apple fry leftovers

kramer, don’t even start with me…

…but iTunes 11 just fucking sucks.

i straddle a line year – typically tech geek types fall into one of two categories:

1. apple bashers who hate anything that’s the company does
2. apple devotees who start each day saying a “hail jobs” over an alter with one button

i am neither. i prefer PCs to macs. i’ve owned both and it’s just what i’ve liked. likewise, i would never own any portable player other than an iPod, i dig my new iPhone, and i’ve always really liked iTunes…

…until sunday.

sunday i downloaded the new version and it sucks. took away most of my favorite features and made the GUI (graphic user interface, i.e. what you as a user actually deal with) a shit-load more sleek looking (good) and impossible to do what you want to do with any sort of realistic simplicity (bad). i like the mini-player, although i think they had that on previous versions i just didn’t use it. why? because i’m a record store geek and i like using the “cover flow” feature so i can have the cover art up on my big-ass screen.

i know it’s not on the iTunes any more, although kramer claims it still does it on his iPhone (i haven’t put music on mine since i have an iPod where all my music lives) and his iPad (i don’t make enough scratch to have toys that expensive) so i guess i’ll just do without until enough of us complain to where they put it back on.

i have no problems with “upgrades” as long as they’re not actually downgrades which, despite this versions slick appearance, i feel this is. the other PITA for me is the inability to just click a track and have it shuffle through my playlist unless i do the expanded view, which then just shuffles that album. on the positive, they brought back the “play next” feature and i think you can do it in the mini player, so that’s kind of nice. still in the experimental phase with this, but so far it seems like a whole lot of hype for a little bit of improvement and a bit more disappointment.