iTunes X Wish List: 10 Things We Want in the Next Upgrade
Many users have upgraded to the new version of iTunes, and are reaping the benefits of the gleaming new upgrade. Home Sharing, Genius Mixes, and tighter integration with the iPhone OS make it a worthwhile upgrade. However, this post isn’t about iTunes 9. Today, we’re looking forward to iTunes 10.
Apple’s OS X changed the playing field back in 2001, setting Apple up to succeed for the next decade while Microsoft tripped over its own feet. Tools like Spotlight, Automator, the iLife suite, Safari, and the “Core” technologies all built into each new Mac have redefined how many use their computer. We can only hope that iTunes X will have the same effect, redefining how we use our media.
iTunes X Wish List (in no particular order):
Name and icon change
It’s time to put that amazing Apple creative team to work. No longer is iTunes merely a tunes manager. It’s a jukebox, a TV and Movie Manager/Player, it’s a sync utility, it’s a store, it’s an Audiobook player, and for over 20 million people it’s phone management software. Obviously iTunes and its icon both have serious street cred, but if the iBook can survive a name change, so can iTunes. Wow us Apple, we know you can.
Tighter control over the library
How many times have you had 3 songs by the same artist all tagged as different genres? How many times have you had mis-tagged genres? Bruce Springsteen isn’t grunge metal iTunes, it just isn’t. What about when you create a new MP3 in Audacity or GarageBand and iTunes automatically adds it to your library, duplicating the track to your music folder to keep your files organized? How about duplicates? Don’t even get me started on Album Art…
When you get a big library in iTunes, it can just be a headache keeping it all properly tagged, organized, etc. iTunes has tools to combat some of these difficulties, but sometimes you just wish they were smarter.
- Automatically remove the duplicates – analyze track length, match up the wave lengths, compare the tags
- Talk to Genius/the iTunes Store and find out the right genre for a song
- Call third-party services like Last.fm, Pandora, and Amazon to fetch missing album art (I know Amazon is competing with Apple, but they offer mostly open APIs to call product info).
Genius Mixes to go: Bridge the gap between the web and the desktop
iTunes has never been good internet radio software. Most attempts at internet radio in general have failed to launch. Apple knows what kind of music I like because of Genius analysis. Let me stream my Genius Mixes when I’m on-the-go and away from my library. Offer genre stations that will introduce me to new music. Partner with Last.fm or Pandora, or maybe build something new in-house (make better use of that iTunes.com domain name?). I would even pay a small monthly fee. Bridge the gap between the desktop and the web.
Please, pay attention to playlists
I love iTunes, but the playlist system leaves much to be desired. It’s been 8 years: give me a keyboard shortcut to add the currently playing song to playlist(s). The constant dragging of songs into playlists is maddening when you’re trying to build a playlist. How many times have you used shift+click or ctrl+click, selected 50 songs, and then forgotten to hold shift/click for song #51? Make it easy to build them, easier to share them with friends, or even allow the download/sharing of playlists from an online portal. Crowd-source playlist building.
Revamp Music navigation
The iPod has always been the true pioneer of intuitive music navigation. Navigate music via Artist, Album, Track, Genre, or Playlist. iTunes has always had the ability to sort these fields, and even used to have the old browse eyeball, but it’s never been as intuitive as an iPod. iTunes developers have tried Cover Flow, Album Covers, and many iterations of list formats. Cover Flow is without a doubt one of their better attempts, but it has it’s short comings. In a collection where many albums lack album art, it’s not very pretty or useful, and it can really lag on a machine with a slower processor.
Considering we’re in the age of netbooks, having an iPod-esque navigation option would be a great addition, and provide UI congruity. With the long-rumored upcoming Apple Tablet, this would be especially handy.
Redo Movie/TV navigation entirely
The iTunes Store has turned iTunes into one of the first successful digital film/tv distribution networks. Others have tried downloads via the browser, but the browser doesn’t seem to be a successful delivery network for digital video downloads. However, the way iTunes organizes the digital video from its store (or from your own rips, if you’re tech-savvy enough) is very early 2000’s. Digital video is not music, and should not be sorted as such.
This view is hardly helpful for navigating a big collection…
Movies: Genre navigation, DVD/Blu-ray cover art, plot descriptions, director/cast/crew lists.
TV Shows: Series navigation by network/genre, season navigation, episode summaries.
iTunes should be calling services like IMDB/the iTunes Store for information on movies in your library. Plus, there’s no easy way to integrate DVD/Blu-ray extras in the current iTunes. Making the desktop movie experience more like the streaming web experience with Netflix and Hulu would make it much more powerful. If a movie I downloaded with iTunes or imported had DVD extras, exclusive interviews, etc., I would drop my DVD’s like hot pockets. Until then… I stick with buying and watching DVD’s.
Audiobooks
Audiobooks have always been somewhat of a side-hobby of Apple. If they were done correctly, it would be much more exciting to buy them digitally. Book jackets/information would be huge bonuses, extra’s from the author. A ticker showing what Page # correlates with the current time. Easier chapter skipping, built-in dictionary/glossary to look up words/characters/events. It’s currently an untapped medium: tap into it.
Revamp the Sidebar
The iTunes Sidebar is one of the more intuitive navigation systems in applications today. There’s very little clutter, it’s quick, its attractive, and most importantly it’s quite usable. However, it’s ever-growing in each redesign of iTunes. If you have a lot of playlists, shared computers on your network, connected devices, etc, it grows to an astonishing length. While it allows you to close off certain sections, that’s useless for syncing and moving content around. Try adding one the playlists at the bottom of your long list of playlists to your iPod. Case and point.
Navigation similar to that featured in the new iTunes Store would be welcome. Using both vertical and horizontal navigation is going to be vital as iTunes continues to grow bigger and bigger.
Lets get real on syncing
It’s time for some meatier syncing tools. One thing that the iTunes’ competitor Zune does quite well is give users information about what in your library is on your device. In Zune software, indicators next to each track tell users whether the item is synced or not. In the age where we rip CDs, copy music off of friend’s iPods, take backups off our own hard drives, and can purchase music directly on some iPods, it’s long-time for more powerful syncing tools. Have a view option to show what’s synced with the currently connected iPod, and whether you’re allowed to sync the content in your library over (is the track’s DRM authorized for this computer yet?). Give an estimate for the time needed to sync. Wireless syncing for the iPod/iPhone would also be a nice touch.
iTunes suite?
Lets face it: iTunes is too bloated. It just tries to do too much. With big libraries it’s just plain slow. If I’m launching iTunes to simply catch up on a podcast, I have to wait for it to load all my music, movies, audiobooks, TV shows, playlists, applications/games, and preferences. With small libraries it’s manageable, with large libraries… it’s a nightmare. Apple, it’s time to compartmentalize iTunes, and turn it into a suite of applications. Apple already kind-of does this with the ability to open core components in new windows.
- iTunes – iTunes as we know it today : an implementation of all the applications when you want everything at once
- Music application – Let users organize music, play like a jukebox, sync with devices
- TV/Film/ application – Navigate video collection, watch videos, sync with devices
- Store/Download Center application – For when you want to go on a spending spree, without lugging everything you own with you to the store. Plus podcasts – weekly/daily updated content for download and play.
- Sync manager – for managing syncing with iPods, iPhones, Apple TV and other computers on your network
- Front Row – It’s always been a side-developed app with roots in the Apple TV. Take iTunes DJ and other miscellaneous tools (visualizers, full screen cover flow, etc.) Apple has built over the years , throw them into Front Row, and give it a face lift.
Give us the option to launch parts of it, and flesh out each app. iLife is a suite for media creation. iTunes should be split into a similar suite for media playback/management.
Conclusion
There’s plenty more to innovate in iTunes. Hopefully in the next major release we’ll see see some exciting new features, and some redesigns of things that don’t work so well in the current version.
Please, for the love of god, make the software in components and let us remove all this crappy useless bloat! I’m so sick of this terrible software. Why do I need to download 100MB every single time you release a X.X.1 update? Are you kidding me?
Why do I need to download 100MB every single time you release a X.X.1 update? Are you kidding me? —-Well, Apple never does part-download updates. They add some lines and codes and you always download the whole application again. And when you install it, it rewrites the old version. And that’s why all their software is so stable.
I’d like to see streaming video integration as well. They already have audio in the way of Internet radio, why not video too?
most of these are good ideas. The only thing I have to add is lyrics. A native lyric adding ability, that works. I’ve used tons of other programs, and they dont work, most of the time its the wrong song, or just random words and symbols.
All good ideas, but Apple HAS to improve performance on large libraries… or am I the only one with a 66K song library of ALC music ripped from my CDs?
Bluetooth iPod Touch/iPhone syncing would be AMAZING!
@Lord Xeon – gimmesometune is pretty awesome when it comes to lyrics adding- and it has a cool little notification thing for the current song playing too
from an Apple TV perspective, it would be awesome if I were able to launch iTunes once to give the Apple TV a connection to my library, say on a NAS or Time Capsule, and then shut down the computer with iTunes and continue to access the library from the Apple TV without iTunes running. (no syncing either, streaming from 2TB NAS would be better than syncing to 160GB ATV drive)
Better performance for sure. I can wait up to a full minute after iTunes launches for the beach ball to stop spinning and this is on a 1 year old MBP.
God help me if I want to change the genre on 20+ songs. I can go make coffee in that time frame.
I think Apple is going to step up with audiobooks on its iphones. I don’t think anyone wants to read ebooks on a small screen. I know there is a new iphone app from NewFiction.com . They offer free audiobooks.
I agree with the idea of better playlists management. I used to use Media Jukebox on Windows to build a custom podcast that mixes in music from my library plus some of my favorite podcasts. This was great for my 1hr commute to work. It was like my own radio station.
iTunes comes no where close to giving me the flexibility.
I would like to finely be able to use the iTunes store, in the Netherlands (and other European country’s), for Movies and TV shows.
A better feature-set to maintain music is what I would like most.
1. As you have mentioned, a better way to identify and manage duplicates is sourely needed.
2. Very basic sound-editing feature – Just so that we can subdue hiss or clicks in a song.
And may I join in the pleads to PLEEEASE component-ize the app. iTunes was meant to be a jukebox but its grown into a monster, Its not a place for maintaining our movies because only few movie formats are supported and there is no feature to convert movies to mp4. Have a separate movie management app and iTunes could use it when syncing to iPods (just as it does with iPhoto for photos).
iTunes now appears to be almost all about the iTunes Store. Recent upgrades to iTunes have almost exclusively been Store upgrades without any great feauture addition to the core application as such. Its about time Apple took stock of this once-great app and reinvent or rejuvenate it !
While I agree with most all of the items on the wish list… the #1 thing on my wish list is the do away with the wish list… (well maybe not completely) give me the shopping cart back or some way I can add songs to a “to purchase list” with ONE click that works from all screens (there are some screens now where you can not add to the current implementation of the “wish list”)
@FreeFun101 Bluetooth syncing isn’t used for a reason… my relatively small music library (6.11gb) would take over 6.5 hours to sync. The nominal bandwidth of bluetooth 2.0 is 3 megabits/sec… in real world situations you will get at best 2.1 megabits/sec… lets do the math:
(6.11 gigabytes) / (2.1 (megabits per second)) = 6.62078307 hours
Do you really want to sync via bluetooth?
You all have excellent ideas! I agree that there are possibly dozens of things Apple could work on, these are just a top 10. If this had been a top 11 list, my next big pet peeve: formats. Video formats especially: we need more codecs.
An iTunes karaoke feature and easier integration of lyrics would probably go over nicely! Artists should be submitting lyrics with their songs so that they’re included in the download from the iTunes store.
Another thing to consider… should iTunes have all of the features it does? It’s a single point of failure for all of your media in the event of a virus or other problem. Part of the reason I wont go for an iPhone… another thing too tightly integrated within iTunes…
1. Allow multiple genres per track — make them more like tags that are associated with tracks than folders that tracks belong to. I mean is it jazz or soundtrack??? — it’s both!
2. Allow the browser to have configurable columns — or at least allow a composer column for classical music. I mean, I can’t remember orchestras and conductors.
Okay…here’s one. Pandora uses a snazzy format called AAC+. Why doesn’t iTunes offer support for it? It requires half the space for a recording that sounds almost indistinguishable from a standard .AAC or .MP3 file. I know people are purchasing larger hard disks, but what if they have an application like PandoraJam and need integration with the music they’re probably *paying for* with a Pandora One account? What gives? I guess these files are destined to remain played back with VLC if we want full audio quality?
64bit and speed the entire app up, it’s very slow these days. Social ratings too, tie it in with genius. I want to be able to see the avg ratings of each song I have.
It would be nice to be able to select which albums from an artist to sync and not just everything.
I have the entire discography of a number of artists and prefer certain albums to others. Being able to select the albums without making playlists would be nice :0)
The thing i agree is Redo the movie and video player thing. I would love to watch videos on itunes but it relaly is slow and laggy most of the time. Plus subtitles dont really work well. Switching to media player classic..
google sniper
PLEASE add wish list capability for Apps!!
you can use ffmpegX to convert any format to mp4 h.264 hd video and play it on itunes. it’s true come to slow, but itunes is for playing/manage music and quicktime/vlc for the video things!
I would LOVE to see an upgraded equalizer! Maybe even some effects like echoing to add to the music… Could be fun.
I want to have additional folders in the podcast view in order to organize them the way I want. With a lot of subscribed podcasts the current view is merely useless.
Regarding the first and second post…. (Whining about the fact the software updates are over 100mb).
With these software updates they actually contain the full iPod micro-OS, complete with kernel and any other updated components as they see fit.
There is no possible way of shrinking the updates.
Kinda sucks for dialup users
FLAC encoding and decoding is needed since it is fast on it’s way to becoming the standard for lossless audio.
I would like to have separate selectable libraries (not via secret start-up keystrokes). I would like to have a children’s library, audiobook library, comedy/other spoken work library, and then all my grown-up music (probably break out classical from rock/pop/mainstream too). My library is way too large to auto-sync to my classic, and I haven’t really found a good way to manage the amount of stuff I have, except for the “check box”. ugghh.
Please please please allow “on the fly compression”!!! We need to be able to have lossless music on our home boxes with compression to the iPod on the fly so we dont have to maintain multiple libraries.
Organizing Apps on iPods is marginally better now that iTunes assists with the process, but what is really needed is hierarchical organization with folders or similar organization. The Apps desperately need a desktop.
hey guys,
don’t forget the djs !
i would love to see new features for semi-professional djs, not only a random playlist. What’s about two playling decks, a fader and a few effects, could not be to hard for developers on apple to add something like that
I hope I will see that
One Word FLAC support ( I understand no ipod support but itunes support would be great)
Allow multipe tags per song. For example
Multiple artists:
Britney Spears; Madonna for Me against the music.
So if i search for britney spears or madonna I can find that song seamlessly
Multiple Albums:
Thats specially useful when you have Collections CDs with the same songs than other cds. That would save a lot of space, and make the library more organizated.
pleas make us possible to sort videoclips (music video ’s) the same way as we do with music.
for us vj ’s with over 2000… video clips it is nice to have all of them per artist, genre, … to be able to make a nice dj stile play list
thx already
and have a great 2010
Ogg Vorbis, Theora & Flac integration, fully (CD import, conversion) please. Hide the option for inexperienced users, but please put it in.
Anything else, I’m happy to be surprised
r3d