Apple Declutters, Speeds Up iTunes With Major Upgrade 295
Hugh Pickens writes writes "The Washington Post reports that Apple has finally unveiled their new version of iTunes, overhauling its look and feel and integrating it more closely with the company's iCloud Internet- storage service with one of the biggest upgrades Apple has made to the program with 400 million potential users since its debut more than a decade ago. The new design of iTunes moves away from the spreadsheet format that Apple has featured since its debut and adds more art and information about musicians, movies and television shows. It also adds recommendation features so users can find new material. According to David Pogue of the NY Times Apple has fixed some of the dumber design elements that have always plagued iTunes. 'For years, the store was represented only as one item in the left-side list, lost among less important entries like Radio and Podcasts. Now a single button in the upper-right corner switches between iTunes's two personalities: Store (meaning Apple's stuff) and Library (meaning your stuff).' Unfortunately, Apple hasn't fixed the Search box. As before, you can't specify in advance what you're looking for: an app, a song, a TV show, a book. Whatever you type into the Search box finds everything that matches, and you can't filter it until after you search. It feels like a two-step process when one should do. 'Improvements in visual navigation and a more logical arrangement of tools are good, but for me the biggest positive within iTunes 11 remains its vastly improved performance on all three Macs I've tested it on, including a relatively ancient five-year-old MacBook,' writes Jonny Evans."
To much selling me shit. (Score:1, Insightful)
The interface spends too much time trying to sell me shit. I just want to play my music and podcasts.
Re:Too bad Apple doesn't make SW like their HW (Score:0, Insightful)
Well, the OS is of course BSD unix, and has not been made by Apple.
Re:Too bad Apple doesn't make SW like their HW (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because it's not designed for the exact opposite. It's designed so that the user shouldn't have to "move and save songs to their phone". iTunes should just take care of it for them.
It sounds like you're using a single user account on your computer for multiple users. Rather than expect every application on your system invent their own ways of dealing with multiple users, you should just have a user account for every user on your computer.
Granted, iTunes is by no means perfect, and the sharp corners show through in some cases, but if you're looking at an Apple product and thinking "I can't do X manually", it's probably because you have an XY problem [stackoverflow.com], and they are solving X while you are asking about Y. X in this case being listening to your music on your phone and Y being manually putting them there.
Re:Too bad Apple doesn't make SW like their HW (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple makes great software; its just that they make the worst Windows software you could ever use. iLife is half the reason why I was using a Mac for so many years. General rule of thumb for all Apple software: .exe, it will be slow, bloated, and unintuitive .app, it will be fast, slick, and makes sense
If it ends in
If it ends in
Guest accounts (Score:2, Insightful)
you should just have a user account for every user on your computer.
Including everybody who might visit and use the computer? A lot of people have only one guest account.
Re:Still can't use on Linux, still not buying (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would Apple worry about the 5 Linux users?
Because there are a lot more than five. Android, which uses the same kernel as GNU/Linux, is beating iOS on phones, neck and neck on 7-10" tablets, and about to beat it handily on game consoles this coming April unless Apple gets apps onto Apple TV pronto.
Re:To much selling me shit. (Score:5, Insightful)
are you looking at the same iTunes 11 I am? in music mode, it just shows me a player on the top bar with simple controls(Previous track, play, next track), a volume slider and search.
Then a mode sensitive bar where I can switch between various types of media, different categories in those types of media, and any devices connected. Then a simple interface for picking items from that category.
Compare that to the default WinAmp install which is kind of a bloody mess.
Re:uhh excuse me but wtf (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sad as much as stupid because Apple offers a deep discount on DRM-free repurchases of tracks previously purchased with FairPlay DRM.
Wow, a discount for redownloading an already purchased track? How magnanimous. /sarcasm
iTunes Plus upgrade (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Guest accounts (Score:4, Insightful)
Why are you syncing a visitor's phone with your iTunes library?
Because the visitor wanted to charge his phone, and iTunes "helpfully" started. Or because I want to share one song with a given visitor.
Re:To much selling me shit. (Score:4, Insightful)
What the fuck are you on? How is it so tightly integrated like IE? Does another music player not work if you delete iTunes? Does deleting iTunes causes your computer not to run, can't install updates and any number of OS essential tasks to stop working?
Jesus, so you don't like it, but do you have to throw in all the lies as well?
Re:Still can't use on Linux, still not buying (Score:3, Insightful)
I was looking at an artists website, and clicked on the link to buy an album. It too me to the iTunes website. OK I thought, I'll try it. Except that I couldn't. To actually buy the album it said I had to do so through the iTunes software. Whoops. I guess I won't be buying anything from iTunes at all then.
You know, 'cause I run GNU/Linux.
It doesn't matter how fast the software is, if I am required to use it to buy shit, I ain't buying it. Websites work as store front ends for many other people, so why not Apple?
Did you contact the artist and let him know that? If not, then your 'vote with your wallet' ballot was not submitted.
Re:To much selling me shit. (Score:2, Insightful)
No, I certainly wouldn't complain if they, say, made the device act as a USB drive so I could just copy the damn files or use whatever media player/manager I wanted to. But fanboys always try to dismiss everyone else as fanboys first, like a kind of pre-emptive strike.
Re:Too bad Apple doesn't make SW like their HW (Score:4, Insightful)
iTunes does actually support manual syncing. It is the only option if you have multiple devices and want different songs on each of them.
Umm, no. Each device has its own unique sync settings. If you dont want to have different itunes libraries for everyone, you can still sync different playlists/albums/artists/songs to each device automatically from one library.
Android lets you have multiple Google accounts associated with each device so you can have a family one for app purchases and then everyone also has their own individual ones for email and other personal stuff.
Ignoring the potential licensing/copyright infringement angle (I believe Apple considers sharing within your family to be just fine; hence the existence of the Home Sharing feature) your Apple devices can in fact have separate AppleIDs for app downloads and email/messaging/iCloud. You can even use multiple different accounts for the store itself, though you have to go to settings and log out/in to switch accounts (only when you want to buy an app for the account you're not currently logged in with; updates don't care what account you're logged in with). My mom gets access to all my apps this way, while she also has her own account for when she wants to buy something I don't already have (so that I don't get charged for silly sudoku apps I won't ever use).
Re:Too bad Apple doesn't make SW like their HW (Score:4, Insightful)
Stuff like "sync songs I haven't listened to in the past week" or "sync 7GB of my top-rated songs" or "sync everything I've listened to over 100 times, and fill the rest of the space with songs I haven't rated yet" or any AND/NOT combination of criteria you can imagine: "sync all my 4-star and higher rated songs, and sync any 3-star songs I haven't listened to in the past month, and sync everything in my favorites list regardless, do not sync anything I've listened to more than 200 times, and then fill the remaining space on my device with songs I haven't rated yet".
Every time you plug in your phone to charge in the evening, you can automatically end up with a new selection of music perfectly tailored to you with no effort whatsoever despite the fact that you couldn't fit it all on the device at once.