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Apple Declutters, Speeds Up iTunes With Major Upgrade

Hugh Pickens writes writes "The Washington Post reports that Apple has finally unveiled their new version of iTunes, overhauling its look and feel and integrating it more closely with the company's iCloud Internet- storage service with one of the biggest upgrades Apple has made to the program with 400 million potential users since its debut more than a decade ago. The new design of iTunes moves away from the spreadsheet format that Apple has featured since its debut and adds more art and information about musicians, movies and television shows. It also adds recommendation features so users can find new material. According to David Pogue of the NY Times Apple has fixed some of the dumber design elements that have always plagued iTunes. 'For years, the store was represented only as one item in the left-side list, lost among less important entries like Radio and Podcasts. Now a single button in the upper-right corner switches between iTunes's two personalities: Store (meaning Apple's stuff) and Library (meaning your stuff).' Unfortunately, Apple hasn't fixed the Search box. As before, you can't specify in advance what you're looking for: an app, a song, a TV show, a book. Whatever you type into the Search box finds everything that matches, and you can't filter it until after you search. It feels like a two-step process when one should do. 'Improvements in visual navigation and a more logical arrangement of tools are good, but for me the biggest positive within iTunes 11 remains its vastly improved performance on all three Macs I've tested it on, including a relatively ancient five-year-old MacBook,' writes Jonny Evans."

3 of 295 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Too bad Apple doesn't make SW like their HW by Bogtha · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Something as simple as moving and saving songs to my phone seems like an excercise in frustration

    That's because it's not designed for the exact opposite. It's designed so that the user shouldn't have to "move and save songs to their phone". iTunes should just take care of it for them.

    I always end up with duplicate songs or apps from other family members' devices.

    It sounds like you're using a single user account on your computer for multiple users. Rather than expect every application on your system invent their own ways of dealing with multiple users, you should just have a user account for every user on your computer.

    Granted, iTunes is by no means perfect, and the sharp corners show through in some cases, but if you're looking at an Apple product and thinking "I can't do X manually", it's probably because you have an XY problem, and they are solving X while you are asking about Y. X in this case being listening to your music on your phone and Y being manually putting them there.

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    Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
  2. Re:To much selling me shit. by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 5, Insightful

    are you looking at the same iTunes 11 I am? in music mode, it just shows me a player on the top bar with simple controls(Previous track, play, next track), a volume slider and search.

    Then a mode sensitive bar where I can switch between various types of media, different categories in those types of media, and any devices connected. Then a simple interface for picking items from that category.

    Compare that to the default WinAmp install which is kind of a bloody mess.

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    Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
  3. Re:uhh excuse me but wtf by joncbo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not sad as much as stupid because Apple offers a deep discount on DRM-free repurchases of tracks previously purchased with FairPlay DRM.

    Wow, a discount for redownloading an already purchased track? How magnanimous. /sarcasm