Veteran Member
|
I'm going on record here and now by saying iTunes 8 is going to be a major new version. It may even be rewritten to the point of being considered a new platform. It could even be rebranded.
I'll expand my thoughts but here are some things I think will make it. 1. Server version- Frequently there are now multiple libraries and caches of music stored in silos in the typical home. It's time for Apple to have a robust solution for managing the media needs of a family or small group. The ability to centrally store data yet locally manage/manipulate the metadata is crucial to moving iTunes like apps into a more multi-user environment. Storage space is rapidly increasing in size and decreasing in cost but the management "costs" of storage will always rise unless one move to a more sophiscated method of storing and retrieving data. 2.New organizational structure - iTunes 7 does some weird things. I've downloaded video files that pop up in my music library. Some podcasts don't show up where the podscasts should go. iTunes 8 should not have these problems. The metadata encoded in the file should place each item in its proper place. Video/Movie files should not be in my music library. Stopping messing up my feng shui Apple. 3. Better editing tools (metadata editing) -I've often wondered why I cannot modify certain chunks of data in iTunes. I've imported songs before that have certain sort attributes that I'd love to edit such as "date added". Give me a Power Users option to fix what iTunes sometimes screwsup regardless of fault. 4. Realtime Apple Lossless to AAC encoding/syncing - I want to rip my CDs into Apple Lossless Encoding yet when I sync my iPod/iPhone I want to be able to choose on the fly compression. At home I want the most pristine quality I can get but on the road 256k AAC is more than enough. Computers are now fast enough to do this. Please make it happen so that I can rip to one codec and still keep flexibility for mobile product. 5. HD movie support-- A no brainer. I expect iT8 to be the version that brings forth HD 720p movies from iTunes from multiple studios. 6. Fix the damn radio feature- Why Apple hasn't created iTunes radio is beyond me or perhaps technology. Internet Radio(IR) needs to be looked at as a new medium. We need to generate a way to marry the quality of radio (diverse playlist, DJ etc) with the power of computing. There's no reason why I shouldn't have IR with embedded metadata that links me to iTunes tracks, podcasts or films. This is a revenue potential for Apple or anyone who can Enterprise. If I hear a song on IR in iTunes I should be able to click a button and go to that song on iTunes for purchase or subscribe to the podcast. The computer is NOT a Typewriter folks!! 7. Beef up the community of iTunes- come'on the rating system sucks. I don't want to read people blathering about music unless we share some commonality in music taste. A rating system based on a Reputation Management system will track other users who tend to like the same music and give priority to their views. This is more important to me. Cap the iMix limit. I don't want to wade through 90 track iMixes. Pick your favorite tunes up to 25 tracks please. 8. Parental Controls- Going along with central storage and metadata editing would be a security system that would allow the family admin (aka parent) to flag files that should not be accessable via some family members. Once a piece of media is flagged nc17 or whatever it immediately is hidden from the computers of those who are barred from nc17 media. 9. Lyric support- iT8 should be able to retrieve lyrics from an Apple iTunes server and import them into the proper song. This way if I forget the title of a song I can do a lyrics search and find the song. 10. Revolutionary Personal Media sharing- Apple should allow iT8 to become the conduit to enable personal sharing via broadcasting services through Wide Area Bonjour. iTunes would handle the connection This would allow you to literally publish or subscribe to end user content set up as a service on a personal computer. Think of Apple's answer to You Tube but better since audio would equally be supported. No money involved and Apple's bandwidth isn't used ..iT8 just manages the connection from end to end. omgwtfbbq |
quote |
Less than Stellar Member
|
If half the things on your list come to fruition with iTunes 8 (hell, even 9), I'd be very happy. Nice list.
|
quote |
Formerly Roboman, still
awesome Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Portland, OR
|
I agree that iTunes is in need of an overhaul - in recent years, it's basically been a katamari, glomming up new features left and right. I don't know if you ordered your list in terms of importance, but I definitely see an "iTunes server" as being important. I'm not saying Apple should start making "Home Servers" like Microsoft - maybe a regular desktop will become the home server, or something - but server functionality needs to be there.
and i guess i've known it all along / the truth is, you have to be soft to be strong |
quote |
Veteran Member
Join Date: Jan 2005
|
For the server stuff, I just want to be able to designate a cheapo NAS as as a server for the 5 Macs in my house. Let everyone add content, make playlists, etc, with some public and some private. Keep the database from being borked by multiple users making changes at the same time. Allow me to designate a playlist or two to keep on my MacBook Pro's internal drive that is easy to change (like you can with an iPhone) so I can be on-the-go with some basic entertainment.
If that's the only new feature in iTunes 8, I'll be happy. |
quote |
@kk@pennytucker.social
Join Date: Jan 2005
|
I'm assuming that iTunes 8 will be introduced in the fall along with new iPods. I'm hoping that they finally start to introduce HD video to the ITS. I've never bought anything from the ITS, but it just seems ridiculous that they haven't offered it yet.
The server idea sounds great. I already have two Macs and plan on owning more as I get older. I would like to make it easier to share the music among all the computers. |
quote |
Veteran Member
|
Yes
In fact with today's multi-computer household developers will have to be keen to offering "Family License" versions of popular applications and bonus points to those who effectively allow their apps to share redundant data. I'm not necesarily looking for iTunes to handle everything. I still want a Quicktime player that is improved. However there are some rough edges that need to be smoothed away in iTunes. I'm seeing people cobble together shared libraries on external storage but I'd love to see a drop dead easy way blessed by Apple. That also means I could back up one volume and protect my media. I think that the ability to transcode Apple Lossless to AAC is a biggie as well. I realize that I probably cannot tell the difference between 320k AAC and Lossless but hell the datarate is close enough I may as well choose lossless. For iPods and iPhone though 160Kbps is fine with me. Slap some SSE optimizations in Quicktime to allow 3x transcoding of ALAC to AAC and I'm a happy camper. Now Leopard gives us some tools that may make features like this more feasible. Time Machine I believe piggybacks on a new API that tracks file system changes better. Spotlight too I'd presume. I've read a blurb about metadata that doesn't get torched when some files change. Core Data is faster...how feasible would it be to add a local store in CD with your cache of Metadata? Bonjour now supports Wide Area Networking and DNS discovery. Nice...once uploads get faster and people decide to start pushing more content to at least friends and family that opens up new avenues of sharing. omgwtfbbq |
quote |
Member
Join Date: Jan 2006
|
I like the thread, though my thoughts are a bit nebulous.
I keep thinking how iTunes is now clearly the leader in its field. Given iPod's immense/established success and iPhone's new success, Apple can maybe be a bit radical and really move things in different directions. It may be too soon, but I can see a time when iTunes has a name change because its focus broadens somewhat as Apple leverages its popularity to include increasing functionality. In essence, the OS will be far less relevant in terms "who's winning." If you spend all your time on iTunes/iEverything, who cares what your box runs? |
quote |
Stallion
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Milwaukee
|
Run faster, take up less resources, get a programmer writing it that knows what optimization means. It runs so SLOW on windows!!
|
quote |
9" monochrome
Join Date: May 2004
Location: 🇦🇺
|
Quote:
Seriously, this is a great list. I think the server version idea is good and perhaps the iTunes team could take a leaf out of the Aperture 1.5 team's approach with regard to effective library management. Organsational structure is a pet peeve of mine too - and I know I'm not alone. Further to your concerns, why do movie trailers show up as podcasts? And why can't I move an isolated "podcast" video clip out of the movies section and into its home in the Podcast section? I also like your idea about maintaining an Apple Lossless library and then having on the fly AAC encoding for iPods ... although if you filled, for example, a 20GB iPod with music that needed to be encoded it would still take a while. For my shuffle I don't mind the wait, but a fully loaded iPod might be a different story. Better editing of metadata would be a welcome addition as too the the ability to find and download lyrics automatically, which shouldn't be that much of a challenge to the code monkeys at Apple. Good stuff - I hope iTunes *insert more apt name here* evolves along these lines. Last edited by Mac+ : 2007-07-18 at 09:57. Reason: typos |
|
quote |
Veteran Member
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Amsterdam
|
The check-playlist-for-iPod-transfer interface!!!!
I want iTunes 8, or rather iTunes 7.next to: #1 Make sure that playlists grouped in folders appear just like that in the playlist selection box of my iPod. I have tons of playlists and I have a really hard time making the right selection, because the selection list is not in alphabetical order, but in the order in which they are in the side bar, but *without the folders*. This. Is. So. Stupid. And. Un. Practical. #2 Tell me the size of each playlist in the select-for-transfer window and tell me how full my iPod nano would be if I synced now. I'm fed up with finding out *after* syncing that I can't sync all checked playlists, and then having no idea how much room is left and what size playlists are, so I don't know what I can do best about it. This is a friggin' crucial part of iTunes' user interface, it should be Apple's visiting card and it's design is crap and keeps me from changing playlists at all! Last edited by Doxxic : 2007-07-18 at 09:11. Reason: Post looked a bit *too* angry... |
quote |
Veteran Member
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Amsterdam
|
Instead of a central server, a solution could rather be to move media sharing functionality from their respective apps to Mac OS X's central sharing preference pane, so photos and music can be simply shared whenever your computer is on.
It would also be nice to allow for networking activity when the laptop lid is down (i'm not sure how this goes with sleep mode though). I think what's behind the wish for a server solution are these concrete wishes (in my case anyway): + I'd love to be able to keep sharing playlists with iTunes not running. (same for my photo libraries) + I'd passionately love iTunes music to keep streaming to Airport XPress when the lid of my MacBook is down. If possible? (same for making backups via the wireless network at night when the MacBook sleeps) What keeps my wife and me from sharing stuff over a LAN easily is that you often need to start the respective apps on the other person's computer in order to get their files shared. And make sure the lids aren't down. I think that's really all there is to it. Last edited by Doxxic : 2007-07-18 at 04:29. |
quote |
Senior Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Chicago
|
I'd like to see syncing within iTunes limited to media. The PIM-type stuff should be in iSync, regardless of the device. iTunes should not be a device manager.
|
quote |
rams it
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Seattle
|
Quote:
Sad, but true. Unless there is to be an 'iSync for Windows' (Which would be, at this point, not at all unusual), PIM-type stuff will continue to be synced through iTunes. You had me at asl ....... |
|
quote |
can't type
Join Date: Oct 2005
|
Quote:
But is MORE features really what we need? iTunes seems to suffer from Feature-creep. They should really make two versions. One where the users can get all new goodies for every revision, and an oldschool version that plays and synchs, and not that much more... |
|
quote |
Not sayin', just sayin'
|
I'd be mucho happy for number 2 alone.
|
quote |
Which way is up?
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Boyzeee
|
I would strongly disagree with re-branding. Apple has carved out a niche in the market place that is absolutely dependent upon the iTunes/iPod brand name. I don't think you could rename iTunes any easier than Coke or Ford or Xerox. It would not make good business sense to do so. They could rename the store (which, in fact, they have done, sort of—iTunes Music Store was changed to iTunes Store, although iTunes Media Store would be better).
- AppleNova is the best Mac-users forum on the internet. We are smart, educated, capable, and helpful. We are also loaded with smart-alecks! :) - Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. (Mat 5:9) |
quote |
9" monochrome
Join Date: May 2004
Location: 🇦🇺
|
Yeah, I understand the marketing side of it and have said as much before.
It's just a shit match for what the app does and the de-evolution of iTunes into a kitchen sink app is something I've lamented before. I'm actually pleasantly surprised by this thread to see others echoing the sentiment, vis-a-vis the organisational structure and handling of PIM and photo data. I'm pretty sure we've even discussed a separate sync app before too. I know it is hard to rebrand, but it doesn't change the fact that the name is not a good representation of what they're forcing the app to become. I just don't like it. |
quote |
Veteran Member
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Leiden, the Netherlands
|
iGroove?
|
quote |
Member
Join Date: Jan 2006
|
iPod mini became iPod nano. Re-branding can be a power move if done well.
|
quote |
Member
|
Social networking features will be the big iTunes 8 feature. It will be interesting to see just how Apple implements it.
Combine this with fullscreen video iPods that can stream music to other iPods (and computers?) and you've got Apple neutering the one unique (if poorly implemented and impossible to take advantage of) feature that the Zune has, and bring a generally copyright-friendly version of music sharing (without actually transferring files) to a mass audience. Everything else will just be gravvy. |
quote |
Travels via TARDIS
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Earthsea
|
Gee, wouldn't it be nice if iTunes became a Cocoa app one day?
Also, if it could make better use of multiple cores when encoding, that would be amazing. And with these two items alone, most of you will think I'm on crack. Because, frankly, I doubt it will happen. No matter how much I wish it would. Also, having better multiple-library support (particularly with the increased distribution/use of external hard drives) would be great. I hacked together a kind of "centralized server" for my family a long time ago, but it involves lots of perl and other ugly hacks. It'd be nice to see iTunes do it cleanly. But I won't get my hopes up. Because the music industry would have a cow, unless Apple could somehow limit it to 5 computers or something. Apparently I call the cops when I see people litter. |
quote |
Selfish Heathen
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
|
|
quote |
Travels via TARDIS
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Earthsea
|
For one, they'd be strong-armed into using standard Cocoa widgets, so iTunes would be forced to look like a standard app. They haven't done that in a long time, unfortunately.
I'm endlessly infuriated by iTunes' use of modal dialogs for editing song information. If you're going to block my use of the main iTunes window, USE AN EFFING SHEET. At least then it becomes plainly obvious what happened. Sheets, I believe, are a Cocoa thing. On the other hand, I don't think editing song details should block your use of the main window, but that's another issue. As another example, spell checking in text fields would be nice sometimes. Also, most other features that are available in any NSTextView would also be convenient. Sure, a lot of song and artist names aren't words, but there are many more that are and it'd be fantastic if Command-; would work as I expect. iTunes has always stuck out as an "almost-but-not-quite Mac app" because it has to live in both the Mac and Windows worlds. It's subtly annoying. Also, it's my understanding that using Cocoa makes it much easier to extend common UI elements. I know a lot of people would like to do this, and maybe it's why Apple avoids Cocoa. They do have all those pesky DRM code paths to lock down, and Cocoa (actually, Objective-C) might make it too easy to inspect the data flow... Aside from running on Windows, are there any reasons you think it should remain a Carbon / custom-UI app? EDIT: In my years of iTunes use, I've occasionally seen very strange rendering bugs (text tearing, graphics corruption, etc…). I suspect this is because so much of their UI is custom-rendered. I imagine using standard controls would cure a lot of these rare bugs, not to mention consistency with other Mac apps. Apparently I call the cops when I see people litter. Last edited by ShadowOfGed : 2007-07-18 at 23:56. Reason: Another last-minute thought… |
quote |
Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Pittsburgh
|
Cocoa is great. But it normally isn't logical to rewrite a mature app unless there are serious issues with the code base. The amount of time and money spent rewriting would more than outweigh any potential gains in architectural flexibility and maintainability. The same can be said for the ease of development vs introduction of bugs during a rewrite.
On top of that, making an App cocoa really doesn't have anything to do with using standard widgets. Standard or custom widgets can be used no matter whether cocoa or carbon. If anything, it is easier to create custom widgets with cocoa. So what am I hoping for in iTunes 8? I would love to see video playback and library management improved. iTunes could easily handle video as well as it does audio. The two require nearly identical interfaces but video needs slightly different tags for more intuitive browsing. Oh, and switch to browsing by album artist rather than artist. (iTunes and iPod) Then we wouldn't have so many duplicate entries for artists which "feature" other artists on each of their tracks. |
quote |
Selfish Heathen
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
|
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
But, wait... didn't you just say that using Cocoa would strong-arm Apple into using standard widgets? Quote:
Quote:
The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting. |
||||||
quote |
Member
|
Quote:
I don't know what's happening below the hood but for an app that has to show lists from a database and play an mp3 or video it really is dog slow. iT server seems like a good idea, with a highly optimized SQL database for the music, it could run on a old G3 with enough memory... "That’s because an “integrated Intel graphics” chip steals power from the CPU and siphons off memory from system-level RAM." (c)'06 ww.apple.com |
|
quote |
@kk@pennytucker.social
Join Date: Jan 2005
|
iTunes on both my iBook G4 and iMac G4 aren't that bad at all. The only problem I usually have is with Cover Flow. That slows things down a lot.
|
quote |
Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Pittsburgh
|
Quote:
I see four possibilities: * You have extremely high standards for responsiveness * More ram is needed * Your music collections rivals that of the library of congress * Software or hardware on your machine is crunk |
|
quote |
Selfish Heathen
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
|
Quote:
iTunes does use a database of sorts for most of its data. If it had to access all of the files directly each time it loaded, it would be excruciatingly slow for thousands of files. When you add a file to iTunes, it imports the metadata into its own database. That's what those "iTunes Library" and "iTunes Music Library.xml" files represent. The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting. |
|
quote |
Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Pittsburgh
|
True, it does cache much of the data in a couple files. Heck, one is even binary. However, almost all of the data is also stored and sometimes accessed directly from the files themselves. Other data is parsed from an xml file. Then there is the music itself. In a database based implentation access to this data wouldn't be through the relatively high cost route of file system access.
Its a gray line, but I wouldn't put its implementation in the "database" category. iTunes resembles a database because of the tabular data display. But the implementation is far from a database in my opinion. By most of the data, I am refering to album art. It is by far the most heavy weight metadata. I think it was moved back into song files a version or two ago. Aw hell, I just realized that I might be remembering that switch backwards. Anyone know where album art currently resides? Last edited by dfiler : 2007-07-19 at 21:04. |
quote |
Posting Rules | Navigation |
|
Thread Tools | |
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
iTunes Qs - Newbie | Track_40 | Genius Bar | 7 | 2007-06-10 17:14 |
Kramer loses it live | Mac+ | AppleOutsider | 98 | 2006-11-28 00:14 |
Disturbing Truth About Apple, iPods and iTunes | canyouhearmenow | Apple Products | 68 | 2006-05-02 17:43 |
iTunes Library Mgmt with an External HD...Help | nmkramer | Genius Bar | 1 | 2005-10-09 03:22 |
iTunes 5 - OK to delete Previous iTunes Library files? | jsk173 | Genius Bar | 0 | 2005-09-12 19:40 |