ArticlesAlastair at girtby.net has never been happy that I have denigrated the iTunes user-interface once or twice.
He tackled several different objections in a recent defence of iTunes. I have a lot of respect for Alastair. When he says I am wrong, I certainly pause to reconsider.
So first, let me make clear that my past objections have been solely related to the user experience. I haven’t complained about any of the other items Alastair addresses – such as it being a resource hog or not supporting WMA, for example.
I’ve been using Windows for a while now, so while I agree there isn’t a firm standard for media player user interfaces, I do have a strong grasp of the basic concepts of documents, folders and files. I get vocal when other media player applications don’t follow the basic conventions.
I haven’t used iTunes for a while, so I decide to give it another go and use it to play a couple of tracks and see how it goes.
The iTunes application is already installed – I have used it before – but it is a newer version since the last time I ran it. When I start it up, it begins to “configure itself”. I watch a progress bar for a while, as I ponder what it could possibly be doing.
I accept the EULA, and my DVD player starts whirring. Why is it doing that? I didn’t ask it to access that; the music I want is on my hard-drive, in F:\Music\. The DVD in the drive is a movie that I don’t want to watch right now.
It tells me I need another upgrade, which is fair enough, because I keep declining them when offered.
So, the iTunes application window is open… I think. Is it the application window? Where’s the title bar for the window? Surely that’s not too much to ask for? What reason could there possibly be to muck around with the basic elements of the window? Alastair says it is no barrier to entry. I feel like kidnappers have broken in to my house and taken away my teddy bear. Sure, I can live without it, but I am still upset that they did, and wonder why their are such evil miscreants in the world who would be so spiteful to me for so little gain. The world seems a scarier place without my teddy bear.
I note the fast forward, rewind and play buttons at the top of the page, but what object or document are they operating on? I haven’t selected one yet, so what’s going on?
The main screen is displaying four random movies; I have no idea where it found them, or why it chose those four. I try to ignore both the movies and my growing sense of bewilderment.
There’s an Apple logo in the middle of the screen. At this point, I don’t know why; it just seems like obnoxious branding.
My eye is attracted by a spinning icon next to the word “downloads”. I don’t know what it is downloading. Did I tell it to download something the last time I ran it, many months ago? Who can tell? I ignore it.
There is some other movement on the screen. The entry for podcasts has a number that’s counting, and I don’t know why. I remember trying to subscribe to some podcasts once, but I couldn’t work out what it was doing. Perhaps those settings are still in place. I ignore it again.
In the bottom corner is a plus-shaped icon. I wonder what that does. Oooh, that’s a shuffle icon (I have an iPod, so I recognise it!) and another one that means play-in-order, right? Then an eject button? Doesn’t sound right. I decide to get some tooltips, so I hover over the buttons. Nothing happens. Why not? It turns out I don’t have focus! I can’t tell because it doesn’t have a standard fucking title bar, which normally indicates to me quite clearly which window has focus.
Whoa, Julian! It’s just a funky silver-coloured toolbar. You can tell the focus by the colour of the font. You are just unfamiliar with it. Is there really any need to debase yourself by swearing at this point? I check and it seems the answer is “Damn fucking right! This user interface is confusing and frustrating me, and besides, Teddy won’t be upset at me for swearing because those bastards kidnapped him!”
So, it is time to play a file. I open the file with File | Open... dialog. No, wait, I don’t do that at all. Why not? Because there isn’t a fucking File | Open... submenu. I can’t work out how to open a file to play it.
I move my mouse cursor over the non-standard (but still recognisable) Application Close icon, but I pause. Have I really given iTunes a fair hearing? For Alastair’s sake, I decide to keep going.
I go back and take a guess at the most likely way to play the file. I choose to add the file to the library. A File Chooser dialog box appears, defaulting to some subdirectory that I was using yesterday in another application. I click on “My Computer” to find some music. No, wait, I don’t really do that… My Computer icon is missing; this isn’t a standards Windows File Chooser.
I navigate through the directories and select Jonathon Coulton‘s Re: Your Brains which is in my F:\Music\ directory.
Nothing happens. Nothing. There is no sign I have made any difference.
I move my mouse cursor over the Application Close icon again, and go to press it, when I stop.
All right, one more chance, Alastair.
I guess again and click on the word Music in the odd menu on the left.
I see a (non-standard) grid/file view of music. The first column is untitled, and shows many exclamation marks. I have no idea what that means. There’s no tooltip when I hover over it.
The second column is the name with a checkbox. What will happen if I uncheck that? I have absolutely no idea, so I don’t dare.
I scroll through the list, and I am pleased to see that “Re: Your Brains” is there in the list. (There’s no exclamation mark next to it, which is either really good or really bad, I am not sure.) I click on it. There’s still no music coming out of the speaker, but I get some new icons appearing – funky arrows in a circle.
I click one of the funky arrows to make it play or, at least, open the file. It accesses the Internet and then tries to sell me some music! What the hell? I’ve already paid Jonathon Coulton for this music. My task today was not to go shopping; it was to merely listen to some the music I already own.
I hate spam. I hate junk mail. Shoving shopping catalogues onto my computer screen isn’t making me feel love towards this product.
I have to hunt to find the non-standard Back button in a non-standard position. (It looks like it might advance to the next record in the database, not navigate through the history list.)
I double-click on the song name in the grid and finally some music is playing! (I manage to get it into rename mode, but that was probably just a simple mouso.)
Yay! I can play a damn song.
So, I click on another song. This has an exclamation mark next to it. It can’t find the file and offers to let me add it back. Odd, because I already have a perfectly good database of music. I call it “F:\Music\”. It is always completely up-to-date. Maybe F5 will make it refresh? Nope.
I finally hit the Application Close button.
Sorry, Alastair. That user interface makes me feel stupid and lost, which makes me feel angry and swear. For what? I don’t need iTunes in my life to listen to my music or to populate my iPod.
I don’t want to go through that again for a long while.
Just tell me where to leave the money to get my teddy bear back.
Comment by Alastair on December 20, 2007
You’ll find the Teddy Bear in Library > Soft Toys > Bears.
Just out of interest Julian, which media player do you use?
Comment by Aristotle Pagaltzis on December 20, 2007
Err wait, that’s not quite what you wrote…
Comment by John Y. on December 20, 2007
Julian, what you describe is truly gruesome (thanks Aristotle!). I must admit I have not tried iTunes myself, but I can identify with your sense of “if they are bothering to make this work on Windows, why can’t they make it work at least vaguely in a Windows-like way?!” as well as the revulsion to lots of random stuff going on that you didn’t ask for and doesn’t have anything to do with what you are trying to accomplish.
I can also identify with your taste for Jonathon Coulton. <severely off topic>I have actually had the pleasure of seeing him perform live. Outdoors. (Not in May though.) He seemed like a relatively small-time local act at the time, so it’s both a little surprising and a little gratifying to see that (evidently through the Miracle of the Internet) he has managed to garner an international following.</severely off topic>
Comment by Julian on December 21, 2007
In approximate order of decreasing usage, my media players include:
Comment by Sunny Kalsi on December 21, 2007
musikcube.
Comment by Alastair on December 24, 2007
Julian, so the first three on the list I can’t really comment about because being hardware players there isn’t really a standard for the user interface to be compared to. But I note that the first software player on your list is WMP, and I can certainly comment on that.
I have a similar reaction to WMP that you have to iTunes. I find the interface incomprehensible and gratuitously nonconformant. WMP not only steals your Teddy Bear, but also pulls all the stuffing out and sticks the carcass on a stake on your front lawn.
Fucking File | Open menu? There *is* no fucking File open menu. In fact, there’s no fucking File menu. Unforgivably, there’s no fucking menu bar.
How do I play a music file? I can see the “Now playing” panel and it says “Drag items here” to create a playlist. OK, so I go to explorer, find my music files, and try to drag them in. But no luck; the cursor changes to show that the files can’t be dropped there. No idea as to why not …
And so on. The point of this rant is not to say that my media player is better than yours, nyeah nyeah. Instead I’m just curious as to why you would find WMP (apparently) acceptable and iTunes annoying.
Perhaps the answer is at least partially a kind of Stockholm syndrome, as Chris astutely commented on my blog. Reading your article above I was reminded of some of the iTunes annoyances that I have become blind to, simply by progressive exposure over a long time frame. Overall I find that iTunes has improved with each successive release but occasionally they make a step backward. On first discovery of whatever annoying feature they introduce, I have learned to simply disable it and continue to use the application as before. For example, when they introduced the iTunes store thing, it took only a little while to discover that it was called the “minibrowser” and disable it from the menu bar. In comparison, a new user gets confronted with all of the annoying features at once.
That’s my theory anyway – perhaps you have another explanation?
Comment by Julian on December 24, 2007
🙂 I’m not going to disagree. I am certainly not going to claim Windows Media Player is a GUI success story.
I so agree. This is particularly disappointing as it comes from the same damn company that set the Windows conventions.
I attacked this ridiculous situation when this blog first started.
I did explain then that:
I have certainly taken this step, so, it seems like I have taken a similar approach to you: I have learned to simply disable or ignore each annoying feature.
I use File | Open… (as turned on above) or double click on the file in Explorer.
For queueing, I right-click on the file in Explorer, and “Add To Windows Media Player list”.
In practice, I rarely use playlists. Perhaps if I wanted to use them more, I would find WMP worse. Perhaps if I didn’t use WMP, I would use playlists more!
No, I don’t love my captor; I don’t even respect it. I don’t claim it is the lessor of two evils. It’s more just the devil I know!
For example, while playing with WMP for this comment, it became non-responsive when I accidentally pointed it at a CD drive. What is this? Co-operative multi-tasking? Name one good reason why the UI thread and the disk-drive accessing thread aren’t different threads. Name one good reason why a thread blocked on input from a driver can’t also be monitoring for an abort message from the main thread.
Oh well, this is the sort of problem that gets fixed in version 2. What’s that you say? WMP is up to version 11? How can that be?
Yeah, no sign of Stockholm Syndrome here!
Comment by Julian on December 24, 2007
Sunny,
I googled for musikcube.
But I don’t want another stinking music library. I want a simple mp3 player. Oh, and a .wav player.
Sorry, I didn’t investigate any further.
Comment by Sunny Kalsi on December 26, 2007
Julian: You’re wrong. You do want another stinking music library. You just don’t know it yet.
Comment by Julian on December 26, 2007
Sunny,
Wrong again? Could be – I’ve had enough practice, that I am getting good at it now.
You persuaded me to install it, and give it a try.
Progress displayed [only] in the title bar?
Equaliser dialog box has a fake Title bar?
30 minutes wasted happily updating properties of my songs, because they are inconsistent and I am anal?
Still no File | Open? No way I can find in the application to simply navigate to a file in a subdirectory and say “Make the bits in that file play through the speaker”?
Still no .wav files?
Getting help requires Internet access?
Is there is a difference between “Enqueue” and “Queue as Next”? (I still can’t tell after reading the help.)
Cross-fader symbol looks like my iPod’s shuffle symbol?
You see an empty NetRadio list and you can’t add a station by right-clicking?
“vol” is the abbreviation for “Volume”? Isn’t the speaker icon ubiquitous for this purpose? Why not a standard Windows slider here?
Select some songs. Hit “Create playlist”. It is created and it is empty. Why not include the songs I just selected?
Musikcube raises more questions, rather than providing an answer. I still don’t want another stinking music library.
Comment by Bork Blatt on December 29, 2007
I remember trying iTunes about a year ago, and all I can remember was hating the experience. My brain mercifully blocked out the rest.
Julian, if all you want is a dead simple no-frills media player, try VLC Media Player (www.videolan.org). It’s open source, available on multiple OSes and as far as I know, has it’s codecs compiled into the app, which has pros and cons, I know, but at least you don’t spend hours trying to find codecs. It supports a *really* broad range of audio and video formats.
No media library or any guff, but there are some advanced features under the hood if you dig around (including ability to stream across a LAN).
I have to say I’m curious how a company that can design some fantastically usable UI’s (iPod) can generate an app like iTunes.
Comment by Julian on December 29, 2007
I just noticed that this post got bitten by the all-mp3-links-are-enclosures bug (via Alastair). Sorry to everyone whose feed aggregators downloaded the song that was tangental to the real post.
Comment by Mike on July 8, 2008
WINAMP. In my opinion, the best mp3 player, been using it for a decade. They haven’t messed with the interface in all the time I’ve been using it.