Why so many Carbon haters?
For the longest time I was biased too but Finder is Carbon. Rewriting iTunes in Cocoa wouldn't automatically make it faster or better. In fact, there would probably be hundreds upon hundreds of bugs and missing features if they rewrote iTunes from scratch. I'm all for iTunes slimming down, possibly separating functionality. But expecting Apple to rewrite iTunes to do the exact same thing, rewritten in Cocoa, perform faster, more stable, and consume less resources. Come on. That reminds me of that whiney article a while back that, after 2,000 words of text, basically said, "I want the Mac Pro to be faster, consume less power, smaller form factor, and more features." You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Personally, I can't imagine a standalone Movie and TV Show app. The business isn't just that successful yet. Movie and Television shows have a better chance of gaining a customer by being in iTunes as anyone who jumps on the iPod bandwagon automatically sees "Movies" "TV Shows" and "iTunes Store" and puts 2 and 2 together.
I'd personally like a new interface. Less complication/confusion but with little sacrifice in functionality is Apple's specialty. The learning curve on iTunes is quite steep. Just look at iMovie! That's a beautifully written app & interface. The problem with iTunes is that the primary interface has been around since 2000 I think. I remember downloading iTunes 1.0. It was in Mac OS 9! I even remember how horribly awkward iPod syncing was compared to how powerful it is now.
So we all talk about having the option to sort TV Shows by Show or by Show & Season to death (I personally like the separated seasons, it was something I hope they'd change when they introduced that view). That's just one more check box in the iTunes preferences. But the fact is all those little check boxes is what's causing everyone's gripes about how bloated iTunes is, trying to do so many things at once. That's why I'm hoping for a whole new interface. The application won't be any less powerful or customizable but simpler on the appearance end.
