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Bug #55: Can't play after connecting iPod

Kind bug
Product Synergy
When Created , updated
Status open
Reporter Jonathan del Strother
Tags no tags

Description

After connecting my iPod, iTunes switches its view to display its contents. Since you can't play directly from the iPod, Synergy's 'Play' shortcut no longer works.

If at all possible, it would be wonderful for Synergy to switch back to the previously displayed view on hitting Play.

(Incidentally - great work on version 1.5b. Nice to have things so responsive now.)

Comments

  1. Greg Hurrell

    Thanks for the bug report. Not sure what can be done to fix this in an elegant way. Synergy is merely telling iTunes to play, and I am not sure if there's any way to find out that the contents of the iPod are being displayed. Synergy would have to somehow know that the iPod was connected, and that it's contents were currently being displayed in iTunes, and then modify the behaviour of the play/pause button. Could require some fairly complex AppleScript/Apple Events, and I am loathe to do anything which would slow down the application in the other 95% of cases (where the iPod isn't connected).

    If I can figure out a way to do it though, I will. I agree this would be a good feature.

    Marking as ASSIGNED.

  2. Greg Hurrell

    Changing assignment to reflect my new email address.

    https://wincent.dev/a/news/archives/2006/05/change_of_email.php

  3. Ben Couldrey

    In addition to this 'feature' of iTunes, I find that if my iPod is connected, iTunes is not running and Synergy is idle, when using a Synergy assigned keyboard shortcut for 'play', iTunes will ask you to choose a Library to play from.

    When Synergy is not running, iTunes opens fine without asking for a Library.

  4. Greg Hurrell

    Ben, instead of using Synergy to send the "play" command, launching iTunes, try this AppleScript:

    tell application "iTunes" to playpause

    You could also try this one but I expect the result will be the same:

    tell application "iTunes" to playpause

    Basically, that's what Synergy is doing under the covers. I expect that you'll see exactly the same behaviour with the AppleScript as you do with Synergy. So that means one of two possible courses of action are available:

    1. Submit a bug report or feature request to Apple asking them to change the way iTunes works.

    2. Submit a feature request to me for me to implement a workaround (would have to open a separate request because the behaviour you're asking for is different than the one described here by the original reporter).

    Specifically, the workaround would involve the following:

    • if user clicks "play" in Synergy when iTunes is not running, launch iTunes.
    • once iTunes is launched, check to see if an iPod is connected.
    • if it is connected, explicitly switch to the master playlist
    • issue a "play" command

    All of which is a little bit brittle and complicated when all you want to do is tell iTunes to "play".

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