iTunes 11, good or bad?

[Nam Pla]

Originally Posted by zhenya

Itunes user since at least 2003. Consistent library metadata from that time with about 7k songs/80GB. Main iTunes library is on my iMac at home that acts as the media server for the house, and all idevices sync to it (2 phones, 2 iPads, assorted older iPods). The iMac is connected directly to my high-end headphone system and also distributes music and content around the house via AirPlay. I also subscribe to Match both for portable devices and to have access to my entire library from my work computer.

As I say, I'm extremely picky about metadata, so I've always used the basic list view. Match doesn't do a good job of keeping that in sync, but otherwise I'm very happy with the service.

Itunes 11 was a big shock at first because so many things I'd done for so many years were changed or removed. Overall it's not a huge step forward, but I'm basically ok with it. Turning off the Search Entire Library option went a long ways towards making it usable to me. I do now find myself using the Mini player at work, which I never used before, because I can now rate songs, see what's coming next, manipulate that list, etc. I also use the album view because I find it better than coverflow ever was for scanning my library, and the graphical view still gives me access to most of the features I'd want.

I think the loss of some things is odd - the ability click on the status bar on the bottom to change the detail view, find duplicates, loss of album art in Songs view, etc. But I also know that most early reactions to change are extreme, so I'm willing to work with it. I've found a bunch of positives and only a few negatives so it's overall a slight net improvement for me.

The 'find duplicates' feature is back with a recent upgrade, 11.0.1.

[bogoss]

not such a big deal that deserves this much attention really, I simply found iTunes 11 unacceptable and unusable, so I went back without any hesitation.

The way I want to experience my music isn't album grid view(useless because I don't play one album or one artist continuously repeatedly, never! and hey, that's me and I have no taste of music ), and it isn't totally coverflow neither, it's flexibility and efficiency, so I need the sidebar there constantly with all my playlists that I can just drag any songs into them or navigate with ONLY ONE click(thanks Apple for undefaulting the sidebar and make it slide in when needed, that's an improvement i reckon), and I can sort my playlist however I want and the coverflow would be ordered the the same way the same time, but if I am not in the mood for coverflow I have my artwork at the left bottom corner, which is ESSENTIAL to have least one of them, that can be applied to shuffling playlists or using iTunes DJ, So after all, it feels like it is ME who owned the damn thing before 11, and
then it tried to own me and sorry, I am taken by me already.

oh, the search, it irritated me awfully, what was wrong with the simple powerful live search from previous versions? nothing for me, I got 100% what I am looking for all the time, by searching genres, artists, or whatever and if I don't know what I am looking, I don't search, so don't give me pop-ups Apple only because you want to make it look like iOS! It seems people figured out solution for this, but it's another flaw that's made default, unacceptable.

I don't need to go on with list I think, it's long enough for apple's previous standards if they have new ones now, and long for mine as well.

For me iTunes 11 is amateur and unprofessionally made, it only looked a little more sophisticated, so does Paris Hilton, who I would definitely walk away from.

[tkermit]

Originally Posted by bogoss

oh, the search, it irritated me awfully, what was wrong with the simple powerful live search from previous versions? nothing for me, I got 100% what I am looking for all the time, by searching genres, artists, or whatever and if I don't know what I am looking, I don't search, so don't give me pop-ups Apple only because you want to make it look like iOS! It seems people figured out solution for this, but it's another flaw that's made default, unacceptable.

The previous search functionality was really more of a filtering than a search function. Still immensely useful and practical of course – which is why it's thankfully still there if you either finish your search query by pressing the return key, or uncheck "Search Entire Library" (which brings back live searching). But only now is it possible to instantly jump to a specific artist,album, song, movie, TV Show, podcast, book, app, or even a playlist by entering a search term regardless of where you currently are in the app. Add to that the fact that it's integrated into the mini player and I personally absolutely love it. Would be nice if it searched for composers as well, but as a workaround you can create smart playlists for any relevant composers you'd might want to search for.

[tkermit]

Originally Posted by aixporter

I want 10 back

It still exists if you want to go back. Personally, I'd rather have an improved 11. Specifically, i'd like album covers to reappear as an optional column in the Songs view. Same thing for the list view in Playlists. I also think the integrated album views and the artist view should have a configurable column width, or at least the ability to set a minimum width. It's annoying to have to constantly resize the whole window to get it to just the right size where only one column at maximum width is displayed so that song titles aren't cut off. Although that's mostly an issue with classical music only.

[zhenya]

Originally Posted by Nam Pla

The 'find duplicates' feature is back with a recent upgrade, 11.0.1.

Thanks. Upgraded right after I wrote that and indeed it is. As is one of the other complaints I mentioned - now the status bar again lists the exact amount of time rather than an approximation.

[jpiphoneuser22]

I can get iTunes 11 to crash consistently. Every time I search in my collection of books if I start typing "A " I get the spinning beach ball and I have to force quit. Anyone else notice this?

[Lvivske]

Originally Posted by mackandproud

So says the brainwashed minion. Go stand in line for your next piece of icrap at the apple store.

Of course. Get thrown to the ropes and resort to "you're an apple fanboy" rhetoric. Pathetic.

Originally Posted by BRLawyer

How do you know it's "pirated" music? Not to mention that in MANY jurisdictions, copying music for personal use is PERFECTLY legal.

Face it, iTunes 11 is a train wreck for anyone with relatively large and well tagged libraries...a software catastrophe, indeed.

It's pirated and you know it.

We're talking a number that is akin to me taking my entire collection, taking the CD collection of everyone I know, and then pirating 100-200 discographies to close the gap. Get the hell out of here with your 50 thousand track "collections" that itunes apparently isn't smooth enough to handle.

[mackandproud]

Originally Posted by Lvivske

Of course. Get thrown to the ropes and resort to "you're an apple fanboy" rhetoric. Pathetic.



It's pirated and you know it.

We're talking a number that is akin to me taking my entire collection, taking the CD collection of everyone I know, and then pirating 100-200 discographies to close the gap. Get the hell out of here with your 50 thousand track "collections" that itunes apparently isn't smooth enough to handle.

This is one of the most incompetent, and least entertaining attempts at trolling I've seen in this sad forum. Take a break, go back to another marathon session of world of warcraft, try again in 24 hours.

[Lvivske]

Originally Posted by mackandproud

This is one of the most incompetent, and least entertaining attempts at trolling I've seen in this sad forum. Take a break, go back to another marathon session of world of warcraft, try again in 24 hours.

You mad, pirate? Or just cranky because you don't like new things and just need a reason to bitch about iTunes even though theres nothing wrong with it.

[inscrewtable]

The Mini mini player is a bit of a mess, very un apple like.



EDIT: Looks like this has been fixed in the latest 11.01 update

[BRLawyer]

Originally Posted by Lvivske

You mad, pirate? Or just cranky because you don't like new things and just need a reason to bitch about iTunes even though theres nothing wrong with it.

I still buy CDs to this day, and at least 90% of my collection comes from them.

But again, EVEN if this were not the case, a great number of civilized, western jurisdictions (including Switzerland, Brazil and many others in Europe) expressly allow for personal downloading of songs - in other words, the only "pirates" are those living in countries where this is NOT allowed.

[inscrewtable]

I wasn't sure at first but after living with it a while I do like the look and usage of the new iTunes.

However, I do miss the volume control on the mini player but it's not that big a deal I suppose.

[GGJstudios]

Originally Posted by Lvivske

and I have to laugh at you folks with 43,000 song libraries, bitching about all your pirated music you never even listen to being somehow wronged by the application

It is incredibly naive and wrong to assume that simply because someone has a large music library that it must be pirated. I've been collecting music for decades and have over 30,000 songs in my library, ripped over the course of many years. I've never bought a song from the iTunes store and I've never downloaded a song. All mine are ripped from CDs or vinyl albums, and I still have un-ripped albums that I have yet to add.

[Lvivske]

Originally Posted by BRLawyer

I still buy CDs to this day, and at least 90% of my collection comes from them.

But again, EVEN if this were not the case, a great number of civilized, western jurisdictions (including Switzerland, Brazil and many others in Europe) expressly allow for personal downloading of songs - in other words, the only "pirates" are those living in countries where this is NOT allowed.

a) you don't buy that many CDs

b) don't skirt this as a legal term, you know what you do. The point is you don't even listen to all the crap you've slammed into your hard drive.


----------

Originally Posted by GGJstudios

It is incredibly naive and wrong to assume that simply because someone has a large music library that it must be pirated. I've been collecting music for decades and have over 30,000 songs in my library, ripped over the course of many years. I've never bought a song from the iTunes store and I've never downloaded a song. All mine are ripped from CDs or vinyl albums, and I still have un-ripped albums that I have yet to add.

You own 3-5 thousand physical albums? Are you seriously using that as a believable argument? :-/ Are you really going to sit there and say you've spent $40-80 thousand on music over the years?

[GGJstudios]

Originally Posted by Lvivske

You own 3-5 thousand physical albums? Are you seriously using that as a believable argument? :-/

You're naive enough to think people don't amass such collections? I've been collecting music since long before CDs were invented. Just because you don't have such a collection doesn't mean others don't. And it's not even 3K albums. More like 2-2.5K.

[Lvivske]

Originally Posted by GGJstudios

You're naive enough to think people don't amass such collections?

You'd be foolish to believe people like that even exist.

[GGJstudios]

Originally Posted by Lvivske

You'd be foolish to believe people like that even exist.

LOL! Not really, since I exist and I know several who have much larger collections of CDs and albums than mine. Your experience appears to be quite limited.

[GGJstudios]

Originally Posted by Lvivske

you don't buy that many CDs

you don't even listen to all the crap you've slammed into your hard drive.

You appear to enjoy making statements about other people's activities that you know nothing about. You have absolutely no idea how many CDs people on this forum have bought, or what they listen to.

Originally Posted by Lvivske

Are you really going to sit there and say you've spent $40-80 thousand on music over the years?

Again, you make ridiculous assumptions about other people, having zero factual information. I made no statement about how much I've spent on music, which is none of your business. Every statement I've made about my music collection is completely factual. Whether you believe that or not has no impact on the facts.

[TweakOnline]

I love iTunes 11, but only when you got the sidebar enabled.
And do not forget, this version of iTunes is finally stable under Windows!

[SwitchFX]

It's a POS. Been dealing with stupid issues for days. If only I could find an official link to downgrade.

[IzzyJG99]

Originally Posted by inscrewtable

The Mini mini player is a bit of a mess, very un apple like.

Image

EDIT: Looks like this has been fixed in the latest 11.01 update

Mine still does it even after 11.0.1. It tends to only do that when I connect via the Remote App with iTunes already open with the mini player up. A new mini player pops up, which the remote connects to. Then the original background mini player has scrabbled text on occasion, so I just close it.

[ricperry1]

I think it's slightly worse. There are some details I don't think SJ would have let fly. The "up next" feature and mini-player are nice. My big complaint is that it's still a behemoth of a program. Come on, Apple! When are you going to decouple your media player, device manager, and media store? These modules are begging to be split apart, and it would make updates a lot more manageable. Can someone tell me why I need to have the full-blown iTunes running to browse and purchase content? Why do I have to have the full-blown iTunes running just to back up my device? Why can't I just have a high-speed low-drag media player. Separately, I want to keep a iOS device manager resident in memory. And please, oh please, combine the Mac App Store and iTunes Media Store. (Use the iTunes Media Store interface vice the Mac App Store interface).

Oh, and the rewind, play, and fast forward buttons aren't properly centered in the space they occupy. My OCD really hates this version.

[inscrewtable]

How about this for an idea.

I miss having a volume control in the mini player but I also have sympathy with the clean design. Well I think this could work for me...

Hovering over the mini player still allows one to control the volume by stroking the magic mouse or trackpad, just as we can do now BUT there is no actual visible volume control, it just happens as if there was one.

Of course it won't work on legacy systems without gestures, but then they don't have it now any way. I think something like this could become a good intuitive way to control the volume without necessarily having any visual clues.

Would be good to see it tested out, because iTunes is used to test new interface ideas anyway

[zhenya]

Originally Posted by ricperry1

I think it's slightly worse. There are some details I don't think SJ would have let fly. The "up next" feature and mini-player are nice. My big complaint is that it's still a behemoth of a program. Come on, Apple! When are you going to decouple your media player, device manager, and media store? These modules are begging to be split apart, and it would make updates a lot more manageable. Can someone tell me why I need to have the full-blown iTunes running to browse and purchase content? Why do I have to have the full-blown iTunes running just to back up my device? Why can't I just have a high-speed low-drag media player. Separately, I want to keep a iOS device manager resident in memory. And please, oh please, combine the Mac App Store and iTunes Media Store. (Use the iTunes Media Store interface vice the Mac App Store interface).

Oh, and the rewind, play, and fast forward buttons aren't properly centered in the space they occupy. My OCD really hates this version.

Not going to happen because it is counter to the seamless integration Apple wants. It makes sense to integrate it into one program because there are dependencies on each section. Links in the Music section lead directly to the store - the devices that you are managing are intrinsically tied to iTunes so it would be extremely confusing if it required a separate program to manage.

I also don't get this complaint about the size of the program. On my Windows 7 machine this morning, iTunes has been running for days and is using 58MB of RAM. Spotify is using 90MB, heck, my IM program is using 63MB! There is really nothing to complain about here.

[MacRumorUser]

iTunes lock ups / freezes and force quitting.

anyone having a lot trouble since the 11.01 update ? It's become a bit of a train wreck on my mac pro since the update. 11 itself was ok.