“Apple just released the long-awaited iTunes 11. After downloading, users should expect a totally redesigned version,” Romain Dillet reports for TechCrunch.
“We have picked a few major new features in iTunes 11 to give you an idea of what you should be looking for when it comes to improvements,” Dillet reports. “The general philosophy of the application remains the same: iTunes is your digital hub for all your entertainment content (music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, books…) with a store to buy, rent and download new things. It is also the iOS media and software synchronization application.”
Dillet reports, “The interface is totally new with more whitespace and less UI chrome. Content comes first. Among the new features, the default view is now a grid of album arts that you can expand to reveal song listings. The left-side column is gone. You can switch back to the old artist, album, song column view just like in iTunes 10. The iTunes Store has a new design as well, in order to share the same user experience across all devices and operating systems.”
Top 5 new features in iTunes 11:
• New interface
• iCloud integration
• Up Next
• New mini player
• Better search
Read more in the full article here.
Related article:
Apple releases iTunes 11 – November 29, 2012
Is the store still based on the now rather archaic Web Objects framework?
Archaic, according to whom?
WebObjects was developed by NeXT in 1995.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebObjects
The store must be TAKEN OFFLINE for updates. Seriously?
It was last updated in 2008, or five years ago.
In internet years that’s archaic.
Does it run on Snow Leopard? Or earlier by chance??
Very nice, much more streamlined….
So…why is iTunes 11 better? I say it is not. The mini player shows “up next” but removes key information, like time left in a track. If one is used to seeing things in a list format (like me – for what? ten years now?) that’s only available in the “song” viewer – which doesn’t allow you to see which album you’re on from a particular artist (even though those options can be checked under “view options.”). This feels half-baked – like Maps! – with fewer customizable options and showy, but ultimately useless and ill-conceived graphics. This version does NOT “go to 11.”
It is perfect! Just perfect.
Love the way Albums just pop open with great graphics. Feels like when we used to handle album covers and read then while listening.
We can spot TROLLs like you a mile off.
Nothing created by humans is perfect. Just sayin…..
Perfect piece of unfinished business you mean!
The new features are great – specially for those of you with small libraries and smaller categories (genre’s, sources, artists, etc.) of music. Seriously, the new stuff is good. But makes absolutely no sense to get rid of vital information in what is now “Songs View” as well as Analyzer data, DJ mode, and a host of other important access to data in our files that there is now NO way to use or access.
iTunes 11 is a breaks too much!
BTW, “Paul”, just because someone points out real problems that you are either not able or willing to see does not make them a troll. Bashing them the way you did does make you a disappointment.
Not a “troll”….just someone who has used nothing but Apple products since 1990 and has never used Windows or Android any other crap. I DO stand by my initial comments. I’m fine with new features, but I object when functionality is reduced in the name of aesthetic “cleanliness.” (a jet airliner would look “cleaner ” without wings too, but would be a lot harder to get off the ground…) The mini-player (which is how I normally control itunes at work) won’t tell me where I am in a song, adjusting the volume is now a two-step process, I can’t tell at a glance if the player is stopped or playing (I’m on the phone, did I pause or not?). And another thing, the Equalizer used to work like the mini-player and could be minimized up and down the same way. That hasn’t worked right since, like, iTunes 7 or 8 and it’s the same in 11. I love progress, but as someone with over 20,000 songs in my library and who uses iTunes all day every day, this feels like a real downgrade and it’s a real drag.
try clicking on the album art in the mini-player, that brings up a maxi-mini
Look… I am not a troll… But I did use iTunes every day…, my opinion a lot new things to learn for NO benefit to me… This what happens when Apple listens to forums, tech writers and NOT the normal user… Know what they want….. They want do the things they do in a familiar environment and the shut down the computer and get back to life…,only to those few who’s life IS their computer gives a rats ass about changes in iTunes.., except that it means they must now waste more precious life time in front of a computer learning how to do things they already knew how to do a new way …. Thanks for wasting more of my life…
@ Paul: sorry, I’m with tk01 on this.
Tweaked interfaces don’t achieve much, especially when features are removed or hidden. While some refreshing is harmless, there’s a lot that of change that resembles bass-ackwards MS Ribbon logic.
What precisely does ITunes 11 preform better than the prior version? Old farts like myself can find, manage, and play our media just as fast on the old interface. And we like sidebars.
Agree with every word.
Luckily, most of my songs are on a legacy MBP running 10.5.8 and iTunes 10 and they’ll stay there for ease of use and sheer prettiness.
It looks like a Google app and that is not a compliment. The typeface change is about the only welcome change.
As usual- the update FUBARed my library settings because Apple cannot figure out how to follow a database from version to version. We are now on version 11 and it still cannot retain custom settings for Genre, Equalization and such.
The good news is that you can turn on the side bar, the tab bar and the status bar.
The mini player is a complete piece of shit- a prime example of fixing something not broken.
Who the flock is running SW development at Apple these days? Instead of progress we are seeing steps backward with no taste, purpose, unity of vision or reason behind decisions.
Looks like more Apple Beta-ware.
Suggestions
#1- Fix the damnable mini player.
and
#2 Put some color into the interface.
Oh wow, Agent Provocateur doesn’t like the new Apple software! Who among us could’ve seen THAT coming? :rolleyes:
——RM
Pleased you like, but as a long-time iTunes lover, this one leaves me cold –
Miniplayer spoiled again.
Coverflow disappeared.
Prettiness gone, now Plain Jane.
Nav not so instinctual.
Bah – it sucks. I hate the album cover opening in a new window, I hate not being able to see the track time remaining, I hate not having cover flow and the duplicate sniffer. I know it’s months on, but IMHO it’s a LONG way from perfect, and I posted here simply because you accused him of being a troll, which I though was unjust – you on the other hand appear to be an unabashed fanboy, which in and of itself is akin to the behavior you disdain so much.
> You can switch back to the old artist, album, song column view just like in iTunes 10.
How?
The way I did it was to sort by Artist, then selected “Songs” as the view. Then selected View-Sidebar and View-Status Bar. Now it’s back to my preferred “old” view.
Likewise. However, anyone else missing the Radio section?
I am missing “purchases” showing what purchased in last item purchased order. ….
Ah, that too.
If you’ve gone back to the View->Show Sidebar mode, you need to click the Music section of your Library for the menu bar to appear to the right with all the options for selecting music. “Radio” will appear as one of the categories.
(In Preferences you must also have Radio checked in General Preferences and NOT checked as “Disable” in Parental Controls.)
Thanks. You’re the second chap to point that out. A bit of a trek, though, yeah? I’ll wait to test it at work before I load 11 up at home, though.
Mormegil – the new “view” does not include the ability to view albums in the “Song View”. There is no more Album Art or Album Grouping in the view.
Is this view still possible:
?
I don’t want to scroll down through all tracks – simply select an artist, then an album.
Thanks.
What happened to Cover Flow? Am I wrong or did it disappear?
yes – how?
why? 🙁 i like cover flow. i used it all the time.
Wow – looking at some of these comments, it’s clear that some people will never be happy. Ever.
How about people actually take a look before making negative comments.
Like iMaps, my a$$
It’s like maps in that it ‘fixed’ things not broken and ignored things that needed improvement.
The problem with iTunes 11 is that the interface was fine- the internals needed fixing and have not been.
The interface was fine? This is a joke right?
Losing the Radio section is not a feature, it’s a catastrophe.
It’s along the top, instead of in the sidebar.
To get to RADIO you need to go to VIEW / Show Sidebar/ click on MUSIC
and RADIO is along the top row
People only have the keynote to go by.
Based on that short overview I am not impressed.
I use iTunes daily and was hoping the little mono screen at the top would be gone.
No such luck.
Hoping to be pleasantly surprised…
Is the inability to get album covers for music not physically in my library new, or has this been around? That is, I have to have at least one song per album on the computer (as opposed to in iTunes Match) to see the album artwork even when it is correctly identified in my album information and it exists in the iTunes store.
Also, I presume Apple isn’t really interested in showing all the paths to the music in the iTunes store in dot form (e.g., DI6.Lockup.ArtistAndAlbum & SF6.SearchPage.Song). However, that is what I get, pages of it, when I try to use “Show in iTunes Store” for any album that iTunes doesn’t have.
How in the world do I find out how many songs or apps I’m looking at? It no longer shows total songs/apps at the bottom of the application window. Unbelievable. I guess I’m not allowed to know how many apps I have anymore.
It’s now at the top, under the artist’s name.
Tell Apple how iTunes 11 sucks like a Dyson.
http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html
is this where the new design at Apple is heading? I say ney…
It is very clean, but even so clean it makes me fell not human enough and not at home. Sorry it is half way beautiful, I can think of a foundation for something better that is not there.
I am expecting to order my iMac tomorrow, so don’t bash me. Besides I am a experienced graphic designer and you don’t design with a graphic paradigm as the ultimate goal but with the human experience always in mind.
Very Very Nice. Everything organized beautifully and simply. Usually takes me a while to appreciate and enjoy changes like this. Not this time. I’m dig-gin it.
ITunes 11 Brilliant, get out of the way.
You have been Cue’d.
I want to see the composer of the tune!
And I want to see when the tune was first originally recorded. Not when it was republished in some collection…
That’s why I haven’t bought anything from iTunes Store, yet!
Oh, God, first they talked me out of upgrading from Snow Leopard, now the new iTunes sucks.
I would like to be able to view my music as a list (like older versions of iTunes and how the new iTunes lets you view other media such as TV shows.) I get that people used to buy music as album and those albums had neat covers, but I don’t buy music that way and the little postage stamp sized graphics don’t help me find what I’m looking for. The option is there to view as a list for other media, c’mon Apple give us the choice for music.
I was really hoping for the ability to create profiles. The whole account association thing is really annoying. Different profiles for family members where the contents are kept seperate. It can’t be that difficult to do
For all the ‘hype’, iTunes 11 is no more than a ‘cosmetic’ redesign. ‘Smoke & Mirrors’ here and there but the concept remains the same. Ho hum!
I was really hoping for the ability to create profiles. One Mac one iTunes many family members without content getting all mixed up. I really think its overdue
I purchased eleven songs yesterday evening before going to bed, went to listen to some of them today only to find that one of the eleven had downloaded to my laptop. This is great, never had a problem before this crummy new version. Just leave well enough alone. Argghhhh!