[stevemint]

Thanks for your response. It's a great option for dealing with the Apple TV.

The only downside is exactly as you stated: "your library will automatically be on your external, and ONLY on your external" as this leaves me without any content when I'm away from home, and not attached to the external. I suppose I could buy a more portable external HDD, or upsize the internal HDD.

[Chris Breen]

alexcumbers said:

I find it quite incredible that anyone has ideas about iTunes being in the least bit difficult to use.

Okay then, explain to the person who's newish to iTunes:

1. How to create an MP3 CD for their car.

2. I want to rip my music as an MP3 file rather than an AAC file because I use a player other than an iPod. How do I do that?

3. My audiobooks and podcast episodes won't go on my iPod shuffle. Why not?

4. When I listen to previews from the iTunes Store they stutter. Is there any way I can stop that?

5. I want to put music from both my desktop Mac and my MacBook on my iPod but iTunes wants to erase it when I plug it into the other Mac. What do I do?

6. The Album Artwork feature isn't showing artwork for my Beatles albums. How can I add it?

7. I understand that my iPod can display lyrics. How do I add them to my songs?

8. I hate the poetry bit from "Nights in White Satin," is there some way to cut it out?

I'm thinking the case just got reopened.

And no, you needn't answer the questions. I know the answers. I'm just saying that iTunes isn't always the transparent and wholly intuitive application you make it out to be.

[tatilsever]

I guess an easy way to sync across multiple accounts or computers would be major help, so that my wife would not have to login as me to add some songs from my library and login as her so that she can get her podcasts.

The rest is about as good as it gets for me. The only reason I won an iPod is the nice interface of iTunes. The preferences are usually for people who like to fiddle with things and most of those are familiar with computers. Besides, the menus and tabs in there are quite intuitive anyways.

I don't get the people who ask for FLAC support, what is wrong with Apple Lossless? A lot of open source programs support it already, so there is no need to be afraid of being stuck with a proprietary format.

[Gcp79]

Many of what you list though are advanced features. I can't imagine making the program simpler so that they can edit or shorten tracks.

[tatilsever]

Chris Breen said:

Okay then, explain to the person who's newish to iTunes:

3. My audiobooks and podcast episodes won't go on my iPod shuffle. Why not?


And no, you needn't answer the questions. I know the answers. I'm just saying that iTunes isn't always the transparent and wholly intuitive application you make it out to be.

Asking iTunes to be more flexible and powerful at the same time, while wanting users have all the features available with just a mouse click away does not sound like compatible desires to me. Besides some of these items goes contrary to the desire of Apple to sell more iPods. "It would be a lot easier if you had an iPod, but if you have to use something else, you could do it through these extra steps" fits Apple's marketing. As it is a free program and Apple supposedly does not make much money of the store, it is hard to blame Apple for making it work for any other use in a slightly complicated way.

By the way, what do you mean by item 3? I can get my podcasts and audiobooks onto my iPod shuffle just like any other song.

[Chris Breen]

What I listed are features that iTunes users commonly want to use ? I get questions like this all the time. They're "advanced" because they're hard to find, not because they're unwanted.

[fletc3her]

The interface is starting to get real busy with all the iPhone stuff in there. It's goofy to search the store and find applications when you're looking for music and vice versa. iTunes has already become a misnomer for both the software and the store.
I don't have any serious issues with the software, but there are some minor things.
I wish it would remember what it is playing better. I want to play one album, but still be able to browse other albums without the player jumping to whatever I'm browsing now.
I wish I could open multiple windows to view the store. It would make comparing multiple albums a lot easier. For example, looking at the track lists of different "best of" discs.
As to the store itself they desperately need to deal with all the "partial" albums. There are some albums that have been partial for years. I can't imagine going into a Tower Records over the course of several years and not being able to find an in-print CD from a popular band. At the very least once I'd requested it they would special order me one. And yet on iTunes some artists like New Order have had several of their most popular albums incomplete for literally years.

[Chris Breen]

tatilsever said:

By the way, what do you mean by item 3? I can get my podcasts and audiobooks onto my iPod shuffle just like any other song.

I'm talking about the limits of Autofill for audiobooks and podcasts.

[alexcumbers]

we can debate all day about 'hard to use' features - If people can suggestion real improvements then send them to Apple.

The issue there is does Apple listen to feedback ...

I hope they refine usability & improve application consistency as they should be doing with Snow Leopard.

It would be good to see a client/server version of iTunes so that multiple machine can be serviced without library duplication etc - perhaps a version of Apple TV should host all the data ...

[heyjp]

1. Definitely needs some file management. Ability to move sections of your library to an external drive that is only available when connected. Or I can turn on or off library groups when I want.
2. I think the iTunes/iPod releationship is elegant. You have a master systm and all iPods are sync-slaves. For each iPod you can define a different sync strategy depending on the owner, use or storage capacity of the iPod. You can sync high energy playlists to a small nano used for running, and general playlists to the iPhone and everything to a high capacity AppleTV.
Would be nice if different computers could be treated as an iPod too. Would love to have an iMac at home with EVERYTHING on it, and just sync 5 or 10 gig to slave MacBook Air. Elegant. Simple. Play counts keep synced, rating systems keep synced. Anything I buy on the Air gets synced back to the Master. Just treat another computer as an iPod.
Same concept would work for a future (and needed) WiFi iPod built-into the car. The car system syncs in the garage over WiFi.
Thats it; file management and treat-macs-as-iPod option.
Jim

[zenwave]

tatilsever said:

I don't get the people who ask for FLAC support, what is wrong with Apple Lossless? A lot of open source programs support it already, so there is no need to be afraid of being stuck with a proprietary format.

I for one don't want to encode anything with FLAC, but I want to be able to enjoy the wealth of freely, legally downloadable music from the jam band scene.

[Adwiz]

I have to agree with Chris, that while those of us who have used iTunes for years find it extremely intuitive and obvious, new users don't. Recently I helped a friend move over to the Mac from Windows. In the process, he bought his first iPod. I almost laughed when he kept calling me to ask about what were (for me) the most obvious things like how to add a song to his iPod or how to sort the list, or how to remove songs that his son put into his library without deleting them from the hard drive. Other questions, like how to add a movie converted from DVD, were not so silly and still presented a major challenge.
What struck me while talking him through these things was that the iTunes interface isn't as intuitive as we tend to think. For example, when I told him to click on his iPod in the devices list and then click the "movies" tab, he had no idea what I meant by the movies tab.
My friend obviously isn't a computer genius, but he's certainly more adept with them than are many other folks, so I would expect his experiences to be quite common.
Having said that, I don't think we can solve these problems in a forum like this. It would take a dedicated effort by Apple to rethink the entire interface, something that they are inherently good at.
My biggest complaint is the sluggish nature of Apple changes. Some obvious things like color coding of rows, which I've begged Apple to add for many years, still don't exist. If Apple is that slow to add a feature which exists in other Apple software (Mail has color coding), then how much hope do we have that they'll listen to other feature or interface improvement requests?

[byronkim]

"Same concept would work for a future (and needed) WiFi iPod built-into the car. The car system syncs in the garage over WiFi. "

That is an awesome idea! I was trying to think of a good way to eliminate the awkward need to plug in an iPod.

[rab777hp]

I agree, old users find it very intuitive, however, I don't think that everyone, given time could do the same. It's not just about being computer savvy. But we people who used it for a long time started in the beginning, with fewer features, and saw it evolve, and took in each piece one by one, like tv shows, the 'burn disc' button which I know I and many other users complain about disappearing. Versus a new, not as computer savvy person starts now, and gets overwhelmed by everything and possible tries to learn everything at once, which can be very hard. Not to mention switchers, who are still accustoming or learning that right-click=ctrl-click.

I could go on for some time, but I don't want to bore everyone with my ramblings.

However, an idea struck me, I don't want to go too in-depth, because it's hard to describe with words, but it's sort off like you fire up iTunes, and you are presented with a few buttons, kind of like if anyone has every used the app Adobe in Adobe air, where you minimize it in to a widget. And you select one and enter that app, like a player, or a store, etc.

The point is, there are a lot of options+ideas out there.