iTunes 5

kainjow

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From MacRumors.com:
Same display, but cleaned up. Search bar. Smart Shuffle feature. Can now organize playlists into folders. Available today from Apple's website. Windows users can sync contact and calendar info with Outlook and Outlook express. Parental controls to restrict songs with explicit lyrics. Album reviews.
 
Yep it's up. Nothing earth shattering, just an updated UI (sort of ugly in my opinion) and the ability to have a playlist hierarchy with folders.
 
i'm using it now -

its very slick - no uneccesary 'metal' bars.

nice new display too - (where you see track times etc) although it looks narrower at the top than bottom...

new icons for movies.

you can now control the 'random' features!

search is great too - just like the search in mail.app - you do the search and then set the criteria - all - music - podcasts etc etc.

i dont like the new placement of the volume control...

pretty nice all in all.

will there be a ipod colour update so that it now has the same features as the nano?
 
Ugh.. so iTunes 5 supports folders for playlists, but my iPod photo doesn't. And since it's running the latest iPod 1.2 software, there appears to be no update coming. When you update your iPod and you have folders in your playlists in iTunes, it just makes one big list on your iPod - ugly.
 
Haven't installed it yet. Not sure I want to.

Can someone explain WHAT is different about the "new" search bar? Everything just says "it lets you find stuff FAST! z0mg!!!!11" Looks just like the old one. Sounds just like the old one. What's new? (I really, really hate marketing....)

As for the new look, I am heartbroken. It looks just like Mail 2. :( I had hoped everyone responsible for that abomination was fired, but I guess not. The good part is that the layout is tighter; there's no border at the left and right anymore (which is arguably bad, but I think I like it). The bad part is that everything looks like non-standard crap now. A FOURTH window type?!? The third was overdoing it, and now they create a fourth with no functional differences at all? C'mon, give it a rest already, Apple. The playlist list is also non-standard. There's no reason for it to be all blue and....weird. Bah.

Well, I was never a fan of brushed metal to begin with. I guess I should be glad to see it go. But I'd be happier if it weren't replaced by something so flat-out ugly.

</whining>

Edit: Oh! But I am very glad that they named it 5.0. If they'd called it 4.10 I'd be bitching about that all day. Yay for mathematically sensical version numbering!
 
it has some sort of a world closck that sounds a lot like the dashboard clock...

it has a 'lock' - so that you can lock the ipod with a 4 digit code... that would be nice to have on my ipod colour...
 
the new search bar now lets you filter your search better.

in previous itunes you did a search for 'beatles' and it found everything with that word in it - now you can select 'podcast' 'all' 'songs' - etc etc - to filter the search better.

thats good.

*edit* above poster just posted a better explanation! an actual pic!
 
Convert said:
Window types?

What is that?
I mean these:
1. Standard aqua, as in, say, TextEdit and most apps.
2. Brushed metal, as in Safari, iTunes 4, QuickTime, etc.
3. "Unified" style, seen in Mail 2 and Xcode.
4. The new iTunes window, which is a cross between brushed metal and the unified look (which itself was supposed to be a cross between brushed metal and aqua....)

When will the madness end??!?! ;)

Not that big a deal, I guess, but as a developer I'm getting very, very sick of Apple's fickle fashion sense. Software design shouldn't be about fashion, but lately it seems like that's all Apple cares about.

Okay, I think I've got all my whining out of my system.


Edit: The posting here is so fast I can't keep up. THANKS for the explanation of the search bar, guys! That IS an improvement.
 
It's terrible. I'm talking about the UI, of course. It looks as if they've tried to find something that could better be reproduced in Windows. Ugly. Really. I don't know how to put it. They took what they've done wrong in Mail.app 2.0, took what's been wrong with iTunes for Windows and voilà: Its bastard, iTunes 5. Hooray.
 
The management of folders from iTunes to iPod is non-existent.

You create a folder - stick in a few playlists - and basically they show up as individual playlists on the iPod rather than another 'level'.

I think there'll be an iPod update soon - that'll add some of the cooler functionality / new features of the iPod nano to the iPod photo - and maybe sort out folder management...

Also - I think the new GUI is good. It's got rid of a a lot of the clutter from the rpevious verion. They've managed to steal back screen space by doing away with the metal inteface separators. I do agree that it looks more Windows-esque - but it's still got Apple written all over it.
 
Apple honestly need to bring some kind of consistency back to their apps. The fact that every app looks different is getting ridiculous.

Put simply, brushed metal has to go. So does iTunes 5. In my opinion all apps should have the unified look, with toolbar icons without text such as the toolbar in Adium. That's what makes Macs look good. This is just shocking.

iTunes is UGLY.

Dare I say it, Apple are starting to remind me of Microsoft.

P.S. Who has the purple iTunes 3 icon? If you do send it to me ;)
 
While I like most of what they've done with the new version, there are a few UI blunders, most notably the volume control slider, which is taking up space that could better be used by the iTunes LCD-style display.

The volume control is just a slider. No label, nothing to make it clear that its a volume control. Surely they could have made it more tactile, perhaps make it look more like a volume control on a hi-fi component? Or better yet, just leave it alone or remove it altogether - I'm sure this volume control is redundant anyway, except for setting the level of your music relative to the sound level in a game, for instance. I actually thought it would be a good idea if the "Customise Toolbar" function worked similarly to Mail.app, letting us get rid of the bits we don't want.

As for the fourth window appearance ... well, it really makes me wonder what they were thinking. When I first saw it I had the completely irrational thought that maybe they were aiming for the only interface that would look good in Windows Vista, which has a habit of turning even the cleanest looking applications into a murky mess. More likely, though, they just wanted to try a few new ideas out and got carried away.

Aside from the UI, though, I'm pretty happy with the updates.
 
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