iTunes 11, good or bad?

[paulsalter]

Originally Posted by 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.

I occasionally get it not responding, usually when starting it or updating meta data but it clears itself after a while and starts running ok

I made the mistake of force quitting it a couple of times when it said not responding when updating meta data and it corrupted my films

Now it if says not responding I leave it a couple of minutes and it sorts itself out

[MacRumorUser]

Originally Posted by paulsalter

I occasionally get it not responding, usually when starting it or updating meta data but it clears itself after a while and starts running ok

I made the mistake of force quitting it a couple of times when it said not responding when updating meta data and it corrupted my films

Now it if says not responding I leave it a couple of minutes and it sorts itself out

Yeah it's seems to struggle when updating iTunes Match. I've left it to hopefully sort itself out, and done the rudimentary repair permissions.

[jarynis]

Originally Posted by urkel

To be honest, Im not sure what the praise is for. So I'd love to hear what I'm missing out on because we were told it would be a major overhaul butin the end it doesnt really feel much different than the last versions.

So far here's my Pros and Cons:

+ I dont seem to be dropping my wireless synching on iOS devices anymore
+ Prettier? (I dont know, i just wanted to have more than one positive note)

- Display Duplicates is gone (or moved. I cant find it and help no longer mentions it)

On the Mac version go to the View menu...

[jarynis]

Originally Posted by Mikey86uk

Love it.

Only small thing i dont like is, i cant use the mini player when i have iTunes in full screen mode.

So for that, i will stick with Bowtie.

Seems to work if you go to the Window menu and uncheck iTunes, then check MiniPlayer, then check the iTunes window again.
Also, you may want to "Keep MiniPlayer on top of all other windows" in the Advanced Preferences window.

[CDCC]

Lot of stuff is missing in 11. I reinstalled 10.7 to get back all the things I liked. What the heck is Apple doing with their IOS software? They should not be experimenting with their flagship app, this is not eWorld. Very disturbing!

The new iTunes has a VERY VERY poorly designed layout. Considering the iTunes app is the hub and most used app on my machine, Apple gets a big fat "F" in design and function with 11.

Maybe I will go with Ubuntu Unix platform if Apple keeps going down the dumb design road!

http://www.ubuntu.com/tour/en/

[Mackilroy]

Originally Posted by CDCC

Lot of stuff is missing in 11.

Such as?

[Dunkaccino]

cover flow, for starters

[Schtumple]

I only ever used the Artist view on iTunes, I don't really understand why they removed it, I thought it was really well designed and SO easy to navigate, it reminded me of the way Aperture works with albums and photos.

[Neverywhere]

Another annoying bug...

There are artists i have about 15 albums of...now if i want to scroll through these albums i can only see the two first albums....if i want to go further down i have to click enter before the selection bar is again visible.

In i-tunes of yesteryear this was not the case. No sir!

[jesseluke]

It's not an upgrade, it is a horrible player. I have now found 8 things I used to use that I can no longer do.

it is yet another FAIL for apple.

The company I have stood by since the beginning has become a disaster.

[sebastian...]

I don't understand, is there a different app beside itunes 11 to search for apps in appstore ?
Because here people talk only about music.
Where is the discussion about the fact that you can't filter / sort the results for apps ?
Like for example popularity, rating... How can I search/sort for free apps only in itunes ? In the previous versions you could do that.

EDIT : missing also the ability to filter / sort apps results based on rating. So if you search for "I Am Rich" app and you find 99 apps, you don't have to click on each one to see which one has better ratings.

[johnfreely]

Apple loves to be daring, throwing out software and hardware that works perfectly good and replacing it with stuff that's supossed to be much better. I know people were also upset about the new Final Cut Pro that threw away lots of features and changed the UI.

[Aquaria]

Originally Posted by Shadow%20Mac

while the new features are nice, how has it been performing for you?

I hate, with the heat of a billion suns, iTunes 11. I would burn it to the ground for all time, if i could.

It's hideously ugly.

It's garbage for navigating a large library like mine.

It took away multiple windows, which I needed for creating playlists quickly.

It took away Cover Flow, which is a lifesaver when I have my 73 year old mother living with me. She loves music, but she's the most computer illiterate person on the planet. She becomes utterly panic-stricken at lists and 'album' or 'grid' views, never mind the mouse, which she STILL hasn't figured out. But she can understand Cover Flow, because it looks like a jukebox, and she can press the right and left arrow 'buttons' and the 'enter' key, to find and choose what she wants. All I need to do is choose the playlist of her music, and open the Cover Flow for her. Then I can get on with the things I need to do around the house while she finds what she wants.

Thank goodness for Time Machine. My mother was CRYING when she saw the new iTunes, and couldn't understand how to get around it to find her music. I go back to iTunes 10, and she's happy again.

You have to hate a company that makes a 73 year old woman cry.

[Aquaria]

Originally Posted by RoelJuun

When opening and album, the background of that window changes color to that of the cover art. Beautiful.

It's hideous. I don't want to be squinting through colors at information. I want consistency, not kindergarten fingerpaint nonsense.

Adding items to playlists is also great.

It takes MORE steps/clicks than it used to. You can't choose things as quickly. You have to switch views sometimes, and then move between different windows to arrange the playlists as you want.

This 'upgrade' gets a big stinking F.

----------

Originally Posted by Mackilroy

Such as?

1) iTunes DJ

2) Ability to open separate windows.

Used to, you could create a playlist, and then open it separately from the main window. Then you could just scroll through and drag and drop things where YOU wanted them in the list as you went. If you wanted to add something later, you could highlight the song you wanted, then look in the other list for where you wanted to put it, rather than trying to drag it up a (possibly) long list of songs flying by.

Now, you have to add things to the playlist THEN go to the playlist and arrange it how you want.

That's MORE steps and more TIME than it used to take.

[a-m-k]

It's great!

[paulsalter]

I still use it to organise my music, but don't use it anymore as a player, will keep checking updates that come out for it, when missing features are added back I might return to it

for now google music does everything I need

[LizKat]

There are lots of things I don't care for in iTunes 11, but the big one for me is losing the ability to see a shuffled playlist's play sequence update in the main window. That's HUGE for me.

Before iTunes 11, you could bring a playlist into the main window and see its then current play order, then double-click any track to start playing, then hold down the option key and press the shuffle button iteratively until you saw a sequence you liked.

The display in the main panel would show the currently playing track at the top of the list and then the reshuffled remainder below it.

When you got what you liked, you could control-click on the playlist in the source menu and get the contextual menu and pick "Copy to play order" to preserve the shuffled order, and then unclick the shuffle button et voila, the list would stay in that last-shuffled order. You could sync lists to mobile devices pre-shuffled and not ever have to turn shuffle on/off on the mobiles. You could glance at a partly played shuffled playlist in non-shuffle mode in iTunes on a desktop/laptop and see where to resume playing it through without omission or duplication, by just glancing at where the last-play date sequence broke.

It was wonderful. It did not need fixing. It got fixed and is now totally nuts. I have experimented on some little playlists holding three or four tracks each from three or four artists, lists that had been shuffled and saved in previous iTunes versions. Now no matter what I do do them, they show up on my laptop iTunes main window in that same sequence, even if I save a newly shuffled order (which I can see in Up Next, which I loathe). Great, so I get a visual representation of how the list wil NOT play. Very useful indeed.

So I should have to look in UpNext to see how a playlist will really play? And the main window is what, chopped liver?

So Copy to Play Order still works, but the main window display is forever "what you see is what you brought sometime in the past" ??

When did Apple decide that what you see bears no necessary resemblance to what you get?

Here's my question: How can I see, in the main window, what I will get when I save a shuffled playlist's play order in iTunes 11 and then refetch it into that main window? If I can't ever see the sequence except by looking in that infernal Up Next, then how can I get my old version of iTunes back without destroying my libraries, messing up my devices, losing my Apple ID or iCloud ID or having to restore my darn laptop from scratch?!

If they don't roll this particular change back, I think it will mean Apple really does intend to do away with the main window next, as part of the dumbing down of an OS to iOS. Too bad. That means we're raising nextgens too dumb to handle an OS. Eventually that will sort itself out in an interesting way, won't it. No need for opposable thumbs, etc., reverse evolution to black hole status. Possibly a universal record for fastest round trip.

Maybe I have to look around at alternative music massagers. Suggestions, please.