Apple releases redesigned iTunes 11 with iCloud integration for Mac, Windows - Page 2

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tallest Skil 

 

1) I can't find how to make album artwork bigger. I enjoyed large album artwork before.

 

Click on the small artwork icon in the play bar at the top centre? This brings up a re-sizeable window with the artwork and play controls. Is that what you meant or have I misunderstood?

Originally Posted by Splash-reverse 
This is not mobile app, you can always uninstall

How? iTunes is required by OS X. And good luck reverting it.

Originally Posted by silversquonk 
Click on the small artwork icon in the play bar at the top centre? This brings up a re-sizeable window with the artwork and play controls. Is that what you meant or have I misunderstood?

That is so weird. Why do they do that? They do it for music! What is that supposed to b—I'm getting off track.

No, I mean in the iTunes window itself, you used to be able to resize the artwork of music, movies, TV shows, etc. I can't find how to do that anymore. But thanks for the help!

Originally Posted by SolipsismX 
…I just won't use iTunes as my media hub. Instead I use the Finder and play everything via QT with the Perian plugin.

 

What happens when Perian finally stops working for you? AVIs already don't play for me; I only keep Perian around if I ever have an FLV to play (because the Flash Projector won't even play FLVs).

HandBrake's a-callin'…

Ah, old TV, screwing with my numbers. You're right about that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ghostface147 

You can click on songs and it will list your columns.  I assume that's what you mean.  

Cool. Just to be clear about what I mean. My current setup has a column to the left with Music, Store, Playlists, etc. with album artwork underneath. Then I have panes in the main part of the window where I have Column Browser's Artists and Albums on top, and a list of songs below. Can I arrange it pretty similarly?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tallest Skil 

No, I mean in the iTunes window itself, you used to be able to resize the artwork of music, movies, TV shows, etc. I can't find how to do that anymore. But thanks for the help!

Sorry - hadn't realised that player window was there in previous versions - just shows how you stop exploring once you're used to something!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gazoobee 

Seems really confusing to me so far in terms of showing what's in the cloud, what's not etc. I think a lot of users will have trouble with this release.
When I log into my account for instance my "purchased" list shows nothing (!) but clicking on my local library shows everything that's been purchased since it's actually showing a blended view of local and cloud based stuff.
When I click "videos" again it shows none of my cloud purchases, but shows a blended view of what's locally on my computer and the videos that happen to be loaded on my iPad which is connected to the computer. These videos (the ones on the iPad) are presented with an iCloud icon supposedly indicating they are in the cloud, when in fact they are not, they are just on my iPad.
Waaay confusing so far.

Actually your post is pretty damned confusing... Not sure at what point you're talking about your desktop/laptop library or your iPad library, or both, or neither, or the cloud?

Quote:

Originally Posted by drewyboy 

So here are some of your questions answered.

1. For those wanting no iCloud, go to View -> Hide ___ in the Cloud

- It can be on/off for each category (music, movies, etc.)

 

2. It is not "confusing" know what it's in the cloud or not... there's an image of a CLOUD. If you have any content that is partially downloaded (1 song of 12) on your computer, it'll show up as local but when you open the cd it'll show the local content in brighter text than iCloud content (dulled out).

 

3. The app is not "blurry", don't be ridiculous. Unless you have retina(can't vouch), you're messing w/ yourself.

 

4. For playlists... again, click View -> Show Sidebar

 

Seriously people, I've spent 60 seconds w/ this new iTunes and figured out all of your "problems"... jeeze, how about you LOOK for some things.

 

Edit: this iTunes is showing up at 64bit in Activity Monitor :)

Thanks for the tip 4!

I am using on 15 Retina - and as for this blurry complaint i read about sometimes..... sometimes i look at a regular screen and I think it looks sharper, its nice when you can see the pixels since they help delineate the image!! /s

Anyone else notice how the sidebar (when turned on) brings color back? Hope they bring back Finder sidebar colors in the next OSX update. It still takes me longer than it should to recognize stuff. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton 

Should I wait until 11.0.1?

no

Is anyone else having trouble accessing their purchased movies and tv shows?

I'm getting the following error:

"You do not have any purchased movies available to download"

"You do not have any purchased TV shows available to download"

Thanks in advance.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aeberhar 

Is this finally a 64-bit binary?

My iTunes 10 was already 64-bit, but yeah, this is 64-bit as well.

Constant skipping with local + AirPlay

Just upgraded to 11.

Now getting constant skipping while playing to local computer (MacBook) and AirPlay at the same time. Thanks Apple.

iTunes 11 Issues - Up Next and iCloud features

I for one was eagerly looking for two improvements to iTunes anticipated to come with iTunes 11: Up Next feature and better iCloud/iTunes Match operability.  Notes so far:

Up Next - Apple still doesn't seem to have gotten this right.  iTunes has long been the only major music player that doesn't support a queuing feature - instead of immediately playing a song, album or playlist, add that song, album or playlist to the end of the "now playing" selection.  Up Next promises to change that, and does to a certain extent.  Now, you can view (partially) the present queue by selecting the Up Next icon in the playing window.  And you can add a new song or album to that Up Next list, in two different ways: right clicking and selection "Play Next" or right clicking and selecting "Add to Up Next".  There are two problems with this feature: First, there doesn't appear to be a difference between "Play Next" and "Add to Up Next" - they both simply add the selection to the head of the Up Next queue.  One would think that "Play Next" would add to the front of the queue, while "Add to Up Next" would add the selection to the end of the "Up Next" queue.  As it is, there is no discernible reason to have both of these options, as they appear to do the exact same thing. Second, the pop-up window that shows the "Up Next" queue doesn't show the full queue, only the next 15 or so songs.  If the present queue is longer than that, it won't show the additional songs until the top of the queue clears out.  This may be related to why it's not possible to make the "Add to Up Next" function work as an "add to end of queue" function.  In any event, this seems to be yet another missed opportunity to implement this long-missing feature.

iCloud/iTunes Match Operability - This feature has long seemed unstable at best and at worst leads to losing songs and metadata, including album artwork, etc.  In some ways, iTunes 11 does improve this - items all seem to appear in the correct locations, and are cross referenced in different but mainly better ways.  It may take some getting used to, but it does appear better, with one big exception: I experienced a major glitch when I went to delete what appeared to be a duplicated song from an album, in that not only the individual song that I selected was deleted, but the entire album and all music from that artist was also deleted.  Because it was deleted from iCloud, it's been deleted from all devices that sync to that account. Not only was this a fairly extreme error on the part of the software, there is no Undo function, and apparently no ability to retrieve the deleted items.  My only hope of retrieving it (it was not purchased through iTunes) is to find it on a device to which it was originally ripped, and hope that iCloud/iTunes Match hasn't deleted those original files.  Notas this a fairly extreme error on the part of the software, there is no Undo function, and apparently no ability to retrieve the deleted items.  This is a pretty dramatic failing, and could cause quite a stir among users if not addressed immediately.

Anyone else seeing these issues?  Also, any word on whether the Up Next feature (after it is hopefully fixed) gets rolled out to iOS?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spamboy 

 

Cool. Just to be clear about what I mean. My current setup has a column to the left with Music, Store, Playlists, etc. with album artwork underneath. Then I have panes in the main part of the window where I have Column Browser's Artists and Albums on top, and a list of songs below. Can I arrange it pretty similarly?

I guess I don't really get what you mean, but this is how mine is setup for the moment using iTunes 11.  

Ghostface:

OK, all upgraded. My old setup is below, and can be configured the same way in 11 except for the album art in the bottom left. Now it's tiny and appears next to the song at the top. Thanks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spamboy 

OK, here's my setup:

 

 

Thanks for indulging me. Your answers have been perfect. I guess I don't have any choice but to upgrade anyhow. Thanks again.

Ah yes.  I saw that look when clicking around.  However I didn't see anything that allows the album art on the bottom left.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spamboy 

Ghostface:

OK, all upgraded. My old setup is below, and can be configured the same way in 11 except for the album art in the bottom left. Now it's tiny and appears next to the song at the top. Thanks.

 

Yup, this column browser is still there. The only thing missing seems to be the album cover window for the selected/playing item. At least I can't find it.

It's still there if you go to View > Show Sidebar.

Wonder if the Dock Popup is back again, but hidden. I'll wait for the next update to Secrets and see.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SolipsismX 


Yes!

It already was...

no scrubbing in mini-player = a downgrade in my book

Observations:

Cover Flow does seem to be gone but a version of it lives in the iTunes Store.  Strange that you cannot control it with gestures, only mouse clicks.

The ability to have multiple iTunes windows open appears to be gone.  This is especially troublesome if you had a large library or were managing lots of playlists.

The UI overall is quite pleasant.  Response times seem to be speedy enough, even on the five year old MacBook Pro I tried it on.

No Leopard support (not sure if 10.7 had it either).

There are still some UI bugs that shouldn't be here.  I've seen misdrawn pages in the iTunes Store that shouldn't have happened (clicking another page and returning fixed the problem).  And I've seen in the new Album view if you ask for more information from the iTunes Store for like music, the column header sometimes comes in from the data element in question, not the proper headers of "Top Songs", "Top Albums", "Recommended Songs".  Instead it says "DI6.INTHESTORE.TOPSONGS" or "DI6.INTHESTORE.TOPALBUMS". It's hard to reproduce but I've seen it more than once.  I like the Album view though....very iOSish.

Songs in iCloud stream instead of downloading locally.  If you want it local, click the Cloud icon, much like iOS.

There is no more "Download Album Artwork".  This makes sense because if the iTunes Store has it and it's not cached locally, it will just get it now and not bother the user with having to do it manually.  But you still have to turn this feature on in "Preferences->Store".  I guess this is for people who roll their ownn artwork since iTunes might override it if it also has something in the cloud.

My elderly Windows 2008 R2 box stores my main iTunes household library including all 20K lossless files, 600 ripped and purchased movies and 1000+ TV episodes (half of which are cartoons from various DVD collections I've purchased).  I'm curious to see how the performance of that will be.  So far just doing this from iCloud is pretty nice.

One more note:  I've seen the same glitch of the interface returning what is clearly a data element title instead of what the user should see on my iPhone as well in the App Store app, specifically with the Updates icon.  Oddly, it just cleared itself up while I was typing.  Very very strange.

Since this just happened on my iPhone, I'm guessing this is a server side bug.

You can't always go back to an earlier version of iTunes, because sometimes the format of the iTunes Library file changes (for example, going from iTunes 9 back to 8 was a big problem). Before installing the new version, make a copy of the "iTunes LIbrary" and "iTunes Library.xml" files just in case.

Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton 
It's 68000 code and it runs in a Mac OS 9 virtual box.

There's already a team working to reverse-engineer it. They've been waiting for just this occasion since Classic was discontinued…

Can you change the size of the app text in preferences?  Old iTunes text is too small for me.

I found what I can only think is a bug. If I go to the Apple Store and search for "Buddy Guy" everything comes up as I would expect it to. If I search for "Beatles", I get a bunch of coded lists (e.g. SF6.SearchPage.song.....D16.Lockup.ArtistAndAlbum..., etc...). Beatle songs are interspersed between the codes, but they are mostly in a very, very, long column and not at all formatted the way the songs, then albums are for "Buddy Guy". I randomly get some with the "Guy" format and some with the "Beatles" format when I put in other artists.

Maybe it's all the acid the Beatles did in their "Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds" days?

Can anyone else verify if this is what they are seeing?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spamboy 

Ghostface:

OK, all upgraded. My old setup is below, and can be configured the same way in 11 except for the album art in the bottom left. Now it's tiny and appears next to the song at the top. Thanks.

 

You can can back some of that by simply clicking the cover art in the top display, resize it and place it next to the iTunes window. Might be impractical on 11" and 13" laptops and is certainly less elegant. This does not survive a restart of iTunes but then there is little reason to ever quit iTunes except when you need to restart the whole OS for some reason. And this mini album art window does remember its size and position through restarts, ie, after a restart of iTunes just click on it and it re-appears.

For small laptops you can also place it in the corner where it used to be as separate window floating on top. Naturally every interaction with iTunes sends it again to the background but a single click into the album art at the top restores its.

Yes, these workarounds probably suck on small laptop, in particular since there was no real practical reason for Apple to remove it. They just felt they needed to de-clutter iTunes (which everybody was asking for, still they could have made that an option like much of the old UI).

Quote:

Originally Posted by skavanag@yahoo.com 

I found what I can only think is a bug. If I go to the Apple Store and search for "Buddy Guy" everything comes up as I would expect it to. If I search for "Beatles", I get a bunch of coded lists (e.g. SF6.SearchPage.song.....D16.Lockup.ArtistAndAlbum..., etc...). Beatle songs are interspersed between the codes, but they are mostly in a very, very, long column and not at all formatted the way the songs, then albums are for "Buddy Guy". I randomly get some with the "Guy" format and some with the "Beatles" format when I put in other artists.

Maybe it's all the acid the Beatles did in their "Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds" days?

 

Can anyone else verify if this is what they are seeing?

That's the same bug I saw.  I've also seen the bug on my iPhone in the iTunes Store app so I gather this is a server side problem (and not iTunes per se) that I'm sure that Apple has identified and are trying to fix right now.  I work in support for a larger enterprise software company so I imagine that some people like me are on a conference call right now with some pretty peeved Apple engineers trying to work through the issue before it becomes widely reported as another "Apple failure".

My only complaint so far is in the older iTunes when playing songs in your playlist the artwork would show in the bottom left corner in around a 300x400 box. I really liked seeing that cover-art there, that seems to be gone. Now there is a tiny 25x25 or so cover-art box on top, but that is no good and too small, you can click on that to enlarge but its not permanent and out of the way like it was before. If anyone can find a way to return the bigger artwork permanently let me know. Thank you.

Secondly, maybe it would be nice to be able to slow down or turn the rotating carousel off on the iTunes store pages. Before they just kind of faded in and out and moved down but it was less noticeable. With the carousel, now it takes your attention away from viewing the front music pages and distracting.

Everything else seems fine, and I like it - overall it is an improvement - to me!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ireland 

no

OK THEN. LET'S DOWNLOAD THIS PUPPY!!!