¶ I’m live blogging my experience of the new iTunes version 9 – as I explore a new feature I’ve written in here. I didn’t think I’d care much, but there’s a few things I need to get off my chest.
iTunes LP
iTunes LP is apparently the ‘best thing to happen to fandom’ and will make you ‘become an even bigger fan’ whatever that means. What they’re trying to do with these is give you back some of the things you’re missing when you buy digital music instead of physical media: sleeve notes, lyrics, artwork, etc. You might also get a few more extras like video clips, so it’s basically a DVD album. This is a good thing; I’ve written before about the shortcomings of digital media.
Call me a snob (and I’d be hard pressed to disagree), but I do object to the name iTunes LP. I still buy LPs. Vinyl pressing quality is at an all time high, particularly with the increase of double and triple disk albums (as a rule, less music pressed onto one disk increases quality). Nowadays LPs tend to be marketed as luxury items and often come in fabulous gatefold packaging, giving you a wonderfully tangible 4 square feet of artwork. A DVD it isn’t.
And let’s say I wanted to specifically buy an iTunes LP from the iTMS – how the hell do I do that? There’s no category for such things, at least not one that I can find. Maybe it’s down to Apple’s usual neglect for its European customers.
iTunes Home Sharing
Initially I didn’t quite get Home Sharing. The only real benefit seems to be that you can import from a library on one Mac to another, and automatically add new purchases made on any of the (up to five) computers in your home. Thinking about it more, it will be handy to easily see items not in one library but in another and just click ‘Import’.
What I really want to do is synchronise my iTunes libraries – in particular ratings and playlists – and Home Sharing doesn’t do that.
Redesigned iTunes Store
I’m not sure if the redesign has improved the usability much (I’ve never had any major complaints, but I’m not exactly an iTMS power user). It does look a bit prettier.
But who the hell came up with ‘iTunes U’? Yuk. On closer inspection it seems to contain a lot of educational material, so perhaps the ‘U’ refers to the rating or is some hideous abbreviation of University. Either way at first glance it sounds like a bastardised ‘My iTunes’ whatever that would be.
iTunes Extras
Extras seems to be fixing for films what iTunes LPs are trying to fix for music, ie. give you access to content you would normally get on a DVD. About time too.
Genius Mixes
At first Genius Mixes weren’t there. According to the help ‘to play a Genius Mix: on the left side of the iTunes window (below Genius), click Genius Mixes’. I had to force a Genius Update to get this option to appear. Once the Genius Mixes had arrived, I was quite impressed. I love using Genius Playlists, and Mixes are very similar except they are not based on an individual song, but are more like a genre-based Last.fm station, in as much as they still play related tunes (from your library), but you can’t see or edit what’s coming up.
For example I’m currently listening to “Alternative & Punk Mix 5, based on: Fleet Foxes, Of Montreal, Arcade Fire, & others”. Judging from that title, iTunes Mixes may be based on the genres specified in your library, although I hope not because my genres are all over the place, as I suspect are many people’s.
Improved syncing
I forgot my phone this morning so I can’t really comment on whether the syncing is better or not. Although I do like the idea of organising and arranging my iPhone apps within iTunes rather than struggling to do it with my finger on the phone.
New column view
I’m not convinced about the new default layout, with artists down the left side. It doesn’t leave enough room for the info I like to see and I like to be able to easily select individual albums. Admittedly the new layout does feel I little more like navigating folders in the column view of Finder. No problem though as there’s the option in the View menu to put it all back how you had it before.
Fixing the store arrow
This isn’t a new feature but a reminder of an old hack from the days of version 4.5. The little arrows which show up upon selecting something in column view by default go to iTMS. You can option-click these arrows to go the album or artist in your library instead. If, like me, you think the option-click method should be the standard, quit iTunes, open a Terminal window, and type:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks -bool YESThat hint courtesy of Mac OS X Hints.
Comments
1
I had exactly the same issue with the Genius Mixes not showing up where I thought they should be.
This is one of the features I was most pleased about from the Apple show yesterday.
I turned off Genius, turned it back on, and voila! A bit like rebooting, I guess…fixes 99.9% of most problems!
I think I’d probably agree with the rest of your review too. Nothing much to write home about, but maybe in time I’ll wonder how I ever lived without it!
2
Correct me if I’m wrong – but when you import tracks from another Mac with iTunes Home Sharing, the ratings are included. At least mine were. Playlists, though, that’s another story.
3
Samuel – yes I think the ratings do import with the tracks, but what I’d like to be able to do is have my ratings syncronise between computers.
4
[proper noun] U is American English for [proper noun] University. It can also be used metaphorically, as in “After he scratched the counter again, I sent him off to Home Renovation U.”
5
Nice review Rich. I was hoping for something that combined the best of Spotify’s interface with the best of Apple’s. Switching between the two of them makes my head hurt now. As you mention I’d also love to have a true sync (or even my Tunes in the cloud) so I don’t have to copies of all the 40G scattered around the planet.
I do reckon that 9 has benefitted from some underbonnet code tidying though it seems snappier and more responsive.
I was particularly inspired by Adam Greenfields comments about Spotify at Dcontstruct – maybe it’s time for a new paradigm – we don’t have enough of the world’s resources for us to each own a copy of Portishead’s 3rd on double vinyl (with fat grooves) so we’ll just have to share: that’s where the internet comes in.
6
Re: iTunes U has been around for several years, although I don’t know if it’s been available in Europe.
Initially made available just for Universities to post lecture recordings for their students, now it’s available for all people to download open educational content from… including lectures from some of the worlds premier academics. It includes a large number of academic institutions.
Some really good stuff in there, have a look!
PS – Here’s a new iTunes feature most people have missed. iTunes can now play the super efficient aacPlus streaming format… which means less bandwidth use on your end, and less cost to internet broadcasts and improved sound quality. Many of the “radio” stations in iTunes are already tuned to their aacPlus streams (see SomaFM streams for example).
7
I agree with the part about the LPs, but heyy… it is just a name afterall, right? And that whole ‘home-sharing’ thing is mostly a gimmick in my opinion, unless you have a mansion with 20 computers around the house, you’ll probably end up just saying ‘hey this is cool’, but never using it.
8
Anyone else notice that clicking on the green maximize button in iTunes no longer toggles to Mini Player mode on OS X?
9
Thanks for the clarification Joe. Apologies to American readers for my ignorance and possible rudeness. ‘U’ is not a noun we have in British English (the closest might be ‘Uni’).
And no, we haven’t seen ‘iTunes U’ on the European iTunes store before. Apple may need to consider some localisation on the front.
10
I’m far from an iTunes power user, but mainly use it to rip CDs too which I then synch to my iPod Touch.
I’ll confess to noticing only very minor changes – not what I was really expecting with a major number version update. There is a lot in various forums about the new GUI / style. Has my install gone wrong as it looks 99% the same on both my Macs?
Home Sharing might be useful for me (with an iMac and uMBP) but not sure how it behaves yet when there are changes to tracks on the main Mac – e.g. Rich’s point about updated ratings etc. Does it automatically sync changes?
11
The artist/genre/album browser can be moved back to the top from the view menu.
Bryant, I regulary use two computers and welcome home sharing. I am far from the mansion scenario...12
There are only subtle changes to the GUI, apart from the new default column layout.
No automatic sync that I can find, and it only syncs missing songs, not ratings (it will copy over ratings with the song, but make no further changes).
13
Management of Playlists, Photos, TV shows, and Podcasts similarly got refinements, albeit not as dramatic as the Applications.
It would be nice if Aperture and iTunes could both pull CoreData links and show quick thumbnails of the albums….
Anymore a good update …
14
Colin #8 YES
I (used to) use that all the time. It really bugs me when Apple silently changes/removes features. I suppose it’s more in-line with the way all the other apps work but still…when it’s been like that for so long there needs to be an option to keep the old behavior.
15
my itunes 9 home sharing button is gone what can be done to fix that problem
16
The other guys are correct, U is slang/abbreviation for University. For example there is ESPN U, which solely focuses on college sports. Also, I wanted to say that I liked the itunes Extras, it makes it more like you actually went and got the DVD.
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