Q: Move column browser to left side vertically rather than on top horizontally?

What a frickin' joke!!! Do the people that design these new versions even use iTunes???? With the artist list at the top you can only view about 5 artist at a time!! When it's on the side you can see a lot more! when your picking songs and your in a hurry you don't have time to scroll!!!! very poor design!! I'll take the old version any day!!! I would like to have the album art work on the side like the old version also!!!

I'm gonna go ahead and join in on the outcry against this stupid UI update. Apple may make/use good hardware but their software is god-awful. Simplicity =/= making all the (wrong) decisions for consumers.

A decent alternative I discovered is turning off the column browser and viewing your library as Artists. It's basically left-sided column browser with only artists. There are album covers for every artist in the list which take up some extra space, but it's not awful.

This is what I mean:

Actually, it is awful.  Especially if you have artists in your library with 60+ albums like the one below... It's definitiely not fun trying to scroll through all of those titles on a small widescreen MacBookAir.

Urgh I agree with you all, no collumn browser is SO annoying. The closest I can get is pressing 'songs' then command + B which brings it up, but in that option THERE ARE NO COVER IMAGES!

I ALWAYS sort my library by 'date added' in order to listen to my newest music first, then occasionally sort by artist or album if i'm looking for something specific. With a library of over 5000 songs, sorting by latest is VITAL!

FIX IT APPLE. I'm a hardcore fan, but this has me ******!

Just posted this here: https://discussions.apple.com/message/20603393

but it makes sense to republish in this discussion:

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There is sort of a way to get that old UI back: smart playlists

I use "genre" as a selector:

Show sidebar and "Artist list" as viewing style:

It is just a work around, needs plenty of time to set up, does not work with remote Apps on iPad & iPhone, nor does it help managing your music on iDevices.

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Some thoughts about the new UI:

Music is an emotional experience and logic + brain should not be involved.

Listening to a large music library with iTunes 10.x is like:

• What is my mood ? OK, select genre, get a list of artists - hmm, OK, today I like to listen to "XXX"

Listening to a large music library with iTunes 11 is more like:

• What is my mood ? OK, select genre (if I find the settings) and BAM Thousands of Albums get slapped into my face. Help !!! I can't decide because it is too much. OK, OK, STOP, I DON'T LISTEN TO MUSIC NOW. (it is a really unpleasant feeling).

The default way to handle things in iTunes 11 now is the search field. But this is like:

• What is my mood (emotion)? Hmm, which artist / song fits into this category (logic, use brain, need to remember, no emotional support but stress) ? Type name into search field (again brain, not emotion)...

There are some work arounds like smart playlists as described above, but they only work on the Mac, not on the iPad. And once upgraded to the new UI it will stop working on the iPone, too.The old 3 column view made it easy to stay on the emotional side and did support my decisions without involving logic and brain. The new interface forces me to use brain and logic when I want to travel on emotions only. So Apple, please

• bring back the 3 column view: Genre:Artist:Album (the one on top of the title view is simply wrong on a large screen & library)
• bring back the old appearance as an option
• and while you are at it, please heve a "genre" for iPhone/iPad Apps, to.

I was all set to buy a 27" iMac this Christmas but I've decided to stick with my Windows 7 PC so I can stay on iTunes 10.7. I wonder how many more sales Apple are going to lose because of this botched update?

The two major issues I have -

1. Removal of the option to have the column browser on the left, lots of people complaining about this -  https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4553820?start=0&tstart=0

2. The new search. I find it cumbersome and virtually unusable. I much preferred the old search where all results are displayed in the main list window. Now it throws me into a different view depending whether the match is an 'artist' or  'album' but I don't like these views I want everything in a list like 'song' view but I can only get the search results in this view if the match is a 'song'. It's complete BS, just give me the **** search results in a list like the old iTunes! Also it no longer searches the comment tag which severely limits the search functionality if, like me, you save meta data in the comment tag.

If they fixed those two things it still wouldn't be as good as 10.7 but it would at least be usable.

More generally Apple seem to have this obsessions with 'Albums'. I do have lots of albums but I never browse or listen to music by album. Perhaps it's because the main genres I listen to are dance music and because I'm a DJ but I just don't get this focus on albums. Surely one of the main benefits of digital music is that is that you're liberated from the constraints of listening to 'albums' and you can listen to what YOU want in the order you want. I guess it just goes to show that we all listen to music in different ways, something Apple clearly forgot when they were designing iTunes 11.

Large libraries require:

1. left side column browser with genre, artist, and album columns

2. option to display ablum art somewhere -- this doesn't HAVE to be in the song list, but that probably makes the most sense with the vertical columns view

Please fix this one ASAP.  I really don't want to have to use the "genres" view, select a genre, and then scroll through 200 albums randomly.  It's just not how my brain works when deciding what to listen to.

Yes, it is amazingly annoying that Apple took away the vertical column browswer!!!!  Bring it back please.

Indeed. Top column browser is messing with my iTunes routine. Please bring back left column browser.... and album art thumbnail!

the real irony is that column-mode Mail is one of the headline features of recent OS X. do the Mail devs use wider monitors from the iTunes devs or something?

Wow@! I'm glad i found this post!! Updated to 11 at work and couldn't even FIND the old left column. It was infuriating. I agree with others. Finding playlists, radio programs previously tagged has become way too  time consuming. Literally wanted to consider using another play app. Why do they think moving it to top helps? Is it to make it mobile device friendlier?? Never mind, this probably isn't even an app on the mobile devices. Arghhhhhh APPLE how you task us!!!!

I 100% agree!! This makes the list sooooooo inconvenient to use. It's better to see more of the lists all at once!

This is so bothersome for me that I am planning on downgrading.

I also have an additional problem that my Ipod nano 6 won't show a column browser at all. The option is in light grey and can't be selected. Argh!!

Thanks for this! It's not ideal and takes a while to set up, but is better than the current column browser!