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Apple Delays Simpler and Cleaner iTunes 'to Get It Right'
Hugh Pickens writes "iTunes has been criticized in the past for being slow and growing increasingly unwieldy as more and more media types have been added to what used to be simply a music player. Apple announced iTunes 11, the latest version of the program, at its iPhone 5 event in September and said the update would be released by the end of October, but Apple's deadline for the upgrade has slipped. 'The new iTunes is taking longer than expected and we wanted to take a little extra time to get it right,' Apple told technology site AllThingsD. 'We look forward to releasing this new version of iTunes with its dramatically simpler and cleaner interface and seamless integration with iCloud before the end of November.' The update is said to be the most significant upgrade to iTunes in the 11-year life of the program, which has grown from a simple music player to the most powerful retailer in the music business — and a force in the movie, television and e-books businesses — and, on Apple's PCs, the portal to its app store."
Give us the option to buy DRM free. Heck, might even increase sales.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
Thanks for the warning, Apple. Now I know that I need to upgrade now, before you remove my favourite functionalities.
Joy! Beautiful spark of the gods!
I welcomed the podcast app until I had to use it.... It came out with too many fingers and a flipper. What a POS.
As much as I dislike Apple, kudos to them for admitting the new iTunes isn't ready and postponing the release rather than pushing out potentially buggy and incomplete software. Too many software companies will just shove whatever they have finished out the door, whether it works or not.
(Although it is possible to err on the opposite side. See Duke Nukem Forever)
Even when I had a Mac Mini and a MacBook, every upgrade to iTunes would have video playback issues until the library was deleted and re-created (backing up all your content before-hand of course). The same thing happened with the last 2 updates that were released 10.6.x and 10.7. The last 10.6.x update caused a slight drop in framerate and 10.7 caused a massive drop in frame rate on high end systems and crashed iTunes on low-end systems. It took a deleteion of the library file to get it working again. Given they're past failure to fix this issue over the last 6 years, I have no hopes of them fixing it with 11.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
Let's hope it's not just the interface that is more simplified. Let's hope the whole application is much less bloated and resource hungry!
My issue with iTunes was never the interface. It was usually pretty intuitive. My problem was the lag - the program was always clunky and slow to respond, and on my laptop would sometimes lock up completely. The stability issues didn't seem to affect my workstation, but it was still rather laggy. I don't ask for much out of my software, but a quick response from the program interface is one thing. That's why I've stuck with Winamp over the years and just manually managed my music collection.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
It is said to be the most significant upgrade to iTunes in the 11-year life of the program, which has grown from a simple music player to the most unnecessary bloated piece of sh!t in history.
You should be lucky to get itunes11 in November, it takes Apple 2 weeks to update one webpage.
why is iTunes relevant anymore, as a music player it is awful, even as a three pane music browser its awful, as a way of interacting with Apple lecacy devices its awful. I must have used 10 different music players on the desktop [I'm using clementine] all better than itunes, and will work on linux[It didn't just work].
It should never have crossed the line into movies and apps. Googles cloud based stores do not require such arcane methods of controlling your Android devices. connecting as a Mass Storage Device.
I've been too kind itunes needs to be killed with fire. It neither works as a music player, or device management...it never did.
Apple's dug themselves into a hole in this one. They have an app that suffers from feature creep and is a resource hog. The only way to fix both issues is a complete code rewrite and interface redesign. Best case they will successful in both areas, but people will still complain that they don't like the new UI. Worse case, they just pull a "Final Cut Pro X" and still have a memory/CPU hog that does less than before. Hopefully they chose the former, and are just taking their time to polish it up.
They're having trouble adapting the Apple iTunes skin on VLC. :)
Apple,
I don't have and don't want an iPod, so don't make me install an iPod service.
And get rid of whatever the hell Bonjour is. I don't use it, and I don't care what it is, but iTunes goes ape shit if it's gone.
And get rid of the updater service. I don't trust you to ship an update that doesn't bork my music collection. I've been burned by you guys on that too many times.
In short, get rid of anything that runs in the background. The only Apple binary I ever want to see in ProcessExplorer is iTunes.exe.
-Anonymous Coward
Now that Forstall is gone, they're going to take a couple days to remove the stitched-leather look.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Any hopes that they will include the obscure format that is FLAC???
Lets get this over with... Fuck Off
Funny - the obviously and verifiably incorrect post about "Give us the option to buy DRM free. " is +1 right now, and the (valid and true) correction saying that iTunes music is DRM free gets modded -2.
Seriously, this play has become a self-pleasurefest for ignorant idiots. Too bad. It didn't used to be, but it's been a pretty steady decline for many many many years.
The App Store is a seperate function on Mountain Lion.
I like winamp. But then i've been using it for 10+ years. don't care for it playing video files, but whatever.
Of course, I do NOT buy music online. I am not giving my money to any of the media corporations. Nor would I ever buy new music from anywhere except from an artist that is selling directly. I'd rather pirate the music and donate money to the band without dealing with the corporate arm that takes most of the money.
Be seeing you...
Has *anyone* at Apple ever used iTunes on Windows? What do they do, punish poor coders by forcing them to work on the Windows code?
I still use iTunes. It's my favorite way to buy music. If i can't find an album there, it's probably not available for digital distribution at all. (Once or twice amazon has had an album that iTunes has not)
I don't even like to download torrents/rapidshares/whatever of albums unless they're lossless. I've downloaded too many albums with bad encodes that sound like garbage. I'll go to ebay/amazon and get a physical CD before I download some random mp3s
It's not perfect, but I still like it. iTunes is one of the few programs Ive used that actually shave bloat with later iterations. Recently they shed the quicktime requirement (Even apple admits that quicktime is a niche product now) And now they're chucking ping and other unnecessary things.
Since iOS5, apple has moved to make the iOS devices independent of PCs. You don't need a computer to use and iOS device now, and they're changing itunes to reflect that.
Can't get the 2nd FA to load, slashdotted and/or Sandy-related issues? Here's a dupe - I guess - Apple Delays iTunes Update | NBC Southern California
Have been a Foobar2000 stalwart for years myself. Only use iTunes for managing iPods and only want one added feature - to be able to delete an item from a playlist and have that file deleted from the iPod too. You'd think that would be no big deal. CopyTransManager stands in for iTunes and has this feature but it's very sluggish.
Maybe they should just release whatever they have now. It would be hard for iTunes to be any worse than it was before. Heck, iTunes could cause flame dog poop to be expelled from my computer speakers and it wouldn't be a huge step down from what they already had. I don't understand how people make themselves use such a slow, bloated, buggy mess.
How about they just make it work as advertised on Windows? For several years now (on several machines with several builds of iTunes) there has been show stopper bugs in basic functionality, like the inability to un-pause video and downloads being corrupted if you attempt to listen/view to files before they are completely downloaded.
Ahhh... Commercials that suck, products with marginal improvements, massively broken apps, product delays, and public apologies, seem to be the norm now. I wonder how long they can ride out on the success of iphone/ipod.
Considering it takes them 14 days to put a paragraph on a web page. Something major like this will be years in the making.
("sorry your honour, we -really- want to make sure the apology's perfect this time"?)
Did anyone else read the headline as "Apple Delays Sniper"?
For a moment, I was like "wow. That's just so inconsiderate. How would you like it if someone needlessly kept you waiting? The mission's a go. Tell him to take the shot and we can all go home".
...Now with 8G RAM requirement and NOW even slower!
(must start with OS)
I've had iTunes / AppleTV as the center of a whole-house media distribution system since 2008 that includes purchased and ripped TV shows, movies, and music. For the most part, it's been fine, running with few glitches over several years.
Until about a year ago.
Suddenly, the Windows-based iTunes instance needed to be restarted, sometimes as frequently as several times a day, or the AppleTVs could not find the home sharing server. Online analysis pointed to iTunes leaking open sockets/file descriptors. Months later, Apple hasn't admitted to there being a problem, and certainly hasn't released a fix.
So I attempted to export my library from Windows and import it into iTunes running on a Mac Mini. Not only was the import slow, it crashed several times, forcing me to divide the XML file into several smaller ones, importing them one at a time and ignoring the failed ones. That's right, iTunes couldn't read an XML file generated by the same version of iTunes when moving from PC->Mac. The Mac-based iTunes media server only needs to be restarted once a week now, which is a massive improvement.
A recent upgrade to the 2nd and 3rd generation AppleTVs causes them to fail to play video files that were ripped (years ago) at a constant bit-rate. These same ATVs played these same files just fine weeks or months ago.
I went with Apple because their stuff tended to "just work", and was especially wonderfully integrated. Their UI was so simple that my technophobe mother-in-law could watch her movies without assistance when she visited. I could watch movies on my TV, computer, iPod and iPhones. I could cause one device to use a remote display. I could start a movie in the next room for my kids with my phone. All wonderful.
Except it barely works anymore.
I don't have high hopes that Apple will "get iTunes right". In fact, I predict a disaster that will have me looking for another entertainment hub.
'The new iTunes is taking longer than expected and we wanted to take a little extra time to get it right'
Translation: "It's taking much longer then expected to fix our badly rushed maps debacle, and because our egos demanded the sacrifice of Forstall, our focus has been elsewhere. We need a little more time before we release the new itunes with it's new and unwanted maps feature!"
I hope they fix the bug where creating an MP3-CD to listen to in the car from an album I bought in iTunes in M4A format is a two-step process... I filed a report a couple years ago on it. It is silly that I have to convert the M4A's to MP3's first, then add only the duplicated MP3's to a playlist, burn that playlist, then delete the playlist and only the MP3 versions of the songs from my library. I've had an instance where I accidentally deleted a purchased track thinking it was an MP3 that I was cleaning up.
...but he's had to do so twice in the past six months: first, for ill-advised changes in Apple's retail stores, and second, for the premature release of Maps.
Both executives whose decisions resulted in these apologies are gone.
Give me one feature: play sample songs and browse at the same time.
For the love, when looking for new music, nothing is more annoying than sitting there twiddling your thumbs listening to a sample.
Itunes is possible the number one reason I switched back to a PC from my macbook. I simply can't stand it. It's bloated, laggy, and just a plain mess if you ever need to do anything complex to it's god-awful database. And if you wanted to offload your massive music collection to a netwroedk location....impossible. Back in the day I wanted to run itunes off a NAS drive - mother of god was that a mistake. I still am forced to use it to back up my iphone but that alone may be driving me to android - that my iphone freeking requires itunes is more aggravating than I can even explain.
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
I've believed for a long time now that synchronization with devices should be separated from iTunes. It made sense back in the days when you needed it to sync your music with your iPod, but with the advent of iOS and the need to synchronize more content (apps, photos, config backups, OS upgrades, etc) iTunes has become a gigantic misguided clusterfuck.
If iTunes could be reverted back to being strictly a multimedia player and store client, it would back on track. People who don't own iDevices but just want a multimedia player can be satisfied by this.
For people who want to transfer content and back up their iDevices, this functionality could be delegated to a separate application. ("iSync?") Let that program install superfluous drivers and services as needed, and let it interface with iTunes as needed to synchronize music/movies/books/whatever. Also, let its updates be released independently, so that when iTunes has to be updated, it doesn't break my ability to sync my iPod touch and force me to re-flash my device (which has happened twice, and what a crock of BS that is).
Just my $ 0.02.
/* No Comment */
They've been delaying it for a decade now.
I just need to manage my iPhones. I need separate profiles (since I have multiple devices) so they don't try and sync up apps with whatever the last person did. I don't need music playing when all I wanted to do was drag some tunes into my phone.
Maybe I'm using it wrong? I'm not an apple fanatic. I just needed to get into the iOS development game, and it was a good deal on a decent phone (now that the iPhone 5 is out, iPhone 4/4s is a heck of a deal if you are in a contract anyway)
Apple should have an iOS Device Manager that does all the syncing and such, and keep iTunes separate.
Of course it's a mess. iTunes is a music player, a video player, a file manager, a sync program, and a shopping cart. Quicktime is also bundled in there somewhere.
The main function of iTunes is to create a direct connection between Apple and your bank account. So Apple is unlikely to separate the shopping cart function from the other functions.
With an operations guy in charge, what do you expect? It's roughly equivalent to Microsoft being run by a sales guy. If you want a great show, you need a show man. Steve Jobs for example. If you want a great engineering organization you need an engineer in charge. Larry Page for example. With an operations guy in charge or any other kind of paper pusher, Apple is doomed to a long slow slide into technological irrelevance. Which is fine by me. I wish Tim Cook a long but not terribly happy career riding Apple down as close as possible to the ground.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
... They already had it right. It was called SoundJam MP.
It's been nothing but downhill since iTunes 4. Every update since has progressively sucked more.
When my iPod dies, I'm looking elsewhere for a music player. The hardware is good, but using iTunes is now a miserable experience. Blechhh.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
Buy you music and movies through Amazon instead...
or through Netflix, Hulu, Google Play, etc...if you prefer.
From the coolaid drinkers:
"Apple Delays Simpler and Cleaner iTunes 'to Get It Right'"
From the real world:
Apple missed release date for iTunes and is still trying to "Get It Right'"
Huh? Guess they didn't trust Forstalls abilities.
If it doesn't work the way tech-savvy people - you know, ones who actually know about stuff - want it to work then doesn't that imply that the design is a bag of old cunt?
Skipping over the epic levels of misogyny in your post, the simple answer is NO.
Because the "tech people that know about stuff" are the last people on earth qualified to write interfaces for software to be used by people who DON'T "now about stuff".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sure, I can accept some tiny, fast software that acts as a middle-tier between my player and my PC
Well then go for it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have been using iTunes Just Added functionality for years. Now it is gone. Basically, as a DJ, I am always looking for new releases in a certain genre, and Just Added allowed me to filter by my genre. It's been gone for two months, and perhaps the impending release explains it. Maybe they will put it back in place in some other way.
For a while, I was able to access it here:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewNewReleases?pageType=justA dded&id=1
This takes you to the Just Added Page...the problem is the sorting by genre no longer works, while it once did. It is possible that someone with better computer skills can be can enter that page and have it be sorted by category.
Does anyone have a bookmark anywhere of a page automatically sorted by a genre? If we can figure that out we can probably append the variable to the end of the link and it will work, at least until Apple inexplicably really kills Just Added for some stupid reason in the impending release.
I tried using this page as a reference:
http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/resources/documentation/genre-mapping.htm l
And added a link at the end, like so:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewNewReleases?pageType=justA dded&id=1&genres?id=20
As an attempt to sort by a genre with the id=20, but no such luck. Maybe it's just not sorting...
But this is a good start. Anyone want to suggest something?
I have an iPad and an AppleTV and to be honest, I don't really use iTunes. Haven't actually installed it since I upgraded to Windows 8.
Everything still works fine. I can manage apps directly from my iPad; iCloud takes care of what syncing to my PC used to do. I can stream my entire content library as needed. I don't even need iTunes anymore for my AppleTV, since that too can directly stream my library. As for music, I use Spotify these days.
Now yes, my library is all stuff purchased from the iTunes store, so that plays a big part. For non-iTunes stuff, a non-Apple product is better suited alot of the time anyway.
It's not that big of a deal though. I'm glad I don't have to rely on iTunes; though it wasn't too bad for me on my PC, it's nice not to have to power up the PC just to watch an AppleTV movie. It's also nice that I can just wipe my iPad if I ever wanted to and know that iCloud has all my settings. It really is seamless without a PC or a Mac these days.
I work in IT and most programs just let you install or remove in a few mins, or less... with the exception of iTunes and my Logitech camera software. Anyway I can't tell you how much I hate it when someone I know mentions a 'problem' with iTunes on their Windows PC.
I find it amazing how Apple can't (or won't) sort out the mess and just make something that's quick and easy to use. I mean they've had time to sort it but I think most people accept that is works more reliably on Apple computers than Windows. Maybe this was because it was designed for the iOS but is it really that difficult to port to Windows?
I worry that now Steve (RIP) has gone, so has the common sense - and demand for perfection so I am not that excited about this new version until I know how well it works and how long it takes to install or repair. I'm not surprised they delayed as they probably still have a binary polished turd and realise that they can't afford to mess this up if they want to maintain their reputation.
they're finally going to add FLAC and ogg support!
iTunes is entirely a huge fucking mess.
No way around it!
A way to say iTunes and regain sanity, currently lacking big time at Apple, is to break up iTunes into its components.
Yea, and Yes. Fragmentation gives customers sanity!
If one wants to use iTunes Store, the customer uses iTunes Store!
In another customer wants to use iTunes Web Radio, the customer uses iTunes Web Radio and not iTunes Store!
Simple.
Perfect.
Correct.
Jobs would say other rather 'nasty' words! We need not go there.
8D
"and, on Apple's PCs, the portal to its app store."
First off, Apple doesn't have PC's (per IBM)
Secondly, It's not the portal to the OS X app store. the OS X app store is a separate program entirely (faster one too).
Apple really catered the needs and wants of their consumers! This surely brings good news to all 'techies' out there including me of course!
Understanding of some