skeezix
Internal Development
hey guys,
Sorry for the 'rantyness', but this literally drives me mad
The devices coudl be so useful, but Apple cripples itunes and the iphone/touch so much in the interface..
Skip the rant prelude if you like.. I just started typing and couldn't resist: iTunes drives me nuts; its one of the worst designed pieces of software around (and corrupted by its being attached to a store, though albeit a pretty good store), in terms of usability (which is odd, considering Apple is generally pretty good at it.) Anyway, I'm specifically annoyed at the iphone/itouch implications. (Did you know that each ipod variation uses a separate codebase, as evidenced by the fact each ipod has different features, and the flagship devices often have less features? But I digress..)
Anyway, for me the core problem is .. I want to be able to pick my music from a list and play it. The Cover Flow view is pretty swank, but its basicly useless once you add a few things to the device since CF has no filtering options -- it shows every artist known (including those in playlists that it also shows as playlists!) -- so if you find a collection that is say 50 different tracks by different artists, suddenly Cover Flow has 50 album covers in it with 1 track each, when you really just want one. Get a few collections and you're just screwed .. I've got a metal collection, a club collection .. bam, CF useless. Add in some soundtracks such as Hackers (a good 90s collection really) and so on... *sigh* Who wants to see Cover Flow with 200 albums wide, with 90% of them just having one track?
Likewise with the plain list style browser; Artist shows hundreds upon hundreds of artists. And I'm very picky about my 'itunes library' -- I keep my music off on another network device, and only link over selected albums to itunes, to deliberately 'keep it simple', but even that is unmanagable. (God help those who keep their entire music collection in itunes.. their ipod interface must truly suck!)
On itunes (desktop) you can do hierarchical playlists, so I briefly considered writing a tool that would read my albums and actually generate hierarchical playlists -- a playlist folder for 'artist' and then make one playlist per artist, say. And a playlist folder for playlists, and put my playlists in there. ie: Eseentially create my own hierarchy, that is useful, and thus I coudl use the playlist option on the device to play music... .. cept iphone/itouch do not support hierarchical playlists (but the 'actual ipod' players, of certain generations and disk sizes, do suport hierarchical playlists.)
So on the iphone/itouch, you can't really get magical with playlists, lest you end up in the giant quagmire problem again (though at least you can get everything in one place, and semi organized.. _manually_ since of course, itunes presents no useful way to generate playlists sensibly. Smart playlists are too limited to be useful.)
In the end, the only solution to actually having a halfway useful interface to pick and play music is to write a program to generate playlists, and have it put text up-front of the name (very short, due to display width problems) so that it sorts them right.. this way all the music would be in playlists, and you wouldnt' have to cherry pick the other interfaces. As is, Artists.. annoying to 'browse', as is Cover Flow (basicly useless).
The real solution seems obvious to me .. allow filtering in Cover Flow and the music lists; simple checkbox options in Settings even: [] show playlists in Cover Flow [] Suppress artists contained within playlists
And something people have wantes since iTunes 2 -- on the desktop [] Dont' be smart, just frakking take my directory as dragged-and-dropped in and use it; don't look it damnwell up, just call the artist what I give you. I don't care if its 50 different artists, I copied them into one folder for a virtual goddamned album, leave it that way. (Heck, you can even buy collections from Apple.. say you buy an 80s collection from iTMS, it comes down as a _playlist_ and not an actual virtual album per se .. so you buy the 80s collection and thats like 150 songs by different artists, and you're screwed right off.. so its obvious Apple hasn't even thought the UI through .. either they push you to Cover Flow (useless), or you resort to playlists (painful as heck) .. there is no elegant solution as far as I can see.)
Anyway --
Anyone have any tips to make iphone/itouch usable?
jeff
(not even going there with the fact iphone/itouch can't be sensibly used with Linux/BSD/etc)
Thanks for letting me get that off my chest (again). I'm goign to drive down to Applw HQ and spraypaint this rant on their wall someday I can't be alone here
Sorry for the 'rantyness', but this literally drives me mad
The devices coudl be so useful, but Apple cripples itunes and the iphone/touch so much in the interface..Skip the rant prelude if you like.. I just started typing and couldn't resist: iTunes drives me nuts; its one of the worst designed pieces of software around (and corrupted by its being attached to a store, though albeit a pretty good store), in terms of usability (which is odd, considering Apple is generally pretty good at it.) Anyway, I'm specifically annoyed at the iphone/itouch implications. (Did you know that each ipod variation uses a separate codebase, as evidenced by the fact each ipod has different features, and the flagship devices often have less features? But I digress..)
Anyway, for me the core problem is .. I want to be able to pick my music from a list and play it. The Cover Flow view is pretty swank, but its basicly useless once you add a few things to the device since CF has no filtering options -- it shows every artist known (including those in playlists that it also shows as playlists!) -- so if you find a collection that is say 50 different tracks by different artists, suddenly Cover Flow has 50 album covers in it with 1 track each, when you really just want one. Get a few collections and you're just screwed .. I've got a metal collection, a club collection .. bam, CF useless. Add in some soundtracks such as Hackers (a good 90s collection really) and so on... *sigh* Who wants to see Cover Flow with 200 albums wide, with 90% of them just having one track?
Likewise with the plain list style browser; Artist shows hundreds upon hundreds of artists. And I'm very picky about my 'itunes library' -- I keep my music off on another network device, and only link over selected albums to itunes, to deliberately 'keep it simple', but even that is unmanagable. (God help those who keep their entire music collection in itunes.. their ipod interface must truly suck!)
On itunes (desktop) you can do hierarchical playlists, so I briefly considered writing a tool that would read my albums and actually generate hierarchical playlists -- a playlist folder for 'artist' and then make one playlist per artist, say. And a playlist folder for playlists, and put my playlists in there. ie: Eseentially create my own hierarchy, that is useful, and thus I coudl use the playlist option on the device to play music... .. cept iphone/itouch do not support hierarchical playlists (but the 'actual ipod' players, of certain generations and disk sizes, do suport hierarchical playlists.)
So on the iphone/itouch, you can't really get magical with playlists, lest you end up in the giant quagmire problem again (though at least you can get everything in one place, and semi organized.. _manually_ since of course, itunes presents no useful way to generate playlists sensibly. Smart playlists are too limited to be useful.)
In the end, the only solution to actually having a halfway useful interface to pick and play music is to write a program to generate playlists, and have it put text up-front of the name (very short, due to display width problems) so that it sorts them right.. this way all the music would be in playlists, and you wouldnt' have to cherry pick the other interfaces. As is, Artists.. annoying to 'browse', as is Cover Flow (basicly useless).
The real solution seems obvious to me .. allow filtering in Cover Flow and the music lists; simple checkbox options in Settings even: [] show playlists in Cover Flow [] Suppress artists contained within playlists
And something people have wantes since iTunes 2 -- on the desktop [] Dont' be smart, just frakking take my directory as dragged-and-dropped in and use it; don't look it damnwell up, just call the artist what I give you. I don't care if its 50 different artists, I copied them into one folder for a virtual goddamned album, leave it that way. (Heck, you can even buy collections from Apple.. say you buy an 80s collection from iTMS, it comes down as a _playlist_ and not an actual virtual album per se .. so you buy the 80s collection and thats like 150 songs by different artists, and you're screwed right off.. so its obvious Apple hasn't even thought the UI through .. either they push you to Cover Flow (useless), or you resort to playlists (painful as heck) .. there is no elegant solution as far as I can see.)
Anyway --
Anyone have any tips to make iphone/itouch usable?
jeff
(not even going there with the fact iphone/itouch can't be sensibly used with Linux/BSD/etc)
Thanks for letting me get that off my chest (again). I'm goign to drive down to Applw HQ and spraypaint this rant on their wall someday
I can't be alone here 
