Why, Blog, Why?

As one of about a billion announcements from Apple earlier this week, iTunes 7 was released. The iTunes user community has been asking for many feature enhancements since the last major release, so I was eager to see what Apple had changed in the new version. The short-list of new features includes a built-in updater (prior to this you had to reinstall with every new release), download manager, automatic download of album art, iPod content summary report, and a bunch more. It sounded good so I downloaded the new version and installed it.

Follow up:

It had been a while since I had fired iTunes up, so the first thing that I noticed (after waiting for it to scan my entire library once over, in a modal window no less) was the download manager which showed all of the latest podcasts that it was fetching for me. This was nice to be able to see in one glance, as in previous releases you had to cycle through the message bar to see what was downloading at any given moment.

iTunes download manager

OK, I guess I fibbed a bit there - the real first thing that I noticed (after waiting for it to scan my entire library once over) was the updated UI. It’s a little bit darker in shading, and there were a few new interface elements dealing with content organization and display. Nothing that would knock you over, but pleasant none the less. (I hear that it does not look anything like the rest of the OS X chrome on Mac though.)

iTunes Album Browser

Also in this release, the iPod preferences have been removed from the general Preferences dialog and now appear as the “home page” for any attached iPod. The initial state of this page gives the summary of the iPod firmware version, capacity, name, etc., along with a summary of the content on the disk (i.e. space used by music, podcasts and “other” content). Not much has changed to the preferences themselves, which are available on other tabs within this iPod dialog. There seems to have been an improvement in the reliability of syncing contacts and calendar items from Microsoft Outlook, which I could never get to work right in the previous versions.

iTunes iPod summary

Unfortunately, all is not well here and my excitement was short lived. The iTunes topic in Apple’s message boards (which are apparently under significant load as they are currently unavailable) quickly exploded with bug reports, complaints and pleas for help. Problems ranged from jittery playback to lost libraries (yes, whole libraries). I added my own problems to the heap after discovering that iTunes was randomly excluding some podcasts when syncing to my iPod. As a result, I may or may not have openly called for the dismissal of at least one quality control or project manager from Apple’s iTunes development team. I know you’re reading this S.J. - don’t let me down.

So as not to understate this, I would estimate the complaint to compliment ratio from iTunes 7 users at about 99:1. Which is why I am surprised that this hasn’t blown up in the Blogosphere (a.k.a. “Blogglestar Gablogtica"). This release is plagued with bugs, the likes of which are usually resolved somewhere between the beta versions, the release candidates and the final gold release of software. That this many problems exist and are being reported within hours of the release suggest Apple rushed this to market for the Apple Expo in Paris (which started Tuesday, a day before the release) or at the very least have a really crappy testing cycle.

If any of you are having problems with the release, be sure to report them by both posting to the iTunes message board and using the iTunes Feedback form (also available under the iTunes Help menu).