Friday, December 7, 2012

iTunes 11 and Classical Music

Kirk McElhearn:

With the arrival of iTunes 11, classical music fans – and anyone with a large music library – have lamented the removal of certain features and views that help organize large amounts of music. I touched on some of these in my extensive review of iTunes 11 for Macworld, and in my discussion of iTunes 11 on the Macworld podcast. But I would like to summarize here the problems that iTunes 11 has brought specifically to classical music listeners.

I like a lot of the changes in iTunes 11, but there’s no doubt that there are also some big regressions. And despite the “little extra time to get it right,” it doesn’t feel as though it was thoroughly tested. For example, the new “Use custom colors for open albums, movies, etc.” feature produces illegible text for many albums.

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[...] Link. Sigh. by jgordon on December 7, 2012  •  Permalink Posted in share Tagged pinboard [...]

It's not just classical music that presents a problem. Classical plays a very small part in my music collection, and iTunes 11 is still a big bag of hurt from my POV. No reason not to stick with iTunes 10 if you're a serious iTunes music user. (When I need iTunes 11 for yet-to-be-released iOS device sync, I'll run it in a VM or spare machine.)

"And despite the “little extra time to get it right,” it doesn’t feel as though it was thoroughly tested."

It's not the multitude of bugginess that bothers me, since that'll theoretically get worked out over time. (Though the Lion/ML experience shows that theory may not be in line with reality.) But the contempt for the UX serious iTunes music users want and need is a whole 'nother kettle of mollusks...

"it doesn’t feel as though it was thoroughly tested"

Since when Apple applications are thoroughly tested?

e.g. Maps, Podcasts, Server, Notes, Reminder, Mail, App Store, Xcode, iAd Producer, Messages, etc.

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