Friday, September 11, 2009

New iTunes Store (iTunes 9) Partly Sucks Compared to the Old Version (iTunes 8)

Frankly, the new iTunes Store in iTunes 9 sucks badly in some respects compared to the old iTunes Store (in iTunes 8). It has limited functionality and IMHO a much less orderly and more confusing look.
The main reason for that is that Apple is now using HTML to display songs in the store and not a custom made native interface like in the iTunes 8 store. Thus songs in the store no longer are displayed like songs in iTunes library but are displayed as web page items—just like in any other music store. This results in a vastly partly pretty much inferior user experience.
Let’s have look at some of the functionality:
  • In the old store songs were displayed as iTunes library items. You could drag them to playlists, arrange them, compare them and rate them.
  • In the new store instead you are limited to one feeble “wish list” that basically has no other functionality than to just display some songs.
  • You can add those songs only one by one, there is no drag and drop.
  • And last but not least: Apple has also removed the shopping cart function. You can’t even collect different albums and songs to purchase them together.
Putting all of this together one has to conclude that Apple has killed some of those very features that made the iTunes Store a huge success, that is a shop interface that works seamlessly with your favourite music jukebox. The new iTunes Store is now basically just another web store.
Please Apple, reconsider and bring back the native iTunes interface for the iTunes Store!
Addendum:
OK, actually some of the new features are quite cool (for example the new “i”-button which lets you see and listen to an album immediately). Still I would like to have access to the songs in the store the old way i.e. as an iTunes song object. A possible solution could be to provide a link with every song and album that would lead to the song/album in Browse view (that view is still available) or to provide a method to display search results in Browse view.