Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iTunes UI has been a crumbling disaster LOOOONG before Scott was let go.

Guys, quit acting like the poor UI design decisions happened the moment Scott was fired. Apples UI had been slowly getting worse in some regards for a long time, while both Scott and Steve were there. iTunes didn't instantly become a mess. They were ruining the sidebar while Steve was around, removing the color from it, hiding it by default, etc.

Some of you guys really have a poor recollection of history. Apples UI design team had been getting incredibly stagnant, predictable, and downright uninspiring towards the end of Scott's tenure. Say what you will about the current design language introduced by Alan Dyes team, love or hate, but it was the most excitement and vision the Human interface team had delivered for years, arguably since 2007 with the introduction of iOS. After that they stood still, made some really questionable and downright poor design decisions.

Just feel the need to clear that up, as someone who's been following this stuff since the late 90s. While Apples HI team has done brilliant work, they have never been perfect.
/sarc on
Thanks Professor Perfect Memory for telling us off. Next time we'll know better to speak before consulting the Oracle.
;)
/sarc off

UI beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I would argue that especially iTunes UI has been anything but stagnant.
If it had been stagnant then so many people wouldn't be complaining about it, except people like you that think it's stagnant now.

UI and functionality are 2 different sides of the same coin. Not sure who drives whom behind closed doors, but clearly iOS 7 has dictated a new design language since Jony Ive had free reign after Scott's "protector" went to the infinity loop.

Listen, I'm not here preaching the gospel of Steve and "Saint Steve could do no wrong", but it's all relative to where you're coming from and what design styles you personally prefer.
For me Apple hit the sweet spot in the mid-2000s. Both hardware & software design wise. The eco-system allowed for the well-tended garden to grow and have an occasional weed. Now, it's more of a prison backyard.

/sarc on
Just felt the need to clear that up.
Now, get back on your horse.
/sarc off
 
I hope this update means I can finally update Itunes 10.7
I won't hold my breath while I wait, but any changes that make Itunes more like version 10 is very welcome!

Hopefully Photos app will be up for re(vert) design next.
 
nice link!

Yeah I think I first had iTunes for version 7 and it felt like that had a great framework. If they kept that but updated the graphics to be modern it would be pretty slick!

I miss that carousel type of album scroll, it was really nice in landscape mode on iOS 5 or 6 I think it was.
Agreed. It was called cover flow Apparently "no one" liked it, was the excuse given for removing it in iTunes 11 forward.
 
Currently, viewing a sidebar is a choice, but people cannot find it? So they remove the choice and turn it on, which is not great for small Air screens. Kind of brain-dead in my book.
 
Apple just bring back the ability to open the store in a separate window in iTunes.

iTunes is really a joke now to use.
 
iTunes resume playback implemented? That useful feature to resume iTunes playback of long song lists once you quit iTunes and open it again, or after rebooting Mac, was available in SoundJam MP 2.5.3 in 2001 (15 years ago!!!), from where iTunes was developed.
 
Let's not forget
mza_5832530847417736514.jpeg

The podcasts app went from being somebody's goofy ui design to being an app that doesn't even function most of the time. Grab your iPhone & iPad, jump in the car, and guess what the likelihood of it having actually downloaded any of the new episodes you told it to is. Want to search for a podcast? Won't work. But you do get a whole page for "stations" with no indication to tell the grannies what a station is or what it's for. Doesn't matter, it won't update anyway. In the event you have time to sit there and load some episodes before running out the door, they'll playback in the wrong episode order, so you'll continually hunt around trying to figure out what the earliest episode is. For safety, they've wisely hidden the scan control into a 1 pixel wide line, so small you cannot scan forward & back while operating a motor vehicle. And forget Siri, she's never heard of the podcasts app and can't figure out where in the music app you'd like to be.

Every time I use it, I get the distinct feeling Apple is trying to kill podcasts hoping we'll all listen & subscribe to Apple Music instead or something. It can't be this bad by accident.
 
After 4 years on Mac I still do not understand what is iTunes for. Could someone explain??
 
I disliked the iTunes interface since the beginning (even back to SoundJam). They never found the sweetspot and in the last few years they actually managed to take a few steps back. All in all it is a very 'un-Apple' like program, but of course it defines the 'new' Apple.

(yes, I am old)
 
You know, everyone complains about iTunes, but nobody in the last decade has made anything that works better.

The only thing that arguably worked better was BeOS, which integrated media into the filesystem. Even that would have problems dealing with really large libraries.

I suspect that they should make something like photos, but metadata for music is unreliable.

Also, you can get the sidebar in today's iTunes. I have it, but I don't remember how.
 
They are quite literally tinkering at the edges..

The whole iTunes/sync/music system needs radical re-thinking from the ground up. This is supposed to be what Apple are good at... or so they keep telling us.

But this constant tweaking and increasingly bloated piece of software smells more of 1990's Microsoft.
 
nice link!

Yeah I think I first had iTunes for version 7 and it felt like that had a great framework. If they kept that but updated the graphics to be modern it would be pretty slick!

I miss that carousel type of album scroll, it was really nice in landscape mode on iOS 5 or 6 I think it was.


For those of you who likes the old iTunes, it is still possible, I have version 9.2 and it still works.

Only caveat is that it will not read your newer iTunes library so you need to start from scratch.

http://downloaditunesfree.com/itunes-9-2-1-for-os-x/

Extract iTunes App with Pacifist, it should work, if you install it using the installer it will install other files which are not really needed for a music player.
 

Attachments

  • Screen Shot 2016-05-07 at 10.20.09.png
    Screen Shot 2016-05-07 at 10.20.09.png
    532.3 KB · Views: 213
Last edited:
.....and it's more of the same old story. Tweaking in the margins, no innovation, milking the user base. iTunes and Music ought to be flagship apps as they are a major source of revenue from content delivery. Currently it's a mess: difficult to curate your owned content, messy interface, inability to stream to Appletv from NAS boxes.........

I guess this is an extension of the self-parody in-joke the execs are playng on everyone, "our sidebar is now a unque shade of puce having blue shifted it 3degs on the color wheel and 3.5% narrower than before, who say's we can't innovate". These guys are definititely taking the pi** and laughing all the way to the bank.

Music and TV need a complete overhaul, not tweaks.
 
  • Like
Reactions: jamescobalt
Apple is bringing back what they shouldn't have removed in the first place and that's about it? Lol
 
How is this taking so long? These are only minor changes/enhancements to the existing UI, bringing it closer to what we had with iTunes 11.x. When they decided to go out and confirm the fact that they are working on a new and improved iTunes / Apple Music solutions for Mac I started to expect something more than some slight adjustments to the UI.

Most of these changes aren't even new. The sidebar has been there all along, you just need to activate it under the view settings... I did expect to see a major overhaul of the entire UI, or perhaps what we all expected with the release of Apple Music. You know, a separat, more streamlined and efficient application for streaming Apple Music.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.