Is it really necessary to fit everyone into a stereotype? Sometimes sarcasm is fun and has nothing to do with being an Apple user. How about we comment on the topics being discussed rather than each other?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iTunes 11 to Include Improved iCloud Integration and iOS 6 Support
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Is it really necessary to fit everyone into a stereotype? Sometimes sarcasm is fun and has nothing to do with being an Apple user. How about we comment on the topics being discussed rather than each other?
The biggest problem with iTunes is the massive popularity of it. It is indeed a victim of its own success. The name iTunes is so synonymous with media in general any radical change could confuse people more than it already does.
I have always advocated an HTML5 version of iTunes accessible from the Internet. The only roadblock is the lack of support from the major movie studios.
If they went along in the fashion of iTunes Match for music with video. Well. Problem solved.
Don't blame Apple. It's very difficult to put the worlds largest library of media in one window.
And let me add.
We have seen a confluence of IOS and Mountain Lion in recent builds so perhaps the desktop version of iTunes will be music and separately there could be a video application similar to what we now see in IOS.
I do know there is animation coming to the Finder.
I have always advocated an HTML5 version of iTunes accessible from the Internet. The only roadblock is the lack of support from the major movie studios.
If they went along in the fashion of iTunes Match for music with video. Well. Problem solved.
Don't blame Apple. It's very difficult to put the worlds largest library of media in one window.
And let me add.
We have seen a confluence of IOS and Mountain Lion in recent builds so perhaps the desktop version of iTunes will be music and separately there could be a video application similar to what we now see in IOS.
I do know there is animation coming to the Finder.
Last edited:
All that would make sense there is your purchasing stuff. THey could role all the purchasing into said app.
the syncing side of things could be done in a more radical way. At least on the Mac. Just have the device appear on the desktop as an icon and you double check and there are the syncing screens.
they could roll the whole DVD player app into the iTunes player app as well
Couldn't you just enable drag&drop in iTunes, disable sync and use it exactly the same way? In my experience the true novices find iTunes set up that way easier than using Windows file explorer or OSX Finder because iTunes doesn't require them to drill down to the media folder when copying the files. The "target" is much clearer as they can just drag&drop the file right to the library where it says "Music"
(Actually the biggest problem I've had in my experience with providing tech support for my friends and family members were that many of them were trying to copy downloaded-from-shady-internet-places media files such as DivX and MKVs, which obviously cannot be copied over in iTunes without 3rd party apps, but they discovered those 3rd party apps soon enough)
Last edited:
Personally, I thought Apple was headed in the right direction with iSync.
Have separate, dedicated apps for different media (iTunes for music and maybe video, App Store for apps, Calendar, Contacts, etc.), and have one app that is dedicated to pulling all the info and media from the various apps and syncing it to all your devices.
Have separate, dedicated apps for different media (iTunes for music and maybe video, App Store for apps, Calendar, Contacts, etc.), and have one app that is dedicated to pulling all the info and media from the various apps and syncing it to all your devices.
I would guarantee that anyone desiring iTunes to be split up into multiple apps for music, video, apps, etc., would be pissed as hell if it actually happened and they had to use it in that way. How much fun it would be to open several different apps to sync and manage all the different kinds of media!
Riiiiiiiight...and you want to talk about not intuitive...
I won't argue with anyone about the library and syncing elements being confusing, but much of that has been resolved by iCloud, and the negative side to it earlier had a lot more to do with copyright holds pissing and moaning than the actual software. Apple is not real keen on making it as easy as possible to pirate content. They also still are more flexible than most on the matter of computer authorizations, and it's very easy to reauthorize and authorize computers. Ever have an Adobe product? You can authorize 2 computers. Fun.
But back to the syncing in general...that's simply a problem in general. Everyone wants everything to be in sync, but syncing to a single computer is a ridiculous concept for exactly the reasons everyone complains. Computers change, break, whatever. Plus content is acquired in so many different places, it's just a mess. It's tough to fault iTunes for that in my mind as the concept is just flawed in general. And again, that's where iCloud comes in. It's resolved a lot of my issues on that front.
However, I still wish I could sync music from my library while still using iTunes Match. If I want to use the iPhone/iPad music app, I'm limited to 256 kbps AAC max if I use iTunes Match, even though much of my home library is Apple Lossless and I buy devices with larger storage so as to be able to store a fair amount of music I want to listen to in a lossless format if need be. It's a little frustrating, but still a minor grievance for the benefit of having nearly 25,000 songs from my library available to me at all times. Add Spotify to that mix and it's tough to beat for music despite my mild grievances.
Riiiiiiiight...and you want to talk about not intuitive...
I won't argue with anyone about the library and syncing elements being confusing, but much of that has been resolved by iCloud, and the negative side to it earlier had a lot more to do with copyright holds pissing and moaning than the actual software. Apple is not real keen on making it as easy as possible to pirate content. They also still are more flexible than most on the matter of computer authorizations, and it's very easy to reauthorize and authorize computers. Ever have an Adobe product? You can authorize 2 computers. Fun.
But back to the syncing in general...that's simply a problem in general. Everyone wants everything to be in sync, but syncing to a single computer is a ridiculous concept for exactly the reasons everyone complains. Computers change, break, whatever. Plus content is acquired in so many different places, it's just a mess. It's tough to fault iTunes for that in my mind as the concept is just flawed in general. And again, that's where iCloud comes in. It's resolved a lot of my issues on that front.
However, I still wish I could sync music from my library while still using iTunes Match. If I want to use the iPhone/iPad music app, I'm limited to 256 kbps AAC max if I use iTunes Match, even though much of my home library is Apple Lossless and I buy devices with larger storage so as to be able to store a fair amount of music I want to listen to in a lossless format if need be. It's a little frustrating, but still a minor grievance for the benefit of having nearly 25,000 songs from my library available to me at all times. Add Spotify to that mix and it's tough to beat for music despite my mild grievances.
A short term product? How does that even make any sense? I mean yeah, I guess MobileMe was short lived, but that was obviously just a hiccup. I guess to outsiders / the average schmoe might not get Apple's long term strategy. Now that I think about it, I was over at a guy's houst the other day when an iCloud commercial came on and he started bitching about how terrible the cloud was because at his work all the PCs ran off the cloud and how awful it worked. I didn't feel like arguing with him. One of those guys. But I thought boy... You really don't get it. Oh well. He will in a few years when his company switches to Mac+iCloud.
honestly What i would like is them is to kill iTunes, iPhoto, and the App store, roll them all into a Finder redesign.
Honestly, I love iOS 5 so much that I literally barely care about iOS 6. iOS 4 was a big step in the right direction with multitasking and folders, but iOS 5 was a game changer with iCloud and wireless syncing and iTunes Match and AirPlay Mirroring and on and on. Literally, for the first time in ages and ages, I feel really content with iOS. It'll be tough to disappoint me with iOS 6 unless they just take stuff away, because I'm really happy as is.
Why change for the sake of change? Does iOS not work better than any other mobile operating platform out there? I think so. Is it perfect? No. (I STILL CAN'T MANAGE GROUPS IN CONTACTS ON MY iPHONE OR iPAD?!?!?) But I see no reason for big changes. I'd just like to see certain things further refined.
It's a very common argument from Android fans that they hate iTunes enough to never consider an iPhone.
I think we are going to have to suck it up to Apple and iTunes being what it is (the worst piece of software from Apple on OS X) and live with it, until we are done with the 10.x.x Tree. I think whenever Mac OS grows to 11 we will hopefully see a new deployment for this software adapted with whatever level of iOS height we are on at that time.
---
1st things first. I love apple and all their products (Except iTunes). I am a happy convert since 2004. Amen, Namaste and all that good stuff. But I am a very opinionated end user and I have as high expectations of them for being #1 as Steve Jobs had when they would make and flesh a product. It has to be impeccable and highly detailed.
This being said, as I mentioned above. I think iTunes both on Mac and Windows is probably the worst piece of software Apple has in its ranks as of today.
The version on Windows is super buggy and I really not going to get into it... but trust me it is super buggy. The Mac Version is probably more stable but its still a bloated pig.
I can't come to explain how much it would have to change in order for it to be fixed but lets be reasonable and stick to 5 details they need to fix so that it becomes a flagship product again.
1. Memory Footprint: On either version be it Mac or Window. It doesnt matter if its running on the taskbar (win) or the finder on Mac. It its a pig. It needs to go on the TV Show the biggest Loser and lose all that weight.
2. Stand Alone Music/Video Player: It needs just that. Apple should make a stand alone, music player that is able to read the music from iTunes so that its just that. In fact iTunes should be a service running as part of the OS and have small apps run-off it. Apple TV should be able to detect this service and be able to link from it, so that any movies stored locally are easily accessible. They need to bring iTunes to be a Media Server of sorts.
3. Take advantage of Grand Central: Dunno how it would affect on windows side, but on the mac it needs to take advantage of Grand Central.
4. Much re-worked iCloud Integration: iTunes Match sucks. I paid for it to test it and quite frankly I hate it. I would much rather use Google's Music because its much less obstrusive and I can equally stream down. They need to re-work how it integrates all this audio and make it trully seamless and they need to retool it from within iTunes App or if they create a service that runs off the OS.
5. They need to integrate this into iOS as well so when I load my iTunes on my iPhone/iPad it has to be synched with everything I have on the fly.
6. This space is reserved for any other ideas anyone can come up with...
---
Lets be more realistic. This is not going to happen on this branch of OS X. If anything happens it will be on the new OS 11 (or however they call it).
We can only hope... that one of the "homeworks" Steve Jobs left Apple was a rework of iTunes.
Lets pray...
---
1st things first. I love apple and all their products (Except iTunes). I am a happy convert since 2004. Amen, Namaste and all that good stuff. But I am a very opinionated end user and I have as high expectations of them for being #1 as Steve Jobs had when they would make and flesh a product. It has to be impeccable and highly detailed.
This being said, as I mentioned above. I think iTunes both on Mac and Windows is probably the worst piece of software Apple has in its ranks as of today.
The version on Windows is super buggy and I really not going to get into it... but trust me it is super buggy. The Mac Version is probably more stable but its still a bloated pig.
I can't come to explain how much it would have to change in order for it to be fixed but lets be reasonable and stick to 5 details they need to fix so that it becomes a flagship product again.
1. Memory Footprint: On either version be it Mac or Window. It doesnt matter if its running on the taskbar (win) or the finder on Mac. It its a pig. It needs to go on the TV Show the biggest Loser and lose all that weight.
2. Stand Alone Music/Video Player: It needs just that. Apple should make a stand alone, music player that is able to read the music from iTunes so that its just that. In fact iTunes should be a service running as part of the OS and have small apps run-off it. Apple TV should be able to detect this service and be able to link from it, so that any movies stored locally are easily accessible. They need to bring iTunes to be a Media Server of sorts.
3. Take advantage of Grand Central: Dunno how it would affect on windows side, but on the mac it needs to take advantage of Grand Central.
4. Much re-worked iCloud Integration: iTunes Match sucks. I paid for it to test it and quite frankly I hate it. I would much rather use Google's Music because its much less obstrusive and I can equally stream down. They need to re-work how it integrates all this audio and make it trully seamless and they need to retool it from within iTunes App or if they create a service that runs off the OS.
5. They need to integrate this into iOS as well so when I load my iTunes on my iPhone/iPad it has to be synched with everything I have on the fly.
6. This space is reserved for any other ideas anyone can come up with...
---
Lets be more realistic. This is not going to happen on this branch of OS X. If anything happens it will be on the new OS 11 (or however they call it).
We can only hope... that one of the "homeworks" Steve Jobs left Apple was a rework of iTunes.
Lets pray...
I really don't understand the hate for iTunes (on the Mac, it's ghastly on Windows). I have always found it to run smoothly (I have a relatively modest library of 4500 songs) - the weakest link in my opinion is iPhone App management, otherwise I'm a happy customer.
iTunes is such a strong brand, I just cannot personally see them ditching that name for the time being.... Crazier things have happened, though!
iTunes is such a strong brand, I just cannot personally see them ditching that name for the time being.... Crazier things have happened, though!
Unless maybe if you have a brand new, top of the line Mac, iTunes is sluggish even in OS X (almost never used it in Windows), particularly if you're only using it as a media player.
I am confident that we are about to see iTunes go under the knife when 11 and Mountain Lion come out.
I think Apple will split iTunes and have just a music app like the iPad with all new UI and a separate app for the iTunes Store as well as seperate apps for video, iBooks, and iTunes U with the Mac App Store to finish it off.
This will finally harmonize iOS and OS X. It desperately needs to happen and I think it finally might!
Last edited:
If Apple were to split iTunes I could see them replicating the app structure used on iOS devices. This would be in keeping with the upcoming Mountain Lion release and is separation of notes and reminders into their own apps.
So, I could foresee a new suit of apps.
iTunes - Just the store, same purple icon as iOS.
Music - The same orange icon as iOS, for music, podcast etc; organisation.
Videos - Again, same icon and feature use as iOS.
App Store - Consolidate the Mac App Store and the iOS App Stores together. Would allow for seeing truly ecosystem universal apps, along with those just for iOS or the Mac.
All of the above shouldn't be too difficult for users to adopt, as if they're familiar with iOS, the concept is already in place.
The only element that would the. Be missing would be syncing. For newer iOS devices this can all be done wirelessly, but a solution would be needed for the older iOS devices and legacy iPods. The reintroduction of iSync, used to communicate with all of the various programmes would allow the syncing to take place. Each tab referring to a different app, where it currently refers to a different element of iTunes.
If they really wanted to take things to their logical end, iBooks should be brought to the Mac, to be used for book organisation whilst a tighter integration with iPhoto would tighten the photo element.
It's only with the final two that I could see not being as simple, the four apps plus sync solution should work just as well orna windows machine as a Mac, it's only when working with Mac only software such as iPhoto where a compromise would be needed.
So, I could foresee a new suit of apps.
iTunes - Just the store, same purple icon as iOS.
Music - The same orange icon as iOS, for music, podcast etc; organisation.
Videos - Again, same icon and feature use as iOS.
App Store - Consolidate the Mac App Store and the iOS App Stores together. Would allow for seeing truly ecosystem universal apps, along with those just for iOS or the Mac.
All of the above shouldn't be too difficult for users to adopt, as if they're familiar with iOS, the concept is already in place.
The only element that would the. Be missing would be syncing. For newer iOS devices this can all be done wirelessly, but a solution would be needed for the older iOS devices and legacy iPods. The reintroduction of iSync, used to communicate with all of the various programmes would allow the syncing to take place. Each tab referring to a different app, where it currently refers to a different element of iTunes.
If they really wanted to take things to their logical end, iBooks should be brought to the Mac, to be used for book organisation whilst a tighter integration with iPhoto would tighten the photo element.
It's only with the final two that I could see not being as simple, the four apps plus sync solution should work just as well orna windows machine as a Mac, it's only when working with Mac only software such as iPhoto where a compromise would be needed.
What i think...
I think its safe to say that iBooks and iTunesU, will be coming to OS X. So Books and iTunesU content will be gone.
Also i don't get why iOS Apps sync with iTunes (now that iOS is its own ecosystem). So i wont be surprised if Apps are removed as well / hope so.
So this only leaves Music, Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts witch is perfect!!
I think "The main focus seems to be on iCloud" Will be all Purchases (Music, Movies, TV Shows) will show up in the Library with the little cloud icon next to it if i want to download it, just like when you have iTunes Match but applies to all content you buy in the iTunes Store.
Also i hope they get all my devices talking on my local network 'better', for example; If one of my devices (Mac, iPad, iPhone, AppleTV) has a Movie or TV Show Im watching/downloading (on another device). It should get it from the device on the local network before "iCloud"... its stupid downloading a 1080p Movie or TV Show from the internet when its on my Mac to feet away.
I think its safe to say that iBooks and iTunesU, will be coming to OS X. So Books and iTunesU content will be gone.
Also i don't get why iOS Apps sync with iTunes (now that iOS is its own ecosystem). So i wont be surprised if Apps are removed as well / hope so.
So this only leaves Music, Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts witch is perfect!!
I think "The main focus seems to be on iCloud" Will be all Purchases (Music, Movies, TV Shows) will show up in the Library with the little cloud icon next to it if i want to download it, just like when you have iTunes Match but applies to all content you buy in the iTunes Store.
Also i hope they get all my devices talking on my local network 'better', for example; If one of my devices (Mac, iPad, iPhone, AppleTV) has a Movie or TV Show Im watching/downloading (on another device). It should get it from the device on the local network before "iCloud"... its stupid downloading a 1080p Movie or TV Show from the internet when its on my Mac to feet away.
Last edited:
While I do like the idea, I don't believe this will happen. Why? Consider this: For an app to be iPhone/iPad/Mac OS universal, it would not only have to have around 3 different sets of graphics, but it would also have to have one binary for each architecture (universal binary). This would be incredibly wasteful, which on iOS would be a massive issue. Plus there's the fact that Mac OS development tends to be done with massive amounts of storage in mind, as in, hundreds of gigabytes to a few terabytes. It just wouldn't make any sense to throw the two together, even for the sake of simplicity.
Apple isn't in the market to help Windows PC sellers.
----------
Wrong on both. Windows won't get a separate iTunes from that of OS X, never mind the legacy for OS X itself.
No, we downgrade your post because it's speculative and ludicrous.
Coming from you, this is rich.
Something's wrong with your Mac. Seriously. I have a 2007 Macbook Pro and iTunes screams on it, using a 2TB library on an external hard drive.
Unless Apple finally revives YellowBox and the Mach-O-Runtime, PDO, Pasteboard Services, etc., and thus Cocoa for Windows albeit Apple only, the legacy will continue.
Grand Central isn't available on Windows.
There is a very large section of Windows users leveraging the iOS world and still not on OS X.
Which probably has been rewritten countless of times. iTunes is fine. It needs some changes certainly like while you are changing tags, you can't do anything else, which is nonsense in 2012. But overall it runs quite fast, it's very responsive compared to iTunes 9 or 8, and it does almost everything I want to do. It needs video controls like brightness/contrast for videos purchased from the store imho because I'm sick of installing Quicktime 7.6 just for that, it needs a better iCloud integration, which seems to be coming already and I'd probably ask for faster usage of the store (if possible).
Agreed but an app that downloads data from the cloud will occupy some memory. Don't expect it to go less than 150MB.
Disagreed. I like having the app be the store as well. Otherwise it'll be like amazon.com. A separate app for downloading music, and then you manually add it to iTunes library. Too much unnecessary work.
How do you know it doesn't? iTunes has been able to use multiple cores for a very long time.
Better iCloud integration is needed but there's nothing wrong with iTunes match in my experience.
You mean everything you have on your computer or the cloud? I have 400GB's of music in my computer, never can be synced to any iOS device. I also have 28000 songs in the cloud, also cannot be synced to any device.
I want better song tagging. I want better album artwork and song information look up. I want to be able to capitalize multiple song titles at once. There's a lot of things Apple can do on that front which 3rd party tagging programs have been able to do since the 90's. But I doubt iTunes ever will be a powerful tagger.