If it's just the current tune artwork, click the image next to the timeline at the top center and you'll get a separate window with the iTunes artwork, which can be moved around, resized, etc.
Then the song has to be playing, I want to see artwork without having it play. Plus that center image is one more step/click I don't want to and feel I shouldn't have to do, also it creates another window to manage/move. In previous iTunes it was a lot simpler and easier. I'm happy with my rolled back v10, v11 has a few nice additions/features but it's not a must have to me. Thanks for the comment, appreciated.
What is nonsensical about that? That I prefer lists to find the stuff I want to listen to? I can quickly scan a compact list much faster than a grid of artwork and I can scroll through a compact list much faster than through a grid of artwork. And if you browse your playlists, you currently have no artwork to see at all.
That I prefer lists to find the stuff I want to listen to?
That zero visual differentiation in a single list of tens of thousands of items would be "easier" to navigate than something visually differentiated and split, I guess.
What is nonsensical about that? That I prefer lists to find the stuff I want to listen to? I can quickly scan a compact list much faster than a grid of artwork and I can scroll through a compact list much faster than through a grid of artwork. And if you browse your playlists, you currently have no artwork to see at all.
I can't agree more. I'm surprised that people with large libraries can use anything but the list views, but to each his own. At least they can fall back to an older version until or if such a time as Apple puts those bits back.
That zero visual differentiation in a single list of tens of thousands of items would be "easier" to navigate than something visually differentiated and split, I guess.
Sorry, humans are pretty good at finding names in an alphabetically sorted list. And the more compact the list the faster I can scroll to the letter I am looking for. In album view how long will it take you scroll to the letter K for example vs. how long will it take you to scroll to the letter K in a list view?
Far less time, as there are multiple items on a horizontal rather than one per horizontal.
But the items are larger (in album view) and you often might have more than one item per artist, it takes 50 page downs in album view to go through my library and 45 in Songs view. But more importantly you have much more visual distraction if what you are looking for is just a letter (eg, K). Say, you look for a band that starts with "Kids", in list view you type 'kid' and in the artist 'quadrant' you'll see maybe a list of 10 to 20 artists, you'll home in in a split second on the name you are looking for. In albums or artists view, there is much more spacing and much more distracting artwork around that artist title you are looking for.
Are you being sincere or another sarcastic AI jerk who thinks he knows more than everyone else or just 'cuz someone uses/wants something he doesn't it's then invalid? I'm intrigued. I and others (there is a growing string of comments about this one issue on Apple Support Communities) use the artwork window as a nice visual aid to our music collection. As I said "might be a non-issue to some, but to ME" it is!! I and others spend a lot of time putting artwork for each song not just each album/CD. I like to put artwork for each released single or photos of the music artist themselves, so when the songs play I see different photos/artwork. Seeing the same album photo for every song bores me. So, not having this artwork display as was previously available is a bummer. As a music collector I grew-up enjoying to look at the artwork and read linear notes on each 12" vinyl single/album and later CD I purchased, same thing.
I was being completely sincere. The Album covers in list view were sufficient for me to use as aide-memoir and I always had the artwork in the bottom left corner hidden as I saw no use for it, so yes, I was intrigued to know how others used it. Now that the artwork is no longer in list view I'll probably use Artist view when I'm browsing and Songs when I'm searching. Since I asked the question on here I have discovered that there is a large number of people bemoaning the fact that bottom corner artwork and cover-flow are now missing. I do wonder how many others there are like me who didn't use it and haven't even noticed its disappearance.
Like you, I too like to have artwork for all of my library, but most of my collection is CD downloads of albums rather than singles and I'm happy with the artwork supplied by the artists. And I too grew up enjoying looking at my vinyl album/single covers and reading the sleeve notes, I still do it now with the CDs I buy, but only for the first few plays. After that I just listen to the music.
Having said all that, I don't listen to music much on my iMac. My main use of iTunes is as a library to get my CDs onto my iPod Classic which is constantly playing in its docking soundbar when I'm home or in my ears when I'm out. Incidentally the iPod Classic still features Cover-flow, but I don't often use it on there either.
Sorry, humans are pretty good at finding names in an alphabetically sorted list. And the more compact the list the faster I can scroll to the letter I am looking for. In album view how long will it take you scroll to the letter K for example vs. how long will it take you to scroll to the letter K in a list view?
No time at all in either view; I just click and drag the scroll bar until I reach the letter I want.
[…] (Edit: Scratch that..the search field is there but doesn't seem to function on the device view).
Search field usage is goofy (for me) in the device view. It can't be deselected (with Sidebar hidden) once it it's been selected unless you're in the "On This <device>" pane. Input will show non-device library search results if "Search Entire Library" is enabled. Otherwise the background text always seems to display "Search Playlist", never showing results for any input.
Other issues I've noticed:
- Unlike previous updates, this one messed up sort order in some manually sorted playlists, which unfortunately includes the largest. Plenty of column widths could use resizing in certain views, but that's always a tedious ongoing hassle. The combination of automatic (un)hiding scrollbars and this UI makes it tougher than ever adjusting the far right column with max width that avoids horizontal scrolling.
- Playlists can only be used as drop targets when they're in the full unhidden Sidebar and not in the limited Music > Playlists pane's sidebar. So, a hidden Sidebar means losing the convenience of dropping content on non-active playlists.
- Item selection retention is less predictably useful when switching between different views/panes. And it's too often difficult or impossible to visibly locate current input focus, which has become an increasing issue with OS X apps in general. Much time is wasted with extra keyboard/mouse/trackpad activity just to ensure focus is where it's expected it to be.
1) I don't like the thin-bezel at the top of the window. The top of the window provides a grab point for moving the window around. And a place to quickly glance to see info about the window - for Safari it is the title of the web page. For iTunes it could be the currently playing song.
2) What do Command-Up Arrow and Command-Down Arrow do? They move you to the top or bottom of a window. But not in iTunes - it changes the volume. This is very annoying when viewing a page in the store.
3) Why does the "Library" button at the right side of the button bar have a down arrow letting me select the section of my library to jump to, but the "iTunes Store" button does not have a similar drop down menu to jump to a section of the store?
Apple REALLY needs to get back to having Human Interface Guidelines and following them. Back in the day, one of Apple's selling points was that all its apps looked and worked the same. They have lost that corporate memory. IMHO, they really need a UI Czar to go in and slap the developers around to get back to doing consistent, clean user interfaces.
Apple users used to be able to point and laugh at Windows users with their mish-mash of keyboard shortcuts and window layouts. No more.
- Jasen.
P.S. I played around with the Mac App Store, too. Its row of buttons goes right to the top of the window - bad. And if you grab the window in the grey top part it moves - unless it's a space between the buttons that is a click target, then it does nothing. There's NO visual cue that the space you're grabbing is any different than any other part of the top border. UI fail!
[Composing inline quoted replies with this post editor is a )(*&@#$ PitA! Must find a way to disable it…]
Re:
1) The combination of menu/button styles, plus the not-context-dynamic-enough cloud icon, below the bottom bezel looks weird to me. Actually looks cleaner in the iTunes Store.
2) Keyboards I currently use support Fn-Left/Right Arrow for Home/End and Fn-Up/Down Arrow for PageUp/PageDown.
3) I vaguely remember noticing an iTS button submenu in some context but can't find it again now.
P.S. Reminds me of using trackpad scrolling on item lists, with (dis/re)appearing scrollbars making it tougher to identify the scroll target, within an iTS page and accidentally scrolling backward/forward a page instead. Botch!
And I couldn't agree with you more about Apple sorely needing a UI Czar. The lack of attention to details that previously mattered seems increasingly obvious and irritating.
- Unlike previous updates, this one messed up sort order in some manually sorted playlists, which unfortunately includes the largest. :grumble: Plenty of column widths could use resizing in certain views, but that's always a tedious ongoing hassle. The combination of automatic (un)hiding scrollbars and this UI makes it tougher than ever adjusting the far right column with max width that avoids horizontal scrolling.
- Playlists can only be used as drop targets when they're in the full unhidden Sidebar and not in the limited Music > Playlists pane's sidebar. So, a hidden Sidebar means losing the convenience of dropping content on non-active playlists.
- Item selection retention is less predictably useful when switching between different views/panes. And it's too often difficult or impossible to visibly locate current input focus, which has become an increasing issue with OS X apps in general. Much time is wasted with extra keyboard/mouse/trackpad activity just to ensure focus is where it's expected it to be.
I rarely mess with the manual playlists these days. I switched to smart lists and just use comment fields for search criteria when genre isn't enough. Plenty of rough edges they need to iron out apparently. Fortunately, with my workflow, the changes that impacted me were minor with workarounds.
Once I start typing an artist or song to search on, if I control-click on the "Show 'search term' in Music" banner in the drop down menu, iTunes 11 instantly crashes, every time.
I rarely mess with the manual playlists these days. I switched to smart lists and just use comment fields for search criteria when genre isn't enough. Plenty of rough edges they need to iron out apparently. Fortunately, with my workflow, the changes that impacted me were minor with workarounds.
I mostly use smart playlists (close to 150 of 'em, yikes) but regular playlists are still useful for certain, usually more temporary, purposes,
So far the sorting mixup on my largest manually sorted playlist is my biggest issue because of how much time I'd put into that. It's not serious enough to try reconstructing and easier to forget than other irrecoverable content (e.g. non-metadata) loss might be.
I've been looking for these shortcuts! They need to do a better job of advertising these.
Help > Keyboard Shortcuts could be more pervasive, accurate, and complete.
Command + # is good for switching library categories.
And # got larger with more categories in primary iTunes library.
Help > Keyboard Shortcuts could be more pervasive, accurate, and complete.
How funny that you can use a software product for years and still find something new. I've always just relied on the displayed shortcut keys in the menus themselves.
Once I start typing an artist or song to search on, if I control-click on the "Show 'search term' in Music" banner in the drop down menu, iTunes 11 instantly crashes, every time.
I was being completely sincere. The Album covers in list view were sufficient for me to use as aide-memoir and I always had the artwork in the bottom left corner hidden as I saw no use for it, so yes, I was intrigued to know how others used it. Now that the artwork is no longer in list view I'll probably use Artist view when I'm browsing and Songs when I'm searching.
For a lot of people, album art in a list is taking up too much space and is distracting when scanning a list. I am very much a visual person but if there are too many visual cues, it makes is harder for me to find things. So, I like album art but not for searching or browsing, it is just not efficient for me. But once a song is playing album art adds to the sensual experience.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by DJRumpy
If it's just the current tune artwork, click the image next to the timeline at the top center and you'll get a separate window with the iTunes artwork, which can be moved around, resized, etc.
Then the song has to be playing, I want to see artwork without having it play. Plus that center image is one more step/click I don't want to and feel I shouldn't have to do, also it creates another window to manage/move. In previous iTunes it was a lot simpler and easier. I'm happy with my rolled back v10, v11 has a few nice additions/features but it's not a must have to me. Thanks for the comment, appreciated.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
That's completely nonsensical.
What is nonsensical about that? That I prefer lists to find the stuff I want to listen to? I can quickly scan a compact list much faster than a grid of artwork and I can scroll through a compact list much faster than through a grid of artwork. And if you browse your playlists, you currently have no artwork to see at all.
Originally Posted by noirdesir
That I prefer lists to find the stuff I want to listen to?
That zero visual differentiation in a single list of tens of thousands of items would be "easier" to navigate than something visually differentiated and split, I guess.
Quote:
Originally Posted by noirdesir
What is nonsensical about that? That I prefer lists to find the stuff I want to listen to? I can quickly scan a compact list much faster than a grid of artwork and I can scroll through a compact list much faster than through a grid of artwork. And if you browse your playlists, you currently have no artwork to see at all.
I can't agree more. I'm surprised that people with large libraries can use anything but the list views, but to each his own. At least they can fall back to an older version until or if such a time as Apple puts those bits back.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
That zero visual differentiation in a single list of tens of thousands of items would be "easier" to navigate than something visually differentiated and split, I guess.
Sorry, humans are pretty good at finding names in an alphabetically sorted list. And the more compact the list the faster I can scroll to the letter I am looking for. In album view how long will it take you scroll to the letter K for example vs. how long will it take you to scroll to the letter K in a list view?
Originally Posted by noirdesir
In album view how long will it take you scroll to the letter K for example vs. how long will it take you to scroll to the letter K in a list view?
Far less time, as there are multiple items on a horizontal rather than one per horizontal.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Far less time, as there are multiple items on a horizontal rather than one per horizontal.
But the items are larger (in album view) and you often might have more than one item per artist, it takes 50 page downs in album view to go through my library and 45 in Songs view. But more importantly you have much more visual distraction if what you are looking for is just a letter (eg, K). Say, you look for a band that starts with "Kids", in list view you type 'kid' and in the artist 'quadrant' you'll see maybe a list of 10 to 20 artists, you'll home in in a split second on the name you are looking for. In albums or artists view, there is much more spacing and much more distracting artwork around that artist title you are looking for.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mesomorphicman
Are you being sincere or another sarcastic AI jerk who thinks he knows more than everyone else or just 'cuz someone uses/wants something he doesn't it's then invalid? I'm intrigued. I and others (there is a growing string of comments about this one issue on Apple Support Communities) use the artwork window as a nice visual aid to our music collection. As I said "might be a non-issue to some, but to ME" it is!! I and others spend a lot of time putting artwork for each song not just each album/CD. I like to put artwork for each released single or photos of the music artist themselves, so when the songs play I see different photos/artwork. Seeing the same album photo for every song bores me. So, not having this artwork display as was previously available is a bummer. As a music collector I grew-up enjoying to look at the artwork and read linear notes on each 12" vinyl single/album and later CD I purchased, same thing.
I was being completely sincere. The Album covers in list view were sufficient for me to use as aide-memoir and I always had the artwork in the bottom left corner hidden as I saw no use for it, so yes, I was intrigued to know how others used it. Now that the artwork is no longer in list view I'll probably use Artist view when I'm browsing and Songs when I'm searching. Since I asked the question on here I have discovered that there is a large number of people bemoaning the fact that bottom corner artwork and cover-flow are now missing. I do wonder how many others there are like me who didn't use it and haven't even noticed its disappearance.
Like you, I too like to have artwork for all of my library, but most of my collection is CD downloads of albums rather than singles and I'm happy with the artwork supplied by the artists. And I too grew up enjoying looking at my vinyl album/single covers and reading the sleeve notes, I still do it now with the CDs I buy, but only for the first few plays. After that I just listen to the music.
Having said all that, I don't listen to music much on my iMac. My main use of iTunes is as a library to get my CDs onto my iPod Classic which is constantly playing in its docking soundbar when I'm home or in my ears when I'm out. Incidentally the iPod Classic still features Cover-flow, but I don't often use it on there either.
Quote:
Originally Posted by noirdesir
Sorry, humans are pretty good at finding names in an alphabetically sorted list. And the more compact the list the faster I can scroll to the letter I am looking for. In album view how long will it take you scroll to the letter K for example vs. how long will it take you to scroll to the letter K in a list view?
No time at all in either view; I just click and drag the scroll bar until I reach the letter I want.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DJRumpy
[…] (Edit: Scratch that..the search field is there but doesn't seem to function on the device view).
Search field usage is goofy (for me) in the device view. It can't be deselected (with Sidebar hidden) once it it's been selected unless you're in the "On This <device>" pane. Input will show non-device library search results if "Search Entire Library" is enabled. Otherwise the background text always seems to display "Search Playlist", never showing results for any input.
Other issues I've noticed:
- Unlike previous updates, this one messed up sort order in some manually sorted playlists, which unfortunately includes the largest.
- Playlists can only be used as drop targets when they're in the full unhidden Sidebar and not in the limited Music > Playlists pane's sidebar. So, a hidden Sidebar means losing the convenience of dropping content on non-active playlists.
- Item selection retention is less predictably useful when switching between different views/panes. And it's too often difficult or impossible to visibly locate current input focus, which has become an increasing issue with OS X apps in general. Much time is wasted with extra keyboard/mouse/trackpad activity just to ensure focus is where it's expected it to be.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jasenj1
1) I don't like the thin-bezel at the top of the window. The top of the window provides a grab point for moving the window around. And a place to quickly glance to see info about the window - for Safari it is the title of the web page. For iTunes it could be the currently playing song.
2) What do Command-Up Arrow and Command-Down Arrow do? They move you to the top or bottom of a window. But not in iTunes - it changes the volume. This is very annoying when viewing a page in the store.
3) Why does the "Library" button at the right side of the button bar have a down arrow letting me select the section of my library to jump to, but the "iTunes Store" button does not have a similar drop down menu to jump to a section of the store?
Apple REALLY needs to get back to having Human Interface Guidelines and following them. Back in the day, one of Apple's selling points was that all its apps looked and worked the same. They have lost that corporate memory. IMHO, they really need a UI Czar to go in and slap the developers around to get back to doing consistent, clean user interfaces.
Apple users used to be able to point and laugh at Windows users with their mish-mash of keyboard shortcuts and window layouts. No more.
- Jasen.
P.S. I played around with the Mac App Store, too. Its row of buttons goes right to the top of the window - bad. And if you grab the window in the grey top part it moves - unless it's a space between the buttons that is a click target, then it does nothing. There's NO visual cue that the space you're grabbing is any different than any other part of the top border. UI fail!
[Composing inline quoted replies with this post editor is a )(*&@#$ PitA! Must find a way to disable it…]
Re:
1) The combination of menu/button styles, plus the not-context-dynamic-enough cloud icon, below the bottom bezel looks weird to me. Actually looks cleaner in the iTunes Store.
2) Keyboards I currently use support Fn-Left/Right Arrow for Home/End and Fn-Up/Down Arrow for PageUp/PageDown.
3) I vaguely remember noticing an iTS button submenu in some context but can't find it again now.
P.S. Reminds me of using trackpad scrolling on item lists, with (dis/re)appearing scrollbars making it tougher to identify the scroll target, within an iTS page and accidentally scrolling backward/forward a page instead. Botch!
And I couldn't agree with you more about Apple sorely needing a UI Czar. The lack of attention to details that previously mattered seems increasingly obvious and irritating.
I rarely mess with the manual playlists these days. I switched to smart lists and just use comment fields for search criteria when genre isn't enough. Plenty of rough edges they need to iron out apparently. Fortunately, with my workflow, the changes that impacted me were minor with workarounds.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stephenbw
No time at all in either view; I just click and drag the scroll bar until I reach the letter I want.
Typing the first letter(s) of what you're searching for (in supported views) can make it even quicker.
Lol. I've been looking for these shortcuts! They need to do a better job of advertising these. Command + # is good for switching library categories.
Once I start typing an artist or song to search on, if I control-click on the "Show 'search term' in Music" banner in the drop down menu, iTunes 11 instantly crashes, every time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DJRumpy
I rarely mess with the manual playlists these days. I switched to smart lists and just use comment fields for search criteria when genre isn't enough. Plenty of rough edges they need to iron out apparently. Fortunately, with my workflow, the changes that impacted me were minor with workarounds.
I mostly use smart playlists (close to 150 of 'em, yikes) but regular playlists are still useful for certain, usually more temporary, purposes,
So far the sorting mixup on my largest manually sorted playlist is my biggest issue because of how much time I'd put into that. It's not serious enough to try reconstructing and easier to forget than other irrecoverable content (e.g. non-metadata) loss might be.
I've been looking for these shortcuts! They need to do a better job of advertising these.
Help > Keyboard Shortcuts could be more pervasive, accurate, and complete.
Command + # is good for switching library categories.
And # got larger with more categories in primary iTunes library.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sjk
Help > Keyboard Shortcuts could be more pervasive, accurate, and complete.
How funny that you can use a software product for years and still find something new. I've always just relied on the displayed shortcut keys in the menus themselves.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OcelotWreak
Once I start typing an artist or song to search on, if I control-click on the "Show 'search term' in Music" banner in the drop down menu, iTunes 11 instantly crashes, every time.
Consistently reproducible here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stephenbw
I was being completely sincere. The Album covers in list view were sufficient for me to use as aide-memoir and I always had the artwork in the bottom left corner hidden as I saw no use for it, so yes, I was intrigued to know how others used it. Now that the artwork is no longer in list view I'll probably use Artist view when I'm browsing and Songs when I'm searching.
For a lot of people, album art in a list is taking up too much space and is distracting when scanning a list. I am very much a visual person but if there are too many visual cues, it makes is harder for me to find things. So, I like album art but not for searching or browsing, it is just not efficient for me. But once a song is playing album art adds to the sensual experience.
I like this new version a lot. It's clean and fast. Of course it's slightly different than the old version--that's what makes it new!