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iTunesandvidsandmore, version 7 (or, Introducing AguaT)

I know I’m late to the iTunes 7 party, but there’s a reason for that: I’ve been working on something, but I’ll get to that later. Right now, the latest version of iTunes, version 7, is standing beneath my web browser obsequiously serving out tunes for my listening pleasure. Not much has changed, it would seem, with the way iTunes is used as a background application (what can change?), but Apple’s goal is to keep you using iTunes in the foreground as much as possible.

I’ll start out with the positive things first. I like the new sidebar layout. The old layout, though functional, always annoyed me to some degree because the playlists were on the same level as the entire library, even though they were all technically subsets. This new layout is organized very well. The new iPod features also look very compelling, though as the FireWire bus on mine has shorted out, I have yet to try them for myself.

Another thing that one notices about iTunes is that it took a lot of cues from Windows Media Player, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Upon seeing WMP11’s new emphasis on cover art, my initial reaction was “Cool, I wish iTunes would do that”. The 2 new views make heavy use of cover art - one a cue from WMP, and the other bought from a small developer. I won’t get much use out of either of them, but they’re undoubtedly cool.

But iTunes 7 wasn’t all bliss. The initial “wow” factor of all the new features was dampened by a “WTF” reaction to the new interface. Aqua is, apparently, passé now that Apple has moved on to grayer pastures. “Lickable” has been replaced with cold hard steel, something reminiscent of the XP widget scheme (ironic that Apple is moving away from Aqua just as Microsoft is just discovering it with Vista). These widgets are most likely a foretaste of things to come in Leopard - and the simpler gradients are also giving rise to rumors of a completely vector-based interface. That would indeed be really cool, but certainly not at the expense of Aqua.

This is where the announcement comes in: Introducing AguaT, the complete Aqua solution for iTunes 7. Not only does it go back to the iTunes 6 look, it also aquifies some of the widgets that were metallifized several versions ago, as well as doing another trick or two. You can check out the program page for screenshots.

Taking cues from WMP is, like I said earlier, not necessarily a bad thing, but on the other hand, it certainly can be. A complaint I’ve had since version 6, though more accentuated now, is that I don’t like the way iTunes is becoming a catch-all media organizer like WMP. I can hold practically any sort of media in iTunes now a la WMP - something I don’t want in my music player. But, to my relief, iTunes does have options for disabling all the superfluous junk in the sidebar like Podcasts, Videos, TV Shows, etc. So until it demands that I respect its video functions, I’m ok with it. iTunes 7 really is a great upgrade - the features are compelling, and thankfully the homeliness is only skin-deep.

• This entry was posted on Thursday, September 14th, 2006 at 11:43 pm and is filed under Gadgetry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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