First look: Apple's overhauled iTunes 11

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  • Reply 141 of 242
    poochpooch Posts: 768member
    walshbj wrote: »
    I always liked the little bouncing bars view you could toggle into. Looks like they're gone.

    djrumpy wrote: »
    pooch wrote: »
    that would be the equalizer ... and although that is still there (under the Window menu) i can't see where to enable the visuals.
    Visuals are under the View menu.

    the original poster was looking for the display showing the equalizer bars, not the visualizer.
  • Reply 142 of 242


    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!

  • Reply 143 of 242
    sjksjk Posts: 603member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by noirdesir View Post


    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.

  • Reply 144 of 242
    trydtryd Posts: 143member


    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.

  • Reply 145 of 242
    noirdesirnoirdesir Posts: 1,027member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by sjk View Post


     


    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.

  • Reply 146 of 242
    djrumpydjrumpy Posts: 1,116member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by noirdesir View Post




    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.

  • Reply 147 of 242
    sjksjk Posts: 603member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by noirdesir View Post




    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.

  • Reply 148 of 242


    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.

  • Reply 149 of 242
    djrumpydjrumpy Posts: 1,116member


    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.

  • Reply 150 of 242

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by CapeVerdeCas View Post


    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

  • Reply 151 of 242

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by lkrupp View Post



    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.

  • Reply 152 of 242
    noirdesirnoirdesir Posts: 1,027member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by sjk View Post


     


    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.

  • Reply 153 of 242
    noirdesirnoirdesir Posts: 1,027member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by yensid98 View Post


    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.

  • Reply 154 of 242

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by lenny View Post


    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.

  • Reply 155 of 242

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by DESuserIGN View Post


     


    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.

  • Reply 156 of 242

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by DESuserIGN View Post


    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.



     

  • Reply 157 of 242

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Stephenbw View Post


     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.

  • Reply 158 of 242

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Stephenbw View Post


    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.]

  • Reply 159 of 242
    desuserign wrote: »
    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.
    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.
  • Reply 160 of 242
    desuserign wrote: »
    Nope not missing it. The only thing that I'm missing is a decent uncluttered song or album view.
    Well you can't really get more uncluttered than a screen sized view of just the album cover ;)
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