iTunes 8 Frustrations
iTunes 8 has been with us for 9 days now, and I’m finding some of the changes in it to be a tad frustrating.
First and foremost, why did Apple remove the “Browse” button from the application entirely? In case you don’t recall the browse button, here are some previous incarnations:
Browse Button in iTunes 6
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It’s missing in iTunes 8. Oh sure, you can use Ctrl/Command+B to bring it up, but iTunes doesn’t remember if you had it turned on for your iPod, so every time I connect it, I have to use a keyboard shortcut to show it. I have over 800 albums on my iPod, I’m simply not going to scroll through them all.
With iTunes 8, Apple added the Genius Sidebar, which will link you to music you might like on the iTunes store. Except it doesn’t work for music on your iPod, so if you’re someone like me who keeps all of their music on their iPod and none in their main library, you can’t use it at all. Same thing with Genius Playlists, the hyped Pandora-like feature that will let you create playlists based on song characteristics. I have 9000 songs on my iPod, it won’t work with any of them.
Similarly, Grid View & Cover Flow don’t work for music on your iPod either.
Next up, those arrow links to the Apple iTunes Music Store next to your songs — they removed the preference to turn these off. Why they did this for any reason beyond just trying to drum up more sales, I haven’t a clue, but this is insanely frustrating. There are, fortunately, workarounds for both Windows & OS X, but there shouldn’t need to be. This is reminiscent of when Apple moved your browser preferences from the Sys Prefs into Safari itself, it’s a very Microsoft-esque move. And just like when Microsoft did it, it’s extremely irritating.
Sorry Apple, but this is not my “favorite iTunes ever”. The only new feature that I can really even use is the visualizer, and while it’s nifty in that “my eyes are glazing over” kind of way, I never use it anyway.