals has it for you for a mere $39!

MacHeist today announced that it was adding two more apps, TuneUp and MoneyBag to its fantastically priced bundle, and is extending the sale of the bundle for three more days. That’s right, you now have the opportunity to purchase $754 worth of great Mac apps for $29, along with giving your choice from the list of MacHeist charities a 25% cut. The sale will end, they say, on Monday.

So far, the MacHeist 4 Bundle has raised close to $234,000 for the charities it benefits, including Action Against Hunger, The Nature Conservancy, American Foundation for AIDS, Save the Children, Friends of the Earth, Global Fund for Women, Direct Relief International, Cancer Research Institute, Humane Society International, and the World Wildlife Fund.

My iTunes collection is a mess. Ripped CDs, music transferred through home sharing, obscure collections, and then there is the classical and opera that I enjoy. Gee I wish there was a way to fix all the “Track 1 by Unknown Artist” music that I have. And duplicates. Yeah I have some when I pulled in whole albums but already had a few singles. I’m not a huge cover art fan, but gray boxes are boring. I wish I could fix them…

Oh wait—Cleanup Your iTunes With TuneUp: Clean & Organize Your iTunes Music Collection in Just a Few Clicks

P.S. My iTunes is still a mess…maybe I need to get my stuff together…

I’m willing to bet that your iTunes library is a mess. You ripped CDs from your collection and you’ve got a lot songs that are labeled: “Track 3” from “Unknown Artist.” And I don’t even want to get into cover art.

Today is the day to make a stand. Today is the day you decide that you will not have an iTunes library you’re embarrassed to show your friends (sorry it can’t help with that Yanni collectors edition you have stashed away). Today is the day you fix your iTunes library with TuneUp.

Today’s deal is is for one of the top iTunes plugins and you can get it now for just $30.

TuneUp is the #1 add-on for iTunes. It cleans up song metadata like missing album info or misspelled names. It also delivers related music videos, and alerts you when favorite artists are playing in town.

It’s easy to use and can do a quick job of cleaning up the messiest library. But it’s not perfect: songs can be mislabeled and there’s been complaints of bugs and crashes. TuneUp costs $39.95/yr or $49.95 one time fee for a bundle. TuneUp also offers a la carte pricing for individual products. A free demo cleans up to 50 songs and removes 25 duplicates.

Yesterday I got a chance to talk to Gabe Adiv, founder and CEO of TuneUp Media,company behind the plug-in.

He gave me some interesting statistics about iTunes and listening habits, as well as thoughts about Apple moving music into the cloud.

UPDATE: I totally screwed this one up. When my contact, TuneUp founder Raza Zaidi, told me iTunes in the cloud has only 20% of the all the music listed in Gracenote’s big database of music, I interpreted it to mean that the upcoming iTunes Match service would mirror only a fraction of most music libraries. What I failed to realize was that 20% of music in iTunes represents the most popular 20%. The remaining 80% is all the music in the long tail. So when Apple rolls out iTunes Match in the fall, it will indeed likely mirror most music libraries, just as Apple claims. In a clarifying note, Zaidi says matches will likely be 95% or higher. In addition, the Get Album Artwork feature in iTunes isn’t powered by Gracenote, as the post implies. Sorry for the mistakes. Teach me to post before my morning coffee.

When iTunes Match goes live in September, Apple promises to instantaneously match any of the tracks in your iTunes library to the iCloud… as long as it already has your music in its mega music library. What Apple hasn’t said is that as much of 80% of your music might not be recognized by iTunes Match… and the only way to get that music into the iCloud will be to spend days manually uploading gigabytes at a time.

One of the big questions about Apple’s upcoming iTunes Match is how the online music service will handle songs acquired from non-standard sources, like analog LPs, or yes, file-sharing networks.

Coming this fall, iTunes Match will scan your iTunes library and make available in the cloud all the songs you’ve purchased online or ripped from CDs.

But Apple hasn’t explained what will happen with songs encoded from sources like tapes or LPs; or those couple of tracks you accidentally downloaded from a file-sharing network and forgot to delete. Will iTunes Match reject these songs or make them available?

In theory, the system should recognize most digitzed music. Apple has explicitly said it will not discriminate based on source, and someone likely ripped the songs from CD before sharing them with the world.

We’ve found a way for you to check how iTunes Match will treat your music library before Apple makes it public.