iTunes 10/iTunes X Predictions/Wishes

[cmChimera]

I'm guessing this should be out in September. Any predictions or wishes?

I'm more just hoping for some performance boosts, making it lighter and faster, but I'm interested in hearing some other thoughts.

 

[Caleb531]

I say:

• Make it lighter, faster, and fully Cocoa (that means switching back to the old window gradient)
• Add some social network integration (don't care too much about that, but I'm sure some people would)
• Adding a media scrubbing feature like the iPhone/iPod touch would be handy
• Better ways to add artwork/lyrics to songs (let's be friends with GraceNote)

For now, that's my list, and that's probably about the number of features they're going to add anyway.

 

[NSWMaps]

I say:

• Make it lighter, faster, and fully Cocoa (that means switching back to the old window gradient.

For now, that's my list, and that's probably about the number of features they're going to add anyway.

That's all I want, but I'm forced to remember that they have to do simultaneus development for two platforms. Finally going cocoa might make porting to windows that much harder.

 

[kasakka]

• Make "manually manage music" work properly on multiple computers with the iPhone
• Ringtones does not equal music so syncing ringtones should be separate from syncing music
• Remember what song you were playing and where you had your library scrolled when restarting the application instead of jumping at the top of the library list
• Speed improvements are a must. Why does it take Foobar2000 1/10th of the time to add the same songs? Why are the iPhone tabs so hopelessly slow, not to mention poorly arranged?
• Always a long shot, but being able to read at least FLAC wouldn't be all that hard to do. I mean it's a free codec so it's not like they have to pay license fees or anything.

 

[no-direction]

I say:

• Make it lighter, faster, and fully Cocoa (that means switching back to the old window gradient)
• Add some social network integration (don't care too much about that, but I'm sure some people would)

For now, that's my list, and that's probably about the number of features they're going to add anyway.

I think iTunes should definitely be going Cocoa with iTunes X, although I take NSWMaps point about how this may complicate any subsequent Windows ports - I'm not a developer and wouldn't know how the switch from Carbon would affect this. Both Adobe and Microsoft have had a lot of stick about taking a long time to switch their development over from Carbon, but Apple's flagship piece of software still lingers on this legacy framework.

Not too keen on social network integration, don't really fancy seeing Facebook walls full of iTunes notifications. However, built in scrobbling to Last.fm would be good - Spotify seems to acheive this simply enough.

 

[dXTC]

I say:

• Make it lighter, faster, and fully Cocoa (that means switching back to the old window gradient)
• Add some social network integration (don't care too much about that, but I'm sure some people would)
• Adding a media scrubbing feature like the iPhone/iPod touch would be handy
• Better ways to add artwork/lyrics to songs (let's be friends with GraceNote)

.

At this stage, I don't know if iTunes can be made lighter, since it now has to handle so many different object types (music, video, podcasts, apps, etc.). However, it can be made faster, at least on the Mac side by two things:

• Porting to Cocoa.
• Ditching the current XML-based flat database file for a true relational database scheme. This would allow iTunes to render only those elements necessary for the first view, not the entire collection, and would allow greater flexibility about object definition-- Multiple Genres, anyone?
  However, this would be a major programming paradigm shift, and I'm not sure Apple wants to take this on just yet.

Like no-direction mentioned, moving to Cocoa may make continuing to support Windows rather difficult.

Also, like no-direction, I'm not keen at all about social media integration. Unless I'm in a music-oriented forum, what someone else halfway across town/the nation/the world is playing is largely irrelevant to my interests. To use a phrase from the infamous "Tourettes Guy": I don't give a dead moose's last <BEEP> what the iPod of a person I barely even talked to in high school played seventeen minutes ago. (Not that I would know; I've specifically avoided Facebook, in part because of this.)

• Make "manually manage music" work properly on multiple computers with the iPhone
• Ringtones does not equal music so syncing ringtones should be separate from syncing music
• Remember what song you were playing and where you had your library scrolled when restarting the application instead of jumping at the top of the library list
• Speed improvements are a must. Why does it take Foobar2000 1/10th of the time to add the same songs? Why are the iPhone tabs so hopelessly slow, not to mention poorly arranged?
• Always a long shot, but being able to read at least FLAC wouldn't be all that hard to do. I mean it's a free codec so it's not like they have to pay license fees or anything.

FLAC compatibility would be cool, even if it's only to convert to Apple Lossless, like iTunes for Windows's WMV conversion utility.

However, I don't think Apple's going to simplify jumping between computers with the same iPhone/iPod anytime soon. The iPhone and iPod series are designed to have a one-to-one relationship; any given iDevice links with one and only one computer. I think Apple made that concession a long time ago to get more support for the iTunes Store from major record labels (who were fearful of wholesale piracy by iPod transfer at the time).

 

[Caleb531]

That's all I want, but I'm forced to remember that they have to do simultaneus development for two platforms. Finally going cocoa might make porting to windows that much harder.

They were able to do it for Safari, weren't they?

 

[mrgreeneyes]

I say:

• Make it lighter, faster, and fully Cocoa (that means switching back to the old window gradient)
• Add some social network integration (don't care too much about that, but I'm sure some people would)
• Adding a media scrubbing feature like the iPhone/iPod touch would be handy
• Better ways to add artwork/lyrics to songs (let's be friends with GraceNote)

For now, that's my list, and that's probably about the number of features they're going to add anyway.

maybe add a section just like the movies and tv show, but for music videos.
a way to organize the apps in itunes