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iTunes will never work well

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Re: iTunes will never work well

#111

Post by lake99 »

reitanqild wrote: post #91
icebraining wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with Google Maps? I've just been watching a non-technical friend use it and the only thing that wasn't intuitive was adding an extra stop to her trip (and even then, she discovered it without needing to search for help).

So tell me how am I supposed to find a route between x and y from my phone without being on x or y first? It is doable, but how is it supposed to be done? (For context: IIRC there used to be a shortcut to navigation for that feature. And yes I think ux designers mindlessly copying each others or Apple are at least partially to blame.(

Hit the directions button. You see two text fields, with the first one already filled out as "Your location". Change that. Enter the destination next.

This was on Android. Is your UX any different?

Re: iTunes will never work well

#112

Post by jdeibele »

I was surprised (and pleased) to see Apple add "rename" to the file menu in Finder for El Capitan. Coming from Windows, I found the "click on a file to rename it" very unintuitive. Evidently a lot of other people did, too.

Now if they'd make it so Finder always opens a window if you select Finder and a window isn't open ...

Re: iTunes will never work well

#113

Post by Dain42 »

laurentdc wrote: post #106
pfarnsworth wrote: post #98

iTunes is the worst piece of software I've come across in a long time. I banned it from my computer until I upgraded to my iPhone 7. Now, the only computer with enough disk space to accommodate my backups of 256GB is my personal desktop, so I was forced to install iTunes. It's infuriating and in the 4 years that I haven't used iTunes, it hasn't gotten any better. I would love to blacklist whoever is responsible for i…

The last good iTunes I've used was on OS X 10.4 on a Mac Mini G4. There were little iGimmicks around so it would play music, sync with the iPod, that's it. From there it went downhill.

Somewhere around 4.9 or 5.x is when I think it was best. They'd added library functionality for movies, TV, and audiobooks, which meant it was a one-stop shop for my media library on my Mac at the time. It was also still fairly lightweight, because it didn't have loads of stuff tacked on to it yet.

Really, the biggest thing I miss from iTunes, as a Google Play user, are the Smart Playlists. I loved being able to pull in every song I had from a set of artists and then shuffle through that. The "radio" features from Google just doesn't do it for me. I rarely want to listen to a bunch of music that's not in my library but which is similar to something I do have there. I'd much rather self-curate what I'm listening to. But I don't think the demand is there for that as much, now. I still wish they'd at least remove the 1000 song cap on playlists, so I could manually do this.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#114

Post by Dain42 »

rtpg wrote: post #104
striking wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their reputation stemmed from the days where everything was discoverable. Want to delete a file? There's a trash can glued to your dock. Need to perform a function but don't know the name? Look it up in the Help menu's search box. Now, though, they've done the Windows 8 thing of overloading gestures and hiding behaviors. Want to see your notifications? Two-finger swipe to the left, starting from the edge of the touch…

want to eject a disk? drag it to the trash can...? I think Apple was good at keeping things consistent across apps, but the chosen metaphors were sometimes just as confusing (if worse) than the blessed windows one. Not that it matters, everything is learned behaviour anyways. Consistency is already a great achievement.

> want to eject a disk? drag it to the trash can...?

That was just something that was there forever, basically since 1984. It was part of the Macintosh vernacular. You could also right-click to eject.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#115

Post by wruza »

threeseed wrote: post #95
striking wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their reputation stemmed from the days where everything was discoverable. Want to delete a file? There's a trash can glued to your dock. Need to perform a function but don't know the name? Look it up in the Help menu's search box. Now, though, they've done the Windows 8 thing of overloading gestures and hiding behaviors. Want to see your notifications? Two-finger swipe to the left, starting from the edge of the touch…

a) If you want to see notifications click the button in the top, right corner where it's always been. b) Apple has not changed the behaviour of buttons on OSX. They still look like they always have. c) Computing resources are not finite like oil. It's there to be used. d) Which gestures are available has always been in the Trackpad system preference which has videos to show you how to use them.

On c): recharge cycles are limited, as are Amper-hours. Idk though how much it takes, I just don't like blurs, it is like you're semi-blind or your screen is damaged, sort of. But flat interface would be too ugly without all that color blots. It is like a makeup to actually bad ui. Shame on Apple they lost it at iOS 7.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#116

Post by Dain42 »

flukus wrote: post #101
agentdrtran wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But pinch to zoom is used for everything.

Maps and the occasional website (the browser used to have zoom options too) with crappy css are the only times I really need pinch zoom. It's annoying as hell when you're holding a coffee and want to zoom.

You're probably outside the 95th percentile on that one, though, and good design targets the rest of the user base. I think most people probably just got annoyed by accidentally hitting those, or by them taking up real-estate or cluttering the view.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#117

Post by ISL »

Dain42 wrote: post #114
rtpg wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

want to eject a disk? drag it to the trash can...? I think Apple was good at keeping things consistent across apps, but the chosen metaphors were sometimes just as confusing (if worse) than the blessed windows one. Not that it matters, everything is learned behaviour anyways. Consistency is already a great achievement.

> want to eject a disk? drag it to the trash can...? That was just something that was there forever, basically since 1984. It was part of the Macintosh vernacular. You could also right-click to eject.

if there was a two-button mouse....

Re: iTunes will never work well

#118

Post by Dain42 »

cageface wrote: post #79

If you're using a Mac then you should go buy yourself a copy of Swinsian now: http://swinsian.com/ It's a lean, fast native player that supports tons of formats, has great library management features, and omits all the bloat and confusion of iTunes.

It doesn't really matter to me, as I'm not a Macintosh user anymore, but does it have the smart playlist feature like iTunes?

That's the biggest thing I miss in most music players, including my current one, Google Play Music (with my all-access).

Re: iTunes will never work well

#119

Post by sirn »

striking wrote: post #23
jheriko wrote: post #11

i don't understand how apple have a reputation for good ui... all of their stuff is terrible. the main problem: zero discoverablity - i need to google how to do things, then get some snotty fanboy answer about how easy and obvious it is, but there is literally no way to infer the functionality from the design. they do love to steal context too... and interrupt your flow... ... i could go on and on, but having zero-di…

Their reputation stemmed from the days where everything was discoverable. Want to delete a file? There's a trash can glued to your dock. Need to perform a function but don't know the name? Look it up in the Help menu's search box. Now, though, they've done the Windows 8 thing of overloading gestures and hiding behaviors. Want to see your notifications? Two-finger swipe to the left, starting from the edge of the touch…

As someone who got to use a PowerBook G4 (running 10.5.8) from time to time (in fact, I'm typing this very comment on it), I fail to see how their current UI is any more undiscoverable than the UI from 7 years ago.

The trash icon was there in the Dock in 10.5, and still there in 10.11. The search function in help was there in 10.5, and still there in 10.11. To remove things from the Dock, right click the icon and the "Remove from dock" is still there in both versions. Any menu items that will open a dialog still indicates with three dots ("...") in both versions. Shortcut for opening dictionary is still not very discoverable in both versions (Cmd-Ctrl-D). I still don't know how to trigger Space/Expose without either using gesture (in 10.11) or look up the shortcut key (in 10.5).

I always see people saying Apple UI got worse in discoverability for the past few years and make it sounds like earlier releases were perfect, but I don't believe that is true. The bad part of the UI interaction was always there (e.g. drag icon from the dock to somewhere to remove it). The main difference I see is that 10.11 has a LOT more features than the 10.5, but the core interaction remain the same in regard to discoverability. In 10.11, we're exposed more to gestures, because it's quick, but there is always alternative way to trigger something without gesture.

Re: iTunes will never work well

#120

Post by wvenable »

Dain42 wrote: post #114
rtpg wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

want to eject a disk? drag it to the trash can...? I think Apple was good at keeping things consistent across apps, but the chosen metaphors were sometimes just as confusing (if worse) than the blessed windows one. Not that it matters, everything is learned behaviour anyways. Consistency is already a great achievement.

> want to eject a disk? drag it to the trash can...? That was just something that was there forever, basically since 1984. It was part of the Macintosh vernacular. You could also right-click to eject.

Right-click? On a mouse with one button?
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