Showtime
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.
- 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?
- Good job on the cover art fetching, though I haven’t tried it yet since I’d already added all the covers manually.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- “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).
6 Comments RSS · Twitter
Whoa!
Removing the iPod Shuffle from the source list when it's not plugged in is a major inconvenience!
Why would Apple remove that functionality? Hopefully, it will be back in iTunes 7.1.
My shuffle appeared there while it was unconnected on first launch, but it too disappeared after I disconnected it for the first time in iTunes 7.
Doing Get Album Art by right-clicking on a selected song gets the art for just that album, though it does it for all songs in the album.
I have a longer comment on that on my blog; basically, I now consider iTunes an emulator for the iTunes/Store platform, not a standard desktop app.
For everyone who wants to provide feedback to Apple and ask for the "keep this ipod in the source list", I've just done it. Hopefully if a good number of us request this function, the powers that be might consider reinstating it.
