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journal: mac
iTunes 5.0: First Impressions
Excuse me for being horribly underwhelmed.
With great fanfare, Apple announced several new goodies; one of which was iTunes 5.0. Wow! Version 5! It must be bursting at the seams with new stuff!
Excuse me for being horribly underwhelmed.
At any rate, here are some of my first impressions of iTunes 5.0.
The UI Police
Under the guise of “streamlining” the iTunes interface (an interface that was damn good), Apple decided it would be a good idea to mangle what was one of the most refined, most elegant user interfaces on the Mac OS and turned into, well, I don’t know how to describe it. Some like it; I detest it. I can’t describe it, but the word “awkward” describes it well. Prior to iTunes 5, I complaoned about the hideousness of Mail 2.0 (which I have since tweaked to make it halfway tolerable). I thought Mail was the ugliest app on OS X; iTunes has since taken that title. Ugh.
Look at me, Strong Bad! I’m smart!
Smart Shuffle is a minor addition and its usefulness may or may not be important to you (zero importance for me personally). But if you use shuffle and don’t like it when itunes randomly plays three straight Smashing Pumpkins songs, this feature will make you happy.
There it is!.
Search is greatly improved. At least Apple got something right.
Okay, that’s about all that has caught my attention. I know; it has folders, parental controls, Outlook syncing and such. But wow. This is by far the least impressive update I’ve seen come out of Apple in a long time. To be honest, there’s nothing compelling at all to it from my standpoint. Looks like I’ll be reverting to iTunes 4.9.
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4 | 858 |
| Nick | comments | views |
thinkback
Send me the iTunes 4.9 dmg when u can nick. I agree, apple fscked up itunes bad. anally
| Sep. 08, 2005 | |
| 2:37 pm |
I like the interface and I’m curious what Safari would look like with a similar design. If the old is called brushed metal, what is the new, Mail 2.0, style known as?
| Sep. 08, 2005 | |
| moreApple | 11:03 pm |
Chalk me up for liking the new version as well. I actually like the new interface styling, as I think Apple is trying to move away from both stripes and brushed metal (hopefully). The only thing I don’t really like about the interface is the square shape of the “LCD” info area (and the source list doesn’t need to have a blue background, really...).
But this version of iTunes has some features I consider quite important. It allows me to disable podcasts; I like the new shuffling options, like fewer songs from one artist in a row and the skip when shuffling option; remember playback should come in quite handy; and there’s a dedicated spot for lyrics.
Anyway, I think iTunes 5 is a worthy upgrade (especially since it’s free… it’s not like they can expect to charge for relatively few new options like iTunes provides, all things considered) and I think, if you guys use it enough, it’ll grow on you.
| Sep. 08, 2005 | |
| Arden | 11:12 pm |
1.
I actually think the new interface is a marked improvement over the old. I did share the belief that the iTunes 4 interface wasted too much space with its brushed metal. I hope all of the iLife apps go the way iTunes 5 has.
Having said that, it doesn’t deserve an entire integer increase. It should be iTunes 4.95 or something.