Q: What are your thoughts on the New iTunes 11?

I think if apple had direct competition for this software, that is if another program by independent company could sync your ios device and do similar things to itunes, apple would actually care about feedback and making a decent app. As it is, if the software is bad, who cares, you still are stuck using it.  This is a microcosm of apple software developement in general.  Hardware great, software is average at best, but it is proprietary, so they feel no pain when it is awful, you have to use it.  Maps showed us all how bad it is.

I am extremely disappointed. I rarely ever upgrade before reading comments. Now, I want to kick myself royally in the arse because I didn't this time around. What is happening to my beloved Apple company??? It's all going to ****...

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVEN'T UPGRADED, DON'T!!! You will be sadly disappointed and upset. I want to go back to 10:00am this morning before upgrading to iTunes 11.

I know this forum isn't for venting, but I'm going to vent anyway.  I used Macs a bit in the early 90s, then switched to PCs when Windows 95 came out and the performance/cost ratio was simply irresistable.  I recently switched back precisely *because* Microsoft keeps screwing around the user interface just for the heck of it. Every version of Windows gets more annoying, and don't get me started about the whole Office "ribbon" thing! You'd have to look pretty hard to find someone who's used more different kinds of computers than I have, and I'm willing to learn new things *if there's some benefit in it*, but making confusing cosmetic changes with no value added is just infuriating.

In contrast, I hadn't touched a Mac in 15 years, and I found the OS was still very familiar, even though they'd torn it down to the studs and rewritten it in Unix in the intervening time!

Now it looks like Apple is getting more Microsoft-like.  iTunes 10 looked almost identical to the original iTunes, then you "upgrade" to 11, stare blankly, and try desperately to figure out how do the things that were so simple the day before.

Even the hardcore fanboys (the ones who wanted to move cities and rename roads to match Apple Maps) are upset this time.

I'm starting to dread OS 11.

Yep, spend a little time to see how things are now and learn new things and many of the complaints in this forum just vanish.

I certainly understand being ****** off about having to change how you have done things, but nobody FORCED people to change to 11 right away.

It's a fail.

At first I was horrified to find that iTunes DJ had been replaced by the Up Next feature. While this new feature is not the same as the old DJ it does provide most of the functionality plus some unforseen tricks I wish to share with the community here.

Where iTunes DJ would select music from any of your local playlist or library, Up Next will allow you to add music amd playlist from ANY shared library. I don't mean just homshared libraries. I mean any generaly shared library on the same network! There is a caveat for this to work with adding whole playlist. You have veiw the shared playlist in the default mode(side bar hidden) in order for ctrl-click to bring up the "Add to Up Next". With the side bar dislaying a shared library you can still select multiple songs and add them to the up next of the local iTunes.

For those who would like to get the feel of working with Up Next, There is a way to do this without migrating from the familiar environs of your current iTunes to the fairly radically different iTunes 11. If you have an appleTV running the latest iOS 5, the Up Next functionality is built in and works fine with iTunes 10homeshares. Once your apple TV is playing music from your library you can play with the Up Next function in two ways, the remote and the remote app. If you navigate to now playing on the apple TV using its remote press and hold the select button to see the "show up next" option. There you can see and manage the up coming tracks. To move a song up/down the list, scroll down to the desired song, push the selection to the right to expand the selection to include the list order button and then move the track up using the up/down arrows. If you have the latest Remote app 3+ you have even greater management control where you can add/delete/order songs in the Up Next function. However this implementation of Up Next does not allow for mixed libraries as described above.  

iTunes11 is both ground breaking and broken ground depending on your perspective. For me it still lacks some Remote app functions like rating a song that is playing and showing the complete track list of the current songs album. Or the party favorite "voting" songs up the list. For other power users there are some other valid concerns. Such feedback, both positive and negative, should always be submitted to  apple itunes feedback. But the underlying core function has been expanded while appearing more simplified. For now I will continue to keep my master music library in iTunes10 on the old server and run iTunes11 and appleTV as clients to that library.

I look forward to iTunes11 maturing further.

Happy holidays

Mr. Dodds,

You keep harping at us about "learning new things" and "nobody forced you" to update to iTunes 11 right away. Allow me to elaborate.

One: iTunes 11 actually lacks features and has the features it contains in a very confusing pattern that makes learning the new interface frustrating to many users. Most of having to acquaint with iTunes 11 is learning to live with it. I for one am not joining the iTunes 11 fanbase and choose to live with my old-fashioned iTunes 10.

Two: Saying that no one forced users to update to iTunes 11 is like when Bill Gates said that "no one forced you to use Windows". Given at the time that Windows was used just about everywhere, there really wasn't any option available (not even Mac OS). iTunes is used by a lot of people, and it has become the hub for all the Apple devices. There simply aren't any other options for synching Apple devices comprehensively, to my knowledge. No, Apple didn't force us to upgrade, but it makes one wonder how long before we have to.

Three: Software Update has a habit of persuading you to trust it. When the iTunes 11 update came up, many users, based on Apple's "new and improved, redesigned" campaign, and a large number of reviews in favor of upgrading, decided to go for it. You trust reviewers to be the experts, right? Apparently, they are not. As soon as users tried to use iTunes 11 for anything more complicated than playing a song, the flaws became apparent. "What happened to Coveflow?" "Where are the other viewing optiions?" And so on. People are feeling they've been duped into upgrading.

You dismiss the negative comments on this thread as being from a bunch of ignorant dunderheads that butt heads at any change. Myself, I'd like to know how many years you've been using Macs. Me I've gone through many changes, from System 7 to OS 9.2 to the early days of OS X on up to present. Yes, I've gone through a lot of change with Apple products. It really isn't about change this time; I get the feeling that Apple is becoming out of touch with its longtime users.

Well said TPerhai,

Also, If you have apple mobile devices, as we do, then there really is NO alternative to iTunes. If you don't upgrade fairly soon then you will be forced to later on.

If we had no apple devices I would have ditched iTunes very soon after upgrading to 11 as it is such a gross failure.

I personally like it, I did have to navigate a bit to find the sidebar, I am super dependant on. However I am completely satisfied, I just need a good organizer and a good player, both needs are met with the new iTunes 11.

lesson for me is never to upgrade my Itunes to a major release, N.n (where n=0) unitl n reaches 5 or so and all the little 'bugs' when the first major release came out have been resolved.  As I mentioned in my other post -- not on this thread but at https://discussions.apple.com/message/20545738#20545738 -- I tried going back to a previous version of Itunes but to no avail. If the index to my music library is corrupted -- as another poster to this thread mentioned (which helped me btw), things will stay broken.  And why I decided to go back to Itunes11; if I'm toast anyway -- what difference will it make what version I'm on?. Note that I'm running Itunes in a Win7 64 bit environment; my husband -- running on an iMac -- hasn't had any problems at all.

Terrible. Smart playlists no longer update. I have had a playlist that filters songs that haven't been played in a period of time (6 months). It used to work perfectly, but is a failure with the new version.

I disagree, it's not a failure.  Is it buggy? Yes, I agreed with that, but I do not see the 'fail' aspect people are complaining about.  Yes, they have removed things that don't make sense at times, like cover flow. i never used it, but completely dumping it was an odd choice. (It would make more sense on touch devices, it's still on iPhone and iPod? Never remember it on iPad or Apple TV) So many choices don't make sense until you try to look at things from a distance, or less emotional perspective. (Not all ever make sense)

I never personally said anyone was a dunderhead or anything else. But many (maybe not you) just see it all different and instantly hate it and come post in here mad. I for one am willing to try and sit back and see where they are going.

I've used Apple most of my life, starting with an Apple II hand serial numbered in the 4000s.  I also use Windows every day at work... <shiver> (at least 7 is tolerable now). I'm not happy with many choices Apple has made over the years, but it's has not been the end of the world (that is Friday) going to OS X had it's many scary changes, but now I can't imagine going back to 9.

I think some of the bugs and crazy changes of late are because Steve Jobs is not a threat to some people's job, and people are trying to push their own ideas.  Now that Jony Ive is head of software and hardware, who knows where things will go. Hopefully for the better. 

Don't Panic

Dups are back. There was an update over the weekend.

by the way -- wouldn't mind if people read the post I gave the link to and to confirm whether the issue really IS that the library index got corrupted during the upgrade to 11.  If that's NOT it, I don't want to waste what could be hours executing my plan:  remove all music and videos from library, sync IpodTouch4G with no music, restore music to library, restore playlists using iPodClassic that has NOT been synced to iTunes11 as reference, and then resync iPodTouch4G.  Appreciate feedback.  Thanks!

The fact is that if they had made all the changes they made *but just left the **** sidebar*, you'd probably only see about one tenth the complaints.  You're used to a few headaches with a major release, but when the dominant first reaction is "Oh my god!", and 56 pages of complaints by the normally fiercely loyal Apple fans, I think it's a "fail" by definition - maybe not on the scale of the maps app (which only last weekend tried to put me on a non-existent road) - but still pretty bad.

As I said before, pushing aesthetic changes with no benefit (it's not like the sidebar was hurting you in any way) has really been Microsoft's forte.  I suspect that "little things" like this are the sort of considerations Jobs obsessed about.

Windows 8 has insured that I'll stick with Apple at least for the near future, but this is just one more thing since Jobs' death that doesn't bode well.