Apple ships 'completely redesigned' iTunes 11
Apple has released what it modestly deems to be "the best iTunes yet." That would be iTunes 11, which Cupertino touts as having a "dramatically simplified player, a completely redesigned Store, and iCloud features you'll love." When iTunes 11 was previewed on September 12 during the iPhone 5 rollout event in San Francisco, it …
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Simply hover your mouse over the intended portion of the info-bar, and it'll tell you how much data you're dealing with.
On a side note, I do wish these companies would design their products to fit in with the intended OS. It's a bit jarring to have a monochrome Win 8 and then suddenly all of these blue gradients...
I'm just glad Ctrl-S will allow you to have the sidebar open permanently.
Re: ...hover over info bar
The trouble with UI elements that appear when you hover the mouse, is that there is no hover event in a touch UI.
I think designing UI elements that require onmouseover is a little short sighted. I'm certainly finding that I'm rethinking my approach to UI design, and noting the general move towards supporting touch interfaces, I wonder whether hover events (should) have had their day?
Re: ...hover over info bar
I think it is short sighted to think of a single UI. (Windows 8 is a perfect example of this.) You tend to find mice on content creation systems, you tend to find touch interfaces on content consumption systems. The UI elements (and task at hand) is much more complex on content creation systems. That is why I hope to never lose mouse-over events - my interface is significantly more complex and *needing* those hints at less frequently used functionality (as well as other uses for this option).
Re: ...hover over info bar
I personally don't think they should got rid of them altogether. There are appropriate uses for it and the basic info of what an info bar colour means is not IMHO an appropriate use. To me a more appropriate use would be using it to to get detailed information on the various areas of the info bar (although I would prefer a mouse click, myself).
Why are these still so expensive though, especially for movies & TV?
It isn't iTunes (although it is of course more expensive than Google Play), but when it is cheaper to buy and rip the physical media, something is broken.
Re: as a Mac user i am an unfortunate user of itunes 10
as someone who doesn't use itunes at all, or Macs for that matter, Why are you using Itunes at all if you don't need any of the other things? I'd hope there would be other music players available that are less trendy.
Re: as a Mac user i am an unfortunate user of itunes 10
'Why should I upgrade?'
If you don't want to, then don't. No-one is pointing a gun to your head and forcing you. If you don't have hardware which requires it (or at least will work better with it) and if you're not interested in the iTunes Store, then don't bloody upgrade. I don't have a iPhone 5 or a iPod, and I don't have any particular interest in buying stuff from the iTunes Store, so I have not upgraded. I haven't upgraded in quite some time, in fact.
Re: as a Mac user i am an unfortunate user of itunes 10
"> I don't have Polio"
Surely anyone who talks so much shit is in the risk group?
Re: as a Mac user i am an unfortunate user of itunes 10
...yet you have a Mac??
If you don't want to upgrade, it's simple. Don't
Heres an abacus for you to go troll with
Re: as a Mac user i am an unfortunate user of itunes 10
You don't have to list your "excuses" for not upgrading.
"I don't have a crapplePod or PissPhone". Did it take long to come up with these names?
"I don't want to buy any music from Apple". Well don't then. No one's forcing you to.
Finally, WTF has having / not having polio got to do with it?
Re: as a Mac user i am an unfortunate user of itunes 10
iTunes is an abomination.
A couple of times when I've been tempted to create an account, it starts asking all kinds of idiotic personal questions which I flatly refuse to answer. I don't have to go through that shite to buy anything else online.
Re: Finally, WTF has having / not having polio got to do with it?
when your muscles atrophy and die and your face looks as grey as the great Jobs, you will flop your limbs onto an iPad that will be near the hospital bed. And the iPad will tell you important news about what needs buying before your forget your pin number and they have to pull the plug.
Re: Finally, WTF has having / not having polio got to do with it?
at least the apple plug will look sexy next to the life support plug
Re: Finally, WTF has having / not having polio got to do with it?
BUY some products, homes: http://www.incrediblethings.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/fundies-underwear-for-two.jpg
Re: as a Mac user i am an unfortunate user of itunes 10
If you own a Mac you have an apple ID. Hence, no questions. You answered them once for your warranty, that's all that is required,
Re: as a Mac user i am an unfortunate user of itunes 10
If you own a Mac you have an apple ID
Actually, you'll have that with any Apple device. And if you don't have an Apple device you don't really need it anyway, so I don't actually see the problem there, certainly because it's up to me to decide what data I feed Cupertino. I won't touch the iCloud or other information absorbing iServices with a barge pole, but they're welcome to my musical taste (or lack thereof :).
Sync books still needs work
My biggest gripe is that the dialog to sync selected books to a IOS device still needs work. Currently the dialog will only display book icons with individual check boxes. There's no way to display the books in list form to facilitate the quick selection of multiple items in a manner consistent with Finder.
In general, iTunes is an abomination that should be broken up into three separate applications: library, store and devices. It's just too unwieldy - trying to adapt a single interface to accommodate three unrelated functionalities just doesn't work.
Ah, well ...
Re: Sync books still needs work
Sync (in general, not just books) is a content randomization button.
When you have (for example) a 32GB iPhone and 1,277GB of media in iTunes on the PC, then when you unleash the mindless Sync function - it's too stupid to notice that 1277 > 32 - so it randomly loads in some stuff and then stops with an error message. I've never seen it work properly.
To those that will claim I'm doing it wrong, I'm hovering the cursor over the Sync button and then clicking it. It's Apple, it's supposed to "just work". Yet another Apple SW Fail.
Re: Sync books still needs work
You are doing it wrong.
1. Check the box that says "manage my music manually".
2. Tick the boxes for the media you want on your phone.
3. Untick the boxes for the media you don't want on your phone.
4. Stop being a twit.
5. Buy a different phone.
Of course Apple refer to this version as the "best iTunes ever". Microsoft refer to Windows 8 as the "best Windows ever", Oracle refer to 11g as the best, etc.
Has there ever been a major company release a new version and say something like "iTunes 11, the second-best iTunes ever"?
I'd love to see a statement from Apple that says:
"iTunes - A program so good, no one got fired for bringing it to market."
Well if a UK company made it..."New XYZ - It's OK but not great! You know what, you might be best to give this one a miss. My girlfriend's mate, quite fit as it happens, had this thing where it wouldn't sync with ABC so she took down to PC World. I know! I said look, you muppet don't go there, it's full of planks. Bad as my dopey sister, the pair of them. Anyway, XYZ is OK just try to do that thing that goes boing, boing after you push that button marked with a green Y on it, should be alright."
Challenging to market a product as anything other than The Best Yet really.
"The new iTunes 11. Not quite as good as the previous version, but still OK."
Reminds me of that quote from The Invention of Lying:
"Pepsi. For when they don't have Coke."
I feel it must be said
When looking at the artists represented on the music list Leonard Nimoy? He has a band? And its classed as rock?
Sorry I find that surprising as much as I love him as Spock I never bothered to follow his other works. Photography and so on.
Re: I feel it must be said
You're going to regret asking that. Yes Leonard Nimoy did have a record:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC73PHdQX04
Re: I feel it must be said
... And the photography is NSFW, so I can't toss a link here to horrify you with, as I'm at work. :)
anon for obvious reasons.
Re: I feel it must be said
Let's start a petition to get this as the official theme tune for the new film
Re: I feel it must be said
His one man show of Vincent showed how great a stage actor he was.
@ stucs201
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH OMG OMG OMG
WHY? WHY IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY DID YOU POST THAT? FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WHY?
You sir are a bastard. I'm going to go stick ice picks in my ears now....
Re: I feel it must be said
Mr Shatner fancies himself as a bit of lounge singer too, when you're only well known for one thing you have to branch out a little to keep the rent paid, just no slightly dodgy cop shows while wearing a corset!
Re: I feel it must be said
It's something about Star trek actors and crooning - Brent Spiner (Mr Data in TNG) did it as well, with several of his male co-stars as his backing singers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsUke0g4ajQ if you dare...
Re: I feel it must be said
@stucs201
I personally prefer the 'Bad Brains meet Leonard Nimoy' version....
http://timmay.buzznet.com/user/video/294261/bad-brains/
That mind-zapping combination never gets old.
Re: I feel it must be said
Groan.
Never has "It's life, Jim, but not as we know it" been more appropriate..
Re: I feel it must be said
> Mr Shatner fancies himself as a bit of lounge singer too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ainyK6fXku0
Posted on the basis that I have had to listen to it and misery loves company.
Re: I feel it must be said
You need to listen to his version of Rocket Man , it's hysterical.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lul-Y8vSr0I
Best ever?
Well on Windows it'd be difficult to be much worse. I've used iTunes for a while in windows and its a hateful piece of crap - buggy, inconsistent and continually freezing and crashing. Apple have never seemed to properly fix the freezes on the windows version; here's hoping version 11 is the one.
Re: Best ever?
I know at least three people (non techie, basically iPod/iPhone users, ie women) who bought Macs purely because iTunes under Windows is so foul.
Therefore, I suspect it's working as intended.
Re: Working as intended?
My response to the horribleness of iTunes on Windows: never buy another Apple product. My (under warranty) classic iPod died a slow horrible death from the constant onslaught of errors during syncing. Soon followed to the grave by the no-longer-under-warranty replacement.
Bought a Sansa Clip+ and never looked back.
Re: Best ever?
When I was still Windows I used Annapod. iTunes for Mac is great. iTunes for windows is a joke. Then then again, so is Windows, so I suppose like attracts like.......
Re: Best ever?
> iTunes for a while in windows and its a hateful piece of crap - buggy, inconsistent and continually freezing and crashing.
lol. Are you talking about Windows or iTunes?
Re: Best ever?
iTunes 11 still looks like a bleak spreadsheet, but hopefully a little less confusing in Windows than the versions I've used.
Though doubtless regarded as terrible by some purists, Easy CD (aka Roxio) was the first CD ripper I used that worked reliably and logically and, several versions later, remains my first choice.
While I have no problem with the iPod, iTunes stopped me ever buying another.
Re: Best ever?
who bought Macs purely because iTunes under Windows is so foul
Hmm. I never really had that many issues with iTunes on Windows, it's IMHO not spectacular on OSX either. For me it's always done the job but it's not exactly a program I *like* using (as opposed to, say, Omnigraffle Pro to make Visio work of colleagues look *so* much nicer :).
Re: Best ever?
Yeah when I saw the article I thought "oh have they changed the dull grey spreadsheet look then?"
Nope.
Predictable if nothing else.
This is going to take some getting used to
Optimistically for Windows users, the interface looks like a complete rewrite, albeit possibly motivated by someone incessantly asking "can't we make it any brighter?". The binary isn't substantially different in size on the Mac though so let's not get too excited.
The advertised 'albums' view seems like a non-starter to me unless you have only about six of them but 'artists' works quite well and 'songs' provides the classic layout if you want it. Colour icons are back in the sidebar but the bar itself is no longer essential to navigation. The new control icons at the top are a huge improvement — the silhouette destroying circles they used to sit in are gone, making everything visually clearer. It's also good that they've made the mini-player more obvious but it now seems to have lost its progress bar, which is a shame.
Re: This is going to take some getting used to
I may be on my own, but I think UI design for media managers hit its useful peak years ago.
The number of use-cases for them is pretty low and most people just want to access a song/album/artist/playlist/genre quickly.
Even my original Nomad Jukebox Zen (how I miss thee) had an entirely usable interface with just a clickable scroll wheel. I could build playlists on the fly back in 2002, a feature that went missing from many subsequent products.
On the desktop, I'm still a WinAmp user. Sure, I don't get to see the album art while browsing (though I could), but I've just always found it quick and easy to browse my music collection and sync a playlist to any device.
Re: This is going to take some getting used to
IMHO it's hard to beat the interface of Foobar2000. The default interface is simple and well laid out and supports multiple playlists. Its fully customisable so you can make it look blingy or add stuff like lyrics and album covers. I use the default myself
Re: Foobar 2k
Forgot to mention Foobar doesn't sync devices without a plugin or 2, so it's probably a non-starter for many.
Re: This is going to take some getting used to (@Ian Yates)
While probably true, iTunes is still a bit too much of a feature mess to be described as merely a media manager. It's a media manager that also manages applications, streaming (both local and remote), performs device synchronisation — including its content and that inherently belonging to other applications, and has only recently stopped being a social media client.
I'm an advocate for splitting it up but I guess Apple want to be able to give Windows users who buy iPods, iPhones, etc, a single thing to install (and, for whatever reason, won't just make that thing 'a driver').
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