The I-tunes interface

I-tunes, one of the most used software systems on both the mobile and computer markets. Used primarily as a software for listening to music, the I-tunes software has had numerous updates to incorporate visual media such as movies and television in an effort to keep up with today’s portable media all-in-one market. Since these updates have been implemented and have hypothetically improved the overall use of the software, the interface and functionality has actually gotten worse with each update.

The interface, organization, and some functions, for I-tunes are implemented terribly. Upon first opening the program on the computer, the software automatically synchronizes all of your music to the main window. This function is great unless you have a lot of media, which causes massive clutter due to the system’s way of organizing data. The main window of the software is divided into, for our purposes, three main sections. The first section is the very top of the window, where you have the basic controls: play, pause, skip forward or backward, and volume. Also on the first section is your I-tunes account log in, and a search tab. The second section is the navigation of the software: this is where you can view your music, podcasts, books, television programs, your play lists, recommended media, and the I-tunes store. The last section is where you’re able to view the media, primarily music. This last section is slightly divided up into two subsections: the most recently added music and a complete view of every album of music. Each individual album is represented with either the album’s cover art or the apple logo, indicating there isn’t cover art for that audio file. Because the window is essentially numerous pictures of cover art depending on the amount of media you have, it becomes very overwhelming to look at as well as a pain to navigate. Although there are different ways of viewing the media, it’s still very cluttered depending on the type of media.

The way audio, along with other media, is organized on a computer is very different than on a media player. When you burn a CD onto your computer, the computer is able to organize the audio packets of data under a folder that you can rename after the CD’s title. The data’s order is unchanged from the original order of the CD in a list format. From that folder or multiple folders, you can open up a media player and can create play lists of select audio. It’s simple, clean, and organized.

 A primarily major flaw is the organization of audio on I-tunes, along with all media players. The way that media players organize music is by the artist’s name, followed by album name, relative genre, and lastly the year. This is logical on a surface level, however, not every album is created by a single artist. For some albums, they can be a combination of a single artist and an orchestra, or even be a collaboration between multiple artists. These albums would then either be organized as the artist’s name followed by the name of the collaborator, or more commonly, label the audio track’s artist as “various artists”. When the album is comprised of multiple tracks done by “various artists”, this drastically changes the way that the album is organized. Because the default organization is by the “artist”, this causes the media player to split up the audio from the CD into multiple parts, dividing each track by its specific artists, and then organizing those tracks as their own albums. This in turn, causes the computer to convert one CD into multiple groups. Because these groups now exist, the original CD’s music files are either duplicated within the multiple groups and are unorganized from the original CD’s organization.

Another huge flaw for I-tunes, are foreign albums. For foreign albums, such as Japanese animation soundtracks, which have the same organizational format as a regular CD, may have different written characters and or combinations of English characters. Because these characters are different, the computer is usually unable to recognize them, replacing them with boxes. These boxes in turn make it very difficult to find a specific album if there are multiple foreign albums or artists. When both of these major flaws are considered, the organization of music and the replacing of characters into illegible boxes, it makes the software virtually unusable for a huge range of music worldwide.

Strangely, the functionality of the menu for podcasts on I-tunes are relatively good, although there could still be improvements. The podcasts, are organized by the name of the podcast and episodes are listed from the newest to the first episode by default. The main issue with the podcasts however is you have to manually download every episode, even if subscribed. If you are subscribed you are automatically updated on when the latest episode is available to download from the podcast’s feed, this feed is a library of every episode of a podcast. However, because most podcasts have at least one hundred episodes or more, having to manually scroll through the feed to download them becomes a chore. Although you can set the system to automatically download episodes, it will only download the newest episode on the feed.

All of these issues can easily be solved on a single update. The software could easily be updated to recognize foreign characters, especially considering that apple products tend to be manufactured on foreign land anyway. This would allow for both the music and the software to be easier to use and not be cluttered as well as a larger variety of music storage. There should be an option to allow music organization by showing a list of the album name, followed by the artist. This would allow for both the mobile and computer versions of I-tunes to flow smoother when selecting music and ease of use. The podcast’s subscription button should simply allow for all episodes of the podcast to be downloaded automatically in the background as opposed to simply notifying you of the latest release. This would allow for more time for listeners to either continue listening to their favorite podcast or give others a shot.