Q: iTunes 11: No more album art preview for selected track??? :(

Well, you don't have to do anything - you could just switch back to iTunes 10

With regard to functionality, the new "Up Next" feature is glorious. You can right click on any song, album or artist and click "add to up next" - and you can do that while any song is playing. The "Expanded View" is also far superior to the old cover-flow interface, because you can view album information rapidly, without leaving the place you were at, plus it shows a logical, organized view of the album and all tracks. I don't see where anything has been removed to make new features possible. Everything you desire is there, but it is accomplished in a different manner.

My guess is that you are the type of person that doesn't adapt to change well, and you like things the way they are (or were) - which is fine. There is, however, no need to be obtuse about it. Good luck to you.

That would be "having to do something" - switching back to an earlier version.

"Up Next" I can simply drag the track to a new folder on the left and play them in order.

and there's no need for YOU to be so sanctimonious about it...
"I don't see where anything has been removed to make new features possible. Everything you desire is there, but it is accomplished in a different manner."

"Everything I/We desire is NOT THERE.... any longer..

what on earth do you think all these people in this thread are complaining about...?

we get it - the new version is fine with you.. go on about your life - there's nothing for you to see here.

Maxseven, why don't you re-read my previous posts, maybe re-read them twice. 

The separate artist window you talk about is also the movie window so everytime you play a movie it gets displaced and moved and resized.  That's a TERRIBLE solution to this problem.  I already tried it. 

Maybe you only have 100 albums in your collection.  I have 2,600 albums, or 31,000 songs.  The only manageable view is song view because I need to be able to break down the albums into smaller lists with genres. 

I tried finding Sigur Ros the other day in genre view, and it took me a whole minute.  There is no longer any way to select an album in any other view but song view, so you can't type the letter of the artist ("s" in this case) and be auto-scrolled down.  And every view but "song" view- with column browser turned- on displays every single bloody album.  I have many albums by some artists.  Think about the Grateful Dead, I probably hae over 30 albums, and I have to scroll through every single one to get to the next artist.  And it's not very fast since all the artwork for each album is loading.  Now you're going to say "weh, make the artwork smaller so it loads faster".  I've spent years adding artwork to all my albums.  YEARS!!!!!!

Even the new album view with the custom color background ruins the album artwork because it fades out all around the edges.  Completely useless.  I could give a **** about custom colored backgrounds, I want to see the album artwork. 

itunes 11 is catered to the lowest common denominator of consumers.  The people who just buy whatever random song they hear on the radio and have 500 songs in their library. 

Such a fail. 

Apple won't let me add this to my above post, so I'll have to just post it separately. 

You say itunes11 adds functionality?  The only thing it did for me was remove album artwork from list view, remove the sidebar (optionally of course, but it is a feature), with no use of all that extra space, and it just makes most things take longer.  If the sidebar is removed (which accomplishes nothing in song view) I have to click a lot more to add music to playlists.  When I have an album selected in song view, and I want to add it to a playlist I have to switch over to playlists, then click on the playlist I want, then click to add something to that playlist, then it looses the album I was viewing and had selected, and I have to find it all over again, since it starts with "all artists,albums, songs" selected.  That is about 5 clicks and a lot of time for something that used to just be 1 click- drag and drop. 

Even simple things take more clicks and more time.  When I want to watch a movie I rented, I have to click on movies, and then I have to click on rentals and it never remembers my last selected sub-category (rentals) so I have to click on rentals every time even though I don't own any movies.  That's 2 clicks for something that used to be 1.  In the itunes store, I now have to click a button to see rotten tomato rankings, and that used to be visible on the main movie page.  2 clicks for something that used to be 1.  Not sure why they want to hide the ratings, but I'm guessing it's to make studios happy who pump out crap movies. 

rhythmdevils wrote:

 

  If the sidebar is removed (which accomplishes nothing in song view) I have to click a lot more to add music to playlists.  When I have an album selected in song view, and I want to add it to a playlist I have to switch over to playlists, then click on the playlist I want, then click to add something to that playlist, then it looses the album I was viewing and had selected, and I have to find it all over again, since it starts with "all artists,albums, songs" selected.  That is about 5 clicks and a lot of time for something that used to just be 1 click- drag and drop.

This is not true. In Album view you can drop the album to a playlist. The different playlists will appear instantly if you start draging the album. So you don't even need one click!

Ok that sounds good, but album view is useless to me so a way to add music to playlists from album view is not useful to me.  I have 2,600 albums, I can't possibly try to find music that way it's absurd.  And the fact remains that adding music to playlists from song view, with the sidebar hidden is a crazy process.  This program feels like a rough draft beta that someone should have rejected. 

and this procedure works even in Song view! So what is the problem? Try it

Over a year ago, Apple came out with the really absurd Music Player for the iPad. I hated that player so much (for so many reasons) that I gave up listening to music and podcasts on the iPad, instead listening to them exclusively on my iPhone. I hated that Music Player that came with iOS 5. I complained about it on this board and complained to Apple. (My biggest complaint - that PDF files that podcasters occasionally drop in their feeds got "stuck" in the Music Player, didn't get "resolved" until iOS 6 when they came out with the steaming pile known as the "Podcasts" app. Don't even get me started on that one.)

Anyway, I decided to load some songs onto the new 4th Gen iPad I got and went to go play them on the iPad when I had a sudden revelation - the "new" iTunes 11 is made to look and act EXACTLY like the crappy music player in the iPad. Look at the iTunes 11 out of the box - without the left-hand menu bar, it looks and acts exactly like the crappy iPad music player that I've hated for over a year.

Now, there are some things that make sense on the iPad player. For example, I'm not really building playlists; I do that on the home computer. Nor am I managing devices like my iPhone or iPad. That's what I use the home computer for. But that's where I take a different appraoch to Apple. Instead of "dumbing down" the home interface to the lowest common denominator, why not build up the iPad version to be more like iTunes?

If you read the notes, Apple is all about trying to make the interfaces for iTunes as close to those used on their devices as possible. But that's not very efficient. I may have 500 songs on my iPhone or iPad, and that interface works very well for that (although I really wish they'd bring back the pre-iOS5 iPad Music Player). But at home, when I have 23,000 songs? That interface is not very effecient.

I used to be able to drag and drop artwork into iTunes. Even now, with the "Get Info" open, drag and drop no longer works for me, only copy and paste.

There are work arounds, yes. I could accomplish in 5 steps what it used to take me 1 step. But when you take 23,000 songs, that's now still 5 times the work.

After I freaked out about iTunes 11 and googled how to get the left hand bar back, I'm happy with everything except not being able to see the artwork for a selected item without playing it. I'm often listening to one song while working on the art for several others. Yes, there are lots of multiple views and I can toggle views and Get Info and all sorts of stuff to get to see the artwork. But what I don't get is the "Why?" part of it. Why not allow a separate window where I can see the artwork for the selected item? Is that so hard to do?

And why remove the left hand bar? I have about a hundred playlists, and it's easier to drag and drop to the playlists in the left hand menu than it is to try to use the "Add to Playlist >" pop-up menu. Why make the left hand menu off by default and make people go google how to turn it back on? I suspect because it is soon on its way out as well.

I'm just worried that with this trend, the left hand menu is the next to go. I want to see the selected art back. But what I *REALLY* want is to see no more disappearing features in iTunes 12.

The problem isn't just not being able to see selected album artwork, there is no large album artwork anywhere in song view.  A tiny thumbnail is useless.

Copaman wrote:

 

 

And why remove the left hand bar? I have about a hundred playlists, and it's easier to drag and drop to the playlists in the left hand menu than it is to try to use the "Add to Playlist >" pop-up menu. Why make the left hand menu off by default and make people go google how to turn it back on? I suspect because it is soon on its way out as well.

so it is easier to drag it to the left side than to the right? Plz read my earlier posts? And you don't need to google this. If you would have had a glance to the intodrucing video a lot more would be clear.

And BTW you can add the album art simply due to  drag the cover to the player line (where the current track time counts down...) Plese choose the album before

HTH

Gerhard,

This one point is great but it doesn't change all the other failures and loss of features with itunes11. 

Your 22:01 post.

But there is.   If you have in place of your old album artwork, empty boxes except for a musical note, right click on the box and select 'Show in iTunes Store.

This may not serve more than a small part of your needs but the panel which then appears demonstrates with no question that the Artwork exists in iTunes records.

Surely, the question is why it is almost impossible to transfer it without a huge amount of trouble ..... and i have tried everything.

You've really nailed it here, Apple's trying to merge OSX and iOS and neither will benefit the more they do it.

Do they really think I'm going to manage a 120K song library from an iOS device? Of course I won't, but that's what they seem to think. I manage my librery on my iMac and sync certain parts of it to multiple iPods, an iTpd Touch running iOS and a wireless streaming music system to my main stereo in the living room.

They've changed it from a library manager to a media player and I have no idea why.

"Over a year ago, Apple came out with the really absurd Music Player for the iPad. I hated that player so much (for so many reasons) that I gave up listening to music and podcasts on the iPad, instead listening to them exclusively on my iPhone. I hated that Music Player that came with iOS 5. I complained about it on this board and complained to Apple. (My biggest complaint - that PDF files that podcasters occasionally drop in their feeds got "stuck" in the Music Player, didn't get "resolved" until iOS 6 when they came out with the steaming pile known as the "Podcasts" app. Don't even get me started on that one.)

Anyway, I decided to load some songs onto the new 4th Gen iPad I got and went to go play them on the iPad when I had a sudden revelation - the "new" iTunes 11 is made to look and act EXACTLY like the crappy music player in the iPad. Look at the iTunes 11 out of the box - without the left-hand menu bar, it looks and acts exactly like the crappy iPad music player that I've hated for over a year.

Now, there are some things that make sense on the iPad player. For example, I'm not really building playlists; I do that on the home computer. Nor am I managing devices like my iPhone or iPad. That's what I use the home computer for. But that's where I take a different appraoch to Apple. Instead of "dumbing down" the home interface to the lowest common denominator, why not build up the iPad version to be more like iTunes?"

rhythmdevils wrote:

 

This one point is great but it doesn't change all the other failures and loss of features with itunes11. 

Oh it's fine when I can help! I really don't see the big difference. I think the new version is better than the old. And as I wrote before. even in Play list you can switch inside of an playlist to album or Interpret list and choose a view style. Than you can see all the other artworks of the playlist not only one as it was in the old iTunes version.

For me the only thing to enhance is the boolean search...

To see really big artwork just click on the small album icon beside the playing track. A big cover with fading play buttons will appear!

Are you serious Gerhard? 

I don't want to have to click on a thumbnail to see the artwork.  It's not like I'm trying to stare at it.  I want it to be part of the interface, and show when an album is playing to give visual context to the wall of text.  I'm not intereseted in having to click to show it everytime I play an album, that is WAAAAY too much work. 

You don't seem to be grasping this problem.  And you seem to not be reading my posts.  The separate artwork window that appears is also the movie window, so it gets displaced and resized everytime you watch a movie.  It is not a solution.  It's just another design failure.