iPhone Music Store Gifting?

Dear Cupertino,


I'd love to be able to give iTunes gifts from my iPhone. We can do it from the iTunes Music Store via iTunes on our computers, so why not from the iPhone version of the iTunes Store?

All we would need in terms of UI would be a button below the current "Buy Now" one, or a different interaction - say, hold down the "Buy Now" button to gift that particular song, movie, or TV show (but not App Store apps) to any of your contacts on your contacts list.

Gifting on the iPhone wouldn't just be handy if we wanted to give someone a song that we liked, or a TV show, nay, gifting on the iPhone would also come in handy if we needed to give someone a gift for their birthday at the last minute, or while we're out and about and can't find the perfect gift in a brick-and-mortar (that's a real store, folks, as opposed to an online store).

Gifting on the iPhone would also benefit those who don't usually have an internet connection at home, too. With the iTunes Store on the iPhone now available on cellular data networks, those sans-internet would be able to gift from the comfort of their homes, all without having to put on "real" clothes and go outside (shudder).

So yeah - iPhone Music Store gifting. Pretty please?

Thanks,
Pia Francisco.

Comments below, folks - and as usual, all DearCupertino wishes/improvements can be directed to:
joel [dot] esler [at] me [dot] com

Clear and Focused

Just a simple one today, folks. As per usual, if you've got any suggestions, or any thing that bugs you immensely about any Apple product, shoot a rant across to Joel at: joel.esler [at] me [dot] com, and he'll be more than glad to read it.

Dear Cupertino,

User Interface inconsistencies bug me. It is really annoying when the UI in any particular application don't function as you'd expect it to. This is particularly true when UI inconsistencies aren't the same across applications - even when said applications are built on the same set of APIs as one another.

For instance, the search field in the iTunes Music Store is on of those things that is just plain annoying.

The problem stems from the field not being able to "clear and focus" itself at the same time. If you've already got something typed in, and the field isn't currently focused (ie, doesn't have the blue highlighting around it), then you can't just hit the X next to your search term and start typing for another search - nope, you have to click in the field again so you can type in that field.


It's one of those UI inconsistencies that really get up my nose - and I want to see something done about it. Almost every other search field that implements the small X that clears the field and refocuses it so you can start typing it immediately seems to work right - so why not one of Apple's most widely distributed products, iTunes?

Apps that I have open at this moment which manage to do this right include: NetNewsWire and Chax's Log Viewer for iChat. Even Firefox's Google search in toolbar manages to automagically select the text for you when you click in the unfocused field, ready for you to start typing.

Everyone who has an iPod has iTunes (unless they're just plain disturbed), so it's one of those things that you would think Apple would go about fixing - this "clear and focus" functionality seems like a standard object in terms of coding Cocoa applications, but it's broken across the board in iTunes - neither the iTunes Music Store search field or the Music Library search field exhibit any "clear and focus" functionality at all. Poor effort, Apple.


Oh well, I guess I'll just have to wait for 8.0.3.

Thanks,
Benny Ling.

Ed's note: post idea from here. Props to Daring Fireball, Bjango, and the excellent range of ngmoco:) apps from the app store.

Getting Back to Basics...

So as a follow up-post to iTunes Improvements, Part One, there was just a couple of interface-related things I might have missed...

Posts are few and far between these days, so keep those submissions coming! Shoot 'em over to joel.esler [at] me [dot] com, and the Dear Cupertino monkeys will hammer on their keyboards for a while and spit out good quality posts... Or meaningless gibberish, one of the two.

Dear Cupertino,

iTunes is awesome, but lately it has become bloated with features and now runs sluggishly as a result.

What happened to the original Apple design modus operandi of "less is more"? John Gruber, of Daring Fireball fame, has even said that: "Figure out the absolute least you need to do to implement the idea, do just that, and then polish the hell out of the experience" in regards to iPhone App design, but doesn't the same apply to most Apple apps?


One of the main reasons people like Apple is because things are so much easier to do - even if features are sacrificed for usability and/or aesthetics. Oh yeah, it's happened before - firewire anyone? Going back even further, floppy drives, anyone? The invention of ADC was practically so USB, power and display signal could all be done through the one cable - even if users didn't want these features.

To point you in the right direction again, I've compiled a list of iTunes interface improvements, as follows:

• The ability to search lyrics and restrict your search to only the lyrics field.

• Make the grouping tag work like it does on the iTunes Store. If you browse the Complete U2 collection that Apple advertised, you will see that the collection breaks down per disc with titles of each original U2 release in the set. You can then hide or reveal the tracks on each disc by clicking the arrow on the left side of the header. I would like to see something like this implemented in iTunes, especially for classical albums, which often contain multiple symphonies on a single disc.

• Support for lyrics display on iTunes, not just on the iPod.

• Multiple artist support in the browser pane.

• Improved print layouts with album artist support.

Thanks,
Ian Rawluk.

Editors note: Now, these improvements are all well and good, but I personally don't think these are the improvements should be making to iTunes.
iTunes, being in it's 8th revision now, has simply become one of those apps which we can't live without - but at the expense of simplicity and aesthetics. Sure, the new grid view is "pretty cool", but is it really needed?
In this blogger's opinion, Apple needs to do what it did with OS9 and scrap it, and start from scratch. iTunes was originally a media player, and while the iTunes Store is a big part of that (5 billion songs can't be wrong) it needs to do what it does best - play music.
Lately, though, it just seems that iTunes isn't a music playing app, it's a spending-money app. All these Genius features are excellent in terms of music recommendations, but in reality they're just another way for Apple to get you to spend money at the iTunes Music Store.

Now, I can't blame Apple for trying to make money - they are a business, after all. However, it does bug me when these so called "features" are really thinly-veiled attempts to suck more money out of consumers. If I like a song, I'll look it up in the iTunes Store, preview it, and then buy it if I like it. That's what the iTunes store is for, and for that, it works beautifully.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that iTunes needs a massive overhaul - forget all the extras (5 visualizers, ooh!), and get back to basics, 'cos that's what Apple is all about.

iTunes Improvements, Part One

Dear Cupertino,

I love iTunes, really I do. It's the one app that handles all my syncing to iPhone, AppleTV, iPod, (unlike some other mobile platforms we know) and on top of that, it manages my entire music collection at the same time! It's completly awesome.

However, I do agree with people who are saying that iTunes is becoming far too bloated (code wise), and feature wise - I've seen iTunes 8 gobble up lots of RAM due to it's new grid album art view. Some people say it's now trying to do too much - but damn, it does it excellently!

Anyway, here are a couple of things we'd like to see in the next version of iTunes...

In the Maintenance category, we have:

1. Find songs without artwork - while iTunes sort of does this, it doesn't do it particularly well, often stumbling on tracks that have ID3 tags that differ from the iTunes Music Store tags. There are apps out there that do it (or pretend to, and screw everything up) but what we'd like to see is an Apple alternative. We love good quality album art, and the iTunes store provides.
2. Find dead songs - OSX has a all-encompassing search tool called Spotlight, no? And metadata indexing? Why doesn't Apple combine to two in some way to let iTunes find your dead music, those tracks which aren't where they used to be.
3. Rescan/normalize soundcheck and gapless values - for songs, this would be great as an option we could preform ourselves. This way, we'd have complete control when a song stuffed up our soundcheck values, or was playing with a gap. Rescanning it would then play the song, sans gap.
   

But wait, there's more! In the metadata section, we have the following suggestion:

iTunes is great for managing a large music library and I’m constantly using the search feature to find a song or album of interest. However, I think that the program needs to allow room for some new metadata fields:

1. Ability to tag/label songs as clean or explicit. Currently, songs downloaded from the iTunes Store come with these labels but when you import your own music from CDs you own, the tracks come in sans clean/explicit labels. You also can't see the tags for existing media in your library, nor edit them. This would be nice for parents to be able to restrict the music younger children could access in the library. Adding this feature would become akin to adding stars to songs - instead, how about you give it a clean/explicit rating?
2. Automatic lyrics import - iTunes already supports the addition of lyrics but this must be done manually on a per-song basis which can be annoying. There are many widgets and programs that automatically fetch lyrics for currently playing iTunes songs - so surely it'd be just a matter of querying some database for the info?
3. Better and more fields, eg: an "Original artist" field - for those excellent cover songs, when we just have to hear the original, more fields for catalog number, music label, and release type (i.e. bootleg, deluxe/special edition, EP, promo, remaster, single). Yet more fields for original release date and/or re-release date. Those of us who like nothing more than to look at our epic collection of 999,999 ID3 tags (per song) would appreciate it.
4. Subtitle support - for remixes and alternate versions.
5. The ability to modify play/skip count values, including batch addition and subtraction.
6. Ability to replace existing album artwork with art downloaded from the iTunes store. The current method of doing this requires manual removal of existing artwork before downloaded artwork appears.
7. BPM and key detection.
   

Phew, we're almost there! Apologies for the long-ish post. In the Video section, we've got:

Apple has started selling videos on the iTunes store and the program has evolved from a music jukebox to a complete solution for music and video management. However, it is lacking some critical features, such as:

1. The ability to purchase high definition 1080p media from the iTunes Store. 'Nuff said.
   
2. The import of unencrypted Blue-ray, DVD, HD-DVD media (AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS directories) or conversion support to H.264 - which has excellent scalability for viewing on our 1080p LCD TV's.

If there's anything else I've missed, or something you'd like to add to the list, leave 'em in comments.

Thanks,
Ian Rawluk.