iTunes 5: The star of the show
There are those amongst us that stifled a yawn at the new features, or lack thereof, in iTunes 5.0, however, I believe this was the biggest announcement of the day. A cell phone running iTunes, and that has an artificial song cap of 100 songs? Eh.
Even smaller iPods? They look cool, and I want one, but at a certain point smaller isn't better, even in consumer electronics.
No, gentle readers, iTunes 5 is where all the interesting stuff is happening. Are there any knock down, jaw dropping features? Not really, however, what iTunes 5 does give us is a glimpse into what iLife, and other Apple applications, will look like in the near future. I predict the death of Brushed Metal, and the rise of.. plasticy metal, of which I am a fan. iPhoto's next rev will look very much like iTunes 5, gone will be the fat metal margins, and in with the non-existent margins. Streamline, streamline, streamline!
Garageband will still retain its odd windows, some things you just don't mess with.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Cyberwhore said 9:12AM on 9-08-2005
I am keeping iTunes 4.9 and my brushed metal thankyou.
iTunes 5 looks about as attractive as eating the crutch out of a lepars loincloth.
Reply
AddictNumeroUno said 9:17AM on 9-08-2005
Apple doesn't tweak 2 tiny features and release it as a next major version. Something doesn't smell right here. I'm betting there's a bunch of new stuff under the hood thats waiting to be activated ... like say ... dvd quality movie downloads. =) This way when the video is released Steve Jobs can say "the only requirement is that you have iTunes 5" instead of "the only requirements is that you have iTunes 4.9.4".
Reply
Small Paul said 9:20AM on 9-08-2005
I like the addition of a lyrics field in song metadata. If it's viewable on our iPods, we can share music with anyone near us, not by BlueTooth or Wifi, but by singing! Woo!
Reply
Guillermo said 9:21AM on 9-08-2005
I wish you could use a song's lyrics as a parameter for smart playlists. And those new "get info" options (skip while shuffling, remember playback position)... they should let you edit that for multiple items.
Reply
dmitri said 9:23AM on 9-08-2005
Please read your own post before posting it. I recently discovered this site and it instantly became something I read about 3 times a day.
But if you don't see the errors in these snippets please have someone else read your post before posting it:
"plasticy metal, of which I am a fan of."
"Garageband will still retain its odd windows, some times you just don't mess with."
Thanks!
Reply
Markopolis said 9:51AM on 9-08-2005
Here is a mysterious new feature. Go to Podcasts. Search for a PodCast named "systm" (no e). Download the Podcast. Note the little video icon beside the show. "Play" the episode and a video will appear where the album art usually is. Click on the video and it opens up in a large window. It appears that iTunes 5.0 has added full video podcasting support but it isn't being advertised yet for some reason.
Reply
GenesysX said 10:00AM on 9-08-2005
I actually like the brushed metal look, but would not stick with something just because of the way the windows looked. More important to me is the that all the iApps look the same, whether brushed or plastic, this enhances the Mac experience for me. But will 10.4.3 change the appearance of all the iApps?
Reply
janiero said 10:16AM on 9-08-2005
I blogged about the same thing last night: http://hohle.net/scrap_post.php?post=153.
my biggest problem is there is no consistency, which confuses developers more then users, and its developers you want on your side.
Reply
Peter Koritschan said 10:26AM on 9-08-2005
6. Markopolis: i had this ability to watch video podcasts with video icons in 4.9 already... i watched the mactv show...
7. GenesysX: I agree very much with you. I am tired of all the different looks... brushed metal (some iApps, finder windows), pro apps, garabeband black (which is pretty in my view, if it could be refined), then the new mail.app and iTunes 5 plastic metal look...
in application and system windows I really would love some consistency, it would make it so much smoother looking. Currently I manage to achieve a bigger consistency with ShapeShifter, but would love for Apple apps and OS X to consistent by itself...
Reply
Ben Poole said 10:52AM on 9-08-2005
Why do you say that the iTunes 'phone has an "artificial song cap"?
From what I know of the ROCKR handset, it comes with a memory add-in of either 256MB or 512MB (paltry I know). Well, half a gig equates to *roughly* 100 songs -- my 512 shuffle has 117 songs on it as I type -- so that all seems to make sense to me.
Or am I missing something?
Reply
Chris K said 11:36AM on 9-08-2005
Sigh... I can't even INSTALL iTunes 5 on my Mac. I get a "please quit iTunes before installing" dialog ad infinitum. I've killed processes, I've rebooted... no joy.
Installed fine on my PC, however. Love those playlist folders!
Reply
Dooley said 12:10PM on 9-08-2005
What would be nice now is a way to move multiple song lists to the folders as opposed to just one at a time.
Reply
Leo said 12:13PM on 9-08-2005
This would have been a nice post if it was predicted before iTunes v5 came out. Predicting future software apps to have similar characteristics of this app isn't too prophetic. with love+
Reply
Martin Tibbitts said 1:13PM on 9-08-2005
I really don't see what is so special about this release. Let's hope the milestone is greater simply a podcast search and hosting system.
Martin Tibbitts
Reply
Ryan said 1:54PM on 9-08-2005
>11. Sigh... I can't even INSTALL iTunes 5 on my Mac. I get a "please quit iTunes before installing" dialog ad infinitum. I've killed processes, I've rebooted... no joy.
Open activity monitor and see if you're running any background applications with "iTunes" in the name. I was getting the same message until I quit "SizzlingKeys" which, fortunately, is 100% compatible with iTunes 5.
Reply
Wheels said 1:59PM on 9-08-2005
The only thing I don't like about the plastic"y" metal is the faux horizontal lighting/shadow; it just doesn't look natural to me. Maybe if they put the "light source" on an angle, it'd look better. And I absolutely HATE the fake lens in front of the LCD display. They should just trash the lens concept.
In terms of functionality, iTunes 5 is worth the switch. Was it the best announcement yesterday? Maybe. But the Nano, as I contemplate it, is becoming more intriguing.
Reply
john said 2:35PM on 9-08-2005
I like the new look. And I have a few thoughts on user interface. Apple does need to move it's interface towards a consistent model, but not as much as many people on the boards want. I feel the interface consistency was much more important in the early days of computing, when the idea of desktop computing was still very foreign to most people. In those days it was much more important to provide a consistent world to the user, with well defined (if mixed) metaphors. These days most people are familiar with the 'idea' of computing, and don't need their hand held as much. I mean look at dashboard, where the user interface guidelines are extremely loose.
We can all agree that the GUI something of a clusterf*ck right now. I feel like Apple is still in a very experimental stage and is still responding to user feedback (but not initial kneejerk reactions).
Has anyone else noticed the speeeed?! Good god, it finally scrolls smoothly through my nearly 9000 song library and resizing is as smooth as it should be on my G5. I'm guessing that at least some of this has to do with the decision to dropped brushed metal. If never had a problem with brushed metal, but if this is the case, I'm all for wiping it from the OS as soon as possible.
Reply
ryan the spaniard said 5:05PM on 9-08-2005
argh... I LIKE borders... this new version's aesthetics do not cut it for me.
Reply
Ben Poole said 6:12AM on 9-09-2005
I stand corrected re the phone; I gather there is indeed an artificial cap on top of the memory restrictions. Very odd.
Re the iTunes 5 UI, I like it, and especially like the new search. However, I agree that Apple need to get their house in order re user interfaces: settle on the iTunes / Mail 2 interface and be done with it!
Reply
Lee Fenner said 12:29PM on 9-09-2005
Once you pointed out the new look of iTunes 5 it dawned on me shortly after that iTunes 5 now looks more like the Mail 2 app. Yes?
Reply