Mark Dominus:
If the Design Patterns movement had been popular in the 1980’s, we
wouldn’t even have C++ or Java; we would still be implementing
Object-Oriented Classes in C with structs, and the argument would go
that since programmers were forced to use C anyway, we should at least
help them as much as possible. But the way to provide as much help as
possible was not to train people to habitually implement Object-Oriented
Classes when necessary; it was to develop languages like C++ and Java
that had this pattern built in, so that programmers could concentrate on
using OOP style instead of on implementing it.
C++ Programming Language Craft Design Patterns Programming
I don’t mind that iTunes 7 is inconsistent with other applications, because I assume that everything will look like this in Leopard. What I do mind is that it’s so internally inconsistent and ugly. I don’t like the reflections (especially on the capacity gauge). The iPod configurator is a bunch of controls on a scrolling white background (with awful tabs); it feels like a Web page. Elsewhere, the swaths of gradient in the background remind me of Windows. More on the new interface style from Daniel Sandler and Andy Matuschak.
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The new views are nice, but I was hoping for a way to show cover art in the mini-player, Clutter-style. And why isn’t it possible to change views from the menu bar?
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Good job on the cover art fetching, though I haven’t tried it yet since I’d already added all the covers manually.
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The right-pointing music store arrows are now shown only for the selected tracks. This makes it look a bit cleaner, but it’s an odd UI precedent.
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My iPod shuffle no longer appears in the source list when it’s not plugged in, which means that it’s no longer possible to add and re-arrange tracks with it disconnected.
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iTunes forgot that I like my Shuffle’s music converted to 128 kbps, and the second time I launched it, it forgot where my library was the standard location.
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“Build your collection over multiple libraries, and keep them on different hard drives to save space.” This seems the same as before. How does iTunes 7 make it easier?
Update: Sven-S. Porst comments.
Update 2: More from Rory Prior, Omar Shahine, and Kirk McElhearn.
Update 3: More from Lee Bennett and Dan Crevier. According to Mac OS X Hints, the multiple libraries feature is simply that you can hold down Option at launch to choose a library. Perhaps I had accidentally done that when I reported, above, that iTunes 7 had forgotten where my library was.
Update 4: Chris Clark and Scot Hacker say that album art downloaded by iTunes isn’t stored in the MP3 files. Also, when I select a single track and choose Get Album Art, iTunes starts getting art for my entire library. I don’t want that, because of the reports that it will mess up existing art that I’ve hand-chosen. Kirk McElhearn writes about gapless playback. John Gruber covers the big picture.
Update 5: Mac OS X Hints shows how to change the capital letters in the source list. Michael Alderete has some interesting comments on the new Nanos. Rainer Brockerhoff and Adam Knight discuss the cross-platform iTunes 7 interface. Jason Fried says that reflections are the new drop shadows.
Update 6: John Gruber examines the new iPods and provides a link to pre-release screenshot of iTunes 7 with an even more Windowsy interface. Daniel Wilson has more iTunes 7 analysis.
Update 7: I just imported a CD, and iTunes 7 wouldn’t let me paste or drag cover art onto a selection of multiple tracks. It only worked if I set the cover art one track at a time. Also, Mac User reports that iTunes 7 hides and shows the Chapters menu based on what kind of track is playing
(via John Gruber).
Subversion 1.4 provides faster and smaller working copies (using a new non-XML format) and smaller repositories (using a new diff format, if you dump and reload).
Update: Bill Bumgarner on the Mac OS X keychain support.
Galen Gruman on the strange performance characteristics of the new Universal version of XPress on PowerPC Macs and compared to the PowerPC-only version 6.5 and InDesign CS2:
The Universal QuarkXPress 7.01 makes up for much of the slowdown in version 7.0 on Intel Macs. The speedup on the Mac Pro is much higher than on the Mac mini, so users of the latest Macs will see the best performance. Compared to non-native XPress 6.5, XPress 7.01 is 19 percent faster on the Mac Pro but 38 percent slower on the Mac mini. On the two Intel Macs, XPress 7.01 is slower than InDesign CS2, by about 30 to 40 percent. XPress 7.01 is about 30 percent slower than version 7.0 on PowerPC Macs. As a percentage, the slowdown is slightly higher on a Power Mac G4 (32 percent) compared to a Power Mac G5 (30 percent). In all tests, XPress 7.01 is slower than XPress 6.5 and InDesign CS2—running at just a fifth to a half the speed of the others.
