

 Apple rocks with iTunes 9, iTunes Store improvements - profquail
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/09/apple-rocks-and-rolls-with-new-ipods-itunes-lps.ars

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nicara
Anyone else feel their lineup is extremely.. non-Apple-y now?

It used to make a lot of sense - to me anyway - how they arranged their iPods
from cheap(ish)/only basic features to the luxury-versions with more features.

I.e., shuffle -> play music; nano -> all of shuffle's features + view album
covers, song texts, song titles to the music, calendar; iTouch -> all of
nano's features + the whole smartphone without phone thing

But now, ever since the introduction of the iPhone 3G, this doesn't hold true
any more. The iTouch is supposed to have all the features of the nano plus
more - but now it doesn't have a camera?

The only reason to give the nano a camera and not the iTouch would be to
distinguish it from the iPhone and market it as a gaming device. But then it
doesn't make sense how the basic model of the iTouch has a slower processor
and GPU than the iPhone.

I don't know, but from these oddities in the lineup I'd almost go as far and
predict more changes to come very shortly. Either push the iTouch more in the
gaming niche and make the nano the new multimedia device (as opposed to just
audio in the first two generations of it), or push the iTouch more into the
all-in-one direction - which would mean there ought to be a new iPhone as well
in order to keep the two apart.

Not sure if I'm making sense here, but right now the nano, iTouch, iPhone
lineup is quite counter-intuitive and almost non-transparent (yes, choice is
not always a good thing).

~~~
GHFigs
_The iTouch is supposed to have all the features of the nano plus more_

Says who?

~~~
allenbrunson
says apple's usual product lineup aesthetic.

one of the problems apple had about the time jobs came back was a confusing
product line. nobody had the discipline to say "no," so there were a bunch of
nearly identical competing products. novices had trouble picking one.

this current situation isn't nearly as bad as that one was, but it's
definitely headed in that direction.

------
ugh
Well, rocks. In a weird kind of way. The new things are all nice but iTunes
has become this huge pile of features, thrown together with no sense of
direction.

Case in point: Genius Mixes and iTunes DJ. They both do the same. DJ gives you
more options (like a history of played songs, better display options, voting,
etc.) while Mixes can pick out similar songs (which DJ doesn’t do). Both have
the purpose to play a never ending stream of music. Why the heck do they keep
them separate? That doesn’t make any sense at all. Combine the two.

Kick out the old and consolidate. That would be a bold goal for iTunes X.

------
MikeCapone
For those who are wondering (it's the first thing I checked): It's still not
64 bits.

~~~
pyre
As someone mentioned elsewhere (Gruber I think), it uses the older Carbon API
which is being left in the 32-bit world. They'll have to upgrade it to Cocoa
to make it a 64-bit app, but Cocoa isn't ported to Windows... So they have
limited options:

* Port Cocoa to Windows and port iTunes to Cococa

* (Gruber's prediction) Port iTunes to be entirely based on Webkit (though I don't know how well that would work as I've never looked into Webkit performance/issues on Windows)

* Port Mac iTunes to Cocoa maintain Windows iTunes in Carbon

* Drop Windows iTunes (not going to happen)

* Port iTunes to iPhone/iPod Touch and drop it on OS X (yea right)

* Port Carbon to 64-bit -- even though it has been stated that they won't in a push to force developers onto Cocoa.

None of those are particularly attractive decisions. Going back on their word
and porting Carbon to 64-bit or porting iTunes to be entirely a Webkit view
seem to be the only options with the least friction, IMO.

I think that porting Cocoa to Windows would probably be a larger undertaking
than it would be worth it, though they may have some portions of Cocoa ported
already (IIRC, Safari is Cocoa, but they maybe have only ported what they
needed to make Safari work).

~~~
wvenable
"Port Cocoa to Windows and port iTunes to Cococa"

OpenStep was already ported Windows NT at one time (
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OPENSTEP_on_Windows_NT.jpg> ). They already
port other libraries to Windows to support iTunes and Safari. I think this
option makes the most sense moving forward if they want to continue building
cross-platform applications.

~~~
pyre
Arguably iTunes is on Windows to support Windows users of iPhones/iPods (to
expand their 'device market' beyond just the Mac ecosystem). Safari.... not
really sure why Safari is there other than to try and support Windows
developers of iPhone-targeted web-apps (before there was an official iPhone
API). But that conclusion is questionable seeing how there are no Windows
development tools for iPhone apps now that there _is_ an official API.

> _They already port other libraries to Windows to support iTunes and Safari._

iTunes doesn't use Cocoa/ObjC. It uses the Carbon/C (C++ too?) that was a way
to transition between OS/9 and OSX back in the day (You could download the
Carbon libraries for OS/9 and a Carbon app would run in OS/9 with them).
Safari is Cocoa/ObjC so far as I know, but it's just a wrapper around Webkit
for the most part. They could have ported the Windows version of Safari to
Carbon, or just ported the parts of the Cocoa libraries that Safari needs
(rather than the whole thing).

So.... it looks something like this:

    
    
      Port X% of Cocoa to Win32 + Port iTunes to Cocoa
    

Depending on that percentage _and_ the amount of time it would take to port
iTunes itself to Cocoa would determine how costly it is (time & money). I
realize that you're also saying that porting however much of Cocoa over to
Win32(+ Win64?) would help them develop more cross-platform apps, but I don't
see this being part of their strategy.

Unless you prescribe to the John C. Dvorák line of thinking that Apple is
going to go cross-platform, make a way to seamlessly develope Windows/MacOS
applications, and then eventually dump MacOS for Windows on Apple machines, I
don't think that Apple will leave the galleon that they have for themselves
(their product/developer ecosystem). They just use cross-platform apps as a
means to an ends... extending gang planks to passing ships and beckoning their
passengers to cross over to the Apple side (or at least buy their consumer-
devices and get hooked onto those).

~~~
wvenable
From what I've looked into, Safari on Windows isn't using Cocoa. The latest
Safari even looks much more like a Windows application than previous versions.
So maybe I'm wrong about this point. However, I still think they're going to
have to port iTunes to Cocoa simply because they've essentially deprecated
Carbon. For the Windows version of iTunes, maybe they'll just have an
completely separate version that isn't a port.

~~~
pyre
I know that when Safari for Windows first came out people were looking into
some of the DLLs that were installed along with it, which were ports of things
-- IIRC CF libraries at the very least -- from OSX. They may have depreciated
those in newer versions due to poor compatibility with Windows.

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ComputerGuru
I don't like the new, white UI. It clashes horribly with the rest of the
(dark, grey) UI feels rather tasteless. Screenshot: <http://twitpic.com/h48v1>

The old UI was far, far classier.

~~~
omouse
Isn't it a shame you can't theme it at all?

~~~
chrisbolt
No. The only themes I ever install are the ones that make it look like a
native app, as it should.

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ujjwalg
I installed iTunes 9.0 and it seems to have a very web2.0 interface. I kind of
like it. They have also increased the top 100 to top 200 lists in the
appstore, which is wonderful. Now, they need to improve the rating, review
system and voila.

~~~
pxlpshr
Yep, overall some nice improvements but I was hoping they would have carried
the Top Earners across to categories too.

~~~
ujjwalg
totally agree. And it should be relatively easy to add. I think they are going
to have it with 9.1 or something within a month.

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pvg
I was hoping to hear more about improvements in the technology that regularly
offers to delete all the music on my iPhone or iPod. For instance, the Genius
feature could save time by deleting only the tracks I am likely to enjoy. With
pocket-sized tera- and petabyte storage on the horizon it's the sort of
forward-thinking innovation that distinguishes Apple from the lesser players
in the field.

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maxklein
They took away the category view in the iTunes Store for all older iTunes. A
lot of app developers are going to be very upset about this.

~~~
camwest
They hid the categories beside the App Store disclosure triangle at the top of
the screen.

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stcredzero
Nano-phone?

~~~
tjogin
It would be extremely unlikely for a new iPhone to be released at an Apple
Music Event.

