What are your thoughts on the New iTunes 11?

lucasvarga wrote:

Now, Itunes looks like Windows Media Player!

Yes you are so right. The worst thing about iTunes 11 is that it's not Mac like. instead of being simple it feels cluttered.

Actually, that is what has been starting to flirt with my attention the last few days: if this is the start of the demise of iTunes, then it's time to go back to buying 'real' CDs rather than simply purchasing from the iTunes store.

I love my music and have a large collection. Although not as large as a lot of people on this forum, obviously

;-)

When the iTunes store first opened (and was finally available here in Australia) I was hesitant to purchase : what if it all turned sour and I was left with an unusable music collection? So it took me a while to feel comfortable with purchasing. Of course, for the last couple of years it has been the only way I have purchased new music. Now I am printing off a list of my purchases and over the next couple of years will probably look at purchasing those tracks I am particularly keen on in a hard format. Yes, it adds to the clutter here, but it is starting to look safer long term.

This has certainly made me think twice about buying anything more through the store (other than rented movies...)

What a set back! Or maybe it is a timely reminder.....

Thanks for this. I downloaded and it imports my album artwork but then crashes when it tries to launch. Oh well, it has now sent 10 reports to Apple...... lol maybe they will fix that instead?

give me old itunes, it ****** me off even more when i cant play my the way i want it, while im already angry! man seriously, maybe this time sack the itunes guy after the ios map dude

Suzanne, Maybe this is just a rushed job to update I-tunes and it will get better! Apple is a class act and they will out do many in this TECH AGE! All BEST ENERGY MEDICINE!!!!!!!

Apple need to be very careful now - maps and now iTunes 11 are not promoting a positive feel. They have messed up iTunes in the run up to Christmas. Due to the locked down nature of Apple users need iTunes to use most of their products. Anyone thinking of buying an iPod or iPad may think twice and look to Android or Windows 7 devices before having to contend with this new release of iTunes. A lightening fast fix is required if Apple is not to see sales slump and to let people know they listen and react!!

I was thinking of buying the new Nano (as it has the video capability back - another daft decision to remove it in 6th Generation) but what with the cost of having to buy a plug adaptor and now fighting with iTunes 11 I think not!!!

I just bought a compact Samsung BD-E5400 Blu-ray player with WiFi (for netflix) opposed to another apple TV, and I'm getting a WD N900 2T router opposed to a time capsule. It's amazing how easy it is to find comparably equipped, lower priced products once you remove Apple’s software from of the equation.

The music is not a big problem, simply burn it to cd then reimport it and it will stay yours forever.

The worst part is all the mobile devices, we have two iPads, two iPhones and three iPods in our house, these are all worthless without a good iTunes to run them. That represents a LOT of hard earned cash. Since the update I have not synced any device because I am reading so many bad stories of failure so I am waiting for an update first.

We have many friends that are ditching thier apple products now because of these mess-ups they are all going android etc. I spent a whole 8 our day yesterday on iTunes doing stuff that would have taken me two or three hours previously, this is a horrible, complicated, flawed update, much of the slick coolness has been deleted for no good reason and nothing of any use has been added at all.

A few bugs....

Cross fade/play count fail,

No cover art preview,

No coverflow,

List view keeps resetting itself,

No multiple windows,

Permanent reminders to log in to the cloud,(I don't use it),

No grouped album listing with cover pictures,

Unknown sync issues(not testing this yet),

Apple tv playback fails,

Plus many more that I have not tried but have read about on here and other forums.

This update was the worst one I have ever had from apple.

I think the "List view keeps resetting itself" is down to the Apple Bluetooth tracker mouse. I attached an old fashoned laser mouse via a cable and using the roller wheel in the middle I managed to scroll down.

Re: stand-alone Cover Flow

It doesn't work perfectly for me either - it crashes consistently on exiting full-screen mode, although that's not a serious problem since that's usually when you want to stop using it anyway. It hasn't got all the artwork, but if you export one image from iTunes and then re-import it to all the songs on that album in iTunes and then 'Album > Reload Artwork' in Cover Flow it works (which implies it's a bug in iTunes and not Cover Flow), it fixes that. I'm also not quite sure I like the 'tilted' view, and it won't show the song title as well as the artist and album. So I'd give it about 7 out of 10 as a stop-gap replacement.

I'd still much rather it was within iTunes, since this way still needs a lot more effort to reach the same goal, just like a lot of the other new stuff in iTunes. This update really has made it a lot harder to do a lot of simple things that you never had to waste time on before.

iTunes was the reason a became what you could call a small time Apple "fan-boy" and started buying Their products in the first place. Like Steve Jobs said. It was like a glass of ice water in **** for PC users.

Now they are ruining many years of good developement and fine tuning in just one update! I feel really let down this time and the fact that they just did it without thinking about how people used their program scares me. iTunes is the glue that tie all Apple-units together. How dare they ruining somthing that is so close to perfect?

If Apple don't fixes this ASAP i see no reason to continiue using their products. For the first time I'm now looking for a iTunes alternatve. And I'm not sure Apple fixing this would get me out of it. Music matters to much to me and I feel like I cant thrust them any more.

Regards

Long time iTunes-user

My Apple devices: MacBook Pro, iPhone 4, 2x iPad 2, iPad Mini, iPod Classic, iPod Touch, 2x iPod Nano

What are the specific issues you object to with iTunes 11? I am also a long time iTunes and Mac user with an iMac, MacBook and Mac Mini in the house along with several iPods, two iPhones and two iPads. So far for me I have found no major issues with iTunes 11 other than lack of familiarity on my part on navigation and set up which is easily being addressed as I go through the software preferences and set up.

I was sorry to see the loss of Cover Flow as I used that extensively displaying album artwork on my HDTV but I have discovered a satisfactory workaround. The only other thing is I would have preferred an option for a neutral gray background on Grid views versus the fairly harsh white background but that probably would not have worked with the new expanded display when selecting a title in that view.

Trying to help people that I see have the same dilemas as I have... I have been testing several apps available, trying to have a similar enjoyable experience as we all had with iTunes 10.

iTunes 11 simply ruined my previous enjoyable experience with the iTunes ecosystem, which was also what convinced me to invest in purchasing music in the online store instead of CDs which are very hard to find these days.

After spending already more than 100 euros on several apps I am sad to report that nothing replaces the previous iTunes 10.7 experience...

On top of my priority list was offcourse the music artwork.

I have setup artwork for individual tracks on all compilations over the years and that was the way I looked for music with Coverflow.

But I desperatly need the sorting of "Albums by Artist" with artcover, otherwhise nothing works for me.

I have installed the original CoverFlow app (free), but there is no integration with iTunes (you can play albums and songs but you need to jump between iTunes and CoverFlow all the time). Also, as was already pointed some album art does not load. Nice to have anyway.

Of all others I downloaded/bought Decibel was the best, simply because it made me realise my iTunes Library could sound so much better. All my tracks are AAC 256kbps but Decibel makes those sound like uncompressed just by oversampling. Nice. Unfortunately, Decibel is like iTunes 11 - it looks like an Excel sheet and it doesn't support nice artwork display.

CoverSutra - Another nice one. Cheap on iTunes Store and it brings a few extra controls which are nice, good search without bugs and it keeps covers and all info available all the time without being in the way like that annoying iTunes cover floating window. CoverSutra is the Mini Player that iTunes should have had a long time.

And thats it...

Everything else is just simplified versions of iTunes and we all know by now that we already got it with iTunes 11.

Anyway, all this process is making me feel sick because of the fact that my "magical experience" I always had with Apple is gone... as well as my trust on the company itself.

With iTunes 11 I was expecting a better integration with the store itself, allowing for more music streaming before purchasing and more integration with info provided by the artist themselves.

I don't have Pandora and Spotify where I live, so I was expecting Apple to integrate that exact type of function within the iTunes store.

Yes, Ping was not great, but I was expecting that to be replaced with Facebook integration as promised.

Artists and bands would worship Apple for that alone...

Finnaly I was expecting that iTunes 11 would finally bring some sort of authoring format support (like iBooks Author) allowing for better album art integration within iTunes (open with preview is simply pathetic...)

It clearly shows that Steve Jobs was the only person who fully understood what users wanted and he was always working towards that goal. Remember when Jobs brought iTunes LP and extended album art? It never got integrated in iTunes as it should and now we know it will never will, because the people messing with this software simply don't get it... They probably have their own cheap plastic MP3 players full of stolen mp3 files from Torrents anyway...

It ***** - Music dissapears!

Plus, I could not import a CD.