beaTunes News

Saturday, May 24, 2008

UnsatisfiedLinkError: beaTunes, Leopard and Java 6

beaTunes LogoA little while ago, Apple finally released Java 6 for Leopard. Unfortunately, the 64bit Java 6 does not support QuickTime for Java anymore. Why? QuickTime for Java depends on Carbon, for which Apple is dropping support in 64bit environments.

What does this mean for beaTunes? In the long term we will move away from the QuickTime for Java API on OS X. We already utilize CoreAudio in parts of the application, which will not be affected by Apple's discontinued support for Carbon based APIs. We will replace the remaining code that is still using QuickTime.

Are users affected by this right now? Yes, unfortunately they are. As beaTunes works quite nicely with Java 6 on Windows, the current OS X version of beaTunes (1.2.9) will also start with Java 6, if it is installed. And this will fail due to the reasons mentioned above with an UnsatisfiedLinkError. To fix this, one needs to edit the file Contents/Info.plist in the beaTunes application bundle and replace the existing JVMVersion string with the value 1.5* (instead of 1.5+)

We will release an update next week, which contains this fix.

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Friday, May 16, 2008

SynchStep is public!

A little while ago, we pointed you to SynchStep, which back then was still in private beta. As of yesterday, SynchStep is public.

From the press release:

"SynchStep is a fun and easy experimental way to plays songs from your music library that match your pace. That means when you're out struttin your stuff down "My Favorite Street", every step you take lands in-time with a drum hit, a bass slap, a piano chord. It's kind of like being in your own music video, where your your music becomes the soundtrack to your life. Ya, it's just like a your own music video, except you don't have to pay 3 hundo to some smug director and let his smarmy crew use your bathroom."

To support this special project, tagtraum industries has created a nifty little plugin for beaTunes, which automatically writes the BPM information into the comment field, so that it can be easily read by the SynchStep application on your iPhone or iPod Touch. You can get a special version of beaTunes from the SynchStep site that has the plugin already installed.

For those of you interested in how to write a plugin for beaTunes, check out the source code and email us any question you might have.

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