Maybe it's because we've grown up with iTunes that we find it okay. The argument that it is bloated by having to do too many things -- such as manage videos, apps, books, Apple Music, podcasts and iOS backups -- is undeniable, so we don't deny it. We just fire up iTunes, sometimes blink a little as we try to remember where things are today, and then we get on with it. The new iTunes 12.4 is an attempt to reduce the number of times you have to blink.
It doesn't succeed. This is all going to sound very negative, because the bloating is true and the blinking is true, but the improvements in 12.4 are so slight that they're going to seem drowned in the explanation of what it is they've improved. Keep in mind that iTunes is ... okay. That's not a great thing to say about any software, it feels especially wrong describing an Apple app, but if iTunes doesn't enthuse us, neither does it stop us using it.
Also,
MacNN is revisiting its extensive --
and exclusive -- iTunes testing from last summer. This comprehensive analysis of iTunes under stress is re-examining our previous results, and also looking to duplicate last week's assorted reports of data loss. Testing this much, and in so many hardware configurations, necessarily takes time -- so this first Hands On is focused on the new or altered controls in the app. It's about what buttons you press, what menus you choose, and whether it's all clearer than in the previous version.
Yes and no
The major change in iTunes 12.4 is in the way you choose between working with music, apps, videos, and so on. The whole iTunes app gets a slightly sleeker, thinner look from the updated OS X El Capitan 10.11.5 it comes in, but the more significant change is the dropping of icons in favor of a menu. The previous iTunes at the top, the new at the bottom:
This does mean that to choose anything but the current option, initially music, you have to click on that dropdown menu and select what you want. That's slower than just clicking on a single icon in the bar, but in every other way it is an improvement. That's because of the ellipses at the end of the row of icons in the old version: if you couldn't see the option you wanted in the icons, you clicked on the three dots and got more.
Maybe everybody figured that out, but certainly it made everyone blink: when you don't know that's what happens, clicking on those dots feels like stabbing around randomly in the hunt for what you need. This way, you see it's a menu, and having to select it every time means you see what else is in there, every time. You can also edit the menu, though only to remove or re-add certain sections: you can't drag to bring the ones you use the most to the top.
Back and back again
There's arguably been an improvement to how you control your iOS devices: to the right of the menu bar in these screenshots you can see a button with an iPad icon in it. It may not be very obviously an iPad, but it is very obviously a button: previously this was a flat icon in the menu bar.
Pressing this got us our first iTunes 12.4 blink moment, though. When you click on that, you leave Music and go into controlling your iPhone: it's where you can specify backups and restores, it's where you can drag documents to apps. Only, what happens now is that all controls, vanish except for the ones to do with controlling iOS.
The change looks more dramatic than it is: all that's really happened is that the new drop-down menu is gone. Yet the first time you go in to this section, you're left wondering what to do to get back out again. The answer is in that you use the back arrow icon. This is the same icon that iTunes has used all over the place, from Apple Music to your own playlists, but it's another case of you understand what to do only when you know what to do.
Playlists
That may also be the case with what is either a new feature in playlists, or we just never noticed before. In the top banner of each playlist there are now more controls, though don't get used to them, because they vary. If your playlist is one created in an automatic Genius-like way based on a single track you picked, then you get a Refresh button. This redoes the Genius feature: where previously it looked at what other users who like this single track have played with it, now it does that looking again and overwrites the playlist with a slightly different one.
It's not as if that's losing you anything, your music is still on there, but if you thump that button you do get a brand new playlist, and you can't go back. There is the same back button that is now everywhere, but it takes you out of the playlist instead of returning it back to its previous state. There is also an Undo option in the little-used iTunes menu bar, but it's greyed out.
Again, this is a playlist you chose to create using Apple's Genius feature, so we can't complain when it does the Genius lark once more, especially not when we pressed the button. Yet maybe we were foolish, but we didn't know what Refresh meant. We had a bit of an idea, but it's not the clearest set of controls, and all you can say is that it's better than the various icons next to it.
These icons are how you mark that you love and adore this playlist, if the urge takes you, and how you share it with people or how you download music. Downloading music threw us: is this another new feature, or just one we couldn't find before? Previously we've had a playlist, and accepted that several items picked from Apple Music had a download button next to them. We'd have added them to our playlist by clicking Add to My Music in Apple Music, but it's as if we then needed to go to My Music and somehow catch them. Did the download icon next to an Apple Music track mean we'd downloaded it from Apple Music, or mean that we still needed to?
Ultimately, we'd just shrug a bit. We'd take it for granted that those items in our playlist with a download icon next to them would play when we had an Internet connection, and might or might not when we don't. Now there is this one download button to rule them all, and seemingly we've got all of our Apple Music picks downloaded: the download icon is gone from them all.
We have to say seemingly, because it's not until you play each of them that you know for sure. This is an Apple Music thing, rather than an iTunes one, but there are tracks on the service that appear to let you download them, yet then won't play in certain circumstances. They won't stream over a cell connection, but they will over Wi-Fi. It's perplexing, and we'll see whether this new download button fixes it.
Sidebar
From the dawn of time to about 2014, iTunes used to have a sidebar: a panel down the lefthand side that got you one-click access to various items. Then it was removed forever (actually, just hidden) -- until this new iTunes 12.4. Only, if we can applaud bringing back something that worked, we can't say we noticed all that much because you could always get most of the same features.
At some point shortly after the sidebar vanished from the default view, we clicked on Playlists in our music, and a version of it popped right up. We've never switched that off again.
What's missing
Our
MacNN testing last summer was in response to how iTunes seemed to be mangling tags, the words you can use to describe tracks and make them easier to find in a search. Last week, there were allegations of Apple Music deleting people's music, and claims that Apple was releasing a fix with this new iTunes version. We can't tell if there's been any real change in this update, but what Apple really claimed was that there would be further safeguards.
Speaking of Apple Music, though, we would've thought that such an important feature would get some attention. Thinking about it, we would've thought that there'd be an Apple Music entry in that new drop-down menu that lists all the types of things iTunes controls. There isn't and there still isn't an Apple Music button: the service remains behind four different controls, For You, New, Radio, and something dusty and untouched called Connect.
This is borne of how Apple wants Apple Music to pervade iTunes, and for you to use it at the very least as much as you do your regular-owned music but it's another blink. Again, it's a blink until you know, but Apple's supposed to be good at making things clear. We have to remember that New doesn't mean newly-released music, as we keep assuming, it means music you haven't heard yet, for instance. We have to remember that whether we search within For You or this New, we get the same results.
That's all, folks
We said that the improvements would get lost in the explanation of what needed improvements. You could summarize this entire update as having a new dropdown menu, and the return of a sidebar you'd replaced anyway.
Yet we say this, and sound really critical. We are really critical, but with a sense of proportion: it is undeniable that iTunes is confusing, but we and millions of others cope with it fine. It doesn't feel as if the tweaks in the new version 12.4 make much of a difference; it does sometimes feel as if a few more little tweaks would be useful.
-- William Gallagher (
@WGallagher)
Readers: do you have an app that you'd like to see us review? Developers: do you want us to take a look at your app? Send your suggestions to our Tips email.
Top