A way to improve iTunes Cover Flow
Cover Flow in iTunes turns your computer monitor into a jukebox, provided you have the correct album art. Since it's been implemented in this music application, I've been frustrated by its shortcomings. The changes to me seem simple enough, so here are a few suggestions.
When Cover Flow is enabled, show the song title for every track.
See the images below. When you have a track playing the song title appears. When you scroll the rest of the library, only the artist/album name appears. This makes it impossible to pick tracks, so why not add it?
Better control of Album Artwork feature
This one is a doozy. I phoned Apple support to find out if they knew how the iTunes album artwork feature worked, and they confessed they didn't.
For example, I spent a number of hours updating and sourcing songs that didn't download from Apple. I then moved my iTunes Library and Album Artwork folder over to a new machine. Even after opening the iTunes Library file (which is a huge hassle that requires you to hold down a key while loading iTunes, a feature that is not documented), much of my album artwork didn't show up!
I've experienced much strange behaviour when it comes to the AA feature. If you find artwork for a CD cover that Apple doesn't have, does your artwork get uploaded to Apple? These terms are not spelled out in the software EULA agreement, I believe. I don't mind Apple getting CD covers from me because I've taken care to get the highest quality image for it. But others might put pictures of their cat as album covers, and iTunes wouldn't know the difference.
There are also strange omissions when it comes to album artwork. For example, I have a few Smashing Pumpkins CDs, and all the artwork to go with them. However, when I moved my library iTunes told me the artwork wasn't available. For NONE of their records! So clearly my artwork wasn't uploaded, and for some strange reason iTunes wasn't storing CDs for somewhat recent million-selling records.
What next?
Cover Flow is a great feature, and it can only get better. Here is what should happen next.
- Apple's iTunes group needs to better document how this feature works.
- They should standardize the data format so if you use other media players they can also access the artwork.
- Album Artwork should 'share' artwork between machines, but allow users to preview files before downloading them. This could get complicated with large libraries, so maybe there should be a separate utility from Apple to manage iTunes artwork rather than bloating up iTunes even more.
iTunes is the leading media player for a reason – it's a good entertainment tool. Apple must use this dominance of the market to make their software even more enjoyable.
