iPod Things you wish iTunes/iPods software had...

[mike dunx]

I'm not sure if this has been done before.. But what are some features you wish they would include (that could probably be easily included) in the iTunes or iPod firmware?

I can think of a few things that would be easy and nice to have off the top of my head:

iPod

• Cover Flow as an option in the Music menu.. Doesn't matter how graphically complicated it is.. it would still be convenient and nice to have. Scroll through the album artwork until you find one you want, press play to play whole album... simple.
  
  
• The ability to upload your high scores from your games to an iTunes Games Highscore table.. sort of how they do it for the iPod Nano running times. You could compare your Highscores with that of everyone else in the country.
  
  
• A battery info section in the settings folder.. gives you a rough estimate of how many more hours of music/photos/videos you have at the current volume/brightness settings.. Wouldn't be super accurate but would still be pretty convenient..
  
  
• The ability to press the center button while listening to a song and after the scrubbing/rating/full album art view/etc. be able to change the audio balance. I'd like this feature because sometimes when I'm listening to my iPod and someone tries to talk to me.. I have to either pause, unplug my phones, or take one out of my ear.. this way I could just free up one ear by leaving the buds intact. Simple feature, yet still not included for some reason.. Also could have the option to change your settings for this feature in the iPod settings folder.. Because I'm sure I'm not the only one that never rates any of my songs.. so the ability to hide this feature would be nice.

iTunes

• 
  The ability to see how far along the charge cycle your iPod has come since you plugged it in.. Tells you how much more you have to leave it plugged it in for a full charge, the percent currently charged, etc. Still wouldn't be amazingly accurate, but would be neat.

anyone?

 

[mike dunx]

Oh, and ofcourse the ability to 2-way sync any song on your iPod back into iTunes, who doesn't want this option?

 

[72930]

Changeable themes.

 

[Killyp]

Oh, and ofcourse the ability to 2-way sync any song on your iPod back into iTunes, who doesn't want this option?

I'm guessing you don't have iTunes 7 yet then? It supports this...


I'd like to see the ability to cycle through photos by roll name. I reckon they've got the music side of things absolutely perfect...

 

[hayduke]

I'd like to add a "Hot" list to the menu. This list would let you add things menu items, playlists, songs, photos, whatever to a single menu item so that you could "pop" to your favorite setting (EQ, random, etc), favorite song, favorite photo, anything.

One thing I really hate is how much I have to navigate to change the shuffle state. I'd love a user modifiable menu list that could contain features that each user want particularly easy access to. Make sense?

 

[davidjearly]

I agree, I think it could only improve performance wise but has no major problems.

OTOH, I think SpineFlow would be a nice addition. This way, I could browse my library the way I do with my CD's.

David

 

[zephead]

More advanced last played stats. Say if a song had been played 60 times, I could click something and it'll tell me what date and time each of those 60 play counts were. I don't know if a lot of people would use it, but when I'm bored it would be cool to look through little details of music stats and such. Kinda like a "song history" of sorts.

A "Videos" list in the iTunes library like in iTunes 6, so my music videos don't get mixed in with my music-only items.

A built-in ability to choose an Aqua skin if you want it!!

One thing that should've been really obvious to Apple is for the ability for your iPod to have the playlist folders just like in iTunes. Sure, everything's nice and neat in the left hand side of your iTunes, but there's no such neatness on the iPod.

 

[RBMaraman]

I'd like to see a menu option on the iPod to change what the center button does.

For example:

I always have my iPod set to random, and 99% of the time I'm listening from a playlist. Let's say I'm listening to a Rolling Stones song, and this song is playing from my "Most Recent" playlist. I'd like to have an option to change the center button, so when I press it once, it'll switch and shuffle all the songs in the album that particular song is on. Then, if I press it again, it'll switch and shuffle all songs by that particular artist. Then, if I press it again, it'll switch back and shuffle the original playlist I was listening to.

 

[roland.g]

I'd like to see the ability to cycle through photos by roll name. I reckon they've got the music side of things absolutely perfect...

I don't have a photo or video iPod but seeing as that is how I look at photos in iPhoto yes.

on the iPod/iTunes side, what I want is:

1. to designate with a checkbox in the library in browser view "Favorite Artists" so that those artists show up under a separate Favorite Artists list in my iPod and I don't have to scroll through the 499 artists in my library to get to a particular artist.

2. playlists are meant for mixing artists, so I don't want to have to create a playlist for any particular artist. Either for all artists, or just 'Favorite Artists' would do, a checkbox system for designating 'Mix' songs. That way when I scroll to that artist in my iPod, and select it, the albums go -> all, mix, then all subsequent albums by that artist. I have artists with several hundred songs. Sometimes I don't want to play all the songs by that artist or a particular album but I would like to hear my own personal mix of favorites/greatest hits without making a playlist for that.

Those two things would really enhance the ease of use of my iPod/iTunes experience.

 

[theman5725]

Music Videos in their own section, not the music section.

 

[mike dunx]

I'm guessing you don't have iTunes 7 yet then? It supports this...


I'd like to see the ability to cycle through photos by roll name. I reckon they've got the music side of things absolutely perfect...

I thought this was just for iTunes purchased music only..

 

[liketom]

nike+ipod on all the normal ipod model
the ability to use my ipod as a camcorder hdd (this would be a killer app for pros IMO )

 

[reubs]

I'd like the ability to flip the display on the iPod...

When I'm driving I have the iPod on the dash (it stays in place very well) w/ a cord coming from the headphone jack to an aux in plug on the car's head unit. I'd like to pick it up and see what's playing w/o having to flip the iPod and rearranging the cording. Make sense?

 

[balamw]

I thought this was just for iTunes purchased music only..

It is.

Personally, I'd like to see a return of functionality to playlists of podcasts. I have a couple short podcasts I like that are great "filler", but not if I have to keep reaching for the controls every minute or two... Now it just stops after the first podcast track is done.

B

 

[decksnap]

One thing I really hate is how much I have to navigate to change the shuffle state. I'd love a user modifiable menu list that could contain features that each user want particularly easy access to. Make sense?

It has this already.

 

[clevin]

build-in radio and larger screen, with those two, i will go buy one right now.
more: a small linux system

 

[balamw]

build-in radio and larger screen, with those two, i will go buy one right now.
more: a small linux system

AAAAGGH! It's a Zune!

What's wrong with http://ipodlinux.org/?

B

 

[imacintel]

front row interface switchable with regular ipod interface.

 

[NicP]

iPod:

Podcasts shouldn't show up in the rest of the library, they should only show up in the podcast section (or playlists). Its silly that itunes works like this but the ipod doesn't, its a pain having heaps of extra artists and albums show up in my library because of podcasts.

Bluetooth support, specifically A2DP and AVRCP. Would be great for wireless streaming to speakers, headsets, car stereos and home stereos.

iTunes:

More format support, itunes should be able to play everything quicktime can, I have AVI files that play fine in quicktime but itunes refuses to import them.

Video properties cannot be applied to several tracks at once (eg I cant select lots of files and go video type> TV show).

Support for bittorrent files to download podcasts.

It would also be cool if you could have multiple tags per track, something could have several generes or several artists.

 

[killr_b]

A "Videos" list in the iTunes library like in iTunes 6, so my music videos don't get mixed in with my music-only items.

Music Videos in their own section, not the music section.

I thought I was the only one who noticed this.
The Music Video category needs to be added to the bar, like, yesterday.

Other than that I like the 640x480 iPod update, gapless playback (whoohoo) and the new iTunes.

 

[Twinsbb17]

Something I'd like to see is after clicking the middle button on the iPod, after the Album art goes full screen would be an information page with song year, bit rate, composer, track number, play count etc etc.

All of that information is with the song file and/or the itunes library file.
Apple Developers should be checkin' with us to see what WE want

 

[EasyB]

An easy way to change the shuffle

The ability to turn on/off shuffle by pressing two buttons together. Allot of the time I am in shuffle songs mode, then I hear something that I want to keep listening to. I might be driving or something. And going into the menu structure is a pain in the a**. I wonder if you can do this easily with the zune...

 

[barnacle]

ditto on the shufle feature.
mostly i want to never have another failure after doing an itunes or ipod update!

 

[PlaceofDis]

i want the iPod to remember if a playlist is supposed to be shuffled or not. in iTunes for example, each playlist remembers if it was turned on shuffle of not, i would love this as i shuffle some of my playlists, and others i don't. it would also make it easier for me to go from listening to a playlist to a specific album. i do not like shuffling all my music as i just have too much to shuffle, so there is no easy way to turn off the shuffle songs feature in settings.

wow... i hope that mad some sense.

 

[Yvan256]

Not sure if these have been mentionned already, but here's my list:

- ability to put any menu item in the main menu (so we can set it up for faster access to the "loop 1/loop all/shuffle" setting)

- ability to re-encode songs for ANY iPod model/capacity, with a specific setting (i.e. Apple Lossless on my computer, 128kbps on my 10GB iPod, 64kbps AAC on my iPod shuffle, 160kbps MP3 on my 4GB iPod nano, etc)