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I have said it before, but I will mention it again - tags, like iPhoto already provides. The genre field is nice but useless if you end up with 100+ genres which only differ slightly. And the comments field is... well, for comments.

Let me use and create my own tags - "Cover Version", "Remix", "Pointless Radio Edit", "Instrumental", "Female Vocals", "Male Vocals", "Uplifting", "Sad", "Slow", "Live"... there is so much stuff which wouldn't fit in the genre field and would make great additions for managing smart playlists.

"Smart Playlists just got even smarter." :cool:
 
I'd like to see a slave mode. i.e. its great plugging in my iPod and AppleTV to the iMac and it all syncs nicely, but keeping the music on my MacBook uptodate us a pain.

It would be great if I could setup iTunes on the MacBook to be a slave or iPod mode so that is syncs as soon as I connect to the network.
 
- Performance improvement. In time they will be forced to improve it.
- New way of organizing the library. Like in iPhoto, just a library with everything doesn't work well, that's why Apple came with Events. Something like that (but not the same) will come in iTunes 8.
- Wireless syncing.. it will come one day because it can be very handy for notebook users, but in iTunes 8? I don't know.
 
In that order:

1) Rewrite it from scratch. If i'm not mistaken, isn't there some classic code in it, from the days of... classic?

2) Keep separate versions for MacOS & Windows. The Windows version is a joke. Very slow, and the Mac interface looks REALLY BAD on Windows. Totally out of place.

3) Support for Mac OS 10.3.9 & Windows XP

4) DON'T MESS WITH THE INTERFACE!!! We don't want another "iMovie 08". It works. Leave it as it is.

5) "Youtube Library". View, download and sync Youtube videos to your iPod!

6) "Wikipedia Library". The English version of wikipedia fits on a cd (not that big), so i think it would be nice to be able to easily download and sync it to your iPod, if you want it.

7) Wireless syncing would be nice
 
In terms of Internet Radio I'd really like to see them possibly partnering up with Sirius (I'm sure it's pretty unlikely) and offer a satellite radio built into iTunes -- I think this will really open up users to different types of music

I'd also like Apple to bring over the "events" from iPhoto but it would be used primarily for artists -- same interface of events but you can add a custom picture of the artist and then it will store all of there songs

Finally, I'd love to see the iPhone coverflow (i.e. you click the album and it turns around for the user to choose a track) integrated in iTunes 8
 
With the idea of iTunes 8, I personnally think that a face lift would be a bad idea, if its not broken, don't fix it. Features wise are always welcome. If iTunes is still using old code, then it would be an idea for it to be re-written. Its slower & lags behind Media-Monkey & Winamp with features file types & speed. Every app Apple has produced has been enjoyed by many & nothing will be perfect & be 100% enjoyed by all users, as with the iPods. The only lacking feature on the iTouch is no xBox 36o support, but then that will come as will other features.

One thing you have to remember, is that programming is difficult & takes alot of time. If a iTunes 8 were to be written from scratch they could implement alot more into the code, instead of adding in features & creating more mess & taking up more & more space on the HDD.

Tagging would be a brilliant idea, I have alot of CD's I've ripped to my library so a Moods tag would be good, a better random feature whereby it uses the BMP to match the next song better, or uses the mood tag. I know you can do this by creating playlists, but they would then be easier to create with more tags. Also, signal built in would be a good feature plus the ability to stream your music to your iTouch/ iPhone. If hooked up to an iPod dock, you don't have to worry about the power being drained.

I also think a server version should be implemented into iTunes. This way you could have the music on one drive & shared among other clients, yes you can do that already, but something where its stored on one drive, like one machine or on a NAS. This way nothing gets stored locally to any machine keeping the startup time quick & then the server unit has the indexing fully loaded. Then, if your taking the laptop away with you on holiday, you can either put it on your iPod or sync a playlist to an iTunes client like software that simulates our iTunes of today (7.6) and sync's like an iPod. That way the whole family can enjoy the music. This could be achieved by ripping the CD in the kitchen on the laptop & then stored on the server drive. This would stop the sharing feature as it can slow down either or both machines, especially with large libraries. I have 2 machines in our home, my dads is connected to a firewire800 ext HDD with nearly 30,000 mp3's & I have nearly 5,000 .aiff tracks, when we try to share, it takes a while to index them. At least this way, sharing will be more fun. & the same could be said for video files. But then you could have each user being able to only access certain files? Like for example, if you have a child with an iMac or MacBook who is under the age of 13, you could have his account only access music that does not have explicit lyrics or a film rated 13 or below. Might sound daft, but a nice feature about the 36o is that when friends & family come round & the kids want to play on the 36o or watch a film on the 36o, they can only watch & play items within their age range.

Just few ideas :D
 
I think that Internet Radio is useless

In its current state, it isn't totally useless, just not very intuitive. That is why i think they should improve on it. Its very hard currently to find a good station, with what you like on it. Hopefully if they update it, it can become more of a portal to discover new music, and less of a chore.
 
At the moment it's a PITA to manually manage playlists on a library of over 20,000 songs - you obviously have to drag said plist upto ipod icon and when you're down at plist "z" it becomes quite tedious.

I'd love to have a dedicated ipod button at the bottom of the screen like where coverart button is or allow to select multilpe playlists onto said ipod icon, this would be enough in itself!
 
Also, it'd be nice in Cover Flow if where like the version on the iPhone, when it was fullscreen, if you could just click the album cover and get a listing of the songs, instead of having to exit fullscreen, skip to the song, then re-enter full screen.

I've wondered about that since the inception of full-screen coverflow - I'm surprised that this isn't already a feature
 
I do think we'll get an all-new version of iTunes some time in 2008. It will probably arrive when the second-generation iPhone arrives or it could arrive when we have the next iPod hardware "refresh" in September 2008. :)
 
Apple has added so many features to iTunes since iTMS was opened, that the iTunes program has become quite bloated, slow and resource hog. I hope that the iTunes 8 is completely redone from the scratch, no more "iTunes 7 plus extra new features to suck all the resources from your computer".
 
Also some dumb stuff they left out, like why does Cover Flow fullscreen on dual displays shows on the one display, and turns the other black.

I HATE that!

Also, it'd be nice in Cover Flow if where like the version on the iPhone, when it was fullscreen, if you could just click the album cover and get a listing of the songs, instead of having to exit fullscreen, skip to the song, then re-enter full screen.

That would be great, it makes so much sense.
 
In that order:
2) Keep separate versions for MacOS & Windows. The Windows version is a joke. Very slow, and the Mac interface looks REALLY BAD on Windows. Totally out of place.

Yeah it does look out of place, like a haven of intuitiveness and design in the swamp of crodware on Windows. (i think i'm the first person to use 'crodware', google it:D) Would you really expect Apple to undergo the painstaking process of rewriting iTunes for Windows so it fits in more with the crap on there when the whole iPod+iTunes halo is turning people to the Mac?

3) Support for Mac OS 10.3.9 & Windows XP

iTunes already does support XP and 10.3.....
 
I like the idea of tagging.

I'd also like a better way to manage a lossless library. The option for the Shuffle to have everything converted to 128k is brilliant ( even better, make it an option ), it's just a pity the option isn't available to other iPods. I'm having to resort to one of Doug's scripts, currently.

I like the idea of a server, as mentioned previously.
 
I'm pretty much anti-skins, but an interface overhaul would be nice.

I do wish contextual menu on a playlist would let you change the COLOR and the FONT of the description of the playlist.

I'd settle for a limited palette of colors AND fonts. I'm easy when I'm begging. ;)

Right now when I'm trying to work up certain lists I want to spruce up for, say, a shuffle and a nano, I have to name them something easy to find or else rummage around in 50 folders or some long run of unfoldered individual playlists to find ForThePinkShuffle_2008_02 and NanoBanano_200802.

And that's assuming I remember the names i stuck on the things. :confused:

I could call them Breakfast and Sam as long as I could turn one red and other turquoise to stand out from the crowd next time I want to resume working on them. Their colors would remind me they're not done yet!
 
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