iTunes 8 Interface: First Impressions?

[irmongoose]

I liked the old Grid(middle view choice) which was list grouped by Album with art. That hasn't entirely gone away as you can still go into an Artist and maybe a Genre and see all the songs listed like that. But you can't see your whole library that way.

Actually, it's still there, but it's hidden. Go to your library or any playlist in List View, and on the top columns with Name, Artist, etc., on the very left is a small right arrow. Click on that and it will expand the old Album view.


As for me, I like the Genius feature. Not the recommendation sidebar, which is just a way for Apple to sell more songs, but the auto playlist-creation surprisingly works well - I really enjoy the selection it makes.


irmongoose

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

Actually, it's still there, but it's hidden. Go to your library or any playlist in List View, and on the top columns with Name, Artist, etc., on the very left is a small right arrow. Click on that and it will expand the old Album view.


As for me, I like the Genius feature. Not the recommendation sidebar, which is just a way for Apple to sell more songs, but the auto playlist-creation surprisingly works well - I really enjoy the selection it makes.


irmongoose

thanks so much for the tip!

BTW: Coverflow and album view (with the tip just given) is soooooo much faster than it used to be.

 

[c-Row]

Grid View is pretty helpful if you want to bulk edit sorting field entries.

What I miss in Artist View (Grid) is an option to set the picture to a custom artist image rather than being limited to the album covers "underneath".

 

[Ntombi]

I was in the Podcasts and I noticed a great addition: you can now have different settings for each podcast. It allows you to set the download and retention settings for each individual podcast instead of having a blanket setting for all the podcasts with only the ability to turn off and on auto-delete. This is SO helpful for me because some of my podcasts I keep forever and the other ones I delete after listening to them. Now it does it automatically, sooo convenient!

This is tied with the Genius Playlist as my favorite new feature!


Overall, I like 8, but it is huge and takes up a lot of memory. My iBook can't keep multiple apps running as smoothly with iTunes constantly running like it did before. And my RAM is maxed out.

 

[puckhead193]

the grid view is only good if you have ALL your music organized with tracks, artist, album art/title correct. I'm not a fan of it. For me its easier just to use the list view

 

[absurdio]

And I DESPISE the forced links to the iTunes Store - give us back the option to turn them off!

Amen to that. Seeeeeriously. Trying to disable those was the first thing I did. Ugh.

So far I like Genius pretty well, and I've found the grid view more useful to me than coverflow. As others have noted, scrolling through coverflow too quickly just means you have to wait for album art to load. Same for grid view, but with slightly less waiting. Seems a little cleaner and more efficient to me than coverflow.

[Edited to get rid of a few questions that I obviously should have figured out answers to. Sorry to anyone that had to read them.]

 

[Pandaboots]

Grid view by artist is pretty cool I must admit, however it needs to have an option to show albums by year, not alphabetical. (when viewing by album it allows this) I think of my favorite bands in terms of chronological order, not album name order. It just doesn't feel right to scroll across the artist and see the albums in the wrong order.

Also, it would be nice to have an option to choose an album cover, or any picture for that matter, to represent the artist icon (vs having it show the first album in the series.) Some album art is better than others....

Until the sorting option is updated for artist view, I personally don't find it useful or intuitive.

iTunes 8 is another nice beta...when is 8.1 coming out?

 

[The Man]

Also, it would be nice to have an option to choose an album cover, or any picture for that matter, to represent the artist icon (vs having it show the first album in the series.) Some album art is better than others....

You can choose which album cover to show on top. Skim to the album you want, right click on the album, and choose Set Default Grid Artwork.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

I've just installed iTunes 8 on my PowerMac that runs my whole house audio system. I've almost immediately run into problems once I tried to use it around the house instead of just on the computer itself.

I updated my iPod Touch to the 2.1 firmware and attempted to use "Remote" to control iTunes and send music to a 2nd room in addition to the computer. This worked fine before iTunes 8. It connected and started playing, but whereas before I got perfectly reproduced music, now I got some serious stuttering that comes and goes. I stopped it and went back to the Mac and did a system reset as it seemed to also be playing unstable in there. I rebooted and now the iPod Touch wouldn't connect. It said it couldn't find the library. I walked back to the den and on the screen I saw a kernel panic. I've since rebooted and I'm about to try again. I'm glad I backed everything up before installing iTunes 8 because it's looking like it has some bugs in it now, possibly relating to Airtunes. I'll also have to try the AppleTV interface and see if it's still transferring OK or not. But this is a bad sign so far, IMO.

I don't care for the new grid view, but seeing I can still use the other views (although list view is really a matter of turning off the album artwork previews), it's not so bad. But I did also notice that the album artwork used to have a bit of a "mirror" effect at the bottom of each album cover and now that's all gone. I guess I got used to it since they all look kind of flattened out now or something.

I wasn't crazy about how they moved some of the preference menus around either. You get used to things being in a certain place and then they move them for reasons unknown. Beyond that, I really couldn't say. I haven't even bothered to try the "Genius" out yet since I don't really want auto-generated playlists anyway, at least not at the moment.

What I would like to see is a visualizer for AppleTV. The new one in iTunes 8 looks much better than the old one, but it's kind of repetitive. I've got one on my PC that came with WinAmp that changes through several different styles over time, which keeps things interesting. Here, I don't see any options at all except to switch to the even more boring original visualizer. I take it you can add 3rd party visualizers somehow? If so, you'd think they could provide a nice preference menu or something like Firefox has for themes and Extensions these days.

As for HD TV Shows, they need an update to AppleTV to allow purchases directly from AppleTV. Beyond that, I'd REALLY like to see HD TV Episode *RENTALS* as I have very little desire to buy and store TV Shows that I generally only watch once. I'm more likely to buy a movie than a tv show and $2.99 is a bit steep to watch one TV Episode one time. $0.99 or $1.50 HD TV rentals would be welcome.

 

[pfml07]

interface

To be honest i must admit that i am a massive fan of the new itunes interface. The added genius feature is absolutely that, Genius. The thing is that many itunes and apple fans are complaining about the new interface and such but the thing you have to bare in mind is that apple fans would complain even more if the interface had a complete makeover. Ive heard complaints like yeah it not much different, the new album view is bad and so on, but from previous experience we know that die hard fans of any product will complain if the product changes too much. Apple have done a great job in enhancing an already fantastic product and i personally think they have done a great job

 

[Trajectory]

There are a number of bugs in iTunes 8 that need to be fixed.

The new visualizer is very cool!

 

[c-Row]

You can choose which album cover to show on top. Skim to the album you want, right click on the album, and choose Set Default Grid Artwork.

Yes, but that's still an album artwork and no image of the artist.

 

[gloss]

I like Grid View, I like Genius, the interface is snappier, and the sound quality seems improved.

Good stuff all around.

 

[paulsalter]

I like the new genius playlist, dont like the genius sidebar though, much preferred the mini store
turned grid view off and just use list view, find it much easier to have things in a list

seem to have taken a performance hit though, quite often get spinning beach ball for a few seconds, also the sound quality is a lot worse for me, only using portable speakers, but it is very tinny now, sounded fine on previous version

 

[GimmeSlack12]

Here's the Terminal command to disable the iTunes Store links (those little arrows).

 defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-store-arrow-links -bool FALSE

 

[Trajectory]

Grid view is nice, but, only shows ALL albums in your music collection. There's apparently no way to view only certain parts of your music collection in grid format. For example, if in Browse mode I choose the Electronic genre, when I click on the Grid button, I see ALL of my albums, not just the Electronic ones. What's the point??

It would be nice if the Grid mode recognized the filtering, but, it only seems to work that way with Playlists.

 

[Apple Ink]

Grid view is nice, but, only shows ALL albums in your music collection. There's apparently no way to view only certain parts of your music collection in grid format. For example, if in Browse mode I choose the Electronic genre, when I click on the Grid button, I see ALL of my albums, not just the Electronic ones. What's the point??

It would be nice if the Grid mode recognized the filtering, but, it only seems to work that way with Playlists.

Er... in grid mode.... right above the window you have a glossy black bar on which are some view options....

 

[Trajectory]

Er... in grid mode.... right above the window you have a glossy black bar on which are some view options....

I know that, but, it still shows the ENTIRE music collection, not a filtered down group. I want to see all of my Jazz albums only in grid mode. Can't find a way to do that.

 

[hollerz]

I know that, but, it still shows the ENTIRE music collection, not a filtered down group. I want to see all of my Jazz albums only in grid mode. Can't find a way to do that.

I agree, grid mode needs a browser. I won't use it untill it does.

But I also don't like the new list view, I like to have album artwork shown on the left, and in iTunes 7 each album was seperated with a gap, now it's just seperated with a line and everything looks really cramped. Much prefer iTunes 7's list view with album art.

iTunes 7:
http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/2006/09/itunes7list.jpg


iTunes 8: see attached.

 

[leifdenby]

Shifting window?

Hi

I quite like the new Grid View, but I have a strange problem though, wonder if anyone else is experiencing the same?

When I open an album in Grid View or return to "All Albums" from an album to Grid View the whole iTunes window shifts it's position to the bottom centre of the screen (i.e. just above the dock). When I then try resizing the window it's keeps being centred until I move it.

This is really strange and very annoying. I hope Apple fixes this soon.

Cheers,
Leif

 

[mcoe19]

Dont like the shuffling in grid view.

I was hoping iTunes 8 would have an option to set different default locations for music and videos. I hate having to import TV shows to my music folder then manually moving them to my external. And I like leaving copy to folder on for music.

 

[Sedulous]

I liked the old Grid(middle view choice) which was list grouped by Album with art. That hasn't entirely gone away as you can still go into an Artist and maybe a Genre and see all the songs listed like that. But you can't see your whole library that way.

I think you can. Go to list view, and choose View>Show Artwork Column.

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

I know that, but, it still shows the ENTIRE music collection, not a filtered down group. I want to see all of my Jazz albums only in grid mode. Can't find a way to do that.

What are you talking about? Grid mode is a better browser than the mini browser. If you just want jazz then just click on the jazz group... easy as that.

 

[duncyboy]

I liked the Grid View at first- thought it looked great like iPhoto. Then I twigged you can't Shuffle the way I like in that view so went straight back to CoverFlow. Maybe Apple will put in an option in future where you can "Shuffle All" in Grid.

The new Visualizer was like all Visualizers for me. I put a couple of choice tunes on it, sat there for 10 minutes going "Ooh, purdy!" then turned it off and am unlikely to return!!! (Note: it works best with instrumentals or soundtracks)

I like the Genius playlist feature though. It doesn't work exactly like Apple claim for me but having a random playlist generator roughly based on one track/genre is good enough for me.

It definitely loads and runs better than previous versions too. Not too bad for the price

EDIT: Oh, yeah- it's been mentioned before but just in case anyone doesn't know- turning off the iTunes Store disables the Little Fascist Arrows of Doom- not exactly headline news but if you rarely use the iTunes Store like me, worth knowing.

 

[big_malk]

Hi

I quite like the new Grid View, but I have a strange problem though, wonder if anyone else is experiencing the same?

When I open an album in Grid View or return to "All Albums" from an album to Grid View the whole iTunes window shifts it's position to the bottom centre of the screen (i.e. just above the dock). When I then try resizing the window it's keeps being centred until I move it.

This is really strange and very annoying. I hope Apple fixes this soon.

Cheers,
Leif

Whenever I do ANYTHING iTunes moves it window to just off centre of whichever display its on! It didn't do it at first, but today I plugged my iPhone in and it moved, now it does it if I do anything, I have no choice but to use it there!

Maybe this is some sly way to make sure iTunes is the centre of attention
Whatever it is, its annoying!

Edit:
I haven't tried burning a CD with 8 yet, but I notice the setting for music/mp3 disc etc. have gone from the preferences? Anyone know where have they gone to? Or are CDs just to old fashioned for iTunes now?