[Chris Breen]

consumer_x said:

Many of those requested tasks are also explained in the iTunes Help.

As they are in my iPod book. That doesn't mean most iTunes users are going to read either of them.

[DoTheEmptyHouse]

This is a great idea, soliciting the internet for answers. After all, Cover Flow came from a good idea someone had on the internet. I'm not going to spend too much time leaving a massive comment about what I think they should do, as I have a massive answer. But in short, add in an extensible architecture to allow people to develop plugins a la Firefox. A lot of the more esoteric needs of the community, like the FLAC support people have been demanding for years, could be added this way. As well as a lot of other things.

Oh and tagging support! Letting us assign moods and so forth to MP3s without dragging them into playlists would be great. I wrote a whole blog entry on all this, if you want to read more, but I figured brevity was more important.

[DoTheEmptyHouse]

This is a great idea, soliciting the internet for answers. After all, Cover Flow came from a good idea someone had on the internet. I'm not going to spend too much time leaving a massive comment about what I think they should do, as I have a massive answer. But in short, add in an extensible architecture to allow people to develop plugins a la Firefox. A lot of the more esoteric needs of the community, like the FLAC support people have been demanding for years, could be added this way. As well as a lot of other things.

Oh and tagging support! Letting us assign moods and so forth to MP3s without dragging them into playlists would be great. I wrote a whole blog entry on all this, if you want to read more, but I figured brevity was more important.

[Wondercow]

Adwiz said:

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?

Maybe I don't quite understand what you mean but iTunes has had rows of alternating colour (blue and white) for years, if not ever.

[Adwiz]

Wondercow: blue and white aren't color coding, they are just standard implementation of alternating row colors so that the eye knows which line it's on. Proper color coding would mean additional pastel colors that you could assign to genres or songs to help you identify patterns in a playlist. Even the store would benefit from color coding. Have you ever done a search in the store and tried to sort out songs from audiobooks from TV shows from apps? The only way is to carefully look at the little grey icon which says "get app" or "get movie" etc. It's very frustrating and makes searches very cumbersome. With color coding for different types of media, it would be really easy for the eye to know what's what. That kind of thing would be just as useful in the music library and playlists as well.

[Wondercow]

Adwiz said:

Wondercow: blue and white aren't color coding, they are just standard implementation of alternating row colors so that the eye knows which line it's on. Proper color coding would mean additional pastel colors that you could assign to genres or songs to help you identify patterns in a playlist.

What if I don't like pastels? ;)

Basically you want labels--look how long it took to bring that back into the Finder. Not saying it's not a good idea, but don't hold your breath.

[mdawson]

While I can agree that Apple has definitely more receptive to feedback from Mac and Apple software users than they were in the past, simply sending feedback to Apple does not guarantee a fix. I have on at least two occasions written to Apple feedback about completing what they have started with artist sorting in iTunes. The first time was when the Album Artist field was introduced early on in iTunes 7, but the artist folders in the iTunes Music folder continued to use the Artist field as a reference for naming the folders. The second time was after the introduction of the sort fields, when the same omission remained with the handling of artist folders in the iTunes Music folder. Several revisions later and iTunes 7 still has not implemented this simple fix.

[mdawson]

The only file management issue with iTunes that I can think of is the fact that to date, the new sorting features in iTunes 7 have yet to be extended to artist folders in a user?s iTunes Music folder. That is, while it is now possible to have artists properly sorted and album tracks correctly grouped in iTunes without resorting to esoteric workarounds, that functionality is not reflected in the user?s iTunes Music folder even when the user has enabled organized iTunes Music folders. Beyond that, iTunes is a database and it is up to the user to use the tools provided to organize the data to suit their usage.

iTunes has a rather complete set of organizational tools that have been built up over its subsequent versions and revisions. Simple playlists allow the user to manually place specific tracks within a certain group. Smart playlists allow the user to create dynamic playlists that are automatically built and modified based on given criteria; effective use of smart playlists does actually require the user to correctly and consistently tag everything in their library though. Folders allow the user to consolidate related groups of playlists and even folders. With those three tools alone one can implement simple organization with just a few playlists or go as far as creating a complex folder/playlist tree structure. All of this can be done without having to learn a scripting language. Again, the hardest part is actually making sure that all of your content properly tagged otherwise these organizational tools will be far less effective.

Apple has even gone as far as adding the Album Artist field and the sort fields to allow iTunes to handle artist/album grouping and sorting in the same manner that a music database such as Music Collector or Delicious Library would, or as you would expect CDs in a brick and mortar store to be arranged. The former helps tracks from a given album remain grouped together regardless of what is in the actual Artist field so iTunes users can finally include guest artists without scattering tracks. The latter helps to insure that artist listings are sorted by user-defined criteria such as having Billy Joel sorted as Joel, Billy even though the artist name is displayed as Billy Joel. Most music mangers lack this type of functionality just as iTunes did before version 7.

The problem is that Apple does not provide an adequate documentation in iTunes to inform users of how to organize their music leaving people to think that a reasonable solution to organizing their content is to resort to extremes such as separate libraries. To date, there is still no information in iTunes help about the sort fields at all. Given the organizational feature set in iTunes, there is little reason to resort to physically separating your library into multiple groupings that are activated and deactivated as you would do if you have too many fonts on their Mac or Wintel PC. It is not as if iTunes loads all of your content into memory every time you launch the application; no database works in that way. Now if you have a mixture of audio, video and iPhone content, then that is another matter that I did address in another post within this thread.

Now I do fully agree with your second point. In fact, what you stated about the MacBook Air is quite one point. The MacBook Air?s design makes it well suited to being a secondary portable system for most people. In effect it is what you would keep on a flash drive with a fully function laptop built around it, but your main system would remain at home or in the office.

[whitedog]

The biggest problem I have with iTunes is how it handles multiple libraries - which is to say, not very well. This functionality needs to be beefed up so that you can change libraries without having to go into preferences and locate and select another library, which only works sometimes and often gets totally messed up.

[samrod]

Missed it by only .4 (8 - 7.6).

Damn you and your sweet piano skills! :P

samrod

[mdawson]

You do not have to go into iTunes? preferences to switch libraries unless you are changing the location of iTunes? default library. To temporarily access an alternate library you have to quit iTunes and relaunch while holding the option key. You will then see the alternate library selection dialog. From there you select the alternate iTunes Library file to link to the alternate library.

Granted, what Apple has implemented is no more elegant that going into the preferences and changing the location of your permanent library, but Apple is apparently of the mindset that library switching is something that is rarely done. Having read several posts on the matter, far too many people seem to desire to resort to separate libraries instead of learning how to properly catalog and group their content using the software. I have yet to see a legitimate reason for intentionally resorting to separate libraries. Playlists and folders can be used to accomplish any organizational goals and it is part of the reason for their existence in iTunes.

I can only see library separation as a necessity in those cases where people have multimedia content as iTunes has become somewhat overextended in that regard. If, like me, you use iTunes strictly for music, or at the very least audio-only content, then the organizational tools in iTunes are quite adequate. Once you begin to include video and smart phone content into the mix things get a little more complicated. Of course, you could simply create audio, video and phone root folders in their source list then build up the appropriate sub folders within each to organize each type of content separately. At this point though, Apple may want to consider grouping playlists under their appropriate content header in the source list instead of as a consolidated group at the end of the source list. Hence, you would expand or collapse Music, Movies, TV Shows, etc., in the source list to access their playlists.

As with any project, organizing content in iTunes, or any database software requires that the user,
bq. 1. actually bothers to take the time to learn how to use the software?granted Apple could do a much better job of providing documentation about how to use every facet of iTunes; 2. makes a point of fact checking all of their content to correct errors, make sure tagging is consistent, etc.; and, 3. most importantly plan, PLAN, PLAN ahead.
As with any project, organizing content in iTunes requires a game, but it is the unfortunate nature of most people to stumble ahead without any forethought as to how they are going to accomplish anything. No matter how user-friendly or intuitive iTunes is or can be, once the tools to accomplish the goal are provided, it is up to the user to think through the organization of their content to their preference.

[doglesby]

I never really go into preferences, and it's not surprising that someone who's having a problem would have to--for any app.
My complaints lie not with the interface (mostly) but execution. One iPhone backup? That's asking for a corrupt backup. Tap into Time Machine or otherwise provide access to multiple backups. Better management of iPhone apps as well.
The one change I'd make to the interface is drag-and-drop reassignment of categories. I've had TV shows and podcasts end up in movies. Rather than changing properties in the inspector (which doesn't always work), I should be able to drag a podcast out of "Movies" and into "Podcasts."
Can you take a PDF booklet from the iTunes store and sync it to the iPhone? I understand it reads PDFs...

[whitedog]

{quote}You do not have to go into iTunes? preferences to switch libraries unless you are changing the location of iTunes? default library. To temporarily access an alternate library you have to quit iTunes and relaunch while holding the option key. You will then see the alternate library selection dialog. From there you select the alternate iTunes Library file to link to the alternate library.{quote}

I've got news for you: using the alternative library selection procedure at startup changes the default library and, in fact, does so more reliably than changing it in preferences. Neither method is exactly user friendly - which was my point.

{quote}Having read several posts on the matter, far too many people seem to desire to resort to separate libraries instead of learning how to properly catalog and group their content using the software. I have yet to see a legitimate reason for intentionally resorting to separate libraries.{quote}

I see, reading several posts on the subject makes you an authority? I think not. People's reasons for using more than one library are their reasons and not yours to judge. They may not be reasonable to you, but it's been my experience that "reasonable" is very much in the eye of the beholder. We may wish it were otherwise till the proverbial cows come home, but the simple fact is that different people reason differently - primarily because they have an unfortunate tendency to start off with the desired conclusion and reason backwards from there to the premise that suits the conclusion. It's not truly logical, I know, but that's the way it is most of the time. Which is why most arguments are an exercise in futility, as are blanket declarations about how things should be.

While we're on the subject of iTunes libraries, not only should it (here I go) be easier to create and use separate libraries, it should be possible to selectively combine them as well. Yes, drag and drop works, but with large libraries it is exceedingly tedious and time consuming. Just because not everyone needs to create and combine libraries doesn't mean it's not important. The same can be said for most existing features of iTunes - not everybody uses them.

Tangentially, library corruption is probably the most common iTunes problem I see. Backups are one solution to the problem, but most people don't bother, which is why Time Machine is such a great idea. A better solution, though, would be a more stable iTunes that didn't mangle libraries in the first place.

If we're lucky, perhaps Apple will toss all these suggestions into a hat and decide to implement a few of them.

[gniw]

i agree that iTunes is hardly easy to use (I had problems figuring out how to burn a CD myself... exactly how you described it) but at least you can do something with it even if you don’t know how to use the harder-to-use features, so it’s not the worst: i still have absolutely no idea how to use iPhotos.

but moving stuff into the OS would be wrong; some iTunes users use a PC