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iTunes 11

M

mjenks

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 17, 2011
16
0
How does everyone feel about iTunes 11? I've been holding on to a stable iTunes 10.7, as I know iTunes 11 is a major change and initial reviews were bad. Has it stabilized? Would you change if you were me?

I'm in OSX 10.7.4 Lion on a 2011 MacBook Pro.
 
iTunes 11 has worked very well for me from release day. Most of the complaints are because Apple removed or changed things that people enjoyed, not because the program doesn't work or makes it harder to listen to music or whatever.
 
Since the 11.0.2 update, in my opinion, it's better than 10.7 in some respects now, still worse in others. Overall I prefer it now if I had to choose. I use list view with the sidebar enabled, not interested in the other views or album art etc. The up next feature is great, I used it the whole night during a party last week, whereas I used to keep an empty playlist for on-the-fly music which has been all but rendered useless by up next. My only gripe now is how when you're browsing playlists it jumps to the top instead of remembering your position like 10.7 used to. Surely it wouldn't hurt to have that as a preference you could have on or off?
 
It probably depends on how you use iTunes.
I've got 11 on my laptop and kept 10.7 on my desktop.

11 has some cool looking features but I find it harder to view and search my library.
Also searching in the store does does not have as many options as 10.7.

Since there is no going back I recommend you try it on another computer before you put it on your main one.
 
Interesting responses--yes, I'm an iTunes traditionalist, and I always use list view with a sidebar, so it's good to hear that's still available. I do like the idea of an up-next feature--is there an actual way to queue songs? My least favorite part of iTunes is how you have to manually quit playing one album to play another, rather than just telling it what album or song to play next. Bobsax, in what way is it harder to search your library?

I refer to my metadata constantly, and would hate to have that made more difficult. This is my newest computer, so I'm not sure I'll find another one to load it onto for testing purposes. I've thought about updating and then using Time Machine to go back if I hate it, but that scares me s***less.
 
Yes the up next feature brings up an on the fly playlist that you can juggle around at will, delete from and add to really easily, rather than constructing a traditional playlist on the sidebar (which I sometimes still do)
 
There is a learning curve associated with iT11 which I did not anticipate.

It works "better" with the cloud which means, in my case, that it made things more confusing.

I think it's clunkier, not as visually appealing, and it does nothing that v10 didn't do, for my purposes. Also, how I filed saved podcasts, for all intents and purposes, has been blown away.

If you're heavily into the cloud element, then you should probably upgrade, but be forwarned that you should poke around all the menus and stuff to see what's changed and how it affects your library and playlists.

BTW, anyone know if I can go back to iT10? :rolleyes:

One example of what I had to deal with: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1566966/
 
I personally don't like it at all, I accidentally updated when I did a system update and forgot to uncheck the box for iTunes...

I sometimes get lost in figuring out where a playlist is, or getting back to music. It's not a "secondhand nature" thing just yet (ahem....still).

What I do like is it starts up in a matter of 5 seconds, when before iTunes 10 would take at least a 45 seconds to a minute to load up 0(I have a fairly old iMac with a slow hard drive).
 
So I count the vote as 1-1-3, with one for, one abstaining, and three against. I know how tricky it is to go back, Rantipole--which is why I want to be sure. The podcast thing is interesting to me, because the way podcasts are stored in iTunes 10 is horrible, in my opinion. Does anyone else have that problem where if a podcast has changed (my examples are FurledSails and This American Life) in some way you can't combine it into one podcast category.

I've tried multiple times to fix it (including on these forums) and have yet to figure out a solution.
 
ipad

I charged up my ipad with the laptop and v11.
I kind of freaked it out at first.
I need to investigate the differences.

I didn't think the podcasts were that different between 10 and 11.
9 would let you drag podcasts into playlists in the music area.

The new iOS has the separate podcast app and seems to works well with 10 for me.
 
It would be helpful if somebody know of a good list of the features that were deleted in 11.

When the last iPhoto came out there was a lot of press (if you looked) on missing and deleted features. When I found out you can only email 10 pics i decided not to get it.

Now iTunes probably has 100 times more features then iPhoto so it's hard to find out what's missing.
I'm staying with 11 because;
1)In the Store searching for a song in 10 lets you choose genre.
2) I like the music library in song list>date added> with album art
These are just some of the features missing I noticed right away.
I really haven't used 11 enough to know what else is missing.
 
You can change your preferences and get all the sidebars back like they were in 10. iTunes 11 was mostly changes with the store. I thought the update was great, I find myself using iTunes more than Spotify now.

----------
Rantipole said:
BTW, anyone know if I can go back to iT10? :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Just go to View>Show Sidebar
iTunes 10 is back haha
 
StintheBeast said:
You can change your preferences and get all the sidebars back like they were in 10. iTunes 11 was mostly changes with the store. I thought the update was great, I find myself using iTunes more than Spotify now.

----------



Just go to View>Show Sidebar
iTunes 10 is back haha
Click to expand...

Not Quite Stint.
To some folks it may seem the same but it's not.
Having the sidebar doesn't make it 10
ha ha;)
 
iTunes 11 is limited to having only one main window open at a time. This makes comparing playlists, creating playlists, moving things between different lists uneccesarily complicated. Apple's also gotten sloppy with UI design, for instance Playlist view come with special view and add to... buttons that don't show up in any of the other view formats (Songs Albums Artists Genres Playlists). Plus there's the 'View Optons' menu item which covers completely different view aspects. 11 feels far more MODAL (in the evil 80's style Inside Mactintosh I-IV sense) than did previous versions. Of course, the whole OS is moving in that direction too...
 
App King said:
I just upgrade to 11. No problem here.
Click to expand...
Different folks use it different ways.
From what I can glean there are at least two types of users;
1) iTunes jukebox--These people seem happy.
2) iTunes with a traditional filing system. Think of your library as a bookshelf or card catalog. These folks have lost features .

StintheBeast said:
Dude, it's Stin the Beast. What kind of name is Stint? lol
Click to expand...
Sorry ,, I laughed pretty hard.....but........what kind of name is Stin?
I guess Nordic? If I was in Minnesota I'd probably know it but in California we don't have a lot of Sweedes:D

a big BTW
Apple has fixed one of the big issues for me with 11.0.3.
You can now see album artwork in song list view.
This makes sorting through my virtual book/CD shelf much easier.

I still can't search songs in Genre in the store so I'm staying with 10 on the desktop for now.
 
mjenks said:
How does everyone feel about iTunes 11? I've been holding on to a stable iTunes 10.7, as I know iTunes 11 is a major change and initial reviews were bad. Has it stabilized? Would you change if you were me?

I'm in OSX 10.7.4 Lion on a 2011 MacBook Pro.
Click to expand...

I upgraded literally a few minutes after the update went live, and I have been enjoying it ever since, I was so glad to get rid of the old, outdated, slow, and ugly software (iTunes 10)
 
AppleDeviceUser said:
I upgraded literally a few minutes after the update went live, and I have been enjoying it ever since, I was so glad to get rid of the old, outdated, slow, and ugly software (iTunes 10)
Click to expand...

I don't consider it old, outdated, slow, or ugly, but to each their own. It does everything I want it to do, beautifully.

mjenks said:
How does everyone feel about iTunes 11? I've been holding on to a stable iTunes 10.7, as I know iTunes 11 is a major change and initial reviews were bad. Has it stabilized? Would you change if you were me?
I'm in OSX 10.7.4 Lion on a 2011 MacBook Pro.
Click to expand...

I have both, 10.7 on the desktop running SL, and 11.0.3 on my MBA running ML, and I personally prefer 10.7; it does everything I want, but if you're heavily into the cloud, iTunes 11, is a logical choice. We posters here can only give you our personal opinion. See also AppleDeviceUser above. To know for sure if you can live with the changes/omissions of the new iTunes, poke around with it at the APPLE store for a while before upgrading, because it is apparently very difficult to go back to 10.7, if for some reason you didn't like iTunes11.
 
macs4nw said:
I don't consider it old, outdated, slow, or ugly, but to each their own. It does everything I want it to do, beautifully.
Click to expand...

Well it is old, and to me it looks like it's outdated and doesn't belong on a brand new Mac. It's not that ugly, I mean I used it all the time, to me it's kinda ugly compared to iTunes 11. Plus it was so slow when syncing my iPod touch 5g or even playing a song for that matter.
 
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