iTunes 12.4 Update to Feature Minor Redesign With New Sidebar, Improved Navigation

[havenyoung]

So now you have to click twice to go to a different media section? How is that more convenient?

 

[Ellmer]

Great, so now if I want to view my TV Shows from Music, I've got TWO clicks and a mouse movement in a drop down bar to get there instead of a one button click.

 

[ForkHandles]

The other thing I wonder about is the use of the letter i in software titles. I don't really know what it means, do you?

When attached to a device it creates a brand identity, iMac etc etc, that's fine.

When attached to software it is somewhat messed up.

iTunes and iBooks, iPhoto, iTunesU are places to collate and organise and consume content.

Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Notes are apps used for creating content.

Then the contradictions flow in
Videos, podcasts, Stocks, Weather don't have a prefix but are for consumption.

iWork and iMovie, iWeb are apps you go to to create new content yet they have an i prefix.

I think that this is part of the problem for Apple at the moment. Their offering has undoubtedly evolved over the last ten years but if they can't even get the names to fit a pattern then what hope is there to get the functionality correct.

They have been great at having sweeping changes to hardware to set the standard for future users. They have been neglectful in not applying that same forward thinking to software implementations.

 

[emm386]

PLEASE get back to the drawing boards and re-design it from scratch!

as it is now, iTunes is a dead-end. performance and usability - wise.

adding additional UI - elements on top is just going to make it even worse and clunkier. and while iTunes is BAD on a mac, it is an absolute nightmare on a PC...

 

[mkldev]

Apologies in advance for the long post, but for a problem this big, any real suggestions are likely to also be big.

The bloat is because Apple has been throwing everything but the kitchen sink in there.
At some point, they need to limit functionality to just music.

Actually, that's the opposite of what they need to do. The app is too modal already. Breaking it into separate apps just makes that problem worse by forcing people to think about whether they want to listen to a song or a podcast before they even launch the app.

The problem with this new design, along with all the designs before it, is that they keep adding features, and then hastily wedging them into the existing design wherever they can make them fit, without ever truly revisiting the app's design as a whole. As a result, the design as a whole fails to take advantage of most of the lessons that the industry has learned over the last 30 years, and instead of making things easily discoverable, has basically buried key features inside multiple layers of tabs that are effectively nested, but are not visually so, resulting in utter chaos and confusion.

This design goes even further in the wrong direction by having a pop-up menu that isn't even on the left side of the thing it controls (what the heck are those arrow buttons doing there?) that changes the entire content of the sidebar. So you have a pull-down menu that controls what is in the sidebar and a tab bar across the top and a sidebar, all of which control what's in the content pane, and it isn't at all obvious to a user how those three separate controls are supposed to interact, beyond that they do.

That basically makes this a massively modal UI. Modal UIs are almost always very, very bad for end users except when the modality chooses between two behaviors that are completely unrelated (e.g. buying content versus listening to content versus managing your device). That should be one of the first lessons you learn in any proper UI design course. Your UI should be, to the maximum extent possible, consistent and non-modal except when that modality provides a very clear user benefit by reducing confusion.

And you should never, ever, ever have modes nested inside other modes, much less doubly nested like this design. When you have tabs down the side and tabs across the top and a pop-up menu that all control the mode, it makes people's heads explode.

Here are a couple of ways to reduce the sense of modality:

• For most users, movies and TV shows are the same kind of content. They're something you watch. They get confused when they're segregated like that. You should maybe have a way to enable *filters* to show one or the other or both, but that's not the same thing as modality.
• Music, podcasts, iTunes U, and audio books are all the same kind of content. You should be able to filter your view when searching or browsing, but the default should be "all of the above at once".
• Instead of the pull-down menu for changing modes, use headings with disclosure triangles. So in the sidebar, you have "Audio", "Video", "Apps", "Tones" categories. Disclose one or more, and you have things like "Artists", "Authors", "Titles" (for both song and book titles), "Genres", etc.

You can give the user control over what types of audio content it shows in a couple of possible ways:

• Use additional levels of nesting by type (kind of ugly, and not ideal, but functional).
• Add a filter pop-up menu to allow you to filter what types of content are shown. This menu should probably be larger than the existing pull-down, and the arrow buttons should be anywhere but there.

I would recommend the latter approach. There is a small amount of modality caused by the filters, of course. For example, some of the subcategories will appear and disappear depending on filters, i.e. "Author" would disappear if books are filtered out; "Artist" ought to be there for audio books (the person reading it), assuming that the metadata is available. But on the whole, the interface will remain consistent regardless of what filters the user chooses. And that's what makes it a superior design.

There are, however, occasionally situations where modality is useful. iTunes app actually serves two entirely different purposes — managing the library on your Mac (or Windows machine) and managing the library on a device. That should be a modal control, because to a user, those are two entirely different actions (as opposed to listening versus watching, which is a much more subtle distinction). So the pop-up at the top of the sidebar should instead choose between managing your local library, managing the library on a device, buying content from the store, or listening to the radio.

In other words, the top of the bar should look like:

• [Manage Library ^v]
• Device: [This computer ^v]
• Filters: [All content ^v]

where each of those is a pop-up menu. The first would contain "Manage Library", "Buy Content", "Listen to the Radio". The second would contain "This computer", "So-and-so's iPhone", etc. The third one would be a hierarchy of categories with checkboxes, e.g. "Content type: {Movies [x], TV shows [x], Video podcasts [x]}".

Alternatively, you could combine the first two menus into one, e.g.

• This Computer's Library
• So-and-so's iPhone Library
• iTunes Store
• Apple Radio
• ...

Or make it a hierarchical pop-up, e.g.

• Manage Library > {This computer, So-and-so's iPhone}
• Buy Music
• Listen to the Radio

Either way, the modality would actually separate distinct actions, and the visual positioning of the elements together as a simple list of filters that are applied in order from top to bottom makes the UI much easier to understand.

Below that, in the sidebar, you would have categories for Audio, Video, Ringtones, Apps, and ideally, Books, so that you can manage all aspects of a device or library in one place. (As an added note, if you double-click or press Play on a book in iTunes, it should open the iBooks app.)

When the device pop-up says "This Computer", you should be able to manage your computer's library, and it should behave like iTunes normally does.

When some other device is chosen in the device pop-up, the sidebar should add an extra "Device" sidebar category under which you'd have a list of various screens for configuring the device, e.g. General (e.g. name), Backups, Syncing options, and so on.

Additionally, when managing a device, it should show the union of content on the device and content on your computer. The library items should clearly indicate whether they're present on that device, e.g. greyed out if it isn't on the device, or bold if it exists on the device but not on your Mac. Hovering over a greyed or bolded item should show a pop-up that says either:

• This item is not currently on the device.
  
• This item is not in your library; it will be imported automatically when you sync the device.

It should have an extra column with button that adds or removes the item from that device, which should ideally take effect instantly (without a sync).

Across the top, the tab bar should switch between list view and icon view. For books/movies/TV shows/songs, that icon view would show the covers. For apps, the icon view would look just like a view of the device, and would allow you to drag icons to the edge and move them to the next or previous screen. Optionally, they could revisit a "cover flow" view there. By making this view change be front and center like it is in Finder, it would be more discoverable, so maybe more people would use that view. Hard to say.

On the right side of the apps icon view, a new sidebar would appear containing a list of "Uninstalled Apps" with buttons to add them. By default, it would add them to the screen that is currently visible if there's room. Otherwise, it should add them to the first screen with space, and should change the view to show that screen.

All of the things that are currently in the top tab bar should become items in the sidebar, adding levels of nesting if needed.

If you change the first pop-up to "Buy Content", the Filters pop-up would shift up into the space occupied by the Device pop-up, and the third box would likely go empty. The sidebar would remain largely the same, but playlists would go grey and collapse. Under "Video", you'd have the usual things like "genres", etc. just like you do now. Filters would let you choose whether you were shopping for movies, TV shows, or both. It would let you filter by genres that you care about. And so on.

You get the idea. A good redesign requires completely rethinking the app from the ground up, in terms of how users consume content. It requires rethinking the iTunes store to be much more dynamic and much less category-driven. It requires rethinking the device management UI to separate general device functionality from item management. And so on.

In short, the iTunes team needs to put together a complete list of features, and then they need to lock a dozen UI designers in a room with that list and let them brainstorm a UI from scratch that implements all of the features, with an absolute prohibition on letting them even look at the current UI while doing so. That's the only way they'll ever get past the natural tendency to make lots of little incremental changes that at best put lipstick on a pig and at worst put lipstick on bacon, and start making the radical design changes that will turn iTunes into the world-class app that it should be.

 

[AdonisSMU]

Too little too late, iTunes is a UI disaster. They put UI all over the place, navigation, views etc is a game of hide and seek. It's plain ridiculous. Making sidebar persistent and adding back buttons is a good step but still too little.

Horrible iTunes
Horrible Apple Music
Horrible Podcasts app

Not sure who is in charge of music, but someone needs to be fired immediately.

This is so presumptuous. We don't know how much user testing was done or anything about what went on in the design process to start calling for people to be fired. People have always complained about iTunes since waaaaaaay before SJ died. I'm not saying it can't be improved but your post reads as hyperbolic IMO.

 

[ForkHandles]

Apologies in advance for the long post, but for a problem this big, any real suggestions are likely to also be big.



Actually, that's the opposite of what they need to do. The app is too modal already. Breaking it into separate apps just makes that problem worse by forcing people to think about whether they want to listen to a song or a podcast before they even launch the app.

The problem with this new design, along with all the designs before it, is that they keep adding features, and then hastily wedging them into the existing design wherever they can make them fit, without ever truly revisiting the app's design as a whole. As a result, the design as a whole fails to take advantage of most of the lessons that the industry has learned over the last 30 years, and instead of making things easily discoverable, has basically buried key features inside multiple layers of tabs that are effectively nested, but are not visually so, resulting in utter chaos and confusion.

This design goes even further in the wrong direction by having a pop-up menu that isn't even on the left side of the thing it controls (what the heck are those arrow buttons doing there?) that changes the entire content of the sidebar. So you have a pull-down menu that controls what is in the sidebar and a tab bar across the top and a sidebar, all of which control what's in the content pane, and it isn't at all obvious to a user how those three separate controls are supposed to interact, beyond that they do.

That basically makes this a massively modal UI. Modal UIs are almost always very, very bad for end users except when the modality chooses between two behaviors that are completely unrelated (e.g. buying content versus listening to content versus managing your device). That should be one of the first lessons you learn in any proper UI design course. Your UI should be, to the maximum extent possible, consistent and non-modal except when that modality provides a very clear user benefit by reducing confusion.

And you should never, ever, ever have modes nested inside other modes, much less doubly nested like this design. When you have tabs down the side and tabs across the top and a pop-up menu that all control the mode, it makes people's heads explode.

Here are a couple of ways to reduce the sense of modality:

• For most users, movies and TV shows are the same kind of content. They're something you watch. They get confused when they're segregated like that. You should maybe have a way to enable *filters* to show one or the other or both, but that's not the same thing as modality.
• Music, podcasts, iTunes U, and audio books are all the same kind of content. You should be able to filter your view when searching or browsing, but the default should be "all of the above at once".
• Instead of the pull-down menu for changing modes, use headings with disclosure triangles. So in the sidebar, you have "Audio", "Video", "Apps", "Tones" categories. Disclose one or more, and you have things like "Artists", "Authors", "Titles" (for both song and book titles), "Genres", etc.

You can give the user control over what types of audio content it shows in a couple of possible ways:

• Use additional levels of nesting by type (kind of ugly, and not ideal, but functional).
• Add a filter pop-up menu to allow you to filter what types of content are shown. This menu should probably be larger than the existing pull-down, and the arrow buttons should be anywhere but there.

I would recommend the latter approach. There is a small amount of modality caused by the filters, of course. For example, some of the subcategories will appear and disappear depending on filters, i.e. "Author" would disappear if books are filtered out; "Artist" ought to be there for audio books (the person reading it), assuming that the metadata is available. But on the whole, the interface will remain consistent regardless of what filters the user chooses. And that's what makes it a superior design.

There are, however, occasionally situations where modality is useful. iTunes app actually serves two entirely different purposes — managing the library on your Mac (or Windows machine) and managing the library on a device. That should be a modal control, because to a user, those are two entirely different actions (as opposed to listening versus watching, which is a much more subtle distinction). So the pop-up at the top of the sidebar should instead choose between managing your local library, managing the library on a device, buying content from the store, or listening to the radio.

In other words, the top of the bar should look like:

• [Manage Library ^v]
• Device: [This computer ^v]
• Filters: [All content ^v]

where each of those is a pop-up menu. The first would contain "Manage Library", "Buy Content", "Listen to the Radio". The second would contain "This computer", "So-and-so's iPhone", etc. The third one would be a hierarchy of categories with checkboxes, e.g. "Content type: {Movies [x], TV shows [x], Video podcasts [x]}".

Alternatively, you could combine the first two menus into one, e.g.

• This Computer's Library
• So-and-so's iPhone Library
• iTunes Store
• Apple Radio
• ...

Or make it a hierarchical pop-up, e.g.

• Manage Library > {This computer, So-and-so's iPhone}
• Buy Music
• Listen to the Radio

Either way, the modality would actually separate distinct actions, and the visual positioning of the elements together as a simple list of filters that are applied in order from top to bottom makes the UI much easier to understand.

Below that, in the sidebar, you would have categories for Audio, Video, Ringtones, Apps, and ideally, Books, so that you can manage all aspects of a device or library in one place. (As an added note, if you double-click or press Play on a book in iTunes, it should open the iBooks app.)

When the device pop-up says "This Computer", you should be able to manage your computer's library, and it should behave like iTunes normally does.

When some other device is chosen in the device pop-up, the sidebar should add an extra "Device" sidebar category under which you'd have a list of various screens for configuring the device, e.g. General (e.g. name), Backups, Syncing options, and so on.

Additionally, when managing a device, it should show the union of content on the device and content on your computer. The library items should clearly indicate whether they're present on that device, e.g. greyed out if it isn't on the device, or bold if it exists on the device but not on your Mac. Hovering over a greyed or bolded item should show a pop-up that says either:

• This item is not currently on the device.
  
• This item is not in your library; it will be imported automatically when you sync the device.

It should have an extra column with button that adds or removes the item from that device, which should ideally take effect instantly (without a sync).

Across the top, the tab bar should switch between list view and icon view. For books/movies/TV shows/songs, that icon view would show the covers. For apps, the icon view would look just like a view of the device, and would allow you to drag icons to the edge and move them to the next or previous screen. Optionally, they could revisit a "cover flow" view there. By making this view change be front and center like it is in Finder, it would be more discoverable, so maybe more people would use that view. Hard to say.

On the right side of the apps icon view, a new sidebar would appear containing a list of "Uninstalled Apps" with buttons to add them. By default, it would add them to the screen that is currently visible if there's room. Otherwise, it should add them to the first screen with space, and should change the view to show that screen.

All of the things that are currently in the top tab bar should become items in the sidebar, adding levels of nesting if needed.

If you change the first pop-up to "Buy Content", the Filters pop-up would shift up into the space occupied by the Device pop-up, and the third box would likely go empty. The sidebar would remain largely the same, but playlists would go grey and collapse. Under "Video", you'd have the usual things like "genres", etc. just like you do now. Filters would let you choose whether you were shopping for movies, TV shows, or both. It would let you filter by genres that you care about. And so on.

You get the idea. A good redesign requires completely rethinking the app from the ground up, in terms of how users consume content. It requires rethinking the iTunes store to be much more dynamic and much less category-driven. It requires rethinking the device management UI to separate general device functionality from item management. And so on.

In short, the iTunes team needs to put together a complete list of features, and then they need to lock a dozen UI designers in a room with that list and let them brainstorm a UI from scratch that implements all of the features, with an absolute prohibition on letting them even look at the current UI while doing so. That's the only way they'll ever get past the natural tendency to make lots of little incremental changes that at best put lipstick on a pig and at worst put lipstick on bacon, and start making the radical design changes that will turn iTunes into the world-class app that it should be.

You've put a lot of thought into that last post and it made for very interesting reading. I disagree with some of your premises though.
For example iTunesU is similar to podcast and music is just not true. ITunesU is an educational multimedia service including video, sounds and documents. It sits in iTunes purely because it can use the Apple Store.

I also think that things you watch vs things you hear are two really different things. I wouldn't expect to hear music in iFilms and I don't want to see film in iTunes.

 

[trifid]

This is so presumptuous. We don't know how much user testing was done or anything about what went on in the design process to start calling for people to be fired. People have always complained about iTunes since waaaaaaay before SJ died. I'm not saying it can't be improved but your post reads as hyperbolic IMO.

I'm not the only one saying this, look at reviews all around the world, everyone was very critical of the UI when Apple music came out. For a music app that should be straightforward and easy to use, coming from Apple, with more than 10 years of expertise in beautiful easy to use iPods, it's catastrophic to say the least, something went horribly wrong in management.

The Apple Music UI nightmare translated to iTunes, and made it surprisingly worse than it was. A hide-and-seek sidebar, one of the most laughable, ridiculous, horrible UI designs I've seen from Apple in many years. Whoever is managing this has no clue what they are doing.

 

[Noble Actual]

iTunes is a relic of 2005. Needs to be gutted out. Have a dedicated Apple Music app. Have a Apple Digital Store like the Google Play Store.

 

[JamesPDX]

iTunes 6 was great. But my needs are for music.

 

[62tele]

Jesus christ. Some of you even make me a catholic. There are a lot of legit complains to be made, but it just sounds (at least for someone that is reading MR threads about how Apple is useless, full of stupid people and doomed since the colored iMac, how Snow Leopard was nothing more than a buggy ripoff, how the iPhone would quickly sink the company...) like the usual suspects only like to bitch and moan.

Nothing constructive. Nothing useful. Only bitching and moaning.

View attachment 630357

If you could check my posting history you would see that it is overwhelmingly positive towards Apple. That is until the past 3 to 4 months. I have been a loyal Apple customer since 2004 and totally Apple-centric in my devices and OS across all platforms. But this is not the same Apple. There were plenty of faux pas under Jobs. (Mobile Me anyone?) However, there is nothing innovative, original or game changing coming from Apple. They have become almost obsessive about nickel and diming customers and being petty about features. There are just too many examples to list here but they are pretty damn evident. Will it make me jump ship to Windows or Android? No. Does it make me delay my replacement plans until they deliver better value, features, etc. Damn straight skippy!

 

[Hustler1337]

Apple need to go back to the drawing board with iTunes and rebuild it. It's a UI mess, slow, tries to do too many things and makes things more complicated than it should. The design itself is poor and I'm surprised they've kept to this piece of junk design all these years. While we're at it, they also need to do the same with the Music app on iOS.

 

[tkermit]

Be careful what you guys wish for. Have you seen what has happened to other Apple apps when they were rebuilt from the ground up? I can only imagine the resulting bag of hurt if Apple created something from scratch. From Home Sharing to scripting, smart playlists or Remote support there's tons of functionality built on top of iTunes that we could lose and not regain for years if ever. Try editing metadata or using AppleScript in iBooks. Or look at "modern" apps on other platforms: Microsoft's Groove Music provides zero support for editing metadata, scripting, smart playlists or multiple windows.

 

[Tech198]

Best thing in my view..

if u build on top of old crappy code u get iCloud today..... nothing works 100%....... but when u take the time to buld any app from the ground up, u give yourself a "fresh start".. Maybe removing features or whatever, BUT at least u "know" it will work 100%..

If u keep old code then u'r not solving anything... your just causing more problems.i don't think anyone can say today iTunes is any better now than it was last year.

 

[Slix]

edit, maybe OT: i miss a button to go to the currently playing track, it was there on the top bar some versions ago, now i can't find it anymore.

I believe what you're looking for is Command+L to jump to the currently playing track.

 

[pedrom]

If you could check my posting history you would see that it is overwhelmingly positive towards Apple. That is until the past 3 to 4 months. I have been a loyal Apple customer since 2004 and totally Apple-centric in my devices and OS across all platforms. But this is not the same Apple. There were plenty of faux pas under Jobs. (Mobile Me anyone?) However, there is nothing innovative, original or game changing coming from Apple. They have become almost obsessive about nickel and diming customers and being petty about features. There are just too many examples to list here but they are pretty damn evident. Will it make me jump ship to Windows or Android? No. Does it make me delay my replacement plans until they deliver better value, features, etc. Damn straight skippy!

Who cares how many devices you have, and who also cares if you are "loyal" (lol) to  or not? That has nothing to do with what was mentioned.

This is about itunes, and the complaints are the same or lighter of what has happened in MR forums since forever. People always bitched and moaned about any new change, any new product. Why did you even bother quoting my post?

Besides, who the **** has been innovating and in what metrics, then? No one. They are all waiting for Apple, because that's what they do. Following. Like I said, Apple makes the best products in the world but also some of the worst values. Who cares? Buy what you need.

They are the ****ing most lucrative public traded company of all time. It's not like being the second or third most valuable and lucrative is any defeat. Some of you are hilarious, trying to extrapolate design decision within itunes to the Apple's doom. Meanwhile, Google's design language is 95% white space on tablets and desktops, with guidelines that don't even they respect.

 

[trifid]

Besides, who the **** has been innovating and in what metrics, then? No one. They are all waiting for Apple, because that's what they do. Following. Like I said, Apple makes the best products in the world but also some of the worst values. Who cares? Buy what you need.

Spotify innovated and led the industry into streaming, Apple copied/followed. Spotify was ahead of its time by 7 years or so. The Apple that led and innovated and was ahead of everyone else is gone. Now Apple is late to streaming, OLED, usb-c, 32gb, waterproofing, low-light camera, new macs, catering to education market etc, almost all metrics.

 

[uid15]

It does TOO MANY jobs.

It did a STELLAR job of STRIPPING OUT all the VITAL names of ALL my voice memos when I backed up & restored them last night, and leaving me with a list of random, meaningless dated voice memos. Well done Apple. >_<

 

[69650]

iTunes will never improve while Eddy Cue is in charge.

 

[ateslik]

A lot of people b@&tching, and not one link showing how it should be. I didn't read every page, but... damn.

 

[mkldev]

You've put a lot of thought into that last post and it made for very interesting reading. I disagree with some of your premises though.
For example iTunesU is similar to podcast and music is just not true. ITunesU is an educational multimedia service including video, sounds and documents. It sits in iTunes purely because it can use the Apple Store.

I also think that things you watch vs things you hear are two really different things. I wouldn't expect to hear music in iFilms and I don't want to see film in iTunes.

Just to clarify, I don't mean that they're identical. I mean that in both cases, you're going in with the intent to passively consume some piece of media, as opposed to (for example) buy something or copy music to your iPhone. There's a clear difference in how different certain actions are, e.g.

• Consuming content (listening/watching) is very different from buying it or copying it to your iPhone for future listening.
• Watching a movie is not very different from watching a TV show.
• Buying a movie is somewhat different from watching a TV show — more so than watching one versus the other, but less so than the difference between buying and watching.
• The difference between listening to an audio book (whether fiction or education-related) and listening to a song is less than the difference between listening to an audio book and watching a movie, which in turn is less than the difference between listening to an audio book and buying an audio book.

This isn't to say that things shouldn't be grouped together or otherwise identified by type (e.g. audio books versus songs), but rather that there's not a good case for having a full modal separation between the two most of the time. A filter is more lightweight, and thus makes more sense for something where the differences are not really much more significant than (for example) differences in genre.

 

[62tele]

Like I said, Apple makes the best products in the world but also some of the worst values. Who cares? Buy what you need.

They are the ****ing most lucrative public traded company of all time. It's not like being the second or third most valuable and lucrative is any defeat. Some of you are hilarious, trying to extrapolate design decision within itunes to the Apple's doom. Meanwhile, Google's design language is 95% white space on tablets and desktops, with guidelines that don't even they respect.

And who cares how lucrative they have been? How does that contribute to the quality of their products? That means they are great marketers, supply managers, etc. As for making great products and being innovative, it's not so clear to me any longer. It took them years to incorporate useful features into the iPhone or even offer folks a choice on screen size. (and no, I don't see screen size as innovation but it is a feature!) They are still using inferior LCD displays in the iPhone. The iMac base still comes with a spinning hard drive. The MacBook. It's thin! It's also a toy! Could I run Logic on it? No!
Look, Apple is in no danger of losing their place in the mobile world which will continue to drive their profit. The halo effect from the iPhone/iPad is still driving Mac growth with younger folks so that adds to the prospects for their future profitability. Frankly, I don't give a crap about their profit.

 

[BuffaloTF]

oh... The sidebar! Comeback of the Year!

Now maybe I can navigate the program again...

 

[drumcat]

Split iTunes out into PhoneSync, Music, Movies, Podcasts, and U. This behemoth is stupid, a resource hog, and long since outgrown its purpose.

 

[040]

Sounds good for the most part, however what's with that "simplifying menus"?
Whenever Apple made something "simpler" in recent times I've found it came at the cost of functionality.

Also, drop-down menu for switching sections?
Jesus Christ...

Guess they try so hard to still make it look different from a formerly splendid interface that they intentionally mess up parts of the GUI to not blatantly remind everyone of the back rolling.

Completely agree with you, it's not just Apple though. This BS is happening everywhere in web design as well. To cater to the mobile users, webpages are being dumbed down everywhere, with unnecessary huge text and hamburger/dropdown menu's. And who can forget the (now not so new anymore) Google Maps, where features and functionality took a major hit in favor of other, not so useful stuff. That reminds me of a lot of YouTube redesigns as well, but let's not go there.

That's one of the main problems with current UI design -- the compulsive need to minimize chrome, hide controls, or leave them visible, but indecipherable; sacrificing function for aesthetics and "simplicity" (some would say dumbed down, catering to lowest common denominator users, etc.)

This.

the usual suspects only like to bitch and moan.

Nothing constructive. Nothing useful. Only bitching and moaning.
[...]
No wonder that it is the most used piece of software in Windows and OS X. The people complaining about the UI are the same people complaining about all new UI, Chrome, Windows, iOS, etc. It's just bitching and moaning.

Ugh, talk like this is the worst. Yes, no one likes bitchers and moaners, but lots of people (including here in this thead) have expressed legitimate concerns and arguments on why they dislike iTunes. They refer to older versions and point out that certain aspects (sidebar, Get Info window, artwork viewer etc) worked better before they were removed or tinkered with.