First look: Apple's overhauled iTunes 11 - Page 4

How about:  Sync; Transfer and Backup?

I have not figured out how to find these three functions and I wonder if they are no longer present.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JupiterDoc 

How about:  Sync; Transfer and Backup?

I have not figured out how to find these three functions and I wonder if they are no longer present.

It is still there like it was before.  Go to the "View" menu and select "Show Side Bar" to see your devices the old fashion way.

If you're running iOS 6 you can sync and backup directly with iCloud. No need to connect to your computer.

Enjoy!

Quote:

Originally Posted by AppleSauce007 

 

You can still see your playlists the old fashion way in the old "Side Bar" view

 

This is an awesomely flexible iTunes, Keep playing with it and just grows on you.

Oh the irony..lol ;)

I've already sent feedback to show the playlists button in each Library category that has playlists. They do this on the Apple TV, so this should be a no brainer. In the meantime, I'll just work in the 'Music' view for video playlists, as I like the left pane left in Context mode rather than the old sidebar.

Sidenote: Anyone else find it funny that the Feedback link still doesn't have a version for iTunes 11?

'+' button for Playlists is on the left but the drag & drop list appears on the right.  How is this logical!
 

I like some of the changes but the one annoyance is the destandardization of "tabs".

Why aren't tabs drawn such that they communicate the fact that they are a "tab". With the newly destrandardized widgets, there is no longer a visual distinction between a button and a tab. In fact, we don't even have a word to describe the bastardized tabs... because they are no longer drawn as tabs.

Think for a second how you would verbally walk someone through using the interface... would you use the word "tab"? Would they know what you're talking about if you did?

Come on apple, stylish interfaces are nice but they don't have to come at the expense of usability. Tabs could have been given a fresh look without ruining their distinctive, self-explanatory visual representation.

Edit: This creeping interface destandardization started a while ago but I'm just now getting around to ranting about it. There's no reason tabs can't be visually distinct from action buttons.

I was astonished that there is no visual differentiation here:

ONE of these needs to be darker or colored or SOMETHING.

Has anyone taken advantage of the Mastered For iTune music? If so, any comments?

Originally Posted by DJRumpy 

[...]

Edit: You can also just delete an iCloud download by selecting the item, and holding down Alt + Delete and selecting the option to delete the iCloud download if you just don't want or need that download to show up anywhere. Just remember this will probably remove it from all devices.

Sounds similar to using Option-Delete to permanently delete items selected in (smart) playlists.

I'd sure like to know how long will current iCloud items will be retained before deleting local copies.

I'll also send Apple some feedback about Playlists enhancements.  Likely I'll prefer normally keeping the traditional sidebar hidden, too.

[OT:Is there a way to disable AI's WYSIWYG editor?  It's way more interfering than useful for me while composing/editing inline quoted replies.]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rbalmer 

I'm sorry but I just don't like this update. I know they are trying to make it more like the iPad and iPhone version but the reality is there needs to be a difference. iPad and iPhone are used for simply browsing and enjoying your media and for that, sure iTunes 11 is great BUT the majority of people who use iTunes on their computers are also using it to organize their media and for that it is a nightmare. I feel like apple focused this new iTunes on people who get every single piece of media they have from the iTunes Store, and that simple just isn't the case. The artist view is terrible, tv shows eliminates all your shows artwork except the one you've chosen as your grid cover, there is no reason they had to get rid of the slider to enlarge your icons (I have about 17 different tv series and the rest of my screen is wasted space... I want to SEE the covers) & why is it that every time they release a new iTunes they get rid of the grey background in grid mode?!? Try spending 30 mins at night organizing your music with that bright white and see how your eyes feel. I don't care about the animations and colors and having a synopsis for every movie and tv shows, I just want to organize my media, have it look good and have it easy to go through.
I'm sure a lot of people are enjoying this and I wish I was you right now because I am an apple fanatic, but for me, this new iTunes looks real pretty but is a huge step back in organizing my media.

The new iTunes 11 can be configured to look and behave like to older versions.  The media organization exactly the same.  It just has a different default presentation.

Try View->Show Sidebar and them press Songs across the top.  Boom!  There is your old iTunes.

This is an awesome piece of software.  Enjoy!

Quote:

Originally Posted by DJRumpy 

So far my biggest gripe is the lack of easy access to Playlists, which has prompted me to turn the sidebar back on. If someone uses iTunes to focus on one specific type of media, this will vastly simplify their experience. They made an odd choice of hiding the playlist button for all except for music. That button then in turns shows all playlists for Music, Movies, Podcasts, etc. What they should have done is logically shown a playlist button if you have playlists for the associated media type.

Which of the five tabs (currently visible in the Movies section) would you have sacrificed for a Playlists tab? And can you make the argument that more people actually create playlists out of movies than would use the tab button you just sacrificed?

Quote:

Originally Posted by noirdesir 

Which of the five tabs (currently visible in the Movies section) would you have sacrificed for a Playlists tab? And can you make the argument that more people actually create playlists out of movies than would use the tab button you just sacrificed?

LOL..is there some shortage of horizontal space? Seriously?

Anyone else notice the lack of a direct link to Ringtones or Tones under Music on iTunes 11?  I can "search" for ringtones and tones on the music section but its harder to find & there's no longer a category for ringtones or tones even when searching.  I'm curious if its just me and or why this is the case.

Sure there's a tone of ringtone apps out there to generate my own ringtones but I'm a busy guy and sometimes I just want a freaking ringtone in a hurry, and I'm just finding it harder than crap to find them in iTunes 11....

Chris Powers

Originally Posted by rbalmer 
iPad and iPhone are used for simply browsing and enjoying your media…

Really? I find that the people who forcibly want to limit what iDevices "can do" are the ones who don't even do such things at all.

In what way? Just the brightness?

But why should they have to make considerations for anyone else? Think about it. iTunes started as software for people with their own physical libraries. There WAS no store. Now it's designed as software for people without physical libraries; not a single CD or tape to their name. It's called progress.

While I agree with all of these, none of them have anything to do with it beyond how it looks; not how it works. They don't "always get rid of the black background". They never have before. Someone said his was stuck on it in iTunes 11, which means it's still there in some form.

I'm sure Secrets (or 11.0.1) will fix things.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike Fix 

It's iTunes for children and old people.

   So which of the two best describes you?

Quote:

Originally Posted by noirdesir 

Have you been using fullscreen mode with other applications in Lion or Mountain Lion? There so many things that are hidden in fullscreen mode that a lot of people would not like use fullscreen mode for iTunes. Do you want to take the maximise function away from all those people to have one green disk less in the UI?

    I'm one of those people who do not like full screen in several apps.  Aperture is one.  I don't use it enough to remember all the key commands and when you go to full screen a lot is removed from the GUI.  With that being said though I like the idea of full-screen and I'm sure it's a useful feature for heavy-users.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 2oh1 

For the record, there's a LOT to like in the new iTunes, but I can't help thinking they should have held off until January 1st to finish polishing it off.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CGJ 

 

What I do like, however, is the album view. I really like the way iTunes takes the colour scheme of the album artwork, it looks great. I only wish they'd group the album into one, though, rather than separating one album into multiple pieces if there is a different artist. I have over 7 different 'NOW' album lists, yet in reality it's one album.

It looks great but is of little use to people like me that have tons of individual songs (ie, only one song per album). I can go with the flow and keep the sidebar hidden but in the end I will always go back to list view for all categories. Once you have to scroll, list views just reduce the amount of necessary scrolling considerably.

Not really my cup of tea. Rightly or wrongly, using web technologies in a product makes it feel cheap. I think it's because the web is full of ads. It's fine for a custom app on a corporate desktop, but not for a consumer product which should have an air of quality.

In this new version of iTunes, far from reducing the "webiness" they seem to have expanded it, even the non-store views, I could swear they're done with Webkit, they just have that feel about them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DJRumpy 

LOL..is there some shortage of horizontal space? Seriously?

No, but there is a maximum of clutter they don't want to exceed. You can argue it should be six instead of five tabs but you cannot easily argue that there should be twelve tabs. There is a point where things start to look cluttered and Apple drew the line at five.

There are many nice things about this new version, but I consider it largely a miss. Mostly I appreciate the under the hood improvements. iTunes feels pretty snappy. While it "looks nice" in some ways, many of the views, despite efforts at minimalism, look cluttered and cheap (like akin to Windows Metro.) Album view in particular is awful, but the worst thing is (unless I'm missing something, and I don't think I am) we very little ability to change the view. Gone is cover flow and any ability to get just a decent view that showcases Album artwork (just the album that's playing please.) the real casualty in this version of iTunes is customizability and choice. Worse, the default choices someone has made for us are crappy.

I find this iTunes visually catastrophic.

Surprise, some of my QT based videos no longer play in iTunes!

"This movie requires QuickTime, which is not supported by this version of iTunes." WTF? In truth, it's the mls codec which is not supported. Why are they dropping formerly supported codecs from QuitckTime?

Scrolling is now a royal bitch, even with a magic trackpad. Jeez,sometimes you want to get to the bottom of the page—that's what a scroll bar is for!

It seems that if we want any restrained song or album views, they are forcing us to buy an AppleTV, which has its own set of very annoying and mostly different problems.

Still no fricking iBook reader! WTF? Why would anyone buy anything from the iTunes book store?

I'm starting to get annoyed with Apple. It feels like I've been transported back to the mid nineties again, before Steve came back. Back to Basics, Apple!

Quote:

Originally Posted by noirdesir 

Which of the five tabs (currently visible in the Movies section) would you have sacrificed for a Playlists tab? And can you make the argument that more people actually create playlists out of movies than would use the tab button you just sacrificed?

I don't follow your reasoning since there are already more (eight) "tabs buttons" visible with the Music view than the Movies view.

Is nobody having problems with the search in iTunes 11? My library is rather large (160 000 songs, 1,7 TB data) and searching for files takes forever. In iTunes 10 I could type "Schubert" in the search field, and iTunes would present a list of matching files fairly fast (approx 20-30 seconds). In iTunes 11 the same thing takes up to 5 minutes. And I get the beachball while the search is performed so I cannot do anything else in iTunes while the search is going on. With this upgrade the search function has been eliminated.

This is on a Mac Pro with 10 GB RAM.

Any ideas what can be wrong?

Edit: Somebody told me to uncheck "Search whole library", and that seems to have solved the problem.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sjk 

 

I don't follow your reasoning since there are already more (eight) "tabs buttons" visible with the Music view than the Movies view.

I count only five:

(1) Songs

(2) Albums

(3) Artists

(4) Genres

(5) Playlists

the same number as in the Movies section:

(1) Unwatched

(2) Movies

(3) Genres

(4) Home Videos

(5) List

or in the Books section:

(1) Audiobooks

(2) Books

(3) PDFs

(4) Authors

(5) List

or the Apps section:

(1) All

(2) iPhone/iPod touch

(3) iPad

(4) iPod Games

(5) Lists

Only the sections TV Shows and Podcasts have less tabs. To me it does not seem like a great leap to guess that Apple decided to make five the maximum number of tabs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by noirdesir 

I count only five:

(1) Songs

(2) Albums

(3) Artists

(4) Genres

(5) Playlists

 

the same number as in the Movies section:

(1) Unwatched

(2) Movies

(3) Genres

(4) Home Videos

(5) List

 

or in the Books section:

(1) Audiobooks

(2) Books

(3) PDFs

(4) Authors

(5) List

 

or the Apps section:

(1) All

(2) iPhone/iPod touch

(3) iPad

(4) iPod Games

(5) Lists

 

Only the sections TV Shows and Podcasts have less tabs. To me it does not seem like a great leap to guess that Apple decided to make five the maximum number of tabs.

My Music view also has 'Radio' in it, which makes it 6. It seems you are in error.

Quote:

Originally Posted by noirdesir 

I count only five:

(1) Songs

(2) Albums

(3) Artists

(4) Genres

(5) Playlists

 

[...]

 

To me it does not seem like a great leap to guess that Apple decided to make five the maximum number of tabs.

Nope, it's at least eight and definitely dynamic under certain conditions.  These other three appear here for Music:

(4.5) Videos

(6) Radio

(7) Match

Videos would probably disappear if there were no music videos in the library.  Radio can be disabled under Preferences > General.  Not sure why Match is there, having never used it (yet).  Maybe clicking "No Thanks" on that screen would make it disappear but I want to leave it as-is for now.

I've read all posts in this thread and so far haven't seen anyone mention the new Gallery (accessed from the Artist view) in iTunes 11.  True, not every artist has one, but acts like The Beatles, Goldrapp, David Bowie and Sinead O'Connor have a selection of photos that you can browse while you listen to music.  Sure, it's not revolutionary, but it's pretty cool.  Who knows how this could be utilized in the future.

Overall, to me iTunes 11 is a great release.  There are things that will take getting used to, but that's what Apple is all about.  Shaking things up and trying new things.  The look is clean and highly customizable, no main features have been lost and it's a speedier app.  Like anything there will be refinements, but iTunes 11 is a real solid foundation for a modern media hub.

I'd forgotten about Music Videos. I used to have a few, but deleted them some time back. I suspect the lack of the Playlists option on the other screen is just an oversight that they will correct in due course, or at least I hope so.

I think other than that, the Home Movies bit is the least useful addition. It's more like a 'genre' than a Library category as it has no dropdown pick in the Library categories. It's just an odd add-on that seems sort of half implemented. Even tagging movies as 'Home Movies', they still just show up under movies. Just odd.

I sent in a suggestion to ask for the ability to add custom top-level categories under the Library. That would be ideal.

I also asked that they fix the confusing 'sharing' dialog, which lets you specify what's shared via iTunes, but is just 'share all' for Apple TV's Home Share. Would love the ability to restrict certain content from an Apple TV rather than the 'all or nothing' approach now. Being able to use the same Sharing preferences for both seems like a win if they could do it.

All and all I like it. The loss of coverflow is insignificant to me, as it was cumbersome to try and use that for any large number of albums (having to scroll through hundreds of albums one album at a time never made sense to me...no idea why Steve liked it so much other than as a demo sort of visual aid). It looked cool, but just didn't work for any number of large album lists.

In the end, I always end up using the list modes and search for efficiency. When I'm listening to music, I don't look at the cover, I listen to the music. I suspect the coverflow folks were just a minority that got the axe much like other features that had low use among the user base. Perhaps if Apple gets enough complaints they'll bring it back as long as it doesn't get in my way. Seems like an easy thing since the view options are all hidden under a button so it wouldn't take up any space.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CapeVerdeCas 

I hate iTunes 11! I have a library of 30,000 songs and used cloverlfow as my default view. Now it's way to tedious and complicated to do the things I was before under the current set up. I'm going to try to uninstall. I already complained to apple. Hopefully they will add cover flow in a update in the immediate future. ...This sucks. I can't deny it anymore. Apple is falling off without Jobs.

FWP (First World Problems)...they can really shake you up.  /s

This video explains it...hilarious as hell, but the nearness to truth is concerning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN2WzQzxuoA

Quote:

Originally Posted by lkrupp 

Yes, yes, someone's favorite feature has been changed or removed. So bottom line when you all talk about how bloated the old iTunes was you were just kidding, right? As long as all YOUR stuff is still there bloat is fine. But remove YOUR often used feature and the world has ended as you know it. Apple is NOT Microsoft.

I for one had no complaints about the previous iTunes.  So the whole idea of "much-needed 'improvements'" doesn't resonate with me.  I've already had to back out Safari 6, holding off on iOS 6 because of the munged up maps, and now I'm going to have to revert iTunes and it's new "improved" interface.  I didn't want to believe it, but without Steve to bang heads together they are really just devolving into mediocrity.

Quote:

Originally Posted by sjk 

 

Nope, it's at least eight and definitely dynamic under certain conditions.  These other three appear here for Music:

 

(4.5) Videos

(6) Radio

(7) Match

 

Videos would probably disappear if there were no music videos in the library.  Radio can be disabled under Preferences > General.  Not sure why Match is there, having never used it (yet).  Maybe clicking "No Thanks" on that screen would make it disappear but I want to leave it as-is for now.

Well, I can only draw conclusions on the data I have. And since I have no music videos, have disabled radio and never dabbled with Match, I did not have these tabs (and I have seen no one else mentioning Match as a tab, strange that it shows up for you).

But I stand corrected on that point.

Quote:

Originally Posted by yensid98 

I've read all posts in this thread and so far haven't seen anyone mention the new Gallery (accessed from the Artist view) in iTunes 11.  True, not every artist has one, but acts like The Beatles, Goldrapp, David Bowie and Sinead O'Connor have a selection of photos that you can browse while you listen to music.  Sure, it's not revolutionary, but it's pretty cool.  Who knows how this could be utilized in the future.

That might be the remnants of Ping (ie, stuff artists or their labels put up for Ping might be re-used here in order for the work to not have been completely for nothing).
But I just went through the 20 first artists (alphabetically) in my library and none have anything. It's a bit of a waste of menu in my view if it is displayed regardless of whether there is any content behind it.

Overall, I think this one of weaknesses of Apple, they have trouble linking the massive content people have in their libraries to any further information. For movies, they could link to the IMDB page for example, for artists to their facebook page etc.. The problem for Apple is naturally that they don't want be beholden to another companies services they don't control (and in the case of IMDB that would be Amazon, a clear competitor in the tablet and online media market).

But like they do with Siri, I think they should strike partnerships to provide additional information. As John Siracusa remarked in his podcast, watching a movie on a Kindle Fire, you have direct access to the IMDB page and even direct access to the key information from it without going to web browser. Apple is good at integrating within its own ecosystem but in an ever more interconnected world they have some trouble connecting to the rest of the world.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lenny 

Yes I did! When I click on it, it shows the songs but it doesn't start playing like it was in the previous iTunes

Did you try a double click? Double tapping my trackpad shows the song list and starts playing it. Another tap hides the songlist but keeps the music playing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DESuserIGN 

 

Scrolling is now a royal bitch, even with a magic trackpad. Jeez,sometimes you want to get to the bottom of the page—that's what a scroll bar is for!

 

 

 Then just turn the scroll bars back on in System Preferences.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DESuserIGN 

Album view in particular is awful, but the worst thing is (unless I'm missing something, and I don't think I am) we very little ability to change the view. Gone is cover flow and any ability to get just a decent view that showcases Album artwork (just the album that's playing please.) the real casualty in this version of iTunes is customizability and choice. 

You are missing something. Just click on the little album cover to the left of the progress bar at the top of the screen and the album artwork will appear to resize as you wish. In playlists this will change with each song.
The only downside is that this large view is showing just how poor some of my downloaded artwork is.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephenbw 

 Then just turn the scroll bars back on in System Preferences.

I have to admit, I didn't know that.

But honestly, why should I have to go into system preferences and turn them on or off as I need or don't need them? This is poor HCI.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephenbw 

You are missing something. Just click on the little album cover to the left of the progress bar at the top of the screen and the album artwork will appear to resize as you wish. In playlists this will change with each song.
The only downside is that this large view is showing just how poor some of my downloaded artwork is.

 

Nope not missing it. The only thing that I'm missing is a decent uncluttered song or album view.

Sad to say, they should take some design cues from Plex (which took them from AppleTV and earlier versions of ITunes.) [Yes, both of which have their own problems.]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephenbw 


I don't know why you would want to do that. They are so unobtrusive and take up so little space I have them on all the time.

Yeah, on investigating them it seems that they have worked it out. With "always on or "with touchpad activity" it works OK.  I don't think these options were available when it first came out.

Thanks for the info.