Goodbye iTunes 11, Hello to Google Music

[tekboi]

Originally Posted by Aquaria

Not everybody has the overpriced Apple devices du jour, cupcake.

Now can now tell me:

How I can open separate windows in iTunes 11, to make arranging playlists more SENSIBLE and MORE EFFICIENT--i.e., more INTUITIVE.

Where iTunes DJ is, the INTUITIVE way to make a playlist that everyone can take part in/vote on without compromising your library's security by giving everyone access to it via Remote Manager.

Where the gapless editor is--the simple and INTUITIVE way to determine how your tracks segue from one to another.

Where Cover Flow is, so that my 73 year old mother can use the right, left and enter 'buttons' to find and play her music INTUITIVELY on my laptop, rather than trying to use other views and the mouse/trackpad which confuse her, without having me hold her hand or do it for her, which is frustrating and annoying for both of us.

Where my album art is in the sidebar in Songs View--the only remotely decent view left in this garbage heap of an 'upgrade'. I went to a LOT of trouble to make sure ALL of my albums had album art. And now it's gone, unless I want to look at an ugly album art view and see kindergarten fingerpaint background colors that makes it impossible to read the tracks. Or look at a paint chip in a mini player. How is a paint chip INTUITIVE?

The album art in the corner was also THE FASTEST way to add album art to new tracks. Again where is my album art in the corner, to do the MORE INTUITIVE thing of dragging album art there for a track/album, from the internet or your scanner, or wherever?

I want to see the the volume control and the time progression of the track in my mini player, just like I do on a good CD player--the INTUITIVE way to the vast majority of people alive right now. I don't want to see a paint chip there. And I don't like the formless buttons, either.

How to keep iTunes from shifting to different views when I search or click on something. The INTUITIVE thing is to stay where I am.

How to shuffle a playlist and sync that shuffle to my iPod with ONE CLICK, the INTUITIVE way, without having to go through unnecessary EXTRA steps of creating smart playlists and randomizing them--which is NOT intuitive.

Be able to do the INTUITIVE thing of being able to get to the current song, without having to do it differently based on what library/playlist you're in. And no need for an extra script. iTunes 10 could do this--INTUITIVELY. I want it back.

How to get column view back the INTUITIVE way it was on iTunes 10, where it could be just about anywhere, and work.

Get the arrows next to songs to look for better versions in the iTunes store with a click and a selection based on artist/album/song--the INTUITIVE way?

How to categorize my apps, which I could do simply and INTUITIVELY by clicking on the columns bar with ONE CLICK in iTunes 10

How to keep my audiobooks sorted MY way--which I could do INTUITIVELY by clicking on the columns bar with ONE CLICK in iTunes 10.



I'll wait.

kthxbye

If anything iTunes 11 is MORE intuitive than its predecessors. Alot what you are calling "INTUITIVELY" is nothing more than just your taste.

[Mackilroy]

Originally Posted by tekboi

If anything iTunes 11 is MORE intuitive than its predecessors. Alot what you are calling "INTUITIVELY" is nothing more than just your taste.

Eh, you'll never get a response now, he's been banned. Surprised he dug up a post of mine from early last month to rant on, though…

[bobsax]

Originally Posted by Aquaria

Where my album art is in the sidebar in Songs View--the only remotely decent view left in this garbage heap of an 'upgrade'. I went to a LOT of trouble to make sure ALL of my albums had album art. And now it's gone, unless I want to look at an ugly album art view and see kindergarten fingerpaint background colors that makes it impossible to read the tracks. Or look at a paint chip in a mini player. How is a paint chip INTUITIVE?

The album art in the corner was also THE FASTEST way to add album art to new tracks. Again where is my album art in the corner, to do the MORE INTUITIVE thing of dragging album art there for a track/album, from the internet or your scanner, or wherever?




How to keep my audiobooks sorted MY way--which I could do INTUITIVELY by clicking on the columns bar with ONE CLICK in iTunes 10.



I'll wait.

kthxbye

I think Aquaria made a lot of good points but for me I especially miss the albums in song view.
I wish there was a way to display my music, compactly with art by date.
What could be more intuitive then that?
I guess what's intuitive for one person may not be for another.

I still have 10.7 on my desktop and I hope that Apple will address the issues that are keeping me from making the switch.
11 does have some nice things but I won't make the switch yet. In the meantime I'll check out Google Music.

[LizKat]

I keep finding more reasons to regret having moved to iTunes 11. The latest one is realizing I cannot have multiple playlists open at once any more. I used that feature every time I decided to create a new playlist of the month, season, etc.

And that's after discovering that shuffle and repeat functions (or repeat-one track) apply universally now, not just to the playlist and track at hand. Are you kidding me? That means a playlist whose order you have not done a Copy to Play Order to preserve will reshuffle when you play any track in it, if you happen to launch the playlist when the shuffle button had already turned on.

And that was after the worst discovery, the one about not being able to see iteratively shuffled lists in their updated order in the main window now. How is it intuitive to fetch a playlist into the main window, start playing it with shuffle turned off, then realize that it had already been reshuffled and saved to some other play order, and that you cannot even determine that order without dropping down the menu for another function, namely the DJ subsitute UpNext. UpNext is not even helpful when you're looking at a long playlist and trying to understand its current sequence. So it's back to manual sequencing of play order? What a drag!

Way back in 1984 Apple started to bring us a whole world of "what you see is what you get." That was intuitive. Seeing the little audio icon jump around in a playlist in the main window of iTunes on a laptop is not my idea of an intuitive view of a shuffled playlist. Really.

Sure, when I'm playing a shuffled hundred-track list on a nano or a shuffle, I don't care what the playlist order "looks like". There's miminal or no display space on those devices. So either I like the track or hit skip and hope I like the next one. But to me that was the whole point of shuffling stuff on the laptop , where one COULD see the order of play, then using Copy to Play Order when happy with the result. Then I could sync pre-shuffled music to the ipods and iOS devices and leave their shuffle mode turned off.

I don't really want to revert to a prior version of iTunes. I like to keep my stuff pretty much up to date. I want Apple to clean up their act and stop dumbing down the software that runs on their laptops and desktops.

[tdhurst]

Sure, Google Reader was free, too.

If you're not paying for it, you're not the customer and likely not a concern of the company making the product.

[Kissaragi]

Really not sure why people have an issue with iTunes 11. If you put the sidebar back on its barely any different from iTunes 10. Maybe i just dont use any features that changed.

[Mac32]

I agree with Aquaria in most of his points. Removing Cover Flow was a big mistake. Adding or changing cover art in iTunes 11 has also become more cumbersome than before, now you can't drag an image from Safari directly into iTunes 11 which is nonsense. To make matters even worse, Safari no longer tells me the size when viewing an image file. Talk about going backwards Apple!

[kurzz]

Love iTunes 11. I have absolutely no problem with it and itunes Match. It's a keeper for me, at least for now.

[GeorgieJamison]

iTunes 11 is super fast on my mac... just sayin' :/

[bobsax]

Originally Posted by LizKat

I don't really want to revert to a prior version of iTunes. I like to keep my stuff pretty much up to date. I want Apple to clean up their act and stop dumbing down the software that runs on their laptops and desktops.

I'm with you Liz. I'm using 11 on my laptop and it has some cool features but I'm staying on 10 with my desktop hoping Apple will fix the issues I have with 11.

Originally Posted by Mac32

I agree with Aquaria in most of his points. Removing Cover Flow was a big mistake. Adding or changing cover art in iTunes 11 has also become more cumbersome than before, now you can't drag an image from Safari directly into iTunes 11 which is nonsense. To make matters even worse, Safari no longer tells me the size when viewing an image file. Talk about going backwards Apple!

I never used cover flow but I understand you wanting it back.
WE all use iTunes differently depending on the type of library we have and what works best for us individually (and probably our hardware)

My number one priority is to easily see as much music as possible in order of Date Added.
Song list without album art doesn't cut it. Imagine scanning through an old file drawer with no folders or titles.
I have a mix of incomplete and complete albums along with a lot of singles.
Having the album art with song list view lets you quickly scan/scroll through your library in order of date added.

If you were able to make the album art really small in album view that might be a substitute but it wouldn't let you know what's a single or incomplete album.