My iTunes Beef, Jakob Nielsen concurs
I don’t own a Mac. I would like to have one and play around with it. I’m sure I would like it. But my programming life is built around the PC, and there’s no money to spare for extra toys.
So my Apple experience is limited to my iPod and iTunes.
My iPod? Love it. My goal was to eliminate any need for CDs (particularly now with a house full of kids who are bent on destroying them) and I am pretty close to that goal.
iTunes? Despise. Let me enumerate the ways:
Syncing
When I have my iPod connected, and I’ve just updated or downloaded some new podcasts, what’s the most likely thing I probably want to do next? SYNC my iPod!
So I click my iPod icon in the left hand navigation, and I begin my search. Where in the world is the “Sync” button? Logically: on the opposite side of the screen in the lower corner (or as Jakob Nielsen suggests: in Siberia).
There are two other buttons your gaze runs into before ever finding the “Sync” button. “Check for Update” and “Restore”, but of which I’m sure are much lower on the priority list than “Sync”. I’m sure there are people who wear out their index finger punching the “Check for Update” button because they can’t wait for the next bit of greatness to hit their device, but me, on the other hand, I would just like to “Sync”.
My suggested improvement:
Playlists
Building a playlist? Painful.
Two panes: one pane to see your list of songs, the other your list of playlists. Want to build a playlist. Simply drag your songs from the middle to the playlist name. Wondering if you’ve already added this song to the playlist? Well, I guess you can drag the song onto the playlist and find out, which is a tedious step, when I should just be able to view the existing list and my library at the same time. Additionally, you can’t organize the list by simply dropping a new song between existing songs. First, you have to add the song to the playlist. Then, view the playlist in the middle pane, and then reorganize the list.
Windows Media Player is still so much easier to manage playlists on (of course, these don’t translate to my iPod unfortunately). Three panes: 1) a list of my current playlists, 2) my music library, and 3) the current playlist I am editing so I can see what songs are currently on the playlist and drop new songs right where I want them in the list.
Updates and moving shortcuts
I don’t open iTunes every day. I generally use it to update podcasts and sync with my iPod. So, seemingly, when I open it every two weeks or so, I feel like I am always prompted to install the latest version! This drives me crazy. The update process is not fast, and it also slows down a lot of other activity on my computer when I’m doing it. And when I just want to sync my iPod I don’t want it to be a fifteen minute process just because I have to download, install, and accept the new license agreement before doing it.
The update process also wreaks havoc with my iTunes shortcuts. I’m kind of particular about where icons are on my computer…I don’t like clutter, and I don’t like the default location that the installer drops the shortcuts to access iTunes. So I move them. No big deal right? Except that after an update, the old shortcuts are no longer valid because it says they’re only valid for “Currently Installed Applications”! What?! Why can’t you just put the application in the same place every single time so that my shortcut still works?! Argh. So I’m left to replace all my shortcuts with the new ones that the iTunes installer dropped in places I don’t want them in the first place.
Jakob Nielsen concurs!
I had started this post along time ago, but finally found motivation to finish it when I saw Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox today. He discusses some of his own personal challenges encountered using iTunes, which have similar themes but within different portions of the application.
My favorite quote from the article: “the dialog area’s Done button might as well be in Siberia.”
I thought I might be alone in my distaste for iTunes, but Jakob has helped me to feel validated today. Thanks man!
Final Thoughts
Some things they have actually improved upon. There used to be lots of little buttons in iTunes that had no words on them, and also provided no tooltip if you hovered over them, leaving you to click on the thing to discover what in the world it does. It seems that most of their buttons have helpful tooltips or text now, so at least I have an inkling of the action I’m about to perform.
And I don’t know if it’s just my computer performance, but sometimes I launch iTunes and proceed to continue working, and am surprised when it opens up three minutes later after I’ve completely forgotten I launched it in the first place.
As Jakob suggests, just because a company is big and successful doesn’t mean you should mimic what they do. I think Apple does extremely well with making appealing hardware. My experience with the iTunes software leaves something to be desired. It seems like just a small bit of usability testing would uncover its shortcomings.
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