iTunes 9 Disapointments
The new “Genius Mixes” feature is all right, but not what it really could or should be. First, it’s not configurable. You just get a page of Genius Mixes with 12 mixes on it. It plays a neverending mix of stuff that sort of sounds like other stuff, and with my collection it did a fairly good job of it.
Genius Mixes - you get what iTunes gives you, like it or not
Here are the problems. What if I want to get rid of one of those mixes and have iTunes make me a new one? Tough. It’s more “Gestapo” than “Genius.” It also doesn’t help you discover new music you might like, because it only sources music from your collection. What it ought to do is pull in a mix of stuff from your collection, streaming from iTunes, and streaming from people’s “Shared libraries” on your local network. With options to play only local content if that’s what you want. A little more Pandora and a little less “play all my Altnerative tracks.”
And it’s not that smart. It just started playing Dethklok on my Comedy Genius Mix, right after David Cross.
iTunes LP is a dud. I have a feeling this is a really soft launch in advance of a product, like say a tablet, that would be better suited to this sort of content. There are something like 12 albums in the iTunes LP section, which doesn’t even have a link in the main store navigation! Five of those 12 albums are pre-orders.
Are people really going to start buying albums because they can get digital pictures and lyrics and liner notes and stuff? The iTunes LP versions cost more, for starters. Nora Jones’ chill-tastic Come Away With Me is $12.99, but the iTunes LP version is $13.99, and it’s not the exception. I take the bus every day and I see a whole lot of people listening to music, and none of them even have their iPods out, much less are they looking at it. They don’t seem to want to.
People didn’t stop buying albums in the age of digital downloads because they lost the artwork and lyrics and liner notes and stuff. They stopped buying albums because all the songs suck except two or three, and they’d much rather spend $2-3 to buy just the songs they like.
The real problem with iTunes is that it has grown exponentially over the years, from a simple music player to a major store that sells multiple different kinds of content, manages the content on multiple portable devices, etc. Apple has committed the sin its fans so often accuse Microsoft of – stapling on features with cursory design changes until it’s a bloated disorganized mess.
For example:
The Search box is application-level, up on the top bar. It’s in a global location, but it’s not a global search. You have to be in the store before you can search the store. If I search for “guitar” there, I get all kinds of music, video, and Apps with that keyword but I don’t get search results from my local library. If I’m in my local library, searches only show local stuff, not results from the store or podcasts. If you’re in Genius Mixes view, the search box doesn’t work at all.
The store is better thanks to some top navigation tabs, but it’s still an unholy, un-Apple-like, unmitigated disaster. Seriously. I’m scrolling through the front page and I’ve got three scroll bars (horizontal and vertical), mixed icon and image sizes, drop down boxes, jumps to other sections… There are horizontal icon lists, vertical lists with double-line items, vertical lists with single-line items, lists with header images, lists without header images… and the major design elements don’t line up at all.
How did iTunes become such a design disaster?
Where are my big beautiful artist pictures? Do I only get pretty pictures if I go for the iTunes LP upsell?
Browsing your local music library is done in either a 1992-style list view, an almost useless grid view of every album you have, or Coverflow (which is just the list with pretty album cover art up top, but not really a navigational aid). Apple users will hate to hear this, but the Zune desktop software interface blows iTunes away. Yes, it’s Windows-only. Yes, there’s less content there. No, neither of these are excuses for Apple doing so many of the same things so much worse than the Zune folks. I’ve seen the Zune software dropping next week, and it’s even better.
Time to step it up, Apple. With iTunes 10, go back to the drawing board. Start from scratch, designing a clean and well-organized app that unites local libraries with online offerings, has a single modern navigation “language” across all elements, and is more easily extensible so it doesn’t become the mess it is today as you continue to add to it.
