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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

Apple yesterday had another of its special events, which I noted would provide immediate disappointment with its open streaming that was only available to Snow Leopard-equipped Macs and iOS devices. (Good move, Apple! That’ll show Google and Adobe!)

As it turned out the event was, as usual, a mix of WOW, bleh, and eh? I was going to write a piece about it, but journo chum Adam Banks got there first and, spookily, his thoughts on what went on in San Fransisco yesterday mirror mine exactly. So, er, go and read Adam’s piece to see what I think about Apple’s announcements.

In a press release on its website, Apple has confirmed that it will “broadcast its September 1 event online”, thereby providing immediate disappointment to users worldwide when Jobs doesn’t reveal a $50 256GB unicorn-powered iPod touch with Retina Display and sprinkles.

The event will be streamed using “Apple’s industry-leading HTTP Live Streaming”, which the company says is “based on open standards, so fuck you, Adobe”. In order to view Apple’s open-standards streaming, you require a “Mac® running Safari® on Mac OS® X version 10.6 Snow Leopard®, an iPhone® or iPod touch® running iOS 3.0 or higher, or an iPad™”, along, presumably, with a shield to defend yourself from the onslaught of registered trademark characters, hypocrisy and irony.

I watched Scott Pilgrim vs. the World this weekend, and thought it was an enjoyable and imaginative film. Eager to find out how it had fared overseas, I was disheartened to discover it was a total flop in the USA, and looks unlikely to fare much better elsewhere. The worst thing about this, other than the talented Edgar Wright now being saddled with far greater challenges for funding his upcoming films, was that all of the aspects I found so enjoyable about Scott Pilgrim—its irreverence, inventiveness, and sense of fun—were ignored or rejected by many critics, who struggled to ‘get’ the film.

The Hollywood Reporter dismissed the film as nonsense, calling it juvenile and saying that: “Nothing makes any real sense. The ‘duels’ change their rules on a whim, and no one takes the games very seriously, including the exes, who, when defeated, explode into coins the winner may collect”.

Yes, well done: you’ve realised Scott Pilgrim isn’t a documentary. Also, it’s not anchored in hum-drum reality. The film (and the comic-book it’s based on) has its own logic fashioning its own reality. But the thing is, most films aren’t ‘real’ in any sense—it’s just that they portray ‘TV realism’; that critics are so quick to belittle the kind of hyper-reality of Scott Pilgrim is hugely disappointing, and in part explains why there’s so much generic crap being churned out of the Hollywood machine.

Even the usually dependable Empire’s review begins with a massively dispiriting statement: “Here’s another great film of 2010 which takes place partly—or possibly entirely—within the leading man’s head.” Maybe it’s just me, but I never saw Scott Pilgrim’s acts and scenes as anything other than totally ‘real’ for the characters that were experiencing them. In this comic-book world, foes really do explode into coins when defeated, and everyone has the power to ‘battle’ in crazy, over-the-top ways.

That everyone feels the need to ‘explain’ every single thing that happens in a movie, or to ground it within the reality that we inhabit, is depressing as hell. Movies should be an outlet for the imagination, not reportage; and those movies claiming to be or striving to be larger than life should not feel the need to anchor themselves in more mundane settings, surroundings and reality, just to cater for people who aren’t willing to just go with the flow and live within a world they’ve never seen or experienced before, and that they themselves will never get to experience, except through the screen.

If you live in the UK, you must have by now heard about the Coventry woman who dumped a cat in a wheelie bin (BBC News). The cat spent 15 unhappy hours in the bin until found by its owners, and the cat-dumper, Mary Bale, was, unluckily for her, caught on CCTV. The RSPCA’s now considering bringing charges, and crowds of people with nothing better to do won’t leave the woman alone. (Note: I find Bale’s actions distasteful and I do hope the RSPCA charges her with a cruelty offence, but going mob-handed to her home and chanting ‘I love pussy’ isn’t going to help anyone.)

In a ray of light on the entire incident, we at least get to see how an old person leapt to the defence of the cat-binner, who may now be about to lose her job as a bank teller. According to the Daily Mail (and, let’s face it, this is the Daily Mail, so this might just be made-up, but, hey, it’s funny anyway), 78-year-old Jean Thompson said: “The only explanation I can think of is that she was worried that the cat might get run over on the road and wanted to keep it safe in the bin.”

To be fair, roads are dangerous to cats, but I’d suggest starving to death in a sealed, thick plastic cage that you’re dropped into by a stranger is a bigger threat.