Well this worries me. I'm waiting on my iPad upgrade to one with Retina to arrive and I have seen nothing but negative issues and comments over the iTunes release. I use a MacBook to sync everything to my iPad and iPhone with a considerable iTunes library of music etc on an external USB HDD that iTunes 10 seems happy with. I know iTunes 10 in an interment way and do not see the need to update especially for fear of losing so many great features.
I might unleash 11 on my PC where I have 60GB of music provided I can roll back to 10 if the result isn't good.
What worries me is that these changes from Apple starting with the loss to us Users of Google Maps and the brilliant performance our iPhones/ iPads had when navigating to the experience I used to get watching YouTubes and now this change to iTunes many are calling a DownGrade, let's face it.... Are we seeing the beginnings of a serious changes from Apple.... changes that show they have lost their way....? Don't get me wrong. I love my Apple gadgets, they work brilliantly for my lifestyle but in recent months I have come to feel as a User they don't really care about us and "The Edge" has gone.
That's why I am loathe to put iTunes 11 on my MacBook (and hope I am not forced to).
The first think to keep in mine is there is no way everyone is going to be happy. Others have mentioned features that are removed that they are unhappy with...but there is NO feature of previous iTunes what I was happy with, so none of that matters to me.
I have 11 on my MBA. I gotta say, what I see there I like...a lot. Quick and snappy. I don't have any music on that device as it only has 128GB, so what it plays it plays from the cloud. I also don't have it jiggered into my 80+ GB music store and it is not syncing any of my devices. Thus, this is iTunes in a light installation.
I have another PC that I use for syncing. I have 11 on that, but I still have only done a little playing around in it. It has adapted to all my stuff. I don't like that it doesn't have cover art from all my stuff, though. Windows Media player has most of it. I don't buy much music from Apple, though, so that is part of the reason. But it does seem much more responsive and I find the interface easier to deal with. I like how it treats individual albums. So far, for me, the hate is a lot less already, but I'm not tied to any feature because I felt is was unable for so long that I never warmed up to it. And since I run windows I can use Media Player.
I have several other laptops. I'm going to install it on them and see how using it goes on them.
On Windows, you can hang onto the old iTunes download if you want to uninstall and go back. I imagine you can do the same on MAC. I don't see myself going back, though...I'd rather have fresh code on my devices. I'm sure they can fix whatever problems this release has...if it is rebuilt from the ground up, it is reasonable to expect them to have to tweak things.
Personally, change is a natural part of life. The Maps we had on iOS didn't do voice guided navigation, so I didn't use it anyway (it has always done this on Android, IME). It was useless to me. I moved on. MotionX GPS Drive is really nice as is Navigon. There are great alternatives that offer advantages in their own right. As for Youtube...we that app should be written by Google not Apple, so them dropping it is a good thing in my view, because it means we will see a better version. Same with Maps. Eventually, we will have a version with turn-by-turn based guidance, which again, is a good thing.
I don't see any of this as the edge is gone. It is just change that sets the course for overall improvements.
If you simply listen to others and don't test things for yourself, then who knows what one is letting dictate their thoughts and opinions. I will decide for myself.
