iTunes 5

Let the dart-throwing begin... :-)

So far the screen shots that are available seem to show that Apple has eliminated the Artist and Album panes in Library view as part of the "streamlined look." I hope I can put those back with a Preference setting (but I doubt it). Can an early adopter comment on this?

I hate it when Apple takes away features as part of a new vision of how their software should work.

At 6:34 AM -0700 2005/09/08, Kevin van Haaren wrote:
>Finally you can create folders and put playlists into them in iTunes 5.
>Unfortunately you can only select one playlist at a time, so dragging a
>handful of playlists to a folder takes forever.
>
>Is this the new look of metal? I like it better than metal but With the
>number of interface looks Apple has now (4 by my count including the wood
>interfrace in Garage Band) they might as well open up the APIs and let
>everyone skin apps.

        It's more subtle than the old brushed metal, but looking at
the top of the window makes my head spin.

        The Source area is blue. The main area is blue & white
striped. The combined window title/ribbon area is a grey gradient (as
is the bottom). The Source heading is a steep grey gradient, with
vertical cross-hatching to hint that it's left-right draggable. The
main readout area is yellow (top) & yellow/grey (bottom). The main
column heads are white, except the active one which is blue. This
doesn't count the actual controls & labels.

        BBEdit/Eudora, in contrast have white text background, grey
window title bar, and faintly pin-striped ribbon area.


                                                Chris

PS-And it still complains every day when I plug the iPod into my work
desktop, because I don't have iTunes 5 for Photo Sync. I have to hit
Esc -- if I hit Return, it gets ready to wipe my iPod's music in
favor of a local copy. Feh.
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

On 9/8/05 10:46, "brian_wessels" <brian_wesselsalumni.clarku.edu> wrote:

> So far the screen shots that are available seem to show that Apple has
> eliminated the Artist and Album panes in Library view as part of the
> "streamlined look." I hope I can put those back with a Preference setting (but
> I doubt it). Can an early adopter comment on this?

They're there on mine, just as they've always been.

Now, the lameness of the new additions to the AppleScript dictionary...

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

On Sep 8, 2005, at 6:34 AM, Kevin van Haaren wrote:
> Is this the new look of metal? I like it better than metal but With
> the
> number of interface looks Apple has now (4 by my count including
> the wood
> interfrace in Garage Band) they might as well open up the APIs and let
> everyone skin apps.

I think it's pretty, but not so different as to affect usability. The
play button is still a play button. There's nothing wrong with trying
on a new shirt every now and then.

Any developer can skin their app however they want, and it's up to
them to deal with the support calls if they do a bad job.

Letting everyone skin an app is obviously something very different:

User: "The music doesn't pause when I hit the little fuzzy robot
button."

Support: "What little fuzzy robot button"?


[A fine point, but let's not immediately devolve into a discussion of the pros and cons of skins in this thread. -Adam]


Mike

> BBEdit/Eudora, in contrast have white text background, grey
> window title bar, and faintly pin-striped ribbon area.

I quite like the new look of iTunes 5, but even if I didn't, I don't know if
it's useful to compare the user interface of an application like iTunes to
more serious programs like BBEdit and Eudora. Actually, to me, it's a little
silly to do so.

They're clearly aimed at different groups of people *in total*. Which is to
say that while there are surely many BBEdit and Eudora users who also use
iTunes, Apple is aiming for a group that includes those users *as well as*
people who are more likely to take a liking to more heavily rendered user
interfaces.

Which is why, though I still have issues with the brushed metal look, I
think iTunes and other similarly designed applications have always been on
the right track. They're trying to capture a broad range of digital media
enthusiasts of all different kinds of experience levels. Admittedly, they're
doing it through eye candy, but that's always been a part of the Aqua
strategy.

Khoi
 

work: www.behaviordesign.com
play: www.subtraction.com

--On September 8, 2005 8:46:36 AM -0700 brian_wessels
<brian_wesselsalumni.clarku.edu> wrote:

> So far the screen shots that are available seem to show that Apple has
> eliminated the Artist and Album panes in Library view as part of the
> "streamlined look." I hope I can put those back with a Preference setting
> (but I doubt it). Can an early adopter comment on this?

I must not have used these features, what were they? I can't find any view
options missing that I used in iTunes 4. If you're talking about the 3
panes: Genre, Artist and Album as in this link (which is still for iTunes
4):
<http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/tutorial/segment102087b.html>

they're still available, accessed in the same way as iTunes 4, the Browse
eyeball in the upper-right corner (or command-b). When I installed iTunes 5
my column layouts and widths came through same as they were in iTunes 4. So
if you have them open now I assume they'll be open in iTunes 5 by default.

iTunes 5 did do an update of my library as soon as I opened it, so you
might want to backup the iTunes Library and iTunes Music Library.xml files
in the ~/Music/iTunes folder before upgrading, just in case you decide to
go back.

Kevin

At 06:34 -0700 UTC, on 2005/09/08, Kevin van Haaren wrote:

> Finally you can create folders and put playlists into them in iTunes 5.

Agreed. Nice.

[...]

> Is this the new look of metal?

Yeah, looks like BM wasn't bad enough:
<http://daringfireball.net/2005/09/anthropomorphized> (Read that! It's
hilarious and right on target.)

> I like it better than metal

It's definitely worse in some respects. No sidebars might seem nice as it
allows for a little more room for contant - something at which Aqua has
always been worse than Mac OS pre-X. You could perhaps even argue the same
for the less rounded rounded corners. But look at the division between the
main area and the playlists area. Zero indication anymore that it is
resizable. Yet again useability lost in favour of shallow first looks.

And why the light blue background for playlists area? What's that? Aqua
Light? It relates to nothing. Meaningless.

> but With the
> number of interface looks Apple has now (4 by my count including the wood
> interfrace in Garage Band) they might as well open up the APIs and let
> everyone skin apps.

Yeah, skin 'm alive. The HIG is dead.


--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>

They didn't fix the bug where you have to start playing something from
Audible (and enter your Audible password) before it will let you download
one of the Audible podcasts.

GUI aside, iTunes 5 fixes a few bugs. Podcasts are now full fledged
members of the library and show up in smart playlists. That's nice.
I've also found that they're less prone to assuming the feed is dead
just because you haven't been connected to the internet for a day or
two.

Folders... It's about time.

What about the search bar? Personally, I think it's great. I'd love
to see something similar in Spotlight (especially if Spotlight's
search could be as responsive as iTunes').

Ultimately, I figure iTunes 5 is a weaker update than 4.9, so I'm not
sure why it got the full version number treatment. But whatever, it's
worth every penny. ;)

--Nik

On 13/9/2005 10:39 AM, "Nik" <gerberinik.net> spake thus:

> Ultimately, I figure iTunes 5 is a weaker update than 4.9, so I'm not
> sure why it got the full version number treatment.

Probably because "4.10" looks weird and would confuse non-geeks :)

(I remember Disinfectant doing the same thing from 2.9 to 3.0 way back when
because the version numbering scheme at the time provided only a single
digit for any of the "point" releases.)

--
Nigel Stanger, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND.
http://public.xdi.org/=nigel.stanger

Ultimately, I figure iTunes 5 is a weaker update than 4.9, so I'm not sure why it got the full version number treatment.

I'm pretty sure it's because Apple (probably correctly) figured that people (and maybe even some software) would struggle with iTunes 4.10. It's a lot simpler to stick with single digit minor version numbers.

=Tony.Meyer

On Sep 12, 2005, at 6:39 PM, Nik wrote:

> GUI aside, iTunes 5 fixes a few bugs. Podcasts are now full fledged
> members of the library and show up in smart playlists. That's nice.
> I've also found that they're less prone to assuming the feed is dead
> just because you haven't been connected to the internet for a day or
> two.

I don't think that the separation of podcasts from the rest of the
library can really be classified as a bug -- in any case, it was a
feature for me, one that was useful enough that the forced inclusion
of podcasts in the library in iTunes 5.0 probably means I won't use
iTunes for podcasts anymore. I generally do everything I do with
iTunes in the main library, and 95% of the time I just have iTunes
set up to play random songs from there. Now I can't really do that,
because I've got podcasts mixed in with my music. I know I could
create a smart playlist to eliminate this problem, and maybe I'll
come around to that as an acceptable workaround, but I don't
understand why Apple couldn't have made the inclusion of podcasts
into the main music library an option instead of forcing people like
me to change the way we work with the software. To me, podcasts have
more in common with the radio streams, which are still separate.

--------------
Jeff Carter
Executive Director
DC LEARNs

jcarterdclearns.org -w
jeffbrilliantbeast.com -h
--------------

On 9/12/05, Nik <gerberinik.net> wrote:
> What about the search bar?

I'd like it a lot, IF it worked. Far too often I type in something
and a bunch of stuff shows up, then I cick "Artist" and everything
goes away. I click album, and artist again and voila! I have what I
was looking for in the first place.

it's also still really stupid as you can't do any sort of control at
all. For example, try to find "Pink" and not "Pink Floyd."
Impossible without creating a smartlist.

> it's worth every penny. ;)

You got me there. :)

--
<http://2blog.kreme.com/>

Nice inclusion of "John Grubers" satire on the new itunes look. Very Funny!

Paul Wilson paulwilson9mac.com

On Sep 13, 2005, at 6:58 PM, Jeff Carter wrote:

> I don't think that the separation of podcasts from the rest of the
> library can really be classified as a bug -- in any case, it was a
> feature for me, one that was useful enough that the forced inclusion
> of podcasts in the library in iTunes 5.0 probably means I won't use
> iTunes for podcasts anymore. I generally do everything I do with
> iTunes in the main library, and 95% of the time I just have iTunes
> set up to play random songs from there. Now I can't really do that,
> because I've got podcasts mixed in with my music. I know I could
> create a smart playlist to eliminate this problem, and maybe I'll
> come around to that as an acceptable workaround, but I don't
> understand why Apple couldn't have made the inclusion of podcasts
> into the main music library an option instead of forcing people like
> me to change the way we work with the software. To me, podcasts have
> more in common with the radio streams, which are still separate.

Podcasts are, by default, set to not shuffle (if you use Party
Shuffle). Also, you can just eliminate them from any playlist by
adding a condition that excludes tracks whose genre is Podcast.


Kirk
             Author of: Take Control of Customizing Microsoft Office
                       http://www.mcelhearn.com/tcoo.html
                - - - - - -
              Read my blog: Kirkville -- http://www.mcelhearn.com
           Musings, Opinion and Miscellanea, on Macs, iPods and more
        Kirk McElhearn | Chemin de la Lauze | 05600 Guillestre | France

At 9:58 AM -0700 13/9/05, Jeff Carter wrote in Re: iTunes 5:
>I don't
>understand why Apple couldn't have made the inclusion of podcasts
>into the main music library an option instead of forcing people like
>me to change the way we work with the software. To me, podcasts have
>more in common with the radio streams, which are still separate.

An option would be fine by me, but for me it's enormously more useful
to have podcasts included in the Library, or more to the point, in
the smart playlists.

For a while I had podcasts arriving from two sources: iTunes itself
and via NetNewsWire. I choose which podcast to listen to based at
least in part on how much time I have, so I have several
time-determined smart playlists. 15 to 30 minutes, for example, is
perfect for walking our elderly dog, while more than 30 minutes works
well for my brisk, healthy walk.

The fact that I couldn't get the iTunes podcasts into those playlists
just made them useless to me and I eventually (in 4.9) abandoned
using the iTunes sourced podcasts. Now in 5.0 I can return to iTunes
as one source.

Cheers,

Miraz


--
Writer Web-Designer Learner
MacTips.Info: http://mactips.info
Blog, Tips Archive, Learning Centre

On 13 Sep 2005, at 10:58 , Jeff Carter wrote:
> On Sep 12, 2005, at 6:39 PM, Nik wrote:
>> GUI aside, iTunes 5 fixes a few bugs. Podcasts are now full fledged
>> members of the library and show up in smart playlists. That's nice.
>> I've also found that they're less prone to assuming the feed is dead
>> just because you haven't been connected to the internet for a day or
>> two.
>
> I don't think that the separation of podcasts from the rest of the
> library can really be classified as a bug -- in any case, it was a
> feature for me, one that was useful enough that the forced inclusion
> of podcasts in the library in iTunes 5.0 probably means I won't use
> iTunes for podcasts anymore.

Get Info -> Option -> Skip when Shuffling

(and it is turned on by default in the podcasts I checked)