Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iTS, iTunes
iTunes global search must be revamped
As the iTunes Store has grown, its search feature hasn't. Enter a bit of text in the search field, and you get results for - Albums
- Podcasts
- Movies
- TV seasons
- Music videos
- iTunes Essentials
- iTunes U
- Apps
That's a good step, but I'd like to be able to filter results before execution. For example, an App Store search, a music search or podcasts. iTunes Power Search [link] does this pretty well, but I'd bet that most users don't use it. This ought to be the default search procedure.
Of course, I'm old and crotchety, so take this with a gain of iSalt.
Thanks to Matt for the eBook App Store tip!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Bob S. said 1:05PM on 7-17-2008
I wish I'd thought of grabbing text off Project Gutenberg and charging a buck -- but are people really going to buy it? If you've got 1) a connection and 2) Safari, you can read it for free.
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Jon said 1:13PM on 7-17-2008
I was just thinking the same thing yesterday. It was bad enough I assumed I was using the search wrong.
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jonathan ober said 1:15PM on 7-17-2008
istockphoto has a nice search feature that allows users to check on or off selections for photos, videos, illustrations and more...just add something like apple.
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Sam Major said 1:24PM on 7-17-2008
Something similar to how Spotlight returns results would be nice. Instead of definition, documents, folders etc. have Music, Movies, Apps, and the like. Just my 2¢
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Brandon said 2:07PM on 7-17-2008
that sounds really good!
dastranger said 1:28PM on 7-17-2008
Seems to me (in terms of UI and user features), iTunes in general hasn't been updated in a while. I'm still waiting on the ability to create smart playlists based on keywords found in the lyrics.
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Simon Arch said 2:00PM on 7-17-2008
I'm waiting for a way to have two dates associated with a track - it'd make sorting compilations a lot cleaner. You could have a track date and an album date. If you've got a "best of" album from 2005, but the tracks were all released in the 70s and 80s, the only way to make it show up in proper order is to enter 2005 as the year, BUT if you're making a playlist of your favourite tracks from 1974, you can't include the tracks on that best of.
And would spell check be so difficult to add? You wouldn't believe how many times I've imported an album only to find half of the tracks have spelling errors.
You know, there used to be a page on Apple's site where you could submit feature requests. Does anyone have that URL handy? I can think of a half dozen features I'd like to see added to iTunes, and somehow I doubt they'd respond to an email.
Simon Arch said 2:17PM on 7-17-2008
Found it!
http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html
SpinThis! said 11:08AM on 7-18-2008
@ Simon: What you're asking is convoluted at best. You don't need a new feature for this... Each track has a year—why not just set it to the year the track originated (instead of when the album was released)? You could then also use the comments.... eg "Compilation released in 2005". There's also other tags you could use—the grouping tag is great for these kinds of things.
Simon Arch said 6:08PM on 7-17-2008
@SpinThis - because let's say I've got a bunch of CDs by a band, and a best of. The albums were released in the 1970s. The best of in 2005. If I put the correct year in the year fields of the best of it will be date sorted by the year of the first track. To wit:
Album #1
Best of
Album #2
Album #3
Album #4
I don't want the best of to be sorted out of order. I CAN put the compilation's year of release in the Sort Album field, but this causes other problems. If you've got two or more albums with the same thing in the sort album list, the first one (alphabetically, IIRC) is the only one to show up in the browser.
I realise this stuff isn't important to most folks, but I'm seriously compulsive about this.
OmniGeno said 1:31PM on 7-17-2008
Totally agree. I was actually hoping for this the other day when searching for apps only.
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2shae said 1:40PM on 7-17-2008
I think the whole interface of iTunes (and OS X in general) has to have a completely new style.
Either that or themes have to be a build in option.
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goobi said 1:36PM on 7-17-2008
Yep. Some search feature is needed. Maybe a search bar that might pop up a lá finder. Also needed is tabbed browsing within the iTunes store…
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totoro said 1:39PM on 7-17-2008
Agreed.
Actually, I was kinda surprised the Apps Store didn't show up as a separate entity on the sidebar in OSX, under the iTunes Store.
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Matt Mungan said 2:30PM on 7-17-2008
I've always wanted to be able to search by record label.
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matt said 4:08PM on 7-17-2008
Holy crap my website is on TUAW, this is the greatest day ever lol.
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SpinThis! said 6:23PM on 7-17-2008
I don't get this post. If you do a search and you find you're getting too many results, in the top left of the window you can narrow it down to just the category you specify. Easy. No need to do a power search. Maybe people don't really read anymore? Or maybe that dropdown menu isn't noticeable enough?
Power search off the top is bad, bad, bad for usability. (Visit useit.com for why.) Part of the reason Google got so popular was part of its simplicity... you type in a search term and that was it—and you get accurate results. Maybe Apple's search engine isn't really providing accurate enough results?
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Fleak said 6:43AM on 7-18-2008
It also would be very nice to have a Scan/Preview Option.
Why do I have to sit in front of my Computer when I just want to check a new Album. every 30secs I have to choose the next Track. I could do a lot more meanwhile...
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Galley said 8:24AM on 7-18-2008
@Simon: Use the original release date for the tracks, but use the Sort Album field for the compilation's release date.
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