Rumor: Apple Redesigning iTunes 11 With New Layout, iCloud Support

[heisetax]

Color Why Gray?

Hah hah, very good point!



Amen. I sincerely hope that Apple never does anything along the lines of iCal again. Should probably replace "sincerely" with "vainly."



I like your suggestion to separate syncing into a separate app. I don't think it would be in keeping with Apple's (sometimes over) simplifying for the least sophisticated users.



Have you looked around in Lion? Not gonna happen. Gray is Apple's new favorite color.

The Apple II had color. The early Macs did not have color until its 3rd gen & then only with the top level if a color display was added. Then the Macs started going into a color period. Now like people when it gets older & near the end of its life it reverts back to the it was when young. For the Mac that means back to gray. Does this mean that Steve Jobs is nearing the end of his life? Or that he wants to end the Mac's life & turn everything into an iToy as he realizes that he is coming close in many ways to end of life?

 

[idunn]

Stymied

'Apple Redesigning iTunes 11 With New Layout, iCloud Support?'

'AT&T to Throttle Unlimited Data Plan Customers Starting in October'

These two headlines side by side on 'MacRumors.' Paradox?


Apple isn't the only one with grand plans for cloud-based computing. If they have their way iCloud will be the next big thing, with all their products centered around it.

AT&T isn't the only one with grand plans to maximize their bottom line by luring in as many subscribers as possible, but increasingly downsizing their internet access while raising prices to it.

Something has to give. These guys are headed in opposite directions. With of course the customer (oh, excuse me: consumer) stuck in the middle. I hear that Apple is no longer providing system discs with Lion, so unless you want to fork out $69 for it on a flash drive better hope nothing goes wrong or, if it does, that you are not one movie too many in AT&T's estimation when trying to do a clean install via the internet.

As far as this goes, I'm on Apple's side. Ubiquitous, fast and inexpensive internet is the wave of the future. Those nations realizing it will have a decided business advantage in the 21st Century.

Perhaps Apple should move to South Korea, they seem to get it.

 

[HiRez]

'Something has to give. These guys are headed in opposite directions.

I'm telling you, at some point Apple has to use some of that obscene pile of cash it's amassing to create or buy their own wireless network, at least in the US, if not some other large and key countries. I know it sounds like a business they don't need to be in, but think how much of their business now relies on wireless access. Now multiply that when everything gets moved to iCloud. What if there's an Apple television or they buy Netflix or something? Wireless broadband is a critical component for them and it's only going to get more important. And increasingly it's becoming a roadblock for what Apple wants to do because of the carriers' control. We all know how much Apple likes being reliant on someone else's control of a key part of their business. Furthermore, it could be quite profitable for Apple directly to keep that subscription money for themselves instead of giving it to the carriers. And I'm willing to bet consumers would love it too (at least Apple users ) because I bet Apple's contract terms would be a whole lot less draconian than what we have now, and their service exponentially better.

 

[Mr Fusion]

Rename

iTunes needs a new name. It sells more than music and audio-type things. They can drop the music note too.

Combine it with the Mac App Store and call it the iStore and be done with it.

 

[ssdeg7]

iTunes is such bloatware. They need to give us an application 'like' itunes JUST for playing back music without all the other crap, not everyone has a need for support for ipod, iphone, ipad, itms, movies, ping, tv shows or any of the other CRAP thats making itunes slow, a ram and resource hog.

Apple should also rename it to iMedia if it intends to keep stuffing useless garbage into what was originally intended to be a music player.

I agree, although i doubt Apple will change its name due to the great success iTunes itself is.

 

[BigJohno]

Since they went 64bit the program feels faster than ever. The redesign is always nice just please do not make it look like iCal. I know that it plays music so don't make it look like an old crap jukebox player.

 

[nagromme]

Let it be true! I had to eat my prediction that they’d never release a Cocoa rewrite of iTunes without also redoing the UI. It’s needed!

Think how anyone aware of Mac's usability strengths would deride Microsoft or Google, if they pulled a lame UI stunt like the iOS device panes in iTunes: fixed-size list boxes within a window. Sometimes they’re smaller than the window: wasted space. Sometimes they’re larger: now you’re scrolling a view within a scrolling view. What?!

The rest of the iTunes UI I like pretty well (and I love the power, especially Smart Playlists). But all of it could use a refresh and some lessons from iOS.

 

[komodrone]

can we have a lite version that doesn't take over 100mb in memory while running?

 

[Rodimus Prime]

iTunes has an identity crisis, and it's only getting worse. Its name and icon suggest music, but these days I go there for so much more. Movies. Podcasts. Apps. iPhone settings. Add to that books soon, and it becomes more painfully obvious that something must change.

Just thinking out loud, but I'd love to see either one app that combines all sort of media consumption in a way that doesn't trivialize everything other than music with its name, and maybe a separate app to deal with device and cloud syncing. Heck, merge the media consumption into Safari. I feel like I'm doing the same thing in Safari and iTunes most of the time anyway, when it comes to consuming digital content.

This just kinda hurts my head. I'm done venting now.

agreed. iTunes started out as a great program that did what it was designed to do really well. It was designed to be a music library/Database system and in that respect it worked great. At the time it was the only thing that had dynamic search and that was one of my favorite things about it.
Podcast being added worked pretty well and that fit in with it.

iTMS well that worked but the music store has become way to busy in terms of its UI.

iTunes itself started getting things bolted on to it that it was clearly never designed to handled. Things like trying to handle movie files, books, Apps just well do not work very well. Ping was a flop and annoying as hell. Internet radio could of been great but then again that was not thought out.

The iTMS store with all that extra stuff tried to take it on and well it fallen apart. I would not be surpised if iTunes would try to handle pictures as well but that been turned off and blocked that no way it can happen.

iTunes at its core is still good. It just needs all the other crap stripped away from it.

 

[redkamel]

The AppStore, software update and the Itunes store need to become one App. iCloud should be a system preference and just integrated into everything, along with access to it in each app's preferences.

 

[the8thark]

Image

Remember this? Remember how much people whined when it was dropped!

Also remember this:

Colour. Courtesy of itunes 109. So many people cried when the colour was sucked out. Me too. That's why I use itunes 109. And as an added bonus it also gives me back the CD icon with the blue note. Does not work perfectly cause of lion but it's good enough for me. I really like it.

 

[the8thark]

Completely agree. Just saw another blog posting on here by him that did that same thing. Not very professional as you say.

If you want professional writing do not come here. This website is for fanbois, witten and designed by fanbois and not much else really. The Mac Rumor writers need to be less of a fan and more of a reporter if they hope to be good. But that's not their aim. Their aim is be fanbois. So you get what what you get.

It's not the best. But it's certainly not the worst. MacDailyNews is one of the worst. They scream dumba$$ fanboi so loud their voices went horse.

 

[Jerome Morrow]

Ok, what is the purpose of iTunes now then. Almost every other app Apple does you can sum up in a couple of words:

Safari - internet
iPhoto - photos
iMovie - video
Pages - Word processing
Numbers - spreadsheets
Keynote - presentations
Mail - email
Address Book
iCal - Calendar
Mac App Store - buy apps

Because some apps have broader definition and purpose than others.

Then we have iTunes which is music, video, podcasts, ringtones, social networking, syncing, music store etc. etc.
Please can I have an example? Almost all cross platform software stinks.

What example? iTunes is media manager and it includes Music, Videos and Podcasts. What is so hard to understand here?

When Apple introduced iPod they made iTunes iPod sync utility, because you know iTunes was a music manager/player then and iPod was portable music player. It made sense to make it sync manager. Later they added video and apps.

Don't see what is wrong with it. It's irrelevant what few say here, because people are used to it and actually like it and it will stay that way.

Also remember this:

Image

Colour. Courtesy of itunes 109. So many people cried when the colour was sucked out. Me too. That's why I use itunes 109. And as an added bonus it also gives me back the CD icon with the blue note. Does not work perfectly cause of lion but it's good enough for me. I really like it.

You know there is a good chance people like gray (not as in here, but in general iTunes users around the world). iTunes had more colour since it's release. So now it's only fair to let these people that prefer grey-ish to enjoy it too.

 

[Project]

At the risk of attracting fanboy heat, Zune software has been kicking iTune's ass in UI and application smoothness. It's pretty weird to see that MS has been more Apple-like than Apple themselves, in this regard.

I really hope they redesign the thing from the ground-up. It's incredibly outdated at this point, and I expect more from the company that rides on the coattails of premium design.

As a heavy user of both apps this is complete nonsense. Zune "feels" a lot heavier than iTunes. It lacks responsiveness and regularly stalls. It looks beautiful yes, but that comes at a price.

 

[deannnnn]

Also remember this:

Image

Colour. Courtesy of itunes 109. So many people cried when the colour was sucked out. Me too. That's why I use itunes 109. And as an added bonus it also gives me back the CD icon with the blue note. Does not work perfectly cause of lion but it's good enough for me. I really like it.

Ah, so much better!

 

[TheGenerous]

I wish they bring back colored icons on the sidebar

 

[AHDuke99]

I hope it's not like the iPad. The new music player is atrocious and poorly designed to boot.


Sent from my iPad

 

[FoxMcCloud]

Well, it's about time

I think the video library and video store should be integrated in to QuickTime which gets renamed to something stupid like iVideo.

iTunes gets remade and contains only music library and music store.

iOS apps get added to Mac App Store which is renamed App Store. It's divided into two sections: Mac Apps and iOS Apps.

Syncing a device is done in the background, seamlessly and without user input.

If you plug a device in, of your options are set to auto sync in the apps, then the counterparts on the device only sync. Like with WP7, which means the device is still usable while the music app syncs and the video app syncs etc.

This can be triggered within the Mac Apps either wired or wirelessly.

Also iphoto handles the pictures and has same features as above.

Now, with iCloud, most of the above won't need to be done as you will be able to push stuff remotely or pull on the device. Desktop syncing will only be required for large stuff like movies or 90 albums. We're getting to a point now where syncing is needed less and less.

You won't even really need backups of iOS apps on your Mac as you have access to any purchased apps at any time now, and music and video. Next up is settings sync to cloud. We already have contacts, calendar, bookmarks etc.

Updates are untethered now too, delta incremental so no need to sync really.

As long as your Mac is on all the time, any time your iDevice is on charge it will sync with the respective libraries on your Mac. You wouldn't even notice it was happening on your Mac and the apps don't even need to be open. Plus the iDevice is still usable for calls, text, email etc! Only the apps which are syncing are out of action.

Anyone else thinking along these lines?

Also, personal pet peeve, perhaps Apple will sort out iTunes folder management. At the moment you have in your Home folder a Music folder. In there is iTunes folder. Then you get two folders, iTunes music and iTunes media. Guess where your music is......hint, it ain't iTunes music.
Then inside iTunes media you have multiple folders relating to your sidebar libraries I.e music, movies, tv shows, podcasts, apps. However backups are nowhere to be found, those are hidden somewhere else on your system.

Call me stupid, but in my plan the QuickTime/iVideo app would store it's library in the Video home folder. iTunes stores it's music library in the Music home folder (properly). And iphoto stores it's photos in the Pictures folder. Oh wait, it already does.

Come on Apple, sort yourselves out. Zune kicks iTunes ass.

 

[Erwin-Br]

What example? iTunes is media manager and it includes Music, Videos and Podcasts. What is so hard to understand here?

You're leaving out the app store on purpose. Tell me how apps for my iPhone fit into your media manager, huh?

And why do we have to buy apps for the iPhone in iTunes, and apps for Mac OS X in a different application? Why not cram the Mac App Store into iTunes as well then?

 

[Jerome Morrow]

You're leaving out the app store on purpose.

No, i'm not. I said it's media manager and that includes apps too. Multimedia/media definition is pretty wide.

Tell me how apps for my iPhone fit into your media manager, huh?

Same way your music, videos and photos do. It's also music and video player last time i checked.

Do you want to have all your content scattered just because you think it's better and somehow undo the mythical bloat?

And why do we have to buy apps for the iPhone in iTunes, and apps for Mac OS X in a different application? Why not cram the Mac App Store into iTunes as well then?

Because that would be unwise.

 

[jowie]

What he said.

Well Jordan, I don't think you suck so there.

 

[cgc]

iTunes is such bloatware. They need to give us an application 'like' itunes JUST for playing back music without all the other crap, not everyone has a need for support for ipod, iphone, ipad, itms, movies, ping, tv shows or any of the other CRAP thats making itunes slow, a ram and resource hog.

Apple should also rename it to iMedia if it intends to keep stuffing useless garbage into what was originally intended to be a music player.

I concur but think device support & syncing is a must in a music app. Everything from the iTunes store should move to the App Store and Apple should rename it to something more generic.

I foresee splitting iTunes from a big honking stinking smelly pile of gnarl into a few apps: iTunes (music and syncing only), iStore (IOS apps, purchase POS for TV, music, movies, and OSX apps), and Quicktime for watching all the purchased content (so no need to watch movies in iTunes which is ridiculous).

Or keep tjhings the way they are, add more features to iTunes, and rename it iBorg or iWal-Mart or something similar.

 

[Rafterman]

* From what we’re hearing, the UI would be much more cleaner and “slick.”

Translation: We are going to dumb it down and take out half the features that allowed you to customize things. Another Final Cut X in the making?

 

[Jerome Morrow]

I concur but think device support & syncing is a must in a music app. Everything from the iTunes store should move to the App Store and Apple should rename it to something more generic.

I foresee splitting iTunes from a big honking stinking smelly pile of gnarl into a few apps: iTunes (music and syncing only), iStore (IOS apps, purchase POS for TV, music, movies, and OSX apps), and Quicktime for watching all the purchased content (so no need to watch movies in iTunes which is ridiculous).

Or keep tjhings the way they are, add more features to iTunes, and rename it iBorg or iWal-Mart or something similar.

You can watch your iTunes content with Quicktime anyway.

 

[paulsalter]

Sounds good, be nice to have a new iTunes

I just hope they dont make the left hand column a pop over box (like iCal in Lion)