Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

why is itunes 10 grey?

H. Flower said:
Then that makes you the first person I've read to have a legitimate gripe about this topic.
Click to expand...

I'm not dyslexic, but the text in iTunes sidebar are too small for me to read comfortably, and now that they are grey, even harder to make out. I want dark black on white, and I want my icons colored!

And whomever said they spend the majority of their time in iTunes managing content, well, perhaps that's fine if all you have in iTunes is music. But nowadays, iTunes handles podcasts, ibooks, movies, tv shows, music videos, apps -- I spend most of my time switching between the various media. It never bothered me before, until the icons turned all grey and now I have to squint to distinguish between them.

BTW, any chance someone could do a Windows version of that mod that lets you usethe colored sidebar icons from iTunes 9?
 
I think...

Apple is very very minimalistic (comes from the word minimum). They want everything to look zen, clean and uncluttered. IMO that's one of the reason people love apple so much..No? Think about it..it's part what defines them just look at their stores or their packaging. Sleek, clean and uniform. If it does not need to be there it won't be. It's all about perceptions.

In other words
You see it like this Color or Grey
Apple see's it this way Disparity or Uniformity

I didn't have any problem's with the old icons, but I don't miss them either.. Change is good! Embrace it! (just kidding ;))
 
Night Spring said:
Key word here is "need." As I said earlier, I needed the color. Or at least it made my life easier.
Click to expand...

I don't think you can call it a need if you can live without it. But I do see you're point of view don't worry. I think in most cases people who do like it colored, like it because of aesthetic reasons not for helping them navigate around.

Hopefully you'll get use to it or apple will come out with a toggle to turn that option on/off.
 
Night Spring said:
I'm not dyslexic, but the text in iTunes sidebar are too small for me to read comfortably, and now that they are grey, even harder to make out. I want dark black on white, and I want my icons colored!
...
It never bothered me before, until the icons turned all grey and now I have to squint to distinguish between them.
Click to expand...
Preferences > General > Source Text: Large

iFanaddic said:
Hopefully you'll get use to it or apple will come out with a toggle to turn that option on/off.
Click to expand...
LOL ... Riiiiiiiiiiight.
 
QuarterSwede said:
Preferences > General > Source Text: Large
Click to expand...

I do have it set to Large. It's still too small. I think everyone at Apple must have 20/20 eyesight. One of the things I don't like about OSX is that the system font, in general, is so tiny, and I couldn't find any way to change the font size.
 
Color

Anybody remember M$ Internet Explorer 5 on Mac that actually let users pic a color theme? I guess choice was so 1999 :rolleyes:
 
H. Flower said:
You're wrong about this. Most professional software uses monochromatic icon schemes because it places visual emphasis on the content itself. And Apple's designs have always been media-centric, so its a bit surprising it took them this long to focus all visual emphasis on the album covers themselves.
Click to expand...
And that is because these people have to judge and adjust the colour of their content and thus need as little as possible of distraction when actually doing work. When you select anything in iTunes, you do not judge or adjust the colour of album artwork. Having undisturbed colour judgment is definitely not necessary inside iTunes.
Think about it....how much of your itunes experience is delegated to the sidebar, compared to consuming the content itself? Probably a tenth of a fraction. The majority of your time is spent media managing. Form follows function.

Your dock icon example is D.O.A because the function of the dock isn't to manage visual media.
Click to expand...
The Dock is used to switch between different applications (similarly to switching between different types of content within iTunes). And no, I don't manage visual media in iTunes, my library is Artist-centric and podcast-name-centric, not album-centric, thus using album art to find something is not really useful (certainly not with over 800 different albums).
 
It's simple marketing.

Your current iTunes library is grey and dull. You used to enjoy it, but now each time you use it, it just seems less and less satisfying. The iTunes store however, full of color! Wow. Just look at all those shiny colorful icons and pictures. Jeez, I sure could be happy...if I just download all that color into my iTunes account.

One thing though, iTunes 10 was much more successful at finding artwork to download. Now about 45% of my albums have artwork. And I've never torrented. Maybe copied four cds from friends. So I do wish it did a better job. Oh well, I don't buy cds anymore. I just go to Color Wonderland where all my music color tv movie dreams can come true!
 
That works beautifully, thank you!!


OutThere said:
I posted this in the other iTunes thread but I noticed this one too so I figured I'd drop it here too:


I hate the lack of colors in iTunes 10, so I did a little ThemePark rsrc hacking and put the colored icons from 9.2 back into 10. It's not perfect, but I didn't want to waste too much time on it, and it looks alright on my computer for the icons that I use regularly.

Download (zip, 11.1mb)

Instructions included.

Enjoy, and feel free to let me know if you see an icon that should be fixed—I didn't check that they all look normal. :p

- Small size only.
- Some may be broken.
- No guarantees.

itunes10screenshot.png


(http://www.drien.com/projects.php)
Click to expand...
 
What the heck. Why is apple doing this, the close/min/max traffic light is vertical not horizontal. Why does apple develop standards only to ignore them :confused: And the monochromatic icons are plain and bland.

The more I see of apple lately, the more I wonder if they lost their way.
 
maflynn said:
What the heck. Why is apple doing this, the close/min/max traffic light is vertical not horizontal. Why does apple develop standards only to ignore them :confused: And the monochromatic icons are plain and bland.

The more I see of apple lately, the more I wonder if they lost their way.
Click to expand...

I suppose they're trying new things. But this is one change that seems to be random and kills usability.

Remember when they changed the way the iTunes minimize button? LOTS of people complained and they changed it back on the next point release update.

Hopefully they'll switch back to colors, or add a Color or Graphite Preference.

I just applied swapped out the .rsrc files in iTunes X (saving a copy of the original just in case) and it works fine and looks good.
 
One question I have, will we suddenly see a vertical close/min/max traffic light in 10.7? If apps are starting to have it, is it unreasonable to assume this may make its way into the next version of OSX?
 
zkhrhm said:
It's simply a port of the iPod interface on the iPad. Seriously, does no one on MR have an iPad, and have you not noticed that this was what it looked like? :confused:
Click to expand...

Now that you mention it, I do see that it is like the iPad interface. I actually rarely use the iPod app on the iPad, so I didn't even think of it.

I think it's a different issue with iTunes, though. On the iPad, space is more limited and a lot of colorful icons might be distracting. With iTunes on a computer, there is plenty of room for a bit of color.

Someone posted here a supposed email reply from Steve Jobs saying it lets the album art stand out, which is fine in views where you see album art. But you see the same, boring gray when viewing other things, too (Ringtones, for example, or playlists where art isn't selected as the view).
 
gojira said:
I suppose they're trying new things. But this is one change that seems to be random and kills usability.

Remember when they changed the way the iTunes minimize button? LOTS of people complained and they changed it back on the next point release update.

Hopefully they'll switch back to colors, or add a Color or Graphite Preference.

I just applied swapped out the .rsrc files in iTunes X (saving a copy of the original just in case) and it works fine and looks good.
Click to expand...

If enough people give feed back on iTunes about this, maybe they will change it back. It's worth a try. It would be like signing a petition.
 
i don't care about the color or the "traffic light" (although the analogy is amusing and i have to admit i've never thought about it this way until i saw the buttons placed vertically).
question: clicking on the artwork in the lower-left corner (when set to Now Playing) had always brought up the original size art work for the song. but i've never noticed that window actually becoming a player window with full controls!
once it's there i can click on the red button in the traffic light of the main window and the whole iTunes juggernaut goes away, while a light control window stays. nice. always hated the mini-player mode, but this looks much better to me.
is it new in 10 or did i just figure out something that's always been there??
 
iFanaddic said:
Well they did add the Dark/Light grid view because of all the complaints they were getting... I agree with you chances are slim but they've done it in the past.
Click to expand...

I could see them rearranging the preferences window a little bit.

e28e85559fa12a5773117f0488097f1e.png

10a3c32dc1b242f0a8e0536a5f3c973e.png


Or, you know, not... :p
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back