[riverfreak]

Will iTunes 5 EVER be released or will we continue to asymptotically approach 5.0 with snivelling releases that plug DRM workarounds?

Google iTunes 5. You'll find tons of discussion - all dating from a MacRumors "informed report" from someone who had seen builds of iTunes 5.

I might add that this was October of 2003!

Like lots of folks, I use iTunes daily. It would sure be nice to have a few new features (like hierarchical playlists, the option to write playcount and ratings to the ID3 tag, etc).

[Randman]

Smart playlists would be nice but you can already edit the tag information yourself.

[Superchicken]

iTunes 5 would be awesome... I suspect it some time this year...

[PurpleGiant]

Originally posted by Superchicken:
iTunes 5 would be awesome... I suspect it some time this year...[/macrumors]

Fixed

[cpac]

Originally posted by Randman:
Smart playlists would be nice

we have these now - what am I missing?

[lookmark]

It's been a while, hasn't it?

I imagine developing iTunes cross-platform, plus the sheer popularity (and importance) of iTunes, has slowed down the development-time and increased the time of beta-testing.

I'd expect iTunes 5 (with oh let's say gapless playback and a handful of neat new browsing, playlist, and shuffle features) some time this year...

[mac15]

Now thats its avaliable for Windows, we probably won't see as many updates. Most Windows don't care what the version number is and probably won't upgrade. (I'm talking about the average home user)

[hmurchison2001]

I suspect it's more than just adding features like gapless playback. Apple could have added that a while ago. Their small steps of revisions leads me to believe the the iTunes 5.0 update is central to their plans of evolving the iTunes store beyond just iPods.

What I mean is that if iTunes is to become the center of our music management then it's going to have become less single user centric and more networked. I think people like the idea having a single music database that all family members can access. However our current tagging doesn't suite this method. We need all metadata for files to support multiple user settings. Everything from tagging, star ratings and eq settings needs to be encapulated into one file for every user in the household.

Apple could also be preparing iTunes Music Store to branch out into other areas. I'm not thinking movies just yet but something beyond just music. I see iTunes supporting perhaps a STB and using Webcore/Webkit for easy connection and purchasing of files.

After waiting this long I'm really excited because iTunes 5.0 looks like it will reveal where Apple is going. They definitely aren't sitting on their hands here. When it comes I don't think Napster and Microsoft will be happy.

[Dog Like Nature]

I'm not sure we're ready for an ITMS-style movie store. Think of the size of the downloads!
Plus, it's easier to justify an impulse buy of a 99c song than a (guessing) $9.95 movie!

[Zimphire]

I just hope it doesn't turn into bloatware.

[Twilly Spree]

iTunes 5. Cocoa.

[mishap]

Originally posted by Twilly Spree:
iTunes 5. Cocoa.

no thanks

[Grrr]

Originally posted by Zimphire:
I just hope it doesn't turn into bloatware.

Its already heading that way me thinks..

[Millennium]

Originally posted by Twilly Spree:
iTunes 5. Cocoa.

iTunes 5. Cocoa. Meaningless.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Twilly Spree:
iTunes 5. Cocoa.

I highly doubt it. Cocoa, although great for OS X-specific apps, isn't as good as Carbon for writing a cross-platform app such as iTunes.

[leperkuhn]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
I highly doubt it. Cocoa, although great for OS X-specific apps, isn't as good as Carbon for writing a cross-platform app such as iTunes.

Agreed. We'd be more likely to see it written in Java than cocoa.

[mac15]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
I highly doubt it. Cocoa, although great for OS X-specific apps, isn't as good as Carbon for writing a cross-platform app such as iTunes.

iTunes is wiritten in both Cocoa and Carbon, the most noticable bit (the UI) is Carbon.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by mac15:
iTunes is wiritten in both Cocoa and Carbon, the most noticable bit (the UI) is Carbon.

What?! No it isn't. iTunes is written in Carbon. There is no Cocoa in there.

[Krusty]

Originally posted by Grrr:
Its already heading that way me thinks..

Somewhat. But at least is still lets you turn off a lot of the sidebar items if you don't use them, which helps simplify things. Plus, items such as Smart Playlists aren't immediately in the interface unless you specifically go looking for them (in the menus, or by learning to option-click the playlist button to create one). All in all, they've kept it surprisingly simple for the non-power user given all of the things its capable of.

But, back to the the thread topic. What feature do you guys think would be groundbreaking enough to warrant a 5.x designation ? I imagine it'd have to be something pretty big or they will stay in the 4.x line of numbering. Maybe a way to subscribe to Satellite radio directly from iTunes ? (like the current Radio selections but with a live feed from Sirius or XM). One thing is certain, iTunes relies on the Quicktime engine for its encoding and playback options ... so the pending update to QT 7.x could bring something that warrants an iTunes 5.x

[Superchicken]

I imagine we'll see support for CDs encoded using surround sound. Not that I buy any of these... aside from that.... I really don't know what they'll add to iTunes... it's kinda fully featured already... maybe tabbed play lists? Nested play lists would be awesome... those are the only features I really want added to iTunes... aside from perhaps tweaking the interface a bit.. I'd love the info window to be more like the levels and what not pallet of iPhoto... maybe the ability to link songs... I've got a few that kinda lead into the others and I'd like to make it so that they either play the beginnings from the old ones, or end at other parts and so on and so forth...

I'd love to see em add things like Label pages in iTunes, a chance for labels to promote their stuff, have pages for like the big 5, plus say one for Tooth and Nail/BEC, some of the smaller labels that have dedicated fan bases. Allow them perhaps to have their own free downloads or something like that. Or even promo tracks that die after a few weeks or something... kinda like M$'s subscription model only these would just be ones that you can listen to a lot and then they just die.

Perhaps they could start bundling Safari with iTunes? I dono... really I think the only reason we'll see iTunes 5 will be Quicktime 7.

[bmedina]

I imagine we'll see support for CDs encoded using surround sound. Not that I buy any of these

If you're talking about DVD-audio, its encryption prevents it from being ripped to the computer.

My biggest hopes are hierarchal playlists, gapless support, and the ability to assign a single song to more than one album.

I'm curious as to how they'll handle Quicktime 7's VBR AAC encoding. Will they release an update to iTunes 4 to enable the option, or will we have to wait for version 5?

[OwlBoy]

Originally posted by Millennium:
iTunes 5. Cocoa. Meaningless.

I agree, at this point iTunes is so fine tuned, and optimized that making it cocoa might just make it slower, and give it a few new bugs.

-Owl

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by OwlBoy:
I agree, at this point iTunes is so fine tuned, and optimized that making it cocoa might just make it slower, and give it a few new bugs.

-Owl

Indeed. iTunes is pretty much the poster child for a Good Carbon App™.

Instead of rewriting it in Cocoa, I would be happier if they would just improve the Carbon framework itself - i.e. add the frigging emacs shortcuts to the standard text widgets! I find it ridiculous that the text editing shortcuts aren't consistent from app to app on OS X when using the standard widgets.

[ryaxnb]

Yes, 5 will happen - but probably not till iLife '06.

[riverfreak]

Originally posted by Krusty:


But, back to the the thread topic. What feature do you guys think would be groundbreaking enough to warrant a 5.x designation ? I imagine it'd have to be something pretty big or they will stay in the 4.x line of numbering. Maybe a way to subscribe to Satellite radio directly from iTunes ?

I'd liek to see heirarchical playlists, the ability to support more than one library, and enhanced speed. I get the SBOD constantly with my library.

Why more than one library? When I rip a CD, I like to add them to my library *after* I've archived them to a CD / DVD. It would be nice to have a temporary library to hold these things before adding them to the primary library.

[riverfreak]

Originally posted by lookmark:
It's been a while, hasn't it?

I imagine developing iTunes cross-platform, plus the sheer popularity (and importance) of iTunes, has slowed down the development-time and increased the time of beta-testing.

Yep, I think you are absolutely right. There is much more attention on iTunes now. I'm sure the level of paranoia is rather high in terms of adding features.

[Twilly Spree]

cocoa

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Twilly Spree:
cocoa

Why?

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

I think it looks a bit dated, I mean the yellow window with the track info should be a nicer blue glossy aqua or something.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Why?

Because he thinks Cocoa is some kind of magical make-my-application-better technology, rather than a tool for writing applications.

[kilechki]

Originally posted by OwlBoy:
I agree, at this point iTunes is so fine tuned, and optimized that making it cocoa might just make it slower, and give it a few new bugs.

-Owl

"Fine tuned" are words that hardly suits to iTunes....
On my 1,33ghz PB, iTunes performs poorly and appears to me as a badly threaded program with an outdated design.
Insert a CD, wait 5 seconds for iTunes to appear. The CDDB window appears : you can't control the application anymore during the rather large amount of time it takes to fetch the info on CDDB. How's that?! This behavior has hardly improved in the past 5 years!
Worse : select 100 songs, edit their comments, "enter". If you were unlucky enough to have a song playing when you clicked on "enter", you are stuck with this tune during the everlasting time it takes to iTunes to update the files. It can become nightmarish when, as I did a few times, a new, much louder song is played and streamed to your airport express. Then, as the volume slider of the express can only be adjusted in iTunes, you end up deaf and wondering why it takes so much time to update a few comment fields.
I don't even mention the hectic performance of the visual effects in window mode. A friend of mine just bought her first mac, a 1,67 Ghz PB with 128Mo of Vram. Well, I really felt bad when *moving* the window brought her PB to a crawl... Resizing a playing window in Real One on PC does not even impact its framerate!! How can visual effects in iTunes perform so bad on Apple's most recent hardware?
On every aspect, using iTunes can be upsetting... My iTunes library consists of 24 Go of music, which is not huge. Is it really so hard to get a usable scrolling speed through those 5000 lines of text? Worst of all, the horizontal scrolling is strictly speaking unusable when using the scrollpad on my PB or shift+scrollwheel with my mouse.

As to its design, iTunes does also feel rather outdated. Too much gray with the dirty yellowish tint on its middle. The overall look of the app gives me the impression to be using a financial accounting programm. There is not even a single standard control in the window! Controls just seem to have been dropped randomly on the screen, where there was some place left to put the "album artwork" and "airport express" buttons. The buttons in the smart playlist composing window come straight from 2000...

All in all, I would say that iTunes deserves a *huge* refresh of both its code and design... The main feature I am waiting for are :
- have a search field in minimized window. Most of the times, I use iTunes in mini mode and let it play randomly until I want a specific tune. Thus, I could just switch to iTunes, not have to widen, look for my tune, double-click it, and then re-minimize the window. I would only use the search field of the mini window, which would give me a small, spotlight-like search result. Even better : allow a search field to appear in the dock menu. Thus doing my search there would give me results in the normal iTunes window.
- transform the "iTunes Store" links into roll-overs. Those links are usefull, but having them in the way all the time is tiresome. Moreover, I would like to have links to find tunes of the same artist/album/genre in my *own* library. This is the most logical behavior for the link : give me an instant way to have all my Isma�l Lo songs in one click.
- build a lyric section in the sidebar
- use a spotlight-like look for the app, with a better-looking overall design. This could be coming sooner that we think, judging by the look of the iTunes widget in Dashboard.
- use Core Image to give some fancy/useful effects to what is initially supposed to be an entertainment app, not an accounting one
- I don't care if it's cocoa or carbon or both
- keep the instant search result ability. This is the truly awesome feature in iTunes.

[Thain Esh Kelch]

Its easy to find mp3 decoders out there that use 10% of what iTunes is using when playing an mp3...

Start iTunes on an iMac 233 - Woila, the system crawls along.

15" mp3 player..

[a holck]

I also hate the fact that you have to activate window before it receives input.

[bmedina]

Originally posted by Thain Esh Kelch:
Start iTunes on an iMac 233

People still use those?

I also hate the fact that you have to activate window before it receives input.

If you have the window minimized (hit the green button), it will accept clicks on the buttons without becoming the active application.

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally posted by kilechki:

- have a search field in minimized window. Most of the times, I use iTunes in mini mode and let it play randomly until I want a specific tune. Thus, I could just switch to iTunes, not have to widen, look for my tune, double-click it, and then re-minimize the window. I would only use the search field of the mini window, which would give me a small, spotlight-like search result. Even better : allow a search field to appear in the dock menu.

Or even better: Searching for songs in the systemwide spotlight menu plays them instantly in iTunes.

Oh, this is how it currently works in Tiger

[poulh]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
i.e. add the frigging emacs shortcuts to the standard text widgets!

Haven't heard of this... can you give me an example of how to use it?

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by poulh:
Haven't heard of this... can you give me an example of how to use it?

These work in Cocoa apps (and in the Terminal):

Control-A - skips to the beginning of a line
Control-E - skips to the end of a line
Control-K - deletes everything between the cursor and the end of the line
Control-H - backspace (not too useful)
Control-D - forward delete (very useful when you're using a lab computer with those horrible keyboards from 1999 with no forward delete key)

They're handy because you don't have to move your fingers from the home row. In particular I love ctrl-A and ctrl-E. Unfortunately, there are many more emacs shortcuts that aren't supported, but at least we have these basic ones. Of course, most Carbon apps don't support the emacs shortcuts at all.

[blackbird_1.0]

Originally posted by - - e r i k - -:
Or even better: Searching for songs in the systemwide spotlight menu plays them instantly in iTunes.

Oh, this is how it currently works in Tiger

That's pretty awesome.

[kilechki]

Originally posted by - - e r i k - -:
Or even better: Searching for songs in the systemwide spotlight menu plays them instantly in iTunes.

Oh, this is how it currently works in Tiger

Does it play the song and stop, or does it play the song and go on with the current playlist? With quicksilver, opening a song only results in a single play, which is frustrating. Users cannot want to choose each song they want to play...
If it works - and fast -, that's great piece of news. Still 6 features to get..

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally posted by kilechki:
Does it play the song and stop, or does it play the song and go on with the current playlist? With quicksilver, opening a song only results in a single play, which is frustrating. Users cannot want to choose each song they want to play...
If it works - and fast -, that's great piece of news. Still 6 features to get..

It plays the song and goes on with the playlist.

[Busemann]

I'd really like gapless playback, VBR AAC encoding, automatic lossless -> aac conversion for iPods, Internet sharing and a better ripping engine w/ error reporting. I hope it will be released at WWDC, but we'll see

[Busemann]

Originally Posted by CharlesS

iTunes is pretty much the poster child for a Good Carbon App

Really? Bringing up any window (preferences, get info, open stream etc) blocks the entire app, OS9 style! There's no right clicking in text fields either, which is something all good apps should have imho (for access to the spell checker etc).

Compared to the other iApps it really feels "old".

[Weyland-Yutani]

Originally Posted by Millennium

Because he thinks Cocoa is some kind of magical make-my-application-better technology, rather than a tool for writing applications.

I think Twilly was pushing your button. And succeding I might add

There is no reason to rewrite iTunes. It is already pretty well written. The Finder on the other hand....!!!

cheers

W-Y

[Millennium]

Originally Posted by CharlesS

These work in Cocoa apps (and in the Terminal):

Control-E - skips to the end of a line

They're handy because you don't have to move your fingers from the home row. In particular I love ctrl-A and ctrl-E.

Um, E isn't on the home row, at least not in QWERTY.

[mpancha]

Originally Posted by hmurchison2001

What I mean is that if iTunes is to become the center of our music management then it's going to have become less single user centric and more networked. I think people like the idea having a single music database that all family members can access. However our current tagging doesn't suite this method. We need all metadata for files to support multiple user settings. Everything from tagging, star ratings and eq settings needs to be encapulated into one file for every user in the household.

Agreed. I have a PC and an Ibook, and hate that I need duplicate copies of my mp3 library on both systems. before I made the switch to iTunes, I just had a shared directory on my server that I accessed everything from, but with my getting prepared for an eventual iPod, I needed to switch to iTunes.

Another feature that would help me out personally since having the iBook means my mp3 library goes with me, is mirroring the mp3 collection on the server and the iBook, and eventually the iPod.

At least that way, in case somethign has to be formatted, there's a mirrored copy on the network.

[Millennium]

Originally Posted by hmurchison2001

What I mean is that if iTunes is to become the center of our music management then it's going to have become less single user centric and more networked. I think people like the idea having a single music database that all family members can access.

The RIAA will never allow that to happen. They wouldn't let you share your CDs among members of your own family, if only they could find a way to prevent you from doing it. They certainly won't allow digital music to work that way.

However our current tagging doesn't suite this method. We need all metadata for files to support multiple user settings. Everything from tagging, star ratings and eq settings needs to be encapulated into one file for every user in the household.

Impossible for much of the metadata, which is stored as part of the file (ID3 tags in MP3s and similar structures in MP4 and others). Apple does not dictate the standards used in these formats, and if those standards cannot handle multiple users -which they can't- then Apple is stuck. Interoperability is king.

[mpancha]

[QUOTE=Millennium]The RIAA will never allow that to happen. They wouldn't let you share your CDs among members of your own family, if only they could find a way to prevent you from doing it. They certainly won't allow digital music to work that way.
QUOTE]

I can understand, even if I disagree, that part of it. But this is for my personal, my own, no one else besides me's use. I just want my music centrally stored so if I'm at my desktop, I can get to the same music I can get when I'm sitting outside with my laptop, which is the same music I have when I'm driving the car using an iPod (of course that's in the future when I get around to getting one).

[kilechki]

I am curious to see if Apple chooses to keep the same set of features for iTunes PC and Mac. If they do, it could be the explanation of the long wait for the new iTunes and altogether be seen as a wrong decision. As iTunes 5 seems to be cocoa-only (like QT7), it could use Webkit to draw iTMS and use CoreImage for many new sexy animations. If Apple decides to keep the exact same iTunes on PC and Mac, however, this would probably never happen. Webkit is not to be ported on Windows, whose architecture is, graphic-wise, too different to easily delegate the drawing of some elements to CI and Quartz.

So we would still have to use the ugly and slow XML-based iTMS without iTunes conforming to the look and behavior of most OS X application. This is really sad for iTunes sounds like Apple's flagship application, the center of the media hub, especially with its new ability to play videos. By now, I completely agree with Buseman on the obsolete feeling of iTunes. This app has already surprised many switchers I know when they discovered that moving the window with the animations "on" on their brand new PB 1.67 Ghz brought the framerate below 5-6 fps! iTunes can really turn to a shame for a company that says to be the most innovative of its category.
Apple has to do something with iTunes quickly if they want to keep the attractivity of their 2-pillars edifice iTunes+iPod.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by kilechki

As iTunes 5 seems to be cocoa-only

Based on what? The only evidence at all that it's based on Cocoa is how long it's taking them to get it ready for release.

[Busemann]

I'll eat my hat if iTunes 5 isn't rewritten in some form. People who say it is "perfect" obviously use it very casually.

That the new QT player is cocoa (and also multi-platform) suggests that iTunes could follow the same path.