Well Apple has released it’s huge update to iTunes, iTunes 11. And honestly I find it harder to use, especially playlists. Instead of all on one window, you have to use separate windows, so it actually takes more steps to do things I used to easily be able to do.

Here is the album view.

And the Playlist view

And you can no longer break playlists off, so you can copy between playlists or use it to organize. Now you can only see one playlist at a time. I hate the move to more iOS like single window viewing, instead of being able to view as many windows as I want!

Yes the iTunes store is now even prettier, and you can now play songs from the iCloud (if you have a small enough library to do iTunes Match, which I don’t), but overall I find it actually harder to use. It is much more focused on Album covers instead of lists, and I have always found lists to be much easier to use (faster and more efficient), and while there are still lists here, they are more hidden. And I have to hit a button to edit a playlist, and then go to where the song is and drag it in, instead of being able to see my playlists and my songs at the same time. The extra step is not easier, it is harder!

And I don’t think syncing has been much improved. Instead of your connected devices showing up in the playlists they show up on the right, but the menus inside seem mostly the same except the addition of an “On this iPad” which I like since the movies have never been as well organized as playlists, especially when you have a huge list. I hate the thumbnail there view, which has not changed (a list would be much more efficient), but at least you can look “On Your iPad” and more easily see what you have already synced.

Here is the On This iPad button.

Here is where your iOS devices show up.

And what happens when you click on the button. And then you can go into the standard sync section, which hasn’t changed much.

And another loss of efficiency is that you have to hover over areas on the iOS device to see how much actual space each section is taking up.

Adding another step which slows things down.

Overall it stills works and I can still make playlists, play music and sync, and there is a better mini player with a search function, but I actually think it downgraded in many ways. I don’t think you will have a choice before long, so this is where iTunes is going and if you need to sync and iOS device you need to use the latest and greatest, so here it is, but overall it is not much of an improvement and even might be a downgrade to what we used to have, even if it always has been bloated and slow.

EDIT:

Well I was wrong on one thing, as I can at least bring back the sidebar and have my playlists back, and iOS devices on the left again.

It is easy to do, just got to the view menu.

And the Sidebar is back.

Nice. Still defaults to Album view, but you can view by songs and that solves the problem. Still can’t open up multiple playlists anymore though, which is a pain. At least with a full 64 bit app it should be faster. Still would like more options in the sync, like viewing by list, but at least we have some more speed.

I also recommend turning on the status bar,

So you can see the length and size of playlists as you used to be able to!

Today as Apple announced the iPhone 5, new iPod Touch and Nano and iOS release next week, they also showed off a new version of iTunes which is a complete revamp, and I am scared, very scared.

As with OS X it seems to be getting dumber.

It looks like you have to look via album covers, instead of a text list, which is not convenient for someone with as big of a library as I have (I can’t even get an iCloud account as it won’t fit). And how does that work for playlists? Is that still a list?

I am not saying iTunes doesn’t need help, but I want a nice list view for things, and not have to use album covers! Hell many of my playlists are random, so they don’t have covers anyway!

I would also like to see the music sync window for iPods, as that has been a peave of mine and needed an update, but the site says nothing about how it works.

Honestly I am scared that this new version will cut down on functionality and only be for the lowest common denominator!

Please apple keep list views for those of us with huge libraries.