Friday, May 17, 2013

How to Revert to iTunes 10.7

Apple just released a new update to its iTunes application. It is now iTunes version 11.0.3. The 11.0.3 update brings back to iTunes 11 what I think is one of the most important features of iTunes, namely the view of album art in List View. List View is the view in which you can still use the venerable column browser. However…

I think that iTunes 11 still is a total failure.

Luckily it is still possible to revert to iTunes 10.7.

Why iTunes 11 is horrible

Apple marketed the iTunes 11 update as a due and significant overhaul. Granted, iTunes 10.7 — the last version before iTunes 11 — was arguably somewhat bloated and many people wished for a technical update. But Apple took the app and tweaked all kinds of thinks that did not need any fixing and on the other hand did not fix any of the issues that made people wish for an iTunes 10.7 update.

iTunes 11 is still bloated in the sense that it still has to handle all sorts of things: music manager, music store, iOS device manager, sync manager, app store for iOS devices, e-book store, e-book storage manager (iTunes still can’t read those books stored in iTunes), video store, video manager and player… And iTunes 11 still feels technically a little behind with modal Mac-OS-9-like dialogues. So the technical underpinnings have not been touched as far as I can see. iTunes 11 has not gotten any faster than 10.7, it may be even a little slower.

And now iTunes 11 has also a complicated, inconsistent, unintuitive interface and a very much changed application behaviour. You don’t have a sidebar anymore by default. (At least you can bring it back via a menu command.) Playing songs works differently with an awkward and intransparent “Up Next” playlist. Double-clicking a song now often won’t play the song but bring up a dialogue with barely comprehensible questions. Search works differently and crams search results into a tiny menu. (You can change that if you find the right setting.) Coverflow and iTunes DJ have been removed. Thankfully Apple kept at least the traditional List View with the column browser. But all other views have very much changed, and not for the better. You can’t customize views. You can’t change the size of albums in album view. To change the volume in the Mini Player you have to open a pop-up. The way you are supposed to edit playlists is just awkward… I can’t list all of iTunes 11’s flaws because 1. there are so many, and 2. compared to version 10.7 iTunes 11 is so horrible that I haven’t used it much.

And by the way iTunes 11 is also ugly and does not fit at all into Mac OS X interface conventions including the design conventions of any of Apple’s other apps.

Simply put: iTunes 11 doesn’t do anything better than iTunes 10.7 and it does a lot of things worse than iTunes 10.7.

How to Revert to iTunes 10.7

First things first: To revert from iTunes 11 to iTunes 10.7 you have to use an old version of your iTunes library file. iTunes 11 “updates” the library file so it can no longer be used by older versions.

You may find a 10.7 version of your library in the “Previous iTunes Libraries” folder inside your iTunes Library folder (usually ~/Music/iTunes/). Of course all changes to the iTunes library made with iTunes 11 are not registered in that old library file.

If you don’t have a backup of your iTunes 10.7 library file and that file has already been modified by iTunes 11 you will have to create a new library file and reimport the music. That is not difficult. Simply put all your existing music in the iTunes Media folder of your newly created library and than drag the iTunes Media folder onto the iTunes 10.7 sidebar. (Before that you have to reinstall iTunes 10.7, obviously.)

To reinstall iTunes 10.7 you will need:

  • An iTunes 10.7 installation, downloadable from Apple: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1576
  • Pacifist, a shareware installation package manager that will enable you to reinstall old components, updated during the iTunes 11 installations process, that are not changed if you use the standard Mac OS X installer for the iTunes 10.7 re-installation. You can download Pacifist here: http://www.charlessoft.com

Simply install iTunes 10.7 with Pacifist and choose “replace” if you are asked whether or not Pacifist should override newer components.

Disclaimer:

This has worked for me. Your mileage may vary. No liability assumed whatsoever. Be sure to always have at least one backup up to date before doing something that you might regret.

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