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Severed Hand of Skywalker · Apr 22, 2005, 09:37 PM

The interface for iTunes has remained more or less the same from version 1.0.

It works well but I can't help but think it looks a bit dated and not very "Aqua" like.

The main thing that bothers me about it is that it looks flat. The yellow window is rather ugly, the brushed metal would look cooler with the platinum look that mail 2.0 has (IMO).

I noticed that with Tigers new Dashboard they have gave it a more iPod and modern look:

What you guys think? Is the dashboard widget a iTunes of the future?

TETENAL · Apr 22, 2005, 09:51 PM

Wheels may be great for a thumb, but with a mouse they are a pain to control. Apple has learned their lesson with the QuickTime 4 Player interface disaster. They wouldn't do something as stupid like that again.

mchladek · Apr 22, 2005, 10:22 PM

I don't think he's suggesting a scroll wheel interface, just a more modern look. After all, after how many years (3 or 4) the only interface change I can think of is the infamous "rock" buttons at the bottom.

I agree that iTunes needs a make over. Hopefully the iTunes widget is the future. It looks nice.

Severed Hand of Skywalker · Apr 22, 2005, 10:29 PM

Originally Posted by TETENAL

Wheels may be great for a thumb, but with a mouse they are a pain to control. Apple has learned their lesson with the QuickTime 4 Player interface disaster. They wouldn't do something as stupid like that again.

Ya I am not at all suggesting a wheel interface. I am talking white with a glossy look with a nicer player window.

Apfhex · Apr 23, 2005, 01:27 AM

Yes, a little "freshness" added could be really nice.

DavidHossack · Apr 23, 2005, 05:17 AM

I don't see what needs changed. iTunes was the father of the Aqua interface - it was aqua in MacOs9 too. It has evolved and matches the rest of iLife well. Changing it would signal a change with all the the iLife and other metal apps.

The changes have been:

Volume slider now a metal blob not a aqua one
Play, FF and REW buttons now the flatter look and not recessed
Search box not recessed
buttons at the bottom changed perhaps 4 times now
Other updates to match system....

iTunes 1 now just looks fugly sitting beside 4

See this link for a shot of iTunes 2

RevEvs · Apr 23, 2005, 05:20 AM

i think itunes would look nice with the new aqua look in 10.4 - the gradient style you have with any aqua app with a toolbar etc... (sys prefs, xcode...)

PurpleGiant · Apr 23, 2005, 05:39 AM

Evolution of iTunes:

iTunes 1:

iTunes 2:

iTunes 3:

iTunes 4:

Busemann · Apr 23, 2005, 09:16 AM

They should rewrite it to cocoa and drop 10.1 legacy support, like they have done with QuickTime 7. It feels a bit old nowadays, with poor multithreading, no sheets and lack of scroll-wheel support in certain lists (such as in the iPod playlist pref pane).

Perhaps it would look nicer if they slimmed the borders a bit as well, like in Finder.

madmacgames · Apr 23, 2005, 10:17 AM

Originally Posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker

The yellow window is rather ugly

Yellow window? What are you smoking?

Severed Hand of Skywalker · Apr 23, 2005, 11:54 AM

Originally Posted by madmacgames

Yellow window? What are you smoking?

Don't smoke but I still see a yellow window.

TETENAL · Apr 23, 2005, 12:04 PM

Originally Posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker

Don't smoke but I still see a yellow window.

Unlike on Windows controls are not windows on Mac OS X.

Severed Hand of Skywalker · Apr 23, 2005, 12:13 PM

Originally Posted by TETENAL

Unlike on Windows controls are not windows on Mac OS X.

Bla bla bla. Call it what you want but either way the display WINDOW is yellow and ugly.

TETENAL · Apr 23, 2005, 12:47 PM

Originally Posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker

Bla bla bla. Call it what you want but either way the display WINDOW is yellow and ugly.

You seem pretty ignorant. The yellow part is not a separate window. It's a view in a window; a brushed metal window to be exact.

The mockup you posted also contains this yellow view, so what do you want?

Severed Hand of Skywalker · Apr 23, 2005, 12:56 PM

Originally Posted by TETENAL

You seem pretty ignorant. The yellow part is not a separate window. It's a view in a window; a brushed metal window to be exact.

The mockup you posted also contains this yellow view, so what do you want?

You have no clue as to what is going on do you

madmacgames · Apr 23, 2005, 01:43 PM

If you are talking about the thing in the top center where the Apple is, and where you can show song info, eq info, etc; that is a far cry from yellow. You might consider getting your color vision checked.

(or maybe I need mine checked)

Now the iTunes dashboard widget... that is somewhat yellow

monkeybrain · Apr 23, 2005, 03:46 PM

I don't mind its colour (whatever that might be, who cares what name it has?), but I think it does need some fine-tuning. As the last screenshot showed, every control gained a less recessed look - making things seem sleeker, more modern. But that info window has still got an older, rougher style of bevel.

It would be interesting to see how sleek iTunes could be made to look, along the lines of that widget and the new 'plastic' windows in Tiger.

Also, what's with that party-shuffle blue bar? Did they design that years ago or something and then only add it at the last minute, not releasing that the rest of the interface got an overhaul?

Kerrigan · Apr 23, 2005, 05:15 PM

Remember this thing?

That application had quite a nice design actually, I was hoping it would be released with the final version of Mac OS X. Small, simple, appealing to look at; it's very similar in a lot of ways to the widget in Tiger.

Superchicken · Apr 23, 2005, 05:31 PM

Dang... somebody should release THAT as a widget... any designers wanna try?!

Severed Hand of Skywalker · Apr 24, 2005, 12:52 AM

Originally Posted by Kerrigan

Remember this thing?

That application had quite a nice design actually, I was hoping it would be released with the final version of Mac OS X. Small, simple, appealing to look at; it's very similar in a lot of ways to the widget in Tiger.

Exactly, it looks 3d, not that flat beige/yellow window crap in the current itunes.

Sage · Apr 24, 2005, 03:16 PM

And the volume is probably a lot easier to control on that thing than on the new iTunes Dashboard widget.

tooki · Apr 24, 2005, 03:38 PM

Originally Posted by Busemann

They should rewrite it to cocoa ...

Oh god, not another "cocoa is better" rant. Learn about Carbon vs Cocoa, THEN form an opinion.

tooki

Busemann · 07:22 PM

Then why have they rewritten pretty much every app and utility to cocoa??

leperkuhn · Apr 24, 2005, 05:24 PM

we've gone though this already why it's not a cocoa app. please look at the older threads.

Busemann · Apr 24, 2005, 05:38 PM

People said they'd never rewrite iMovie or QuickTime either, but they did, even if they were solid carbon apps. Right now, only DVD Player & Finder is carbon it seems.

Oh well, I guess we just have to wait and see. (Not that cocoa alone is my most wanted new feature)

Chuckit · Apr 24, 2005, 05:50 PM

iMovie and QuickTime were not "solid Carbon apps." iTunes is the flagship Carbon app � the one that shows that Carbon apps can be completely awesome. iMovie was okay, but actually was made worse when Apple rewrote it in Cocoa. QuickTime player was pretty lousy in the first place and did nothing special anyway, and it would be my first recommendation for something to write in Cocoa. Cocoa does make things easy on developers, but unless you're on the iTunes team, that doesn't matter, and the difficulty of porting an app like iTunes would very likely outweigh any benefits that would be gained from having a Cocoa codebase.

Busemann · 07:17 PM

What's so "completely awesome" about it from a technical standpoint?

Bringing up any window (such as preferences or get info) freezes the app OS 9-style due to poor multithreading. Turning on the visualizer and dragging the window around slows it down to just a few fps. It still uses its own hardcoded ui, and there's no scroll-wheel support in certain lists, such as the iPod playlist pref.

Even if these and other issues perhaps could be fixed in Carbon, wouldn't it be better to just rewrite it now instead of five years down the road? In the end, I think the engineers would save a lot of frustration by doing it now, and it would make the app feel a lot more OSX like (I love that question-mark pointer

)

RonnieoftheRose · Apr 24, 2005, 09:03 PM

Whatever happened to the ugly Docklings concept?

JHromadka · Apr 25, 2005, 10:04 AM

Originally Posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker

*snip*

What you guys think? Is the dashboard widget a iTunes of the future?

Maybe not iTunes, but that would make for a very nice future iPod shuffle.

Millennium · Apr 25, 2005, 10:40 AM

Originally Posted by Busemann

Then why have they rewritten pretty much every app and utility to cocoa??

Actually, this is done in part as a testbed. Carbon has been positioned as the low-level API to OSX, whereas Cocoa is the high-level API. As such, Cocoa was actually quite incomplete in the first few releases of OSX, and many things could be accessed only from Carbon. As they make more and more of the OS available from Cocoa, it makes sense to port utilities over, as a means of making sure that it still works right.

As others -namely, those who know what they're talking about- have noted, Cocoa is not a magic make-my-app-better pill. iMovie is perhaps the best example of this: an app which which got a Cocoa-for-Cocoa's-sake port and suffered mightily for it. An API does not make a program better or worse; only the programmer can do that. Nothing is truly free, even in Cocoa; there are always tradeoffs. This is in large part why iMovie suffered so much in the transition: Cocoa is actually significantly slower than Carbon if you abuse its facilities too often. Cocoa can make it easier to program a simple app, but for complex apps it can bite you even worse than Carbon if you don't know how to use it properly.

Socially Awkward Solo · Apr 25, 2005, 11:08 AM

Can we get off the cocoa argument and stick to the topic please

Chuckit · Apr 25, 2005, 12:41 PM

What SAS said.

Kerrigan · Apr 27, 2005, 01:45 PM

This is sort of on-topic: do you think that the next generation iPod will look like the iTunes widget? I'm not talking about the shape of the widget or the green LCD screen, but rather the gray aluminium colour.

The reason I say this is that clues to the XBox 360's design had been present all along if you looked at the Xbox website's layout. I would not be surprised if iTunes widget is based on the design of the next generation iPod.

It's just speculation, of course