Hopeless Geek

Apple’s finally created an iTunes that really embodies Apple’s media efforts with iTunes 7. Sometimes, as I poke through it, I see things that have been done that were on the back of my mind forever as flaws in iTunes. Then there are other times that I see a feature and just stare at how well it was done. Then, of course, it crashes.

The Good

Real Queued Downloads

This is the big one for me because podcasts were useless the way they were implemented previously. Before it just cycled the download in the HUD and that was … less than perfect. Pair that with the program locking up both an iBook G4 and a dual-core MacBook Pro with just downloading three or four items and you quickly start to look for another solution for getting your podcasts.

Now, however, there’s a full download manager in iTunes that handles podcasts, iTMS purchases, and even iPod software updates. Pretty much any time the program needs to get a file, it’s going to push it on the download queue and off it goes. It’s great, and it really shows that iTunes is becoming more of a complete media center than just a music player.

In fact, a lot of the things in iTunes 7 really promote the program from being a music player with crap tacked onto it at the last minute to being a complete media player that respects that it works with differing types of media.

iPod Management

Which brings me to the iPod management. The addition of the iPod preference pane in iTunes 6 was fairly welcome, but after using it for a while it became apparent that it was a solution to the problem in the strictest sense. It was clear that the actual implementation of the feature wasn’t the subject of endless meetings, but more that some manager said, “It’s a preference? Make it a preference pane. Shoo.”

So now when you pick an iPod, the main view switches to a new view that lets you configure everything about the iPod, including performing software updates for the iPod from within iTunes (finally).

Coverflow

Apple bought Coverflow and integrated it into iTunes 7. Not much to say outside of the fact that while I thought it was a cool idea, I was of the opinion that I would pretty much only use it if it was integrated into iTunes. Well, yeah. I love it.

Backup

Proper backup is built into iTunes now. It’s in the File menu as “Back Up to Disc…” and it creates a CD/DVD set out of your media (either everything or just purchased media). The really thoughtful part is that it allows for incremental backups, copying only media that was added or changed since the last backup. Nice.

Which is to say that Apple solved two problems with this:

• They will issue less freebies to idiots that didn’t backup because now iTunes does it for them.
• They have an unpaid backup solution for iTS media, rather than recommending .Mac Backup to everyone that wants such a feature.

Bravo.

The Bad

The interface for iTunes 7 will surely be the hot topic for many of the anal GUI reviewers out there. Personally, it’s a love-hate affair for me. I do like how it looks as a finished product, but it doesn’t make me feel like I’m using a Mac at all. It looks like the new iTunes Store does, right down to the scroll bars and buttons.

The only reason for this that I can put forth is that they needed one unified interface for both Mac, Windows, and the iTS and we thus have this new concept. It’s interesting, and it’s not entirely unusable, but it’s kind of annoying to have this iconic Mac application turned into a bastion of wishy-washy cross-platform interface design, from a place of pure principle.

So far I’ve run into the dark blue and gray versions of the following elements:

• Buttons
• Scroll bars
• Table headers
• Table views
• Pop-up menus
• Checkboxes
• Radios
• Sliders
• Tabs

It gets a little worse, however. Not only does Apple change these basic and fundamental interface elements in the main window, but it’s not consistant. None of the modal dialogs use any of these elements; they use the standard system widgets. The preferences dialog is completely lacking the new elements. Then there are the little ones, like how in the iPod settings there’s an overridden pop-up menu, but in the equalizer it’s an Aqua pop-up.

If you’re going to break a UI rule, break it consistantly. If you’re going to follow it, follow it all the time. Kind of a basic concept that they’ve missed out on just to look cool. Kind of sad.