I skipped the whole “first takes on” bandwagon with the last large-ish release
of iTunes, but not this time (apparently). So, here’s what jumps out at me:
1. I don’t get why people say the MiniStore is gone. If I show it, there it
is (on both Mac OS X and Windows).
2. Apparently, it isn’t enough anymore for every Apple application to have a
different splitter widget (and, in iTunes’s case, a different window
rounded-corner radius). Maybe they decided that, since the main interface
basically looks the same on Mac OS X and Windows, it should look like an
alien in both environments, instead of just in one environment or the other.
3. I also saw somewhere that the scroll bars have the arrows together — on Mac
OS X it picks up the value for this from your Appearance preference pane
(on Windows, as far as I can tell, it always uses the _at both ends_
variety).
4. The _every widget looks different than it does anywhere else_ plan applies
only to the main window — the preferences dialog looks like a normal window
for whatever OS you’re running it on. This makes me suspicious of the
theory that maybe this is a Leopard preview (well, that and having used
some recent Apple applications). But theming the OS is still crazy talk.
5. In iTunes preferences, the _Show: Podcasts_ and _Show: Radio_ items on the
General pane and the _Disable Podcasts_ and _Disable Radio_ items on the
Parental pane apparently set the same two preferences (flip between the two
panes, flipping the Podcasts item each time, and you’ll see what I mean).
6. Related to the above, if you want to hide the STORE category in the source
list, there’s no check box to hide it, but there is a box for your parents
to disable it. Mind you, if either the _Purchased_ or _Download_ item in
that category has stuff in it, that item (and therefore the STORE category)
will remain, just with fewer items in it.
7. iTunes 6._something_ has been the current version since I returned to the
platform, so I’ve only ever seen the green variant of the iTunes icon on a
current version of the software. I keep noticing the blue one in my dock
and wondering how I managed to get iTunes 4 or something on my Tiger
machine.
8. The only two _gapless_ examples I can think of in my library weren’t
detected. And by _weren’t detected_, I of course mean they now play
gapless, but the checkbox that seemingly enables this behavior on each
item’s Get Info dialog is not checked.
9. There’s useful newcomer in the Get Info dialog if you’ve been playing with
TiVoToGo on your Windows box — some of the _TV Show_ tags on MPEG-4s can
now be edited, so you can put your TV Shows in the (\*gasp\*) TV Shows
part of your library.
10. In Finder (and a number of other apps, for that matter), there’s a
segmented control in the toolbar to chose from the three different view
types, and you can use Command 1–Command 3 to flip between them. iTunes
already uses those for zooming videos that you’re playing, and there’s no
hint how you might flip between the three view styles from the keyboard,
if you even can do it. And that control isn’t in the sequence of controls
you can Tab to, so don’t get any ideas there scooter.
Update 1
——–
I’m a dimwit (or shouldn’t write this stuff so late at night). iTunes 4–6 all
had the green icon, and I’d actually come back during the iTunes 4 era. iTunes
3 had the [purple icon][purple], iTunes 2 had a [blue icon][blue], and it looks
like iTunes 1 had this spiffy [three-colored job][multi] that I don’t think
I’ve seen before.
[purple]: http://images.google.com/images?q=itunes3+icon
[blue]: http://images.google.com/images?q=itunes2+icon
[multi]: http://images.google.com/images?q=itunes1+icon
Update 2
——–
The _iTunes 1_ link above now points where it’s supposed to.