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iTunes restores Genius sidebar

genius sidebarThe launch of iTunes 10 in September left a lot users disappointed for several reasons. In addition to the lack of a complete rewrite that many people were hoping for, the highly underwhelming Ping social network was added, and the subsequent 10.0.1 update replaced the former Genius sidebar content with Ping.

Thankfully, despite Apple's insistence on tightly controlling the user experience (which is generally a good thing), the company has been willing to reverse course from time to time to restore functionality or designs that users preferred. Users that miss the Genius sidebar content will be happy to learn that Apple has made server-side changes to iTunes (meaning no software update is required on your end) so that we now have Genius recommendations back in the iTunes sidebar.

The sidebar now combines the functionality of the Genius and Ping. Genius recommendations are always available, and if you use Ping your activity is also displayed. Recommendations now appear as soon as a song is selected, before it's even played. It's a step in the right direction; hopefully next year we'll finally get the ground up re-write that iTunes so desperately needs.



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The launch of iTunes 10 in September left a lot users disappointed for several reasons. In addition to the lack of a complete rewrite that...
 

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masongill

Are these separate sub-teams at Apple?

November 10 2010 at 5:21 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Tom

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November 10 2010 at 1:00 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
tony

I would just like them to remove all sync functions from iTunes, and put them in the iSync app where they belong. Plus make syncing WiFi, and make it possible to initiate sync from the iPad or Mac.

The remaining parts of iTunes could be split into iMedia, a complete media library manager, and the iTunes store.

November 01 2010 at 4:07 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to tony's comment
Jonathan A

Hear! Hear! I was just writing a comment to say the same thing about moving the sync functions to iSync. However, I was thinking that iTunes could handle just the music library, which would be stored in the Music folder. Get iTunes back to it's SoundJam roots. Or, as the suits like to say, "focus on its core competencies." Create something else to handle movies and store them in the Movies folder. (Unfortunately, the name iMovie is already taken.)

I am reminded of what Doug McIlroy said about UNIX back in 1978:

"Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new features."

November 01 2010 at 9:24 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
unteins

Rewriting from the ground up doesn't mean the software will be better. Often it introduces new bugs because the code is less tested. Sometimes it removes bug fixes that only apply to those 500 iMacs sold on July 8th 2003, which might not matter to you but sure matters to the people with those iMacs.

October 31 2010 at 12:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to unteins's comment
Charli

most folks calling for a rewrite won't be happy because they don't want itunes to be a do it all program. and it is likely to stay that way.

or they want it to be 64 bit when there's little to nothing that would benefit from such a step.

and so on

October 31 2010 at 5:38 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
chris

@Jordan

So your biggest issue is how iTunes looks on Windows. Um...busted.

October 31 2010 at 10:14 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mr Lizard

Is this showing up in Software Update yet? My SU is finding nothing, and iTunes still shows Ping in the sidebar

October 31 2010 at 10:54 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
4 replies to Mr Lizard's comment
Brett

Now all we need is a preference option to completely turn off/disable Ping. There's no reason for it to be so aggressively pushed on people who don't want it... rather than making me think "maybe I should try it out", it just makes me really annoyed with iTunes.

I've followed the previously supplied Terminal codes to hide much of Ping and have now completely disabled the iTunes Store (which I only use rarely on my computer)... it shouldn't be this much work to avoid Ping.

October 31 2010 at 8:39 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Brett's comment
jwfnla

I could not agree more.

October 31 2010 at 11:45 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Charli

there is an option to disable.

October 31 2010 at 5:32 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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