Stay away from iTunes 11.0 -- it is a complete disaster

[mhschmieder]

I am becoming increasingly annoyed with the changes in iTunes 11.0, which seems to have done a good job of hiding the features I use most on a regular basis.

Granted, I have to spend eons correcting and adding information to almost any classical or jazz CD that I upload, but once that's done (and even given that parts of my collection are still missing info that I need to fill in manually), by far the most common way I access my library is by Composer (since I listen mostly to classical music).

Where did they hide "Sort by Composer" in iTunes 11.0?

Did they remove this feature altogether in the new version, or hide it somewhere? It used to be that Classical Music was treated separately, knowing it had a different context and unique traditions to how music is filed.

It's time to move on to another playback engine if they have decided to treat all music genres the same and take away our ability to even find our OWN music via Composer!!!

[cuttime]

Check the "View Options" under "View" and you'll find it there, however I'm not sure it will be to your liking. Also gapless playback seems to be missing- #11 is not friendly to classical music at all.

[mhschmieder]

Thanks; that's a mild improvement, but it seems to only add Composer as a column to the album material in list view once an album is selected by artist, as the main panel above the album track listing does not add the new view options.

At least we can rearrange the columns in the album track view, so that the composer column (once added in view options) is right after the track title and before the artist column.

If anyone from Apple is at my next classical concert this Thursday night, they'll get an earful.

[mhschmieder]

This version of iTunes is full of bugs -- perhaps the most of any version ever released!

It is clear that whoever was in charge of this release knows and cares nothing for classical music. I haven't yet checked whether other genres have the same bugs.

The visual display does not match the "Get Info" in many cases, even if you edit it carefully, uncheck "Part of Compilation", set "Artist" but make "Album Artist" blank, and other tricks to try to rationalize the database as well as the display and organizational choices in the GUI.

Worse, it freezes up any time you try to make an edit, you can no longer edit subfields from within the GUI vs. by bringing up the "Get Info" dialog, and more often than not it brings up the info for the wrong track (even from the wrong album!) even though the one you intended is highlighted as selected, leading to a bit of a panic and lack of confidence in editing and committing edits. Many times the track won't even give you a right-click context menu!

The iTunes GUI has now decided to "get smart" and "see" that recordings of the same work by different artists are "really" part of the "same album", only by "Various Artists". I am going through some comparisons of Mahler renditions tonight for enlightenment, and iTunes is, to put it mildly, getting in the way.

[kgdrum]

I'm sorry to hear this MH,my library has about 400 Classical CD's,this would piss me off!!
I went through a similar upgrade fiasco a while back,so now whenever there's an iTunes or iOS update I NEVER update anything until I see the buzz,good or bad & I always wait for at least 1 revision.
I'm still in iTunes 10.61
Right now my app icon on my iPhone shows 59 updates available,lol
& I'm in iOS 5
I'm sorry you're going through this, I never update iTunes or iOS when they're 1st updated, hopefully they'll fix these screwy quirks in the next update.
There's a thread on GS about this so believe me, many iTunes users are complaining to Apple.

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/moan-zon ... -11-a.html

[bayswater]

Check the "View Options" under "View" and you'll find it there, however I'm not sure it will be to your liking.

Not sure if we're saying the same thing, but you can add Composer to the column browser. Where Apple puts Genre in the column browser by default, I have Composer, in addition to Album and Artist.

[mhschmieder]

Yes, but Composer only shows up in the track view for an album, as opposed to a library-level sort feature. I sort for albums by composer. Once I have selected an album, I don't tend to sort the tracks on the album itself by composer.

[mhschmieder]

Thanks for the GS link; I've been too busy to spend much time on the internet these past few months and missed that one. I'm glad to see that my needs are not so archaic and specialized that they don't matter to anyone else.

I NEVER buy music on-line -- I only use iTunes to upload my CD collection since I sold my hi-fi system, and to host my own music as well as music I am working on with live gigging projects. I do not own a mobile device and doubt I ever will. I will not consider buying music on-line unless they start offering WAV or Apple Lossless files AND also provide LINER NOTES! Cover art isn't enough, and it's shocking how many major albums by major artists don't find their cover art even after tweaking aspects of how the album name is spelled etc. Not to mention how Gracenotes is incorrect more often than they are correct (for jazz and classical, but increasingly for pop/rock as well). I guess no one listens to music anymore; they just use it as background and don't really care.

[mhschmieder]

OK, I've read the GS thread and no one talks about the glaring bugs, so maybe none of those people do classical music, or maybe the bugs only happen on Snow Leopard? Also, maybe nobody but me sorts music in iTunes the way they sort CD's and records in physical media shelves, which is by composer (like Library of Congress or any other library). I guess iTunes only thinks of albums as being by artist vs. by composer, since the latter only applies to Classical, but they used to special case Classical Music in the application.

[kgdrum]

Yeah no one mentions your actual gripe but there's all sorts of changes that lots of users don't like,more than usual IMO.

[bayswater]

When iTunes 11 was released, MacFixit and Ars Technica did reviews. It might be worth having a look at these. IIRC, one of the feature omissions was noted by Apple and will re-appear in an update, and the articles offered up some workarounds for some of the other issues. None of them seemed like show stoppers to me, so I updated, and I like it. With column view, I can narrow in on anything I want, and as was the case with Lion, some of the "missing" items can be restored with preferences and settings.

Aside from a general music library, my main use is for podcasts, and it deals with them a lot faster and the interface and lay out are simpler to deal with.

[cuttime]

11.01 update now available. Find duplicates is back, don't know what else has been fixed.

[stubbsonic]

I had been holding off on updating.

After reading this thread, I'm glad I waited. I'll stay with iTunes 10.7 for as long as possible.

[cuttime]

If you click on the down arrow in the search field, you can filter by composer, and it will display albums in the column. Does this help? (That is, if "Search Entire Library" is checked).

[denekawa]

11.01 update now available. Find duplicates is back, don't know what else has been fixed.

That was a real head scratcher when that was inexplicably missing. So glad they put it back, but the new layout is still not as good as the old imho.