Advertisement: Introducing the new iPod touch. Now with FaceTime, Retina display, HD video recording and Game Center. From $229. Buy Now.
How to fix Apple’s iTunes 10 for Mac’s minimize, maximize, close buttons:
1. Make sure you quit iTunes.
2. Open Terminal (Applications>Utilities>Terminal).
3. Type or Paste the following into Terminal:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -1
4. Hit enter and quit Terminal.
5. Launch iTunes and enjoy your minimize, maximize, and close buttons restored to their proper places:
I’m sure this will be how everything looks in 10.7. iTunes usually shows future UI elements.
iTunes has always been a sort of UI testing ground. These buttons may or may not make it into 10.7, but apple seems to be thinking about it. This is one thing I hope they forget though.
How can I get all windows to have the vertical buttons. I like them and hope they become the standard.
Who knows, maybe in 10.7 it will be a system preference, kinda like the arrows on the scrollbar or the color scheme of aqua. Some people will like it, other’s will like the older style.
Me like the vertical button arrangement.
I’d like them on the right. (I’m joking.)
How about posting some instructions to restore the colors back to the sidebar icons in iTunes?
The stoplight arrangement could grow on me, not sure yet.
I don’t mind the vertical layout of the buttons, and I love the new all-grey sleeker look of iTunes, along with the new iTunes icon. Makes it modern and fresh.
FROM TERMINAL WITH ITUNES CLOSED
TO SET LEFT TO RIGHT
defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -boolean YES
TO SET TOP TO BOTTOM
defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -boolean NO
Look at them side by side objectively… The vertical arrangement is a much cleaner design. I’ll pass, and here’s hoping the rest of the OS gets it in 10.7
Actually like the vertical design.
Another vote for the new vertical design.
To me, more space efficient and graphically pleasing.
Another vote in favor of the vertical orientation.
Just updated to 10 yesterday. Wow, the speed increase is amazing! I’ll take the vertical buttons as a trade off if iTunes remains this…..err…..snappy. Sorry, just had to.
Take a quick look at the images provided. Note that the unusual vertical arrangement people are all in a fuss about uses less screen real estate than the previously standard horizontal arrangement. Well over half the height of the capitol “M”! This may not mean anything to you, but Apple engineers get a little twitchy when faced with an empty band of unusable space, especially if a modest change can recover that space at no cost other than the blown minds of a few of those who Just Don’t DO Change Well.
There is just no way it would work across the whole OS, as nice as it may be to some (or many).
Too many applications, including some of Apple’s own (such as Mail, iWork suite, the Finder windows themselves, etc) have a little ‘pill’ button in the top right corner that collapses the entire toolbar area. The only way this can be done without forcing the change of the layout of those buttons is to have buttons from left to right. This collapsing feature has been an integral part of the UI in Mac OS for a very long time, and most third-party applications take advantage of it (check Firefox, Skype MS Office, etc.). Changing this would be a major problem.
I like the new design too. If anything, I’d like the option to hide the minimize button altogether. For me, windows and applications should be hidden, never minimized because of the difficulty of bringing them back to the forefront with just the keyboard.
That or give us a single (like command+~) keyboard way of bringing back the minimized window.
Ditto the colors on the side bar.
I want them spaced left, middle then right of the entire window. Then I want the OS to randomly re-arrange them every time I launch the application. That would be fantastic!
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
Still undecided about the vertical buttons. It seems like they did it so that the play/rewind/fastforward buttons would be centered vertically on the titlebar (look at MDN’s sample shots above).
However, I do like the all-gray motif. It makes the old colored scheme seem immature, for lack of a better word.
I realize that it violates UI standards, but at the same time it preserves desktop real estate. I actually prefer the new style.
The iTunes 10 GUI looks soo cool.
If iTunes really does predict the new Mac OS GUIs then I can’t wait for OS 10.7
The vertical arrangement reduces the number of vertical pixels wasted in the menu bar. Vertical pixels are at a premium in the HD 16:9 aspect ratio, especially if you keep your dock at the bottom of the screen.
I can easily adapt to these sorts of minor UI changes if Apple propagates them consistently across its OS and apps. As others have posted, I suspect that this is the new Apple layout for 10.7.
I wouldn’t have minded a fourth button to maximize to fit the display, like the Windows function. But a fourth button would not fit in the new vertical orientation without increasing the thickness of the menu bar.
Me likey vertical.
@Predrag,
Excellent observation!!!
@rws,
I’ve always thought that the Command-M keyboard shortcut should unminimize a window on the Dock.
@Jubei,
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”LOL” style=”border:0;” />
KingMel et al. who like the new vertical arrangement,
Read Predrag’s post.
@ DLMeyer
“Apple engineers get a little twitchy when faced with an empty band of unusable space, especially if a modest change can recover that space at no cost other than the blown minds of a few of those who Just Don’t DO Change Well”
Right. That’s why the Dock, which by default takes up 2-3x the vertical space as a window’s titlebar, even on a 13″ Macbook screen, is pinned to the bottom of the screen instead of on the side (which makes far more sense with all the widescreens these days), and has empty space to the left and right of it that isn’t recognized as usable screen space when zooming a window.
I don’t really care about the change in iTunes personally because I have a keyboard shortcut tied to the window zoom, but until the Dock is on the left or right by default (mine’s on the left; what else is going to fill a widescreen?) your argument is weak.
The vertical arrangement is the wrong metaphor, or at least a misleading one. Everyone looks at it and thinks “traffic light,” but isn’t one. Clicking on red doesn’t make anything stop, and clicking on green doesn’t make anything go. Also, this traffic light has all three lights on at the same time, which means it’s out of order.
Another minor problem is that it imposes a minimum height on title bars.
Maybe Apple hired a Microsoft UI expert.
Also, look at Safari, Mail message windows, etc. iTunes doesn’t need a titlebar because it has that multipurpose status display, but most other programs use it to show message/document name, etc. Since the titlebar’s already used for that, it just makes sense to keep the horizontal button arrangement for them.
More importantly, the ‘DATE ADDED’ column seems to be missing in all except the Music section.
Grrr…. why fiddle Apple????
iTunes is iTunes. I listen to it. I watch movies from it on a different player. I don’t watch iTunes.
How can the UI police be so anal?
foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. — R W Emerson
How does one revert back to vertical button orientation once the horizontal, default one has been applied using the Terminal?
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I don’t agree with those who find the vertical arrangement “cleaner”. To each his own.
@Hm:
Interesting quote, but consistency most certainly has its place—especially in the realm of graphic design.
@Dennis
FROM TERMINAL WITH ITUNES CLOSED
TO SET LEFT TO RIGHT
defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -boolean YES
TO SET TOP TO BOTTOM
defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -boolean NO
@Mac,
Does your Terminal command work the same as the one MDN lists? I’ve only seen the MDN one listed in other articles.
It seems to me that the spacing between the buttons is less in vertical orientation than in horizontal. Or, maybe it’s one of those optical illusions.
Please stop feeding these twits and their obsession with UI elements, an obsession obviously born of undiagnosed autism. It’s simply no kind of deal, and certainly not worth the reams of digital ink being spilt.
I’m keeping them cause I like it. So there.
Count me as anal, I put them back!
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
Who
I don’t mind vertical but how do I change the order so red is at the bottom. I’ve closed the window too many damn times by accident.
I love you just the way your are.
I’m in favour of the vertical arrangements. It’s not a new arrangement, as the mini player has always had them vertical.
Nothing to fix here.
Hardly seems worth the trouble.
Yes, please more vertical! I don’t want a horizontal toolbar at all. Is it just me, or isn’t it very practical to but a bar on top of every window? I mean on a widescreen MacBook… Wouldn’t it make more sense to put that vertical anyway? Same with the dock, isn’t it much better on the right or left?
What I feel will or should also change in 10.7, is the menubar on top of the screen. That is a relict of the mouse-aera, they should get rid of it. Very unpractical if you use a big screen, you always have to travel up there. It’s better in Ubuntu or Windows, there every window has its own menubar, but that gets confusing. The mac version was perfect on a classic mac, but that had a tiny screen. I think the new GUI from Apple could be button/toolbar driven (on the sides please), for complex stuff you anyway have an inspector or the double finger click context menu.
I think OS X is somewhat bloated at present state, in OS 9 you could at least get rid of menus so long that you had to scroll. iOS is so clean, I love it, and I hope our Mac can become a little more like that…
Anyone else thinks that way?
Regarding iTunes, I had more problems to find the stuff because the icons aren’t colored…
As a UI design, it’s better to have them vertical than horizontal. In a small screen, you want the top area to be as thin as possible. This allows it to be just like that.
I vote for vertical alignment.
Vertical is to Apple as horizontal is to Microsoft.
Vertical alignment is proper, too; just different from the other proper, which is horizontal.
Non-issue at best.
Thank you MDN!!!! That awful vertical change was driving me crazy. If you’ve used it from the beginning, it really is an irritating change, and I don’t get why they made this one tiny change… There’s no reason to suddenly change this on every piece of system software and third party software – why would that be worth it?
@Maeric,
Not possible.
Wanna bet some lawyer sues Apple on behalf
of his client who claims a patent on vertical
orientation of buttons?
Since the size of the monitor being used by the average computer user has always been increasing, what is this anal retentive desire on the part of so many (particularly, it appears, Apple UI designers) for minimization?
This change is simply unnecessary.
And, as has already been stated, it also brings an inevitable association with traffic signals even though there is no analogy in behavior.
There is an expression, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
It ain’t broke.
DONE.
I feel better now!
@Lemon…
You are alone.
There are GUI studies that note the efficiency of the Mac UI and it’s SINGLE menu bar at the TOP of the screen. There’s no need to carefully position your cursor to find it, just fling the cursor up and it stops at the top of the screen.
You can change the Dock with position ease in the System Preferences: Dock.
I don’t like the vertical buttons. As for the monochromatic sidebar icons, just a bad idea. It’s difficult to differentiate between them easily without color-coding.
Want to switch it back to iTunes 9 style? EASY.
http://obamapacman.com/2010/09/how-to-add-color-icons-apple-itunes-10-gray-sidebar-mod/
Icon Resource: http://cl.ly/2Ek7
The vertical orientation is the new hotness, MDN. What you are trying to do is return to the old and busted.
@Cuthbert
Yes, it works in the same way. Yes / -1 have the same “meaning” . . . just a switch to turn the setting on/off.
Who actually uses those buttons? In five years of OS X use, I have never used them except to show off the Genie Effect in slow motion holding the shift key. I certainly don’t use them to close windows (CMD-W set to a button on my mouse) and I do not minimize anything because I use Expose.
Sometimes I might use the maximize button because OS X has no window size memory for when changing between screens of different resolution.
So the extra space provided by the vertical alignment is welcome for me.
For users who do maximize and minimize, don’t you just double click the title bar anyway? I can’t believe anyone still hunts for tiny buttons to click on increasingly large screens.
I like the new layout only because it uses less space. I haven’t used those buttons in years. Command-w is always quicker.
UI-wise, I like the vertical. It saves space and works well.
I like the vertical, but it’s no biggee either way.
What SUUUUUUX is the lack of color. It’s not just aesthetic- I actually like the grayscale look. But I have to hunt longer for the left hand icons every time because a huge range of information that makes each one easily identifiable has been stripped out.
Also, do the targets of every manipulable item seem smaller to anyone else?
Why not just accept change stoooopids?
Nice tip. I don’t like the vertical arrangement personally, so this tip was an easy way to put it back to the original. Thanks much!
Cares?
I like vertical (traffic lights), especially if they flipped horizontal when you clicked the minimize toolbar button on the right that some applications use.
It might be nice if when you clicked the red dot on the last open window of an app that the app would quit. I can’t tell you how many converts to the Mac I know that have trouble getting the concept of window/document vs app. Thank Steve for good memory management in OS X.
One thing that I think Microsoft did better than Apple was the maximize button. The green + button for Mac doesn’t operate consistently across applications.
@ Lemon: I like the Mac menubar at top as it increases productivity when using many apps. If Apple used the same convention as Microsoft or Linux and put the menu in the windows, it makes for mousing hell and productivity suffers.