Am I the only one who hates iTunes 11?

[Old-User1988]

I am one of the people who really detest the new iTunes 11 for numerous reasons.

I have had +18 Apple products since 1989 and today
I have an iMac 27" 2011/12./ an iMac 24" 2008 (SnowLeopard) 3 iPods and an iPad 3 & an AppleTV3.
And we migrated to iTunes 11 with the purchase of an Apple tv3. Really a bad choice!

First of all!
With +14.000 tracks on some 1500 LP's and CD's mostly imported with 5 % mgp3/320 bit and the rest Apple Lossless, iTunes is for serious listening. And porting to Sonos.
In - I think iTunes 9-is.some version - the decoding and the listening of the audio experience too degraded seriously.
The issue was fixed, but still - tracks imported at that time still suffers.

NOW iTunes 11.0 & 11.01 HAS REPEATED THIS ISSUE 20 fold.

Testing I have conducted on the output of both freshly imported CD /mpg3 files and "old" tracks, shows that the sound quality is so seriously degraded it can't really be termed HiFi anymore.
The good old scoop shows some impressive "muddling" on the readout of the audio output.
Just to check I have reverted to iTunes 10.6.3 (that took 6 hours of re-importing from my backup) and there is no problem at all…..with the music quality …the connectivity don't work at all.
WHAT THE .... IS GOING ON with iTunes 11?

And all the other stupidities.
No matter how fixed and set, you became in your ways, then the ease with which one could jump from Playlist's to Imported to Music to Film to DJ to Radio ect.ect is gone.
Every time you jump, you will have to start at the top of the list you left a moment ago because iTunes 11 starts from the top again.
You can't open multiple windows and move your music from list to list in easy batches.
There is the loss of all the multiple graphics you have attached your music tracks, the text which is added into the tracks is suddenly cumbersome to watch.
AND SO ON. BUT….. you can connect to the appleTV3 box in your living-room -Hurrah Cheering Stomping of feets - great lousy music experience Waauh!!!!!.

SO TRUE! The ease of the connectivity (wonder if thats a word?) has come up to date.
That actually works - at the cost of audio quality, video grains and all other kind of smartness.
AND YES! YES IT IS easier to get films, videos and of course to BUY.
It has sadly become must more difficult to just find just the release You are looking for (ahh what a pun), couldn't resist it.


In iTunes 11 ease of use has become amateur hour, coupled with money grapping on the (audio/visual) side.

reLEARN TO write a PROGRAM Apple!

[Jon-Luke]

Today I'm doing a clean up - putting songs into playlists etc and the new iTunes 11 is driving me crazy.

It used to show where it was playing the current track in the library, now you have to ask it to show you where the song is in the library (2 additional clicks every time you want to get back to where you were working) I wish this could be switched back to the old way of doing things!

I also miss cover flow... It seems not that long ago that it was introduced and I found it and easy and quick way to find tracks... Now its gone why?

[hsotnicam8002]

Bring back cover flow or at last some top of the page picture for each track. That bland list view is too boring and the album view too visually intensive.

[moderately]

Originally Posted by flottenheimer

I miss coverflow, though (always loved looking at nice, big album art while listening to music).

single click the album art in the center window or the mini player and you get larger, resizable album art that is also a player. coverflow had up next built in. oh well.

[Dr99]

I just want my content not to disappear and end up with a ! every day or so. It is a pain when my daughter wants to watch something and I have to run to the Mac just to double click the movie so it works in on ATV.

I swear it worked with 11.0 and broke (again) after the first update.

[1934hotrod]

This has been a very interesting read, I have 10.7 and have been getting the itunes software ready for install update messages. For some reason I have been ignoring it and it now looks like that was a good, even if accidental choice.

I always hesitate when comes to NEW AND IMPROVED, usually code name for more complicated, less in function and reliability usually takes a hit also.

I got lazy recently, being an Apple fan received an OS upgrade, jumped in and installed it when I first saw it come across. Well, big mistake it hosed the email application. Trying to just do an OS reload time capsule or whatever would not allow that to happen. Lucky for me I have a solid backup. I was forced to wipe the drive reinstall the OS grab the updates for the OS. Then imported the apps and libraries back on the main drive.

Point I am making is that Apple is not the company it once was. This is very evident to any user that has been around the Mac for some time. I have definitely become very cautious and changed my approach and blind acceptance of the stuff being pushed out the door of the company. New is most likely not as good as it was before, dumber definitely that it is. My biggest surprise to this whole change is how fast it has happened, warp speed indeed.

Keep the information flowing you sure have enlighted me and I thank you all.

Greg

[Mackilroy]

Originally Posted by 1934hotrod

This is very evident to any user that has been around the Mac for some time. I have definitely become very cautious and changed my approach and blind acceptance of the stuff being pushed out the door of the company. New is most likely not as good as it was before, dumber definitely that it is. My biggest surprise to this whole change is how fast it has happened, warp speed indeed.

Keep the information flowing you sure have enlighted me and I thank you all.

Greg

Opinion. I've been using Apple's machines since 1994 and for me they've been getting better and better. iTunes 11 in particular has not given me any issues, not when it comes to the metadata nor to playing music.

[1934hotrod]

Originally Posted by Mackilroy

Opinion. I've been using Apple's machines since 1994 and for me they've been getting better and better. iTunes 11 in particular has not given me any issues, not when it comes to the metadata nor to playing music.

I have serviced and used this product as of 88, not so much on the service side as of 97, still have them for my home. Today a Unix gate keeper, so we have a different opinion and I will agree to disagree.

Cheers,
Greg

[bdodds1985]

i hate the shuffle. it used to be able to sort by the number (order you shuffled)... and command L to get to the current playing son? what about on windows...

apple repeats itself with another downgrade. why do they continue to improve the overall look of things while taking the simple things everyone uses and discarding them?

i also use the genius bar and liked when i made a genius playlist it would actually create another playlist. now: i have no idea whats playing next.

searching for songs is a effin joke. come on apple. for the first time i can say that you completely lost my support on this one. fix it.

anyway to revert to the old iTunes? just before the screw up, i mean update.

[msh]

Put me in the camp of non liking iTunes 11; I just reverted back to iTunes 10.

I use iTunes exclusively via the IOS remote and the performance has degraded under iTunes 11. I use the remote app with both a 2nd gen Touch and an iPhone 5. On the Touch you can select an album to play but it doesn't stop at the end like it did under iTunes 10, but goes on to the next album; can't prevent that except by manual intervention. On the iPhone 5 it will play an album and stop at the end and has that "up next" functionality which is nice. Problem is, there is an unbearable lag in painting the album artwork on the display as you scroll through albums; 2nd gen Touch has no lag. The 2nd gen Touch outperforms the iPhone 5 in scrolling artwork under iTunes 11? Really? Nice work Apple!

The other thing that pisses me off about iTunes in general, regardless of version, is the idiotic method of moving iTunes media to a remote network server. I have 500GB of music on a locally attached drive to a Mac Mini in my living room backed up to my Mac Pro in an upstairs room. If I want to now move the library and media to my Mac Pro connected only wirelessly to the Mac Mini, I apparently have to have iTunes copy it to the Mac Pro over the wireless network which takes something like 24 hrs to do. I can't just point to the copy already there on the Mac Pro and start streaming. If I am missing some other way to do this, please let me know (short of physically hauling the Mac Pro downstairs and physically connecting it to the Mac Mini). And finally when I did relocate the media library and started streaming under iTunes 11 I started experiencing interruptions via wireless; not acceptable. I mean I can stream 1080p video via XBMC wirelessy without a problem and iTunes can't do it with much lower bandwidth audio? Give me a break, Apple!

[psg2000]

Originally Posted by msh

Put me in the camp of non liking iTunes 11; I just reverted back to iTunes 10.

The other thing that pisses me off about iTunes in general, I can't just point to the copy already there on the Mac Pro and start streaming. If I am missing some other way to do this, please let me know

Give me a break, Apple!

Although I hate itunes 11
I simply copied the music folder, pasted the folder onto a new drive, and then pointed (through preferences) to the new drive.
(Although I did rename the drive to the same name)

In terms of staying with itunes I've started a new thread here:

[flottenheimer]

Originally Posted by moderately

single click the album art in the center window or the mini player and you get larger, resizable album art that is also a player. coverflow had up next built in. oh well.

Ahh. Nice!
Thanksamillion.

[The Man]

Yes.

[SocialMktMaven]

I'm no expert, but might the new ITunes software have caused my problem?

I had a hard backup on 1/11/13, and when Apple kept asking me to update my IPhone this week, I knew better than to update without backing up first. So, I went on ITunes, actually spoke on the phone with a customer service rep, saw the new layout, and and asked him to walk me through where to click to backup my phone.

I do PR for a living, and had just photographed four different grand openings for companies, and have many photos and videos which I was to manipulate and post to you tube and various charities' websites this weekend.

The backup scroll bar was going, so I took my kids to the store, so as not to disturb the phone and laptop during backup.

When we came back, the screen said the update was successful, the next one will be in February, and that the phone was in Recovery Mode.

The phone has a photo of a usb port and an arrow pointing to an ITunes logo.

Neither my ITunes account nor my laptop have ANY backup, and photos or videos or contacts saved.

ITunes guy said maybe my internet went down during the backup. I called Comcast and the guy laughed at me, saying Apple knows interrupted internet during backups just stops backups, they don't make you ruin the phone!

The Apple store manager said it was my responsibilty to pay a third party software company to try to flip it out of recovery, or a pro data recovery firm thousands of dollars to take the hardware from the phone and run it on another system to read and hopefully recover the grand opening photos.

I need the photos today and Saturday, and can't afford thousands of dollars.

Seriously, does Apple do this.... screw up backups, screw up phones, and take no responsibility, and expect me to bear the risk and the cost to repair?

Why would it update without my permission to a higher version software, go into my laptop without my permission, and NOT backup my data first?

Could your ITunes major change and my ITunes performance issue be related?

[nilk]

I don't hate iTunes 11, but it did lose a few features I liked from 10.x, such as vertical column browser and multiple windows. Hopefully they add in those features in a later version. I like the way Up Next works, but I wish it was a sidebar on the right hand side instead of a iPad-style popup. I know how to open a MiniPlayer and achieve the equivalent of this, but I don't think you should have to manage multiple windows for this.

I actually love the new horizontal listing of song titles. It's more information-dense and I can see more on screen.

At launch, 11 was missing the column browser for playlists, but thankfully they added that in an update. That was an essential feature for how I use iTunes (some of my playlists are basically mini-libraries).

I don't mind 11, and I don't think it's so drastic of a change that I'm wanting to abandon it. Most of the issues with it are minor, and there is potential for them fixing these things.

There are some things I hate about iTunes, that have always been the case, but there is no difference here between 10 and 11. For example, getting music into iTunes has always been a manual process (unless you buy from iTunes store). I wish I could just point iTunes to a folder full of music and have it auto-sync like other music players can do, but I don't think it will ever do this because they want you to use iTunes store to get music.

[Rogifan]

Is it possible to make iTunes less bloated? I have an older PC and loading and using iTunes on it is a pain in the a**. Good thing for me is I hardly ever have to use it. I wish I didn't have to use it at all so I wouldn't even have to install it on my PC. I'd love a slimmed down piece of software that was just for device management and kept the store separate.

[Mr. McMac]

I'm not liking iTunes 11. It's way too bloated. As of yesterday I'm not using it anymore to play music. Google Play has taken it's place

[Aluminum213]

Love it, it took a bit getting used to but now I could never go back to that hideous old design

[NT1440]

Originally Posted by Mr. McMac

I'm not liking iTunes 11. It's way too bloated. As of yesterday I'm not using it anymore to play music. Google Play has taken it's place

It's less bloated than previous versions, what was it that pushed you over the edge if you don't mind elaborating?

[mrsir2009]

Originally Posted by Mr. McMac

It's way too bloated.

But it’s worlds less bloated than iTunes 10!

[bdodds1985]

Originally Posted by The Man

Yes.

wow great story.

[globalist]

Originally Posted by bdodds1985

wow great story.

LOL, it's not like iTunes 11 is not already pretty much hated even among the Apple faithfuls at the Apple Support Communities. Cursory browsing reveals these and countless other threads on the subject:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread...art=0&tstart=0

Read up and enjoy more great stories. MR is a IT11 lovefest compared to that place, lol.

[Microkozm]

The interface has grown on me. In a good way, or a cancerous mole way, I haven't truly figured out yet. But the fact that syncing with my AppleTV is essentially broken is what makes me hate it.

Shows which I've previously watched show up now as unwatched. If I manually set them to watched, then the next time I restart iTunes its back to unwatched. Also if a new song/movie/show is added, it doesn't show up on my ATV until I restart iTunes.

[lexvo]

Originally Posted by Dr99

I just want my content not to disappear and end up with a ! every day or so. It is a pain when my daughter wants to watch something and I have to run to the Mac just to double click the movie so it works in on ATV.

I swear it worked with 11.0 and broke (again) after the first update.

I have the same problem (no content in library error) and wonder if it has to do with iOS on the ATV or iTunes.

A maybe quicker workaround is to switch off and on home sharing on your ATV.

[praterkeith]

I wish it had a way to switch back to "classic" mode.