Roundup of Changes in iTunes 11: 'Expanded View', No Cover Flow, 'Up Next' and More

I never thought I'd be this impressed with an update to a music player. I especially like the interface changes. Less skeuomorphism!

i was a BIG user of prey shuffle/DJ and from what i have seen so far up next functions much better.

Puevlo said:

So basically the update is purely fluff. Nothing of substance to speak of.

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What specifically were you looking for? This is a huge update.

So far, I like the update, with a couple of exceptions:

1. "Up Next" is not a good enough replacement for iTunes DJ. Specifically, I miss the ability for guests to request and vote for music via the Remote app. (Interestingly, that capability still exists in the new Remote 3.0 app, if you connect to iTunes 10... so at least they didn't remove it from Remote... maybe it will return to iTunes 11 as part of Up Next?)

2. I haven't been able to find the "Display Duplicates" feature. In iTunes 10, it was under File -> Display Duplicates, but can't find it anywhere in 11.

You people actually liked coverflow? What the hell is wrong with you?

I think it looks absolutely fantastic. Makes everything so pleasant and modern.

Now it's possible to add multiple airplay speakers, that wasn't possible before, was it?

BeachChair said:

You people actually liked coverflow? What the hell is wrong with you?

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I could say the same about you. You don't like Coverflow? What are you smoking?

I actually like the scroll through the album designs to pick music. Didn't do it all the time, but it was a great feature.

Glad I read this thread first before I downloaded. Would not be happy.

tech4all said:

No Coverflow? No thanks, I'll stick with iTunes 10 then.

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I know right !

I used it on the TV. When I had it on shuffle it was awesome.

NO more 'live search'.
no more artist column on side , just on top, which is uncomfortable. generaly i prefer itunes 10

Multi-CD albums are completely broken

Listening to a multi-CD audiobook is now a sanity test, as it jumps from "Disc 1, Chapter 1" to "Disc 2, Chapter 1" to "Disc 3, Chapter 1", etc. In short, it's sorting track number before considering disc number.



Everything shown here has proper metadata and worked fine in iTunes 10. This only happens in the new-and-improved album view - list view works just fine.

Does anyone know how to get back to the black background for Album view ?


All that white is hurting my eyes, it looks unfinished

So much faster!

iTunes 11 is just a pleasure to use on my 2008 iMac, responsive and snappy. Up Next is a fantastic simplification - I can start a playlist, then add in songs that come to mind, & then iTunes will go back to the playlist right where it left off.

I was never impressed with CoverFlow. Recall that it was a third-party product that was acquired by Apple and shoved into iTunes. Invariably that kind of approach would lead to bloat - I won't miss it.

honus said:

The expanded view is wonderful in theory. But you can't change the columns, so you can't see the iTunes Match status of the songs and you can't get the checkbox column so no way to uncheck that annoying video that you don't want added to Up Next when you add the album.

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I just played with it, and found if you right-click on a track in the expanded view, the uncheck/check selection option is there and works... but there is absolutely no UI element for this feature, so you have no idea if a track is selected or not just by looking at it.

Loving the update for how I use itunes. Now to see if itunes match has been fixed up to match songs better. Nothing worse then adding an album and having to upload 2 of the 11 songs or whatever...

diamondsw said:

Listening to a multi-CD audiobook is now a sanity test, as it jumps from "Disc 1, Chapter 1" to "Disc 2, Chapter 1" to "Disc 3, Chapter 1", etc. In short, it's sorting track number before considering disc number.

Image

Everything shown here has proper metadata and worked fine in iTunes 10. This only happens in the new-and-improved album view - list view works just fine.

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Looks like you just need to set the disc number/count and track number/count meta data correctly.

corsa said:

I just played with it, and found if you right-click on a track in the expanded view, the uncheck/check selection option is there and works... but there is absolutely no UI element for this feature, so you have no idea if a track is selected or not just by looking at it.

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Yea noticed this too, but you can always go back to the song list to select un-select as well.

coverflow is one of the major features I use in OSX, so I really hope it's not removed from there in the future as well. I'm disappointed to hear it has been removed from iTunes. I guess it's best though to reserve judgement until I actually have a chance to download and try this new version.

App is still heavily Carbon-based. The scroll bars still don't behave the way they should in 10.8.

TV shows now groups all seasons together which is horrible in my opinion. At the very least it should be an option to have all seasons of a show grouped under one heading or allow them to be separate like before. Doing it the way they have now makes artwork for all but the first season of a TV show useless. You'll never see it since when you click on the TV show the option to change seasons is in the upper right corner, but changing seasons doesn't change the artwork. This alone is a huge setback for me, one I'm very disappointed in.

P.S. - Podcasts still suck. I've never understood why they have artwork for a podcast in the store, but when you download it that artwork is gone and you're left with a screencap from a random part of any video episode. Yes, I realize both my complaints are related to artwork. I like a pretty iTunes. lol

Don't like it

I watched the video, read the new features, and unless something amazing is pointed out this seems like another "dumbgrade" where lots of useful stuff is dumbed down and taken away making managing my media and my devices harder. I will be happily sticking with 10 which works works perfect me and has stuff I think works well.

maybe I miss coverflow BUT seriously:

1. SONGS VIEW: where's the "artwork" ???
I have thousands of albums and now all looks list a lonnnnnnng list! with no separation!

2. ALBUMS VIEW: where's "groups albums by artist" ???
again I have thousands of albums and now all looks list a lonnnnnnng list! with no separation by artist

3. BLACK background option on Album, Artist, ang Genre Views ???



1: No Artwork, No separation, thousand of albums mixed!


2. No "groups albums by artist", mixed albums!

For me, it's significantly faster. I like that.

And the default layout is kind of how I always had iTunes set up anyway.

I also had the "missing" AirPlay button, but going to the MiniPlayer, activating AirPlay and then back again to full screen, brought that back.

"Get Album Artwork" doesn't seem to work... even if "Show in iTunes Store" takes you to the exact album w/ artwork.

I'm also seeing a bunch of metadata anomalies now that I hadn't noticed in the past.

tech4all said:

I could say the same about you. You don't like Coverflow? What are you smoking?

I actually like the scroll through the album designs to pick music. Didn't do it all the time, but it was a great feature.

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Yes, taking 5 minutes to find something that can be found in 10 seconds using any other method was a lot of fun.

I honestly had no idea anyone liked that "feature" until this thread. There's apparently more than one of you?