twerppoet
iPad Fan
It's faster and more stable, or so I've heard. That's the number one takeaway for me.
There are a few things I miss, though not cover flow. While that looked nice, it never did anything useful for me. I'd like the progress bar back in the mini controller too.
Apple has already promised that it is going to put some of the missing features back. I'm guessing the complete re-write meant a few things got left out due to time pressure. The find duplicate tools was mentioned. They already had to delay it a month, and Apple hates not meeting their announced release dates.
I would have liked to see some substantial improvements in the sync controls, though I have to admit I don't' see how they could be improved; not without changing things so radically that I'd have to start all over. As it is, everything still works the way I expect.
Other than that, it's more about tweaking how I do things. Not a lot, just enough be be inconvenient. It's a short term annoyance, and something that new users will not encounter. It is possible to change the windows to get a similar layout to the older version, but I've chosen not to do so. Best to dive in and learn the changes. You don't really know if something is better or worse until you've give it a fair trial. At least two to three weeks of daily use, in my estimation. I'm almost there.
Some strange things were mentioned in conjunction with the new closer iCloud integration. At least one person I follow on Twitter mentioned several movies that retreated to iCloud. She was certain they were local on the computer before.
I've noticed that some of my songs are duplicated in iCloud. At first I thought it was just a hiccup, but some blog posts and investigation show that what I"m actually seeing is the opportunity to download non DRM versions of some of my older DRMed music. Might still be a hiccup, but a nice one; once I get around to downloading all those new tracks.
The iTunes Plus things seems to have disappeared as well. That's because all songs are at the higher bit rate now, as far as I can tell.
I also saw a few extra tracks show up as iCloud downloadable. I'm not sure if they got deleted locally (though I doubt it), were added later to album's song list after I purchases, or what; but they are free to download so I'm either not upset, or happy. Depending.
I've noticed that songs to not have to actually be downloaded from iCloud to play. Another words, if you're computer is a bit short on space you can stream the music instead of keeping it local. That's for computer playback only, I'm pretty sure. You probably can't sync form iTunes to you iDevice unless the music is local. Of course, it's available on the iDevice via iCloud too, so that's not really a big issue.
As for the negative press and comments for iTunes 11, I only have two comments that I don't think have been covered yet, though I could have just missed them.
Change: Except for people who have already been convinced that "this" change is good before hand, or happen to like novelty for its own sake (in that area of their life), change almost always meets resistance. It's human nature. People (statistically) don't like to be dug out of a rut and made to learn new things. Nothing new has ever been done without having to overcome a lot of scoffing and dire predictions of disaster. Software revisions are not an exception.
Hind site often leaves a rosy glow when reviewing a success story, especially when told by an early adopter. A closer looks always shows up the (now less noisy) nay sayers of time.
Apple's eminent demise: This has been predicted (mostly by the same people) for over a twenty years. There is absolutely no doubt that they are right. The only question is how many years (or decades) they will have to wait for vindication. For the most part these people's predictions are based on wishful thinking and/or a desire to get as many page hits as possible. No one knows what will happen to Apple. It could get better. It could get worse. It could go semi-stagnent for decades and still be one of the most powerful software companies for another decade (al la Microsoft).
There are a few things I miss, though not cover flow. While that looked nice, it never did anything useful for me. I'd like the progress bar back in the mini controller too.
Apple has already promised that it is going to put some of the missing features back. I'm guessing the complete re-write meant a few things got left out due to time pressure. The find duplicate tools was mentioned. They already had to delay it a month, and Apple hates not meeting their announced release dates.
I would have liked to see some substantial improvements in the sync controls, though I have to admit I don't' see how they could be improved; not without changing things so radically that I'd have to start all over. As it is, everything still works the way I expect.
Other than that, it's more about tweaking how I do things. Not a lot, just enough be be inconvenient. It's a short term annoyance, and something that new users will not encounter. It is possible to change the windows to get a similar layout to the older version, but I've chosen not to do so. Best to dive in and learn the changes. You don't really know if something is better or worse until you've give it a fair trial. At least two to three weeks of daily use, in my estimation. I'm almost there.
Some strange things were mentioned in conjunction with the new closer iCloud integration. At least one person I follow on Twitter mentioned several movies that retreated to iCloud. She was certain they were local on the computer before.
I've noticed that some of my songs are duplicated in iCloud. At first I thought it was just a hiccup, but some blog posts and investigation show that what I"m actually seeing is the opportunity to download non DRM versions of some of my older DRMed music. Might still be a hiccup, but a nice one; once I get around to downloading all those new tracks.
The iTunes Plus things seems to have disappeared as well. That's because all songs are at the higher bit rate now, as far as I can tell.
I also saw a few extra tracks show up as iCloud downloadable. I'm not sure if they got deleted locally (though I doubt it), were added later to album's song list after I purchases, or what; but they are free to download so I'm either not upset, or happy. Depending.
I've noticed that songs to not have to actually be downloaded from iCloud to play. Another words, if you're computer is a bit short on space you can stream the music instead of keeping it local. That's for computer playback only, I'm pretty sure. You probably can't sync form iTunes to you iDevice unless the music is local. Of course, it's available on the iDevice via iCloud too, so that's not really a big issue.
As for the negative press and comments for iTunes 11, I only have two comments that I don't think have been covered yet, though I could have just missed them.
Change: Except for people who have already been convinced that "this" change is good before hand, or happen to like novelty for its own sake (in that area of their life), change almost always meets resistance. It's human nature. People (statistically) don't like to be dug out of a rut and made to learn new things. Nothing new has ever been done without having to overcome a lot of scoffing and dire predictions of disaster. Software revisions are not an exception.
Hind site often leaves a rosy glow when reviewing a success story, especially when told by an early adopter. A closer looks always shows up the (now less noisy) nay sayers of time.
Apple's eminent demise: This has been predicted (mostly by the same people) for over a twenty years. There is absolutely no doubt that they are right. The only question is how many years (or decades) they will have to wait for vindication. For the most part these people's predictions are based on wishful thinking and/or a desire to get as many page hits as possible. No one knows what will happen to Apple. It could get better. It could get worse. It could go semi-stagnent for decades and still be one of the most powerful software companies for another decade (al la Microsoft).
