iTunes and Coverflow

Tuesday September 12th 2006 11:58 PM PST

So i discovered CoverFlow a couple months back and started using it immediately. I suddenly became crazy about getting all the album artwork for all my music. So If the artwork was already in iTunes then CoverFlow would display it, or go find it if it was missing. So now we come to the new iTunes. Apple obviously thought that CoverFlow kicks ass. So much that they bought the tech and integrated it into iTunes 7. BUT... originally CoverFlow had its own cache of album artwork and iTunes had all the album artwork embedded in the audio files themselves. So there was always two sets of artwork floating around. If you used coverflow at work, and then went home, the music would not retain its cover artwork unless you went through the process of pasting it in manually into iTunes. If you did the paste then the artwork is embedded in the song file and goes wherever the song file goes. I personally think this is good. Its simple, and yes its redundant. Each track off the album will have a copy of the artwork, but who really cares. Its attached.

So where the hell is this rant going? Well i figure that Apple when combines CoverFlow and iTunes, and they'd think about where to write the artwork. I'd assume they'd just follow the usual plan and write the artwork in the sound files. That makes too much sense i guess. Instead they write a album artwork directory in your home directory. (yes, even if your music is somewhere else) So now i've got a bunch of music that does have album artwork attached, and i've got my old coverflow cache, and now my new UNWANTED directory of album artwork floating in my home dir.

So whats the solution? Well there was an app called GimmieSomeTune that used to work great. If it encountered an song with no artwork it would fetch the artwork and paste it automatically to all the songs on the same album. It was a little slow cause it did a lot of heavy lifting. It doesn't seem to work with the new version of iTunes.

We'll wait for an update on that.

AND... there's more.

I know why Apple dumbed down CoverFlow. Yes, i said it. They dumbed it down. Well they really just made it work a little better for dumb people (or people who still use piece of shit computers). The original CoverFlow had a great little rollover glow and moved each piece of artwork slightly as you moved the mouse around. It had a better birds eye perspective, and IMHO it just looked a lot sexier. So why did Apple do it? Well they can't allow a piece of software to hog that much CPU! DUH! They can't have the sexy cause it would take too much CPU from the long "Loading iTunes Library" and "Determining gapless play"

I don't know, but this might be one of the first times I've found Apple pulling their punches on making something look better.

Shit i'm not done yet. WTF happened to Apple UI!?! Any time you're in iTunes the left and right arrows play the next and previous song. Now if you're in coverflow view, the left and right arrows do nothing but pan through the artwork. And you'd figure if you click on the song titles and then hit the arrows it would work. Nope, it still pans the artwork. BUT, now if you click on the "MUSIC" link in the left menu, and THEN hit the arrows, it goes previous next. I don't know, but that seems counterintuitive. And we're talking about APPLE FFS!

So i'm not going to be all negative. Here are my suggestions. Add a CoverFlow tab in the prefs. Give the user the ability to change ALL the settings. I want to be able to change the view angle, the rollover states, and where the artwork is stored. And i want to turn off the little scroller at the bottom of the artwork. And my last suggestion is out of left field i know. Every other app that apple makes has a function "Customize Toolbar...". iTunes is the only one without this, and it really shouldn't be. The UI first off is a little crazy. You got icons and buttons on all sides of the window. Forward Play/Pause Reverse, Volume are at top left. View selection and Search is at Top Right. Add Playlist, Shuffle, Shuffle, Repeat and View/Hide Artwork at bottom left. Finally Browse and Eject at bottom Right. Ok, WTF is the deal with this? Please make all the toolbar buttons standard units of size and let me put them wherever I want. You know.... just like every other app you make.

Last thing. Visualizer can't be set to full screen CoverFlow? Why Not?