[Macworld]

Post your comments for Imaging a new iTunes here

[zenwave]

A dedicated 'Composer' browsing column for classical music enthusiasts.

[fribhey]

you caught the typo in the title just in time ;)

[chewygoat]

What I think Apple needs to do is to pull the iTS out of iT. The iTS would be a much more pleasing experience if it were in Safari. Like a normal web store. Buying things would automatically put them in iTunes, but the iTS would not be within iTunes. Then you could do all the usual browser type things, such as make a bookmark to an app or album or movie, and it would all work in a familiar way. That would also simplify iTunes.

[flybynight]

zenwave said:

A dedicated 'Composer' browsing column for classical music enthusiasts.

View menu > View Options (Cmd-J on the Mac) > click the "Composer" checkbox. Done.

[Chris Breen]

flybynight said:

View menu > View Options (Cmd-J on the Mac) > click the "Composer" checkbox. Done.

See, now that's what I mean. iTunes is packed with useful features, but how easy are they to find?

[hayesk]

chewygoat said:

What I think Apple needs to do is to pull the iTS out of iT. The iTS would be a much more pleasing experience if it were in Safari. Like a normal web store. Buying things would automatically put them in iTunes, but the iTS would not be within iTunes. Then you could do all the usual browser type things, such as make a bookmark to an app or album or movie, and it would all work in a familiar way. That would also simplify iTunes.

Ugh. No, thank you. Part of what makes the iTunes store good is that it is not just like the other awful web stores. The iTS is much easier to search and browse than any other store I've shopped at. Bookmarks is a nice idea that can be added to the existing store easily.

[kirkmc]

He said a "browsing" column; the one you see at the top of the window when you display the browser. As it stands, you can only have genre, artist and album.
I think it needs work under the hood. With a library of nearly 45,000 tracks, it takes several seconds - on a 1G Mac Pro - to change anything in my library, even simply checking or unchecking a track.
Kirk

[imarcw]

I don't mind the chaos in the preferences panel, so much as the $100+ you have to spend on additional software to do things that should obviously be in the program:
* More sophisticated SoundCheck (using the same open-source algorithms as iVolume). Yes, it takes longer, but you only have to do it once.
* Greater ease of moving libraries and files around without losing important metadata. How about a "Move library" menu command?
* Downloading album covers that aren't on the iTunes store. Why should I have to manually add album covers to all of my Beatles albums just because Paul McCartney and Steve Jobs can't settle their differences?
* Menu bar, floating control bezel (a good one, like CoverSutra) and system-wide keyboard shortcuts for changing tracks, adjusting volume, rating songs.

[garyi]

I would like to put to bed the arguments raging on various hifi fora regarding the quality of itunes as a music server. Its all about squeezeboxes at the moment because apparently it works and sounds better.
The appletv coupled with itunes is sort of a midfi solution.
More over apple need to pull itunes away from the mac, they need to create a NAS with itunes on it. for tose users not wanting mutliple computers on in order to listen to music.
itunes is vastly to complicated to non technical users. Think about it from a non user perspective, A good for instance, 'how do I burn a cd?'
'Well, firstly you have to create a playlist. Then when the playlist is created you have to click back in the libray then you have to find the music you want. you have to drag them into the playlist. No, no, the playlist has gone off the screen a bit, scroll down, yes, there, there on the side. The one you just made. Yep put it in there. now the next tune.
Now you have to click in the playlist you made. Click burn, yes, put a CD in now. What do you mean to many tunes. Oh right you put to many in, you have to drag some out now. No they won't be deleted....'
Etc Etc.
Its hardly 'just working'
My feeling is a lot of the crap regarding the pods and phones should be pulled an intergrated into the OS, and leave itunes as it was intended.

[Rhywun]

I would leave it exactly as is. I've used almost every player under the sun on Windows, and none of them comes close to iTunes for ease of use. Performance could probably be improved, as kirkmc mentioned, although with around 10,000 tracks and 2GB RAM I don't notice any major problems except when changing certain tags on multiple tracks. My only other complaint is that it doesn't monitor folders for changes, but that's not a fundamental problem.
> A dedicated 'Composer' browsing column for classical music enthusiasts.
[/quote]
I put the composer in the Artist field on all my classical music. I generally don't care who actually performed a piece.

[zenwave]

[quote name='Chris Breen']
>

flybynight said:

> View menu > View Options (Cmd-J on the Mac) > click the "Composer" checkbox. Done.

See, now that's what I mean. iTunes is packed with useful features, but how easy are they to find?

umm ... wrong and wrong.

You are talking about the normal columns ... I am talking about the 'Browse' columns, of which there are only three:
Genre, Artist, Album.

[kgvs]

Itunes has become bloated in terms of using hardware resources. I'm willing to bet that that since it's almost on version 8, that once it goes up to version 10, there maybe a major redesign/rewrite of the app and perhaps a name change. If it is true, it might happen in a few years.

Look at the progression:

* itools to .mac to mobile me.
* System 1-7 then Mac OS 7.6-9, to Mac OS X (This was planned years before anything came out)
* PPC to Intel processor transition (Planned when OS X was released)

What'll be the name for the future itunes? Idk. What about when OS 11 comes out? OS XI?

[zenwave]

Rhywun said:

> A dedicated 'Composer' browsing column for classical music enthusiasts.

I put the composer in the Artist field on all my classical music. I generally don't care who actually performed a piece.

That's why I wrote "for classical music enthusiasts". For those whose classical collection consists of "x's Greatest Hits", this is obviously not an issue.