First Impressions of iTunes 11.0

1. My first impression of the user interface is that it's "square" and "flat".
Esthetically I don't see it as an improvement. To the contrary, I think
the former interface is nicer.


2. After starting iTunes 11.0 it sat there for 1/2 an hour with the message
"Sending Information to Apple", then a dialog box displayed with:


We cannot complete your iTunes Store request
An unknown error occurred (4002)

Note that three subsequent attempts resulted in the same iTunes match error.


3. Could not find a way to change the BRIGHT WHITE background. I hate the white
background for various reasons. I'm sure many other customers preferred the dark background, or at least having the option.

4. Tried syncing my iPhone and had to cancel. It was copying 49 apps, I believe
some of these were from my iPad. Had to then restart iTunes.

5. Movies in grid view have large gaps in between the rows of movies.
It is UGLY! Is it just me, or do others have these huge gaps?

6. Looking at my music, I see no way to view the songs in a list view.
Where are the convenient buttons which quickly allowed changing views?
Now there is just unused space where they used to be. And all of
the menu items under View -> Column Browser are disabled.

Why???

7. You can no longer resize the album covers in grid view.

8. I read another post which said that there is no longer cover flow available when viewing audio books. Are they serious?

9. Hey, at least they brought back color icons, which Apple deemed that
no one liked! (That was sarcasm).


Overall I am extremely dissapointed with this update, and it has me wondering
how the most valuable company in the world could release something that looks
more at home on a Linux desktop.

Thanks for the info. I guess I'll stick with my trusty iTunes v10.7.

I actually like it. It doesn't look bloated like the previous versions.

I haven't decided if I really like it yet. It's certainly a lot cleaner in appearance, and I definitely like how they finally... FINALLY... merged all TV seasons for a show under one listing now. Unfortunately that didn't carry over to the Apple TV (yet). I'm also annoyed that they still haven't provided a persistent iTunes server that runs in the background. It's highly annoying that I have to have iTunes open on my Mac to use the Apple TV.

I think overall I'll have to call it a win, though I'd much rather they had taken the iOS apps off entirely and merged it with the Mac App Store. That, or just made a new app for the iOS App Store and let us manage devices from there. Shoehorning it into iTunes has always seemed bizarre.

So far the speed of everything in the new iTunes makes it worth it for me.

At first glance last night I was ready to post and suggest everyone wait for more reviews before installing it. After another 5-10 minutes of playing around with it, I need to do a lot more playing around to have any opinion.

They did have the new Ice Age in HD for $15 and almost bought that.

I installed it last night too (mainly on the promise of improved Playlists), but haven't had a chance to play with it yet.

I am pleased so far but miss cover flow for albums.

I think overall I'll have to call it a win, though I'd much rather they had taken the iOS apps off entirely and merged it with the Mac App Store.

Click to expand...

I also like that idea, however, wouldn't that leave Windows users out in the cold?

lifeisabeach said:

I'm also annoyed that they still haven't provided a persistent iTunes server that runs in the background. It's highly annoying that I have to have iTunes open on my Mac to use the Apple TV.

Click to expand...

I agree 100% with this, they REALLY need to create an iTunes service to supply content to an ATV without having to leave the full iTunes running. I really like that aspect of Plex having the media server running in the background and I think would be an excellent feature for iTunes (as long as you can turn it on and off at ones choice)

iTunes 11.0 Upgrade?


Shouldn't an upgrade be better than a previous iteration? In most world's yes, but there are a few things that are wonky. NO DISPLAY DUPLICATES and no total song count. How many people are going to have bloated library's because they don't know of dup's or their actual song count? Just got off the phone with iTunes phone support (nice folks) but they confirmed both these things were removed and there is no way through them at this time to revert back to iTunes 10.7. Upgrade or not? That's always the chance we take...

stevony said:

Shouldn't an upgrade be better than a previous iteration? In most world's yes, but there are a few things that are wonky. NO DISPLAY DUPLICATES and no total song count. How many people are going to have bloated library's because they don't know of dup's or their actual song count? Just got off the phone with iTunes phone support (nice folks) but they confirmed both these things were removed and there is no way through them at this time to revert back to iTunes 10.7. Upgrade or not? That's always the chance we take...

Click to expand...

There is time machine for things like that.

I played with it a bit last night and so far haven't seen any negatives (to me) and I do like the changes to playlists.

chscag said:

I also like that idea, however, wouldn't that leave Windows users out in the cold?

Click to expand...

Yah, I thought of that as I was posting, thus the thought that a separate iOS App Store app would be more ideal (EDIT: just noticed I didn't actually say that a separate iOS store would be more ideal... it was on my mind though ). Merging iOS apps with the MAS might actually be a bad idea... leaving the possibility that someone would buy the wrong kinds of apps.

Why did Apple remove the iTunes DJ function? I use that everyday. After seeing the disaster that iTunes 11 is, I uninstalled 11 and reinstalled 10.6. I was going to buy a new Mac notebook, but if it can only run iTunes 11, I will not buy.

Larry H said:

Why did Apple remove the iTunes DJ function? I use that everyday. After seeing the disaster that iTunes 11 is, I uninstalled 11 and reinstalled 10.6. I was going to buy a new Mac notebook, but if it can only run iTunes 11, I will not buy.

Click to expand...

Seems like you aren't the only one with this concern. Did a quick google search and found this. Linky.

I have not had the guts to try it yet, somewhat because been very ill and also was not sure I would like it.

dtravis7 said:

I have not had the guts to try it yet, somewhat because been very ill and also was not sure I would like it.

Click to expand...

Back up and then try it. If you don't like it you could always just revert back.

A hassle getting back to iTunes 10

List view, list view, list view. That's all I used and it had great sorting and playlist-building ability. In iTunes 11, it was unavailable on several screens. The icon-based views are absolutely huge ! I can't work with them. OK so 11 now was on my Lion partition as a failed experiment.

Time Machine gave me trouble reverting back to iTunes 10.

Using Time Machine to restore to v.10, I got: iTunes can not be changed or removed because it is needed by OS X.

So I changed iTunes permissions to allow me to read & write.

It did the restore, but then iTunes 10 couldn't read the library because "it was created by a newer version of iTunes". So I restored my iTunes folder (within my Users>[me]>Music folder). That worked. I'll stick with 10.

*big sigh of relief*

EDIT: Oops! Not fixed yet. "An unknown error occurred (-42408) " So far I can't purchase from iTunes Store...hmmmm Working on that now.

I hate it when the new app converts all your music, pics, Etc then you don't like it and revert back and the older version will not read anything! I guess a Backup is important if you are not sure.