I used to love iTunes when I first discovered MP3s. It was quick, easy to use, and all of my beautiful, prized tracks sat in it so precise and ready to play with my eardrums. It was amazing. I would spend hours perfecting all the track data on my songs, like a weird compulsive habit I couldn’t stop because I loved being inside Apple’s music utopia. Now I hate the damn thing.
Over the years iTunes has become the least user friendly interface of any app Apple makes, which is tragic because it could be so much better. Apple will announce a new version of iTunes in about 2 hours, and I don’t know every feature it’s going to have, but here are the things I want to see in the new iTunes:
- Simplified Interface – The iTunes interface is horrendous now that they’ve crammed it with features. Navigating between different stores, audio files, video files, and iBooks is clunky, and playing music on it is terrible too. They need to strip away the fat by getting rid of unnecessary features or even parse them out into different apps like on iOS.
- Better App Store – Yes, the App Store has more apps than any other mobile platform, but it needs some sprucing up. Users prefer to use the iOS App Store not just because it’s right there on their iPhones, but because the experience is better.
- Better Search – App discovery is terrible. Apple acquired Chomp, so we’re expecting them to start using those resources to make the experience of finding new apps better.
- Faster Experience – When you use an app like Rdio and then jump into iTunes it’s painful how slow Apple’s music app has become. I’m not just talking about it being slow because it takes a few seconds to load areas, but the amount of clicking you have to do to get to what you want takes longer than in Rdio which makes the software experience itself slow.
- Genius Radio – I have 154GB of music in my library, and a lot of times I don’t know what I want to listen to specifically. Genius Radio would give users a fresh experience with iTunes. iTunes needs something new for me to want to start using it again.
- Better Podcast Support – iTunes made podcasting popular, but they’ve always neglected it. It’s time for Apple to really embrace podcast support and make it more prominent.
- More File Support (.flac etc) – This might just be a pipe dream for me. Apple doesn’t sell .flac files in iTunes, so why should they support it? I dunno, because they want to be nice to their users maybe?
- The Death of Ping – It was a nice idea, but no one wants a separate social network just for music; they want to talk about music on Facebook or Twitter.
- Redesigned iTunes Store – The iTunes Store sells everything, and that’s the big problem with iTunes. Is iTunes a music app? Video app? Books? It’s not called “iMedia”, so why not create separate apps for each of those categories and give users the best experience possible when they want music, or movies, or books, rather than giving them a crappy experience with all of it mashed together?
Am I forgetting something? What do you guys want to see most in the new iTunes?
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
14 responses to “What I Want To See From The New iTunes [Opinion]”
I want to see a more unified experience between desktop, iPhone, and iPad.
I couldn’t agree more about the ping crap…also if i have to keep waiting more than 30 seconds for my genius or itunes match to update i’m gonna toss my mac to the garbage.
I have to say, iTunes was the only software from Apple that I had exposure to other than iOS. It really put me off buying a Mac if this is the standard of Apple’s software. No thanks! Even iOS leaves much to be desired.
We have photos broken out from other media, why do we have video, music and apps still unified in one software? iTunes needs to be 3 pieces that are all smaller and more focused. Have the itunes store combined with the app store and call it a day.
The one and only thing I would like to see in iTunes is for it to run properly in windows. Using it is like trying to jog in quicksand. I trust that the update will be for a competing service to Spotify though. Not counting on much else.
• Remove the App Store from iTunes and unite it with the Mac App Store, with devices (iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad and Mac) separated in tabs
• Add ability to “Explicit” tag to non-iTunes purchased content and therefore create Smart Playlists with
• Separate Movie, Music, TV Show libraries, etc. and have the sidebar item launch only when needed
• Add sub-genres to better sort music. Music from a Soundtrack needs to be also categorized by genre, Disney is also Children’s Music, Holiday isn’t specific enough for Christmas, New Years, Halloween, etc.
• Fix the problem with iTunes Match substituting censored music for Explicit
• Add a Spotify-type option
• Share Playlists (using songs from your library and offering to let you download songs you don’t own)
Vastly improved metadata system in store and either kill ping or improve it
Also, unified lists in the library akin to iTunes match, where I can see my purchased list alongside my local stuff and if I wish, start a redownload right from the library. Same with shared library etc content
AppleTV, same unified list. Move my stuff to the ‘movies’ etc and just put a store button at the top of each grouping or on the front.
Also letting me ‘mute’ batches of stuff, even whole categories/genres would be nice.
And it is past time for the freaking Extras to work on more than the computer. And get missing seasons all qualities etc
They need to remove the iTunes store from the application and put it in the App Store where it belongs.
start over completly. Brand new design, speed it the hell up.
I think killing the Ping shall be better than improve it…and reading earlier opinions, taking the iTunes Store and putting it into the App Store is not a good approach…in the App Store you go to buy Apps for the Mac…on the iTunes Store you go to buy media content…there’s no sense in mixing apps and media, it’d be such a mess
My wish: separate the iOS syncing and AppleTV Home Sharing into a distinct app so that iTunes becomes solely an app for managing your music and media library on your computer. Separation of concerns, simplification, and *speed* as a result. Ahhh. Unfortunately it’s not going to happen. At least not any time soon.
How about the ability to read iBooks on a Mac? You can purchase and read any number of iBooks on iDevices or Macs, you can see your iBooks in iTunes, but you cannot physically access them. There is no solution to being able to read an iBook on the big, beautiful iMac screen, or even on a Macbook Pro. What gives? Would this really be hard to implement in iTunes? Where you at, Apple?!
Tags
I don’t need change for the sake of change. The UI doesn’t confuse me, and I don’t see how it confuses anyone, but hey to each their own. What they can do is SPEED IT UP!!!!!! I go to type in the search field, and its one letter, 10 seconds of beach ball, second letter, 10 more seconds. Its freaking absurd! I don’t care about splitting it up, in fact I like one central place to go, but if they have to split it up to speed it up, then freaking do it!
And while I’m whining, for the love of god, fix the commenting on this website where if I’m not logged in and I hit post comment, it erases everything I wrote once I do log in!