GNOMEr’s criticism of iTunes
In response to John Gruber’s comments on Eric S. Raymond’s CUPS configuration usability rant, an Anonymous George has posted a page titled “The State and Future of GNOME”. Along with visual comparisons of GNOME’s Open/Save (no longer crappy!) and preference dialogs to those of Windows XP, the author includes some criticism of iTunes when compared to Muine, a GNOME music player. I have never used Muine, so I can’t really compare it to iTunes from a usability perspective, but the author makes some…
Good Points
- Apple’s positioning of the album art display in iTunes is not ideal, failing to strongly connect what is displayed in the central status oval and the art. With that said, the artwork pane has two useful modes, one of which would not be at all logical if the artwork were displayed in the status area as is done in Muine.
- Automatic fetching of album cover art should be an option without having to use Sofa or Synergy.
- Automatic folder-library synchronization, a feature found in Whamb and Audion, is of potential use for those who backup and listen to their music on several machines.
- Context-switching widget
The only iTunes widget I know of that completely changes function based on context switching is the Browser (upper-right), which becomes Burn CD when viewing a playlist rather than the Library. A problem, but a singular, not plural one. What Apple could do is make iTunes’ CD burning interface more like that of the Finder (a related posting of my own) - when a writable disc is inserted, it appears in the iTunes source list for users to name and drag-and-drop tracks or playlists to. The Burn widget (the black and yellow doodad) would be placed to the right of the disc name rather than the Browse button changing to and from Burn Disc. Once the burn completed, the Eject button would replace the Burn button.
iTunes CD Burning (87K PDF)
Based on the screenshot at Muine’s home page, it has a queueing feature that would be nice in iTunes. I believe Windows Media Player also has such a thing. The 3rd generation iPods allow users to queue songs in an “On-The-Go” playlist (mentioned about halfway down the right-hand sidebar), but iTunes does not have an equivalent.
Muine does look like a solid application, but iTunes is an end-to-end music management app while Muine appears to be tightly focused on playback. The author calls iTunes bloated while neglecting to mention that you would need (possibly several) additional GNOME applications to get the functionality iTunes provides. As I’ve pointed out in this and numerous other posts, there is room for improvement, but I think iTunes handles an overwhelming majority of its many tasks very well.
You talk about the iTunes monoculture as though it’s a good thing. A near perfect software monoculture already exists in MS Windows. Why would you try to reinvent it?
Do you think an iTunes monoculture is good for artists? How many independent artists do you know that have made significant money when partnering with a Steve Jobs-led company?
This was purely about the interface and functionality. iTunes does many things - Muine does not. While I prefer the integration of CD ripping, audio playback, and burning functions, I did not say it was an inherently good thing. I merely pointed out that iTunes does all of these things while Muine does not, making comparisons somewhat foolish.