Apple Releases iTunes 5

[Lacero]

You're right ... and adding fuel to the argument is that iPhoto lets you select multiple albums to move into a folder. For the sake of not only usability but consistency across iApps, they should probably correct this oversight.

I'm just grateful they included this feature after 4 major revisions without.

 

[itcomesinwaves]

yup

a new flaw?

Has anyone tried the new search feature?

Try searching for an artist then click "Name"... click the "x" and do your search again... it is still searching the "Name" but it reads "All"...

this is pretty bad... I need to be hired as a beta tester!!!! jk

I just hate when you get your shiney new software and it has bugs you notice in the first 5 minutes

I'm getting the same thing. You can correct it by clicking 'Artist', then 'All' again. Needs to be fixed...

 

[artifex]

Looks fine to me, albeit all my Apple apps I have open each looks slightly different.

The pale-green display window is archaic now, though. It was designed to mirror the colour of an iPod screen, but now all iPods have colour screens.

You wish. I have a b&w u2 ipod. Probably little or no resale premium, now, compared to all the other b&w 20Gs of that generation.

 

[artifex]

Then maybe it would save us from all the whining

I'm going to start complaining about how vBulletin doesn't let us ignore/skip comments made by people who insist on complaining repeatedly about the same thing for many messages over the course of a thread. Send your comments to Apple, or stick them in your .sig, and be done.

 

[artifex]

Hmm $250 seems like a bit much for having someone read Harry Potter to me. Maybe I can con my mom into reading them aloud for $10.

Buy the set for some kids, and have them read to you. Much more fun, and educational, too.

 

[SiliconAddict]

I sense a Firmware upgrade in your future....

Either that or Apple seriously overlooked the folders feature. Folders only work on iTunes not the iPod.

 

[dontmatter]

wow...

Downloaded itunes 5. Much as it leaves it all the same, it changes a heck of a lot in look and feel. I really like the new look. I'm not so sure i'm as hot on the source list-no border makes it so you can't have it too narrow for the whole name, or else it looks really messy, and the color is a bit much, too. But I'm sure I'll get used to it. Looks much cleaner than previously. Simple, sharp, distinct. I don't like the shading on the little window at the center on the top that says your track info, b/c if you change what's there, it can look really funky.... though when its' nothing or just playing a track, it looks really nice.

Regrouped in pref's, keeps it from looking cluttered as they add features, but is kinda silly as importing and exporting really don't belong under advanced, and it'll make people frustrated when they can't find it.

Not apple levels of obviousness for adding a folder in the source menu, but kinda unavoidable. Gapless playback doesn't bother me, and all in all, I'd call this a win. Would kinda like some huge happy surprise, but it's better they don't try and come up with a revolutionary feature when they don't have one, I suppose. Bloat even happens as is

 

[Diatribe]

Why oh why is the display bar two different colors? It's hard to read.

Yeah, why is that? It looks ugly, especially since it is straight.

 

[artifex]

Ahhh, but you see Madonna refused to go digital because she didn't get more royalties and she believed that the record companies make more profit off of downloads (which they probably do)...

Does anyone else smell a payoff by Apple here? Lets see, Madonna is one of the best selling artist of the last 20 years, and doesn't want to go digital because of money....It's a no brainer for Apple, throw her some money and get an exclusive contract and watch Sony and Napster cry.

Maybe so. Did you see how cheap some of her catalog is going for?
If I can't find my CDs, after cleaning up this mess, I might give up and just buy some.

"and inside... we're all still wet"

 

[Diatribe]

You realize that iTuns has no concept of "albums" as an entity, right? I mean, yeah, you've got cover art for your songs, and you've got album names, and you've even got artist names. But, what's the cover art for an album? Who's the artist for an album? Do you just pick one from the various songs which happen to share the same album name? Or would you want iTunes to be doing a binary-blob diff on the cover art for each song and show a list of all unique images (even if one "album name" has four different cover arts, or three "album names" all share the same cover art)?

It's "doable", but I wouldn't call it "simple". There are some hard design decisions to make, and even then you won't be making more than half your customers happy no matter which way you go!

It's pretty simple. Just look at
coverflow

 

[artifex]

I'm refugeeing at my aunt's due to Katrina, and while my Mac is downstairs, it has no internet connection at the moment. Downloading iTunes on the aunt's PC, however, just to check it out.

Man I'd love a wallpaper-sized version of this:

I see a bandwidth exceeded picture, with a yellow frog.
Could you put it on something like tinypic.com?

 

[Dahl]

Coverflow is nice eye candy, but not that usefull. If it's was a plug in for iTunes, it might be something. But I prefer Jewelcase. It's usefull and pretty.

 

[Diatribe]

Coverflow is nice eye candy, but not that usefull. If it's was a plug in for iTunes, it might be something. But I prefer Jewelcase. It's usefull and pretty.

I mentioned it as an example of how Apple could integrate an album search/browse feature into iTunes. If it would be like coverflow, they'd have themselves a hit.
The thing is... they are all about openness to Windows now and Coverflow is OpenGL which won't work in Vista... oh well. Hopefully Coverflow will be a plug-in someday.

 

[Lacero]

Ah much nicer, tighter UI.

 

[Hyde]

Maybe I'm not seeing it somewhere - but in iTunes 4.x you could select 'Show iTMS'. I don't want it in my source menu. I always deselected it but now it seems that there isn't an option to get rid of it. Suck. Also - it's FUGLY.

 

[Diatribe]

Maybe I'm not seeing it somewhere - but in iTunes 4.x you could select 'Show iTMS'. I don't want it in my source menu. I always deselected it but now it seems that there isn't an option to get rid of it. Suck. Also - it's FUGLY.

Yes you are not seeing it because it is in the parental controls now.

 

[Ryon]

Grouped playlists: CHECK!
Multiple Artists: ERRRR!
Multiple Albums: ERRR!

Common Apple! I thought they were going to take care of these major overlooks. 5 major generations of iTunes and they still haven't got it.

Countless songs appear on more than one album. The way iTunes is set up now, you have to choose which album you want it to be on, even though you might have both albums on your iTunes.

The same goes for artists. Many many songs are collaborations of two or more artists. There's no way to add both artist's names to the song without creating a new artist category labeled with both names. There's a simple fix for this, let's have it!

Agreed on multiples. This is one thing I miss from Windows Media Player on my PC... it allowed you (or the online info grabbing service) to put more than one artist in the artist field, separated by semicolons. Then, when you're browsing your library, you can choose to view either by "Contributing Artist" or "Album Artist."

 

[curmi]

The new UI in iTunes has sparked some discussion on where is Apple UI going. So below I have included a quick Photoshop motage of Finder according to the changes that were made to iTunes.

What do you guys think, Mac OS 10.5 Leopard?

Tone it down to look like the Tiger Mail colour. Make the bottom bar thinner so it takes up less room. That would be better than we have now - for sure!

I once did a mockup of how the Finder should have looked in Panther, which is similar in style. Knowing Apple though, they'll make the Leopard Finder look completely different again, woodgrain with huge borders or something.

 

[miccoli84]

ummm i dont know if anyone else had this problem, but after i installed it on my pc (im on my powerbook now) i ran it, launched a new playlist to burn and it froze up on me, so i control +alt+ deleted and then windows goes into a bloody memory dump with the"bad pool header" title. everytime i restart after about 20 seconds it does it again. its okay in safe mode, what drivers does itunes 5 install?????? so i can uninstall it

 

[NicP]

Agreed on multiples. This is one thing I miss from Windows Media Player on my PC... it allowed you (or the online info grabbing service) to put more than one artist in the artist field, separated by semicolons. Then, when you're browsing your library, you can choose to view either by "Contributing Artist" or "Album Artist."

how about multiple genres too! and sub genres!!

 

[barneygumble]

can't say i'm a fan, to plastic bring back brushed aluminium!!!

 

[Diatribe]

Agreed on multiples. This is one thing I miss from Windows Media Player on my PC... it allowed you (or the online info grabbing service) to put more than one artist in the artist field, separated by semicolons. Then, when you're browsing your library, you can choose to view either by "Contributing Artist" or "Album Artist."

Yes that would be awesome. Right now I have to make a compilation out of every album that has a lot of features.

 

[NicP]

just downloaded the windows version and god its ugly, its so cramped, it feels like an oldskool app before people though about interface design

can anyone tell me if the mac version is better?

 

[itcomesinwaves]

How would we know?

just downloaded the windows version and god its ugly, its so cramped, it feels like an oldskool app before people though about interface design

can anyone tell me if the mac version is better?

Help us out a little. How about a screenshot?

Personally I like the new interface, but it doesn't seem like they've added that many features...

 

[JFreak]

All of you people bitching about gapless playback realize that true gapless on either MP3 or AAC is a hack, right? Both formats have fixed frame-lengths, whereas CDs do not.

actually, red-book cd audio has fixed frames. it's just that the frame size is such that in addition to other control data it happens to contain audio data for one 16bit sample oh well... another bit of useless off-topic information. sorry.