Coverflow on iPhone; do you use it?

[Sonicjay]

Coverflow on the iPhone looks really nice, and people always seem impressed when I show it to them if they haven't seen an iPhone before, but does anyone ever actually use it to browse/pick their music? I personally never use it, and more often that not, just get irritated by it if I'm scrolling through my music in list mode, and tilt my phone a little too far and activate cover flow.

 

[DenniZ]

Err, well I use it once in a while, usually when I get annoyed at shuffle picking songs I don't want to listen to. I use it when I have nothing else to do usually. But 99% of the time, it's barely used. I have all my album art done as well, but not really, maybe if I could navigate to certain letters like songs in cover flow would help.

 

[pj rage]

Yeah, completely useless to me. Text based is WAY faster to find what you are looking for.

On the same/similar topic, am I the only one that is very annoyed that in the "playing now" screen, the album art takes up like 90%+ of the screen real estate? WTF? I can barely make out what song is playing (artist and title). Especially while driving, I have to really stare and squint at it. I wish I could make it's text much much bigger at the expense of the useless picture of artwork. Sometimes a song I haven't heard in a while comes on and I can't remember the name so I want to see what it was, and it's very dangerous to have to bring the phone halfway to your face and stare to make out the letters. I should be able to read it clearly with my 20/20 vision from the cupholder without any struggle. This is all not to mention that only like 60% of my songs actually have art, and I haven't had time to get art to the other songs, so most of the time I'm looking at a mostly blank screen

 

[mattpreston11]

i use it when i just dont have a clue what i want to listen to.

i generally dont listen to my music much though, much perfer virgin radio on tuner.

 

[DenniZ]

Yeah, completely useless to me. Text based is WAY faster to find what you are looking for.

On the same/similar topic, am I the only one that is very annoyed that in the "playing now" screen, the album art takes up like 90%+ of the screen real estate? WTF? I can barely make out what song is playing (artist and title). Especially while driving, I have to really stare and squint at it. I wish I could make it's text much much bigger at the expense of the useless picture of artwork. Sometimes a song I haven't heard in a while comes on and I can't remember the name so I want to see what it was, and it's very dangerous to have to bring the phone halfway to your face and stare to make out the letters. I should be able to read it clearly with my 20/20 vision from the cupholder without any struggle. This is all not to mention that only like 60% of my songs actually have art, and I haven't had time to get art to the other songs, so most of the time I'm looking at a mostly blank screen

When playing music, lock the phone, and press the lock button, the date is replaced by the song name which is slightly larger font.

 

[Whigga Spitta]

I don't use it on my iPhone and I don't find myself using it on my Mac either. I just don't find it to be a very efficient way of finding the music I want to listen to.

 

[illutionz]

I use it sometimes on the iTunes but on the iPhone, I never use it at all.

The biggest problem is that when you're at a playlist, using cover flow brings you back to the "Album" which is very annoying.

The implementation on iTunes is so much better that you can have cover flow for just that particular playlist and not your whole library.

Also, my favorite view is "grouped by artwork" which is not as bland as seeing a list, and at the same time, able to show the cover art

 

[Cynicalone]

I don't listen to music on my iPhone/iPhone 3G much since it's just a backup iPod for me. I do use Coverflow on my iPod Touch, but again comes the problem of iTunes not being able to find the cover art. I wish there was a way to search and d/l the artwork yourself from iTunes.

 

[DenniZ]

I don't listen to music on my iPhone/iPhone 3G much since it's just a backup iPod for me. I do use Coverflow on my iPod Touch, but again comes the problem of iTunes not being able to find the cover art. I wish there was a way to search and d/l the artwork yourself from iTunes.

You can, just drag and drop the picture you found into the now playing box thing.

 

[Cynicalone]

You can, just drag and drop the picture you found into the now playing box thing.

I didn't know that I'll try that...

*Edit tried that it didn't work.

 

[pj rage]

When playing music, lock the phone, and press the lock button, the date is replaced by the song name which is slightly larger font.

Yeah, that is slightly helpful, but most times I don't know the artist either, so I still have to look it up. I would complain ALOT less if this screen also said the artist.

The best workaround I've found is to get to the home screen and double click the home button. That shows the song and artist in readable text. It just sucks that from within the ipod app, where you would expect to see the most info in the best layout / most readable form is, in fact, the worst, so you have to back all the way out to get to readable info. Considering how much time and effort apple spends on usability (and nails it for the most part), this just seems like a huge oversight.

I'd rather even have an option to have the album artwork go away entirely and be replaced by huge text only if that's what it took. The artwork is useless to me. If I'm going to look at something, I'd rather look at a cool visualization or something.

 

[pj rage]

I didn't know that I'll try that...

*Edit tried that it didn't work.

You can also select all the tracks that you want the same artwork for, select get info, double click the picture where the artwork thumbnail would be, search for a pic, and hit OK.

 

[DenniZ]

I didn't know that I'll try that...

*Edit tried that it didn't work.

Not the now playing box at the top, its at the bottom left corner, if there is no album art is should say 'Drag Album Art Here'.

If there is no box then go to

view-Show album art

 

[Geckotek]

Yeah, completely useless to me. Text based is WAY faster to find what you are looking for.

On the same/similar topic, am I the only one that is very annoyed that in the "playing now" screen, the album art takes up like 90%+ of the screen real estate? WTF? I can barely make out what song is playing (artist and title). Especially while driving, I have to really stare and squint at it. I wish I could make it's text much much bigger at the expense of the useless picture of artwork. Sometimes a song I haven't heard in a while comes on and I can't remember the name so I want to see what it was, and it's very dangerous to have to bring the phone halfway to your face and stare to make out the letters. I should be able to read it clearly with my 20/20 vision from the cupholder without any struggle. This is all not to mention that only like 60% of my songs actually have art, and I haven't had time to get art to the other songs, so most of the time I'm looking at a mostly blank screen

I agree, but I do like the album art also. But there should be a better balance than there is now.

Also on a similar note, I hate the fact that when I'm browsing music, the artist isn't listed. Perhaps I'm looking at the recently added playlist....I don't usually have the song titles memorized of the last artists album I downloaded, so it sometimes gets lost in all the other music. I hate that!!

 

[Sonicjay]

Now album art, otoh, I love. I just have no use for scrolling through all the albums with coverflow, and as stated above, dropping out of your playlist when it comes up is very annoying.

For album art that iTunes didn't find, or found the wrong one, I just grab the cover art from Amazon and drag it into the cover art tab in iTunes on my Mac.

 

[ucfgrad93]

Once in a while I'll use it, but not very often.

 

[o JRoD o]

Only time I use it, is to show off the iPhone. Otherwise I just use my playlists.

 

[Vesian]

Text is way faster and I can see the cover art anyways in that mode. Besides, you can't even view coverflow by albums, only artists. Annoying.

 

[redgaz26]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5B108 Safari/525.20)

I don't listen to music on my iPhone/iPhone 3G much since it's just a backup iPod for me. I do use Coverflow on my iPod Touch, but again comes the problem of iTunes not being able to find the cover art. I wish there was a way to search and d/l the artwork yourself from iTunes.

if your on a mac use a little program called"gimmie some tunes"
Will get all your artwork and lyrics

 

[Geckotek]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5B108 Safari/525.20)



if your on a mac use a little program called"gimmie some tunes"
Will get all your artwork and lyrics

Got a good lyrics program for PC? The ones I've used in the past are clunky and time consuming.

 

[pj rage]

I agree, but I do like the album art also. But there should be a better balance than there is now.

Also on a similar note, I hate the fact that when I'm browsing music, the artist isn't listed. Perhaps I'm looking at the recently added playlist....I don't usually have the song titles memorized of the last artists album I downloaded, so it sometimes gets lost in all the other music. I hate that!!

Yeah, I also hate that.

There are so many things I wish the ipod app either did different or had the ability to do.

It's running on such a capable and powerful device, but the implementation sucks, IMO. It's great for being a phone's mp3 player, but if I bought the touch primarily as an mp3 player, I would be disappointed. The sad thing is that it's only marginally different/better than the first ipods, which I found to be basically unusable/cumbersome for large libraries.

But enough with the ipod complaints, I'll just keeping my fingers crossed for a sweet 3rd party app to replace it, or possibly a revamp of it at some point from apple.

 

[mrtune]

I hate it. It's just a gimmick to show to friends when showing off the capabilities of the phone, IMO. That's it.

I have a spot in my car where I rest the phone while driving. It plugs in via an auxiliary cable and to my car adapter for charging. When charging and listening to music, it does not sleep, which I like.

If I set my phone down, it switches to coverflow. I change what I'm listening too I need to pick up the phone and turn it right side up. I hate that!

 

[Geckotek]

<snip> ipods, which I found to be basically unusable/cumbersome for large libraries. <snip>

That sounds familiar. Did we have this conversation on another forum?

 

[btcutter]

Coverflow doesn't work in playlist

Anyone notice that when you are in a particular playlist and you go to coverflow , the coverflow take you back to the entire music library and not just the coverflow for the selected playlist.

is that just me or anyone else notice????

 

[redgaz26]

Anyone notice that when you are in a particular playlist and you go to coverflow , the coverflow take you back to the entire music library and not just the coverflow for the selected playlist.

is that just me or anyone else notice????

not just you. anyone else notice that podcast do not appear in coverflow .....but if you are listening to a podcast and go into coverflow the podcast shows up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!