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."
Still can't use on Linux, still not buying (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Too bad Apple doesn't make SW like their HW (Score:5, Interesting)
As a PC user, always found Apple's software beyond the OS baffling and counterintuitive, probably because they hide what they are doing. Something as simple as moving and saving songs to my phone seems like an excercise in frustration - syncing is not backing up for some reason and I always end up with duplicate songs or apps from other family members' devices. If they didn't have to hide the file system.
Amazing that a company that makes decent hardware and a decent OS and ok apps can't make decent software. Hope this update fixes some of the bullshit.
Many of the same flaws, some new ones (Score:5, Interesting)
Too many of the same old flaws are still there. For example, it insists on sorting artist rather than composer in many views. If I have an album where two different pieces have different featured soloist artists, it insists in some views as treating it as two separate albums, while other views may not. For larger works, this can be a problem, like the complete symphonies of Haydn.
Groupings remain the red-headed stepchild, poorly used, despite being the only way to logically group together movements of a larger work within an album.
It introduced a few new flaws. In playlist view, it appears trivial to turn on shuffle and start playing a random piece. In library/songs view, that no longer appears possible. Multiple testing shows it always plays the first piece of the playlist, then shuffles.
The column browser is gone, just gone inside a playlist. I have some very large playlists. I want to be able to use the column browser within that playlist. I now have to go outside the playlist to the library view and use that, hoping I remember correctly the criteria that form the smart playlists.
I never had much of a performance issue, so I can't speak to that, but the first thing I turned off was album art based views. If I wanted an album, I'd pick it from the column browser.
Major overhaul is useless: still no FLAC support (Score:0, Interesting)
and no, I'm not dual stacking flac-alac just for them. stupid retards.
But Can It Read DRM-Locked iBooks? (Score:1, Interesting)
I made the mistake of purchasing an iBook without reading the various notices saying that iBooks are only readable on iPhone, iPad, etc. Why can't iTunes read the DRM-locked iBooks so I could... read what I purchased?
I ended up pirating the book I bought just so I had a DRM-free copy of it to read. Generally I don't mind the DRM associated with iTunes (save the 'can only play videos out of iTunes bit, but that's a minor gripe), but being unable to consume entertainment I purchased from them is a shining example of DRM done wrong.
Re:CNET overviews the removed features (Score:3, Interesting)
"5. Multiple windows"
Tried this on my test machine, and it appears to be true. What The Hell. This completely wrecks my workflow for creating playlists (which was to have library open in one window, playlist in another, and to drag files from the library into the right place on the playlist).
For fnord's sake. It seems that these days every update from Apple ends up just frustrating me. Not installing this one either, just like Safari 6 (no RSS, again WTF?)
Re:CNET overviews the removed features (Score:2, Interesting)
The gapless field was removed because it is for the most part needlessly redundant. For some time now, the iTunes application and Apple's iDevices playback as gapless by default already [apple.com], regardless of whether the gapless field is checked.
In fact, for some time it's been difficult or impossible to disable gapless playback. But this is an entirely different complaint.
Re:To much selling me shit. (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess most people haven't noticed, because nobody else has said anything about it. The link you describe are so far to the right of the song listings that there's no chance of accidentally clicking it. I actually had to open it up to see if you were right, and I've used it every day since Thursday. Furthermore, I actually like it! It's a really quick way to see more songs by an artist, without having to leave your library.
Regardless of what you think about it, it's only two links on the screen at any given time. As for "buy now" on everything in the store, well...it's a store. What do you expect?
Re:To much selling me shit. (Score:2, Interesting)
I've used iTunes on a Mac.
Its just as much a design clusterfuck on Mac as it is on windows. Its a total mess.
This software was never designed. It was just programmed incrementally. When they came out with a phone, they looked around for anything they could hammer-to-fit and hung more code on it without a thought to usability.
If Apple built roads, they would saw down a couple trees to get across a creek. As traffic increased, they would add cross members, then add gravel, then pave it, then cement over that, then add side rails. But under that mess the logs would still be there rotting away.
iTunes is a professional embarrassment. That you need a music player to manage a phone is like needing a fish to maintain your motor-cycle.