“Apple has released iTunes 12.4.1, with some bug fixes, but notably restoring a few features that were ‘missing’ from iTunes 12.4,” Kirk McElhearn reports for Kirkville.
“What’s surprising here is that some of these “fixes” are things that were missing or forgotten in iTunes 12.4,” McElhearn reports. “There is no logical reason why the Reset Plays command and the Convert ID3 Tags command were not in iTunes 12.4, other than sloppiness.”
McElhearn reports, “I assume the iTunes engineering team has a checklist of features and menu items, and these two commands were simply missing from the menus.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right. – Steve Jobs
Good to see MDN taking a more critical view of Apple’s slipshod product work these last couple of years.
Ironic from a PC apologist.
I am always amazed at the critics who sit back and take pot shots at anything new or different made by other people. Of course, if the critics had to create an iTunes like piece of software, it would never see the light of day. It’s easy to kick the strong man when he is down, slam the doer of good deeds when she fails, and point out the flaws in others. Actually making something that improves people’s lives is beyond their abilities.
Very true it’s the small minded who have the smallest ears and biggest mouths most often.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I use to be able to have two windows open at once on iTunes. I use to be able to have two separate playlist open at once, I would put them in list view mode side by side so I could compare the playlist, drag songs from one to the other.
I can only have one iTunes window open now.
I believe that useful feature disappeared in v11.
This is Tim Cook’s Apple, where details are forgotten on a regular basis. Apple’s software quality has declined markedly while Tim Cook has been at the helm.
It’s a very sad situation.
At least we can see clearly what sort of bird you are by your repetitive nature.
I don’t think Apple was always this sloppy.
Now with all the resources Apple has, its leadership can’t seem to make a clean software release without a bug fix one week later.
What’s worse is that more that just a few of the slip-ups in the last few years have bricked iOS devices or caused user data loss, which completely calls into question the reliability that Apple was once known for.
Tim: once you lose Apple’s reputation for quality, it’s hard to regain it. Fix the fundamental problems with your leadership team ASAP.
Well said Mike, I have been concerned for a while now about Apple software issues. In terms of iTunes they have just piled too much stuff into it making it too bulky and unworkable, in short too many things for too many users. Part of the problem I am sure has to do with the rapid growth Apple has gone through rather than management problems. The programmers in early Apple days had the approach of just make it work, make it easy to understand. The rapid increase of programmers has likely caused some of that philosophy to falter.
looks to me like multiple eyes have been taken off the ball for some time now.
i am beginning to suspect that most of the upper echelons attention is being lavished upon the apple car development effort and finagling with supply issues and opening up india for new business.
plus maybe a wee too much attention to wall streets reaction to quarterly earnings leading to rushing things to market that are not truly finished.
somebody is forgetting what it was that actually made apple great – attention to detail and making sure “it just works”
Part of the problem of rapidly becoming a multi faceted business with greatly increased product lines, the focus wanders. Not that that is an excuse for sloppiness but the management structure needs to adapt very quickly at various levels as at the top level it becomes more strategic in nature. A certain fail in that regard in recent years.
“I forgot.”
With all the anger, spite and vitriol in these comments, you’d think these commenter’s lives were actually affected negatively by the “Convert ID3 Tags” and “Reset Plays” expert menu options not being present in iTunes for 2 weeks.
Be honest, this article is the first time you guys are hearing about these advanced menu options being missing in iTunes 12.4. Stop clutching your pearls acting like your lives were disrupted somehow.
As for the reason the options weren’t present at first: Changes to those features in 12.4 weren’t complete or were buggy as they neared the release date, and rather than delay the release of 12.4 over two obscure features hardly anyone ever uses, they disabled the two menu options temporarily, and scheduled their re-inclusion for the 12.4.1 update once they were finished.
Professional apologist?
HTF do you know what users want or need? Whenever you remove software features that they do use, you deserve to be called on it.
There is no question that under Cook, a lot of great software has been abandoned or deliberately neutered or, just as bad, buried under a horrible monochrome interface so that direct function selection is impossible. This is not what Apple used to be.
You took the words right out of my mouth Paul.
What the F is going on at Apple??
Why is Cook accumulating massive amounts of cash while key software goes from bad to worse?
Have you talked to any PC user that runs iTunes lately?
I have.
To a man they think it’s the shoddiest piece of crap they’ve ever seen.
The iCloud apps all are slow, clunky, and still lack basic features. OS X is treated as an afterthought, sheesh I could go on and on.
I’m no armchair critic, I’m a Apple fanboy.
The Apple I knew is dead.
As long as it’s led by this limpwrist there’s not a chance we’ll see a return to its former glory.
Steve should have left a man in charge.
Just let me delete songs from iTunes. I want to erase all traces that I ever listened to… well… you know…
How TF does Apple leave out features from the previous version? Thanks for remembering and restoring them. But there are still FURTHER features missing in 12.4.1.
Is this a deliberate attempt to piss customers off? I doubt it. That means it’s more Apple fumbling and bumbling. There’s too much fumble bumble going on at this point. Too much.
How do you sync books now?
Once you disregard the Human Interface Guidelines, it is easy to let everything slip.
Steve Ballmer
oh hello Steve Ballmer
The option to right click on a song or group and Convert To AAC is still missing. I had to hunt for this feature which is buried in the File tab.