On iTunes 10: has Apple killed all its (good) UI designers?
So I just installed iTunes 10 and… wow. This isn’t a good ‘wow’. It’s just a… wow. Here’s why:
Yup. Apple’s decided it’s been at least a few months since it screwed with the iTunes UI, and so it’s made some changes. Some of them actually work. There’s a decent ‘hybrid’ list view, and the main interface pane offers more clarity. However, two changes are mind-boggling:
- iTunes previously coloured its sidebar items. This enabled you to—without thinking—associate certain items with certain colours; even if you didn’t do this, each item was differentiated. Now, you have to think before you click, and the usability of this area of the app has been substantially reduced.
- The close/minimise/zoom buttons are now aligned vertically in the full window mode. In the mini-player window, this was always the case, but in the full window mode, it’s a baffling decision. Even though Mac OS X’s hardly a bastion of total consistency these days, these three important buttons usually stay put, and people’s muscle memory enables quick access to them. Now, iTunes 10 chucks Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines (the ones Apple seemingly expects every developer but itself to follow) out the window, in order to save a little horizontal space. However, this again reduces usability—not only are these buttons now in the wrong place, they’re also much smaller and harder to hit.
In the past, iTunes has foreshadowed subsequent updates to the look and feel of Mac OS X. I seriously hope that isn’t the case this time, because the iTunes 10 UI is a botch job—a collision of fairly good ideas (which are incremental updates) and the very worst in interface design. To that end, I wonder where all Apple’s best UI designers have gone. They’re certainly not on the iTunes team.
UPDATE: In the comments, mr_phillip writes: “For what it’s worth, defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -1 restores the default close/minimise buttons”. So at least Terminal-savvy Mac users have an option to deal with the second of Apple’s UI disasters.
For what it’s worth, “defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -1” restores the default close/minimise buttons.
People are kicking up a stink over nothing: “oh noes Apple did something different, it has no real impact but I must be angry!”. And they’re using “usability” as a weak justification for their complaints.
The three important buttons even in their new state are instantly understandable and usable, there is no learning required except a one time recognition of the alternate orientation. The benefits of a balanced top bar and optimised use of space are far more important to me.
I’d argue that buttons half the size they were previously are harder to hit, ergo lower usability. And by making things totally inconsistent compared to the rest of the system Apple potentially confuses the user.
This is also hardly a good example to set. When devs churn out apps that don’t conform to Apple’s HIG, what’s Apple going to do in return? To some extent, this kind of thing even validates Adobe’s dodgy arguments regarding UI.
But there is no confusion here, it’s very clear what is going on. The green button (with a plus on it!) is the criminal in my mind.
I agree with what you’re saying about not setting a good example however.
It’s no worse than the crime that is and always has been the entire iTunes interface.
Not least that a company that will deny your app based on a button very slightly the wrong shape on iPod continues to produce and app that takes all rational Windows sense and takes a great big dump on it.
I was surprised with the iPod storage/usage meter in iTunes 10. I can’t recall any other time in OS X where the contents of a gauge appear below the surface.
It’s not bad, I was just surprised by it.
If you are an old (or young) person, small buttons are harder to hit. This should be obvious. Personally I use command keys for these window functions, because of that. There should be an option to increase their size. Which would work best with horizontal alignment. But I’ll use the “defaults” command posted.
One could go on: the disclosure triangles next to the different sections of the sidebar are gone and replaced by hover-appearing Hide/Show text, so without hovering you’ve no idea if there’s simply no shared libraries available or if they’re just hidden. The column headers are randomly justified: “Name” is left-aligned, “Time” is right-aligned, and it looks like amateur hour. The list view alternate-row highlighting is almost invisible. The toolbar in Preferences is color-less (mostly just boring) and randomly centered. All in all my biggest objection is that, again, it looks like amateur hour and continues the tradition of the OS 9-originated iTunes faking the OS X interface.
I do like the fact that the checkmark column can be hidden, is its own column, and can be moved.
iTunes needs a rewrite in the worst way. The damn Finder is better after iTunes 10.
Oh, and the app icon is /ugly/.
THANK you for that terminal command to restore the horizontal close/minimize buttons!!
Now if we could get those colored icons back too… I agree that they were VERY helpful in color.
Re: “Name” is left-aligned, “Time” is right-aligned…
Uh, that’s how I’d expect it to be, since the items in each column are aligned that way, and I’d want Time and its items to be right-aligned so I can tell which are significantly longer songs (and how much longer) at a glance. But yeah, some other changes apparently for changes’ sake.
I absolutely love the grayscale sidebar items. When I need to find something in it, the icon shapes are enough.
The app feels less busy now – since iTunes is a media app, it is crucial that their icons don’t distract you from the media/social content at the right. Imagine if Safari had colored icons in a left sidebar all the time – it would be very annoying.
I don’t like the grayscale icons in the Settings section though, they don’t seem necessary there.
The new iTunes 10 looks and works much better than its predecessor.
This weblog, however, has one the most tastes styles I have ever seen. It really makes your UI complaints somehow seem irrelevant and senseless.
Sorry, I meant to say tasteless.
Exactly! The first thing I noticed.
Just try and submit an App, and change the UI that way. I bet it gets shot down… 🙂
The vertical window buttons are not so bad for me. I find that I have better muscle control when moving the cursor vertically than horizontally, so the new layout may be an improvement. (But it /is/ pretty inconsistent.)
Oldsters will remember that iTunes is one of the apps that Apple has always experimented with new UI on. As I recall, it was one of the earliest with flat-metal look, etc.
As such, the HIG arguments about iTunes aren’t something that *real* developers make any more – we know that they don’t always apply. But flouting them doesn’t make *your* app look better unless you have a *lot* of designer muscle.
the thing that pisses me off the most, is not the tiny weird placed buttons or the colourless icons (although i prefer coloured icons), no, the thing that pisses me off the most is that they have eliminated the vertical lines separating songs and other information such as album names. it seems to make it harder to visually seperate the information. This could be a real problem for someone with dyslexia. Also!! the new logo is HIDEOUS!!! keep the old one or make a better one, it sticks out like a sore thumb in the dock and looks chinzy. The old one however, looked classy and blended in well with the other logos. i think the reason they redesigned it in a circle was so they could use it in the dot of the I in ping.
LMAO. Same thoughts here.
Good critique.
iTunes was the first app to be “metal” instead of pinstripe (according to HI guidelines metal was reserved only for utilities).
There are problems with iTunes functionality too. Is it a media player? Is it a storefront? (the iPhone has 2 separate apps: iPod and iTunes) Why is syncing (address book, photos, etc) part of the app?
I have the feeling it’s bloated and inconsistent because iTunes is the beach-head app that allows M$ Windows users to use iPhones and iPods. It would be harder to sell the iDevices if a M$ Windows user had to install 5 different apps.
Well, thanks for the fix for the buttons, that was quick. What truly bugged me was that ridiculous new AlbumArt view that simply takes up way too much space with useless pics. Ping, so far, is also very much in flux, and I may never, ever, bother to be bothered with it, since I very much doubt The Incredible String Band will make the ‘featured’ list….
The logo is bad beyond belief. The vertical buttons are irritating. And the one, single use of metallic, in the volume control, is arbitrary and contributes to the overall impression of a rushed job and declining design standards at Apple.
“The toolbar in Preferences is color-less (mostly just boring) and randomly centered.” Yep, this centering is non-standard. The point about consistency is not to put design in a straitjacket, there are just places you need it or the whole thing degenerates into a dog’s dinner.
[…] aplicações Mac, a Apple decidiu colocar na vertical “rompendo” com as suas próprias guidelines para desenvolvimento de aplicações para ambiente […]
[…] A negative look at the iTunes 10 UI changes. This doesn't seem like a very good update to me. Yup. Apple’s decided it’s been […]
“Uh, that’s how I’d expect it to be, since the items in each column are aligned that way…”
And Apple does it in the Finder, too, which I never noticed before; the previous iTunes, as well, which I didn’t notice until your response. I wonder why I just noticed it, but I honestly don’t know.
“…contributes to the overall impression of a rushed job and declining design standards at Apple.”
I’m not sure I’d go that far: rushing the job would probably mean not changing it at all. (I can’t explain it, but I do happen to like the new slider. It looks like the bolts in the staircase at the Apple Store and the screws, or whatever they were, on the iMac G4 “Luxo”.)
“The point about consistency is not to put design in a straitjacket…” [re: the centered Preferences toolbar]
I agree, which is why I was never one of the people who complained (seemingly endlessly) about the different color scrollbar thumbs, to pick a random example that’s not the volume slider. I don’t even notice it anymore, which was quick, but it’s still a little weird. See above about the volume slider.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I think my initial negative reaction was influenced by the hope that iTunes 10 would be iTunes X, re-written to be a modern app (not the 10+ year-old SoundJam MP re-skinned) and at /least/ reorganized so that it didn’t seem to take bloating-cues from Microsoft. But an above poster is right in that it’s hard to remove the bloat because that would primarily mean a separate app, which is really only a problem on Windows. The Mac has iSync that could be re-purposed. But Apple’s in the Microsoft trap: they can’t change because /everyone knows iTunes/.
tom
“In the past, iTunes has foreshadowed subsequent updates to the look and feel of Mac OS X. I seriously hope that isn’t the case this time…” [from the original post]
Not /everything/ is carried over to the OS X interface, the scrollbar being an example.
Although the scrollbars have somewhat randomly been applied to other Apple applications (and some third-party ones), including iPhoto. iPhoto’s also another culprit regarding dodgy UI design—the window is, surprisingly, non-standard and so partially ignores certain commands from things like resizing utilities.
Is there a decently designed application for OS X that I can use to organize all my music files? One that conforms to Apple’s Human Interface Guidlines? I’m getting a little fed up with these useless changes to an application I use every day.
I’ve recently reviewed a couple of apps that work with the iTunes Library (so you manage with iTunes but then use the other app for playback). Everyplay is pretty good, although I got some juddering playback and it did odd things with playlist order. It also, oddly, took up more resources than iTunes 9 (I haven’t compared with 10). I also reviewed Ecoute, although that sort of apes an iOS app, and so might annoy you as much as iTunes.
Regarding management, and especially with/for devices, I’ve not come across anything that matches iTunes. I guess since iTunes is such a giant, there’s no market for that.