iTunes... uSuck.

Poor iTunes. Talk about a rough week. First your logo gets a facelift that nobody likes. Then your interface gets a supposed overhaul that fails to impress. Third, you get turned into an ambitious, but ultimately misguided social network. And finally, you get hammered with spam within the first hours of launch. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemies (not that I have many enemies), let alone one of my favorite pieces of software.  There have been calls for Apple to completely redesign iTunes for years now, ever since the opening of the iTunes Store, but each upgrade has failed to do one important thing… realize what iTunes has become.

A Brief History

Back in 2002 when i first downloaded SoundJam, and the G-Force sound visualizer designed by Andy O’Meara, I remember sitting in awe watching my favorite songs come to life in a blaze of color and motion. The G-Force plugin, now the iTunes Visualizer, was every stoner’s dream, and put the laser light show at the planetarium to utter shame.  I remember reading about Apple’s acquisition of the software, and it’s release as iTunes with the launch of OSX. I remember how awesome iTunes was.

It quickly became the music player of choice for everyone on a mac.  When paired with the launch of the first generation iPod, it became an essential tool for anyone who wanted music on the go. Gone were the days of carrying a bag to hold a Discman, and a half dozen CDs, or spending hours burning mix CDs on slow 2x USB Burners, only to find your Discman won’t play CD-RW disks. iTunes and the iPod put your entire music library at your fingertips. But it’s at that moment the role of iTunes began to change.

Everything but the Kitchen, Sync

Before the heady days of the iPhone and iPad, the iPod was king, and as a means for sync’ing songs and playlists to a music player, iTunes was the perfect queen. It was an ideal marriage.  When the iTunes store opened, legal music downloading final found a home, and am extremely lucrative and successful home – something once thought to be impossible.  But once our iPod became iPhones, and mp3s became apps, games, and video, the role of iTunes changed drastically.

While we most often use iTunes as a music player, it’s now also the means for synchronization of our mobile lifestyle. We use it to sync our songs, our ringtones, our apps, our playlists, our contacts, our videos.  We can manage many elements of our iPhones, but not all of them. Synching photos still requires iPhoto… to a degree… eMail still requires Mail.  Granted, Apple does make the process as painless as possible, but their redressing of iTunes fails to understand how the purpose of iTunes has been drastically transformed.

The Logo isn’t Just Ugly, it’s Off-Target

During his speech, Jobs proudly announced that soon music downloads would outpace CD sales. Personally, I’m surprised it already hasn’t, but then again, you’re talking to some who still buys CDs, and who still listens to music on a stereo.  He used this as the reason behind the redesign, and the removal of the CD. I can understand the move, but by reducing the logo to merely a black music note, he’s turned the logo from a unique recognizable design to a piece of clip art. The notes lack any distinguishable personality, and the circular disc behind it has even less.  It’s pretty bold, dare I say cocky, to think one can brand a musical note with nothing but a blue-green gradient. And besides, what does a note have to do with apps, video games, or TV shows?

Steve Jobs was rather terse in his defense of the new iTunes logo, but while he defends the design choices, they expose a larger problem: iTunes is no longer just about music.  It’s about synching our on-the-go life. I for one am surprised many of the synching tasks haven’t already been removed from iTunes, and placed into a reborn iSync style application, where one can manage everything from their music, apps, email and photos, but also connect with MobileMe.  Such a move would free up iTunes to become iMedia, a tool dedicated to managing entertainment media on your Mac desktop, iOS devices, and AppleTV. Instead, Apple has seemingly done the opposite, and crammed even more under the iTunes banner.

Questionable Design Decisions

Even the new iTunes interface overhaul has been widely criticized. While the new hybrid view is a neat feature, the loss of color from the sidebar has made navigating media and playlists more difficult. Before we could quickly recognize the color associated with each type of media in the sidebar.  By making them all monochromatic, we are actually forced to read the text, or decipher the icon. There were also no improvements to the organization, leaving users plagued with a dozens of playlists which they cannot organize or categorize.

While those attempts at innovation have gone awry, Apple’s failure to address the iTunes store is more disturbing.  Open the iTunes store and you are confronted by lists, thumbnails, and links that fail to provide any clear visual hierarchy, and all fight for your attention.  With music alone, the iTunes store can be difficult enough to navigate. Add apps, ringtones, and video downloads to the equation, and you’ve got an even bigger mess on your hands.

By keeping the user within iTunes, and not a browser, Apple has forced us to adapt to a new means of interaction…one that’s clunky and unfamiliar, and well outside a typical user’s comfort zone. The opening page of the iTunes Store bombards the user with images, titles, and artists, but doesn’t provide any great direction. It also lacks many of the browser’s features such as bookmarking, or even the ability to email friends links to an artist’s pages or albums.  By shunning the browser keeping us within the walled garden of iTunes, Apple has made sharing with the web much more difficult than it needed to be.

And this is supposed to be the basis for a social network???

Ping Feels the Sting

Earlier this summer I blogged about the upcoming launch of Google’s own social network, and how Google was delving into the one area Apple had yet to dare. Here I am weeks later seeing Apple launch their first social network months before the much hyped GoogleMe will make its appearance. While taking cues from the privacy gaffs of Google Buzz and Facebook, Apple wisely hasn’t opted-in its rather sizeable userbase. Sadly, that seems to be all they’ve gotten right.

Within 24-hours, not only had users discovered the number of artists on Ping was rather small, but their profiles had become the victim of spammers. Not terribly inspiring. Add that with the sudden disappearance of Facebook Connect, and users found they had taken the time to sign up for an utter turd. Why a turd? Simple. Facebook is THE social network, and much like the Highlander, there can be only one.

As someone who has designed and built both community and eCommerce websites, I know how difficult it can be to get visitors to become members.  People don’t want to sign up for something new. They don’t want a new username and password to remember. They want to access secure information, but they don’t want to have to login to do that. And after spending the past few years building up hundreds of friends on Facebook, they don’t want to do that all over again.  Facebook is where people go for social networking. Period. End of story.

Facebook is THE social network, and much like the Highlander, there can be only one.

Sure, we’ve seen other social networks like Friendster and MySpace rise and fall, but to compare these sites to Facebook is like comparing a Commodore 64 to an iPad. There is simply no comparison. And to think that Ping or GoogleMe will truly compete, even with their large, pre-existing userbase is merely a pipe dream.  When the Facebook Connect feature disappeared from Ping, so did it’s chance for success.

Why Apple didn’t make a move to purchase the already popular and appropriately named iLike software baffled me. While iLike is connected with MySpace, I doubt it would’ve been difficult for Apple to partner with or acquire both companies, and craft MySpace into iSpace,while making iLike their music sharing service. Granted… building Ping from scratch did avoid many of the legal hurdles that would plague such dealings, but given their failure to come to a deal with Facebook shows that perhaps Apple needs some practice negotiating.

Fire…Bad. Friend… Good.

iTunes has certainly become much more that the awesome mp3 player it began life as. Sadly, it’s become this bizarre Frankenstein of a creature that everyone needs, but nobody loves. While it is easy to criticize iTunes, it doesn’t deserve the blame. The blame belongs to the people who have failed to see what this piece of software has become, and where it should become something different. But if nothing else, at least iTunes doesn’t judge the “shitty hipster music” we listen to.