Although I see more and more things to dislike about iTunes with each major update, I’m usually thankful to Apple that these “features” can be hidden or disabled. I just want a program that stores and catalogues my music and videos, manages my podcast subscriptions and works seamlessly with my iPods… a mixture of versions 4, 5 and 6, I guess.
So, the Genius sidebar can sod right off for a start… I just don’t get on with any of those “if you like this, you’ll probably like THIS” suggestion systems. Luckily, it’s easy enough to disable and hide the whole facility. The same goes for the increasing space given in the Preferences page to AppleTV and the iPhone… simple enough to ignore.
But here’s a knotty one… there’s no obvious way of getting rid of the “Genre” column in Browser mode. What is this? Some kind of obsessive/compulsive geek thing, whereby some people can’t listen to music unless they know what it’s supposed to be? It’s as bad as the rating system (if I didn’t like it, it wouldn’t even make it as far as my iTunes library) but at least I can ignore that. I want my two-column browser layout back, DAMMIT!
Fortunately, help is at hand from the support forums. One line of code, typed with a smug flourish into the Terminal, is all it takes…
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1710847&tstart=0
I’ve heard that iTunes 8 will make Vista machines BSOD if you so much as look at them funny, which is putting me off downloading this update for the moment! Though perhaps that’s my fault for using Vista.
Adrian – remember my “collective” post re itunes ? I was pretty new to it all then and it didn’t seem quite as “user friendly” as I had expected. Now I’m up to speed and have forgotten my issues, but now they’ve gone and complicated it again!
Complicating things seems to be in vogue, lately….
(it can end in tears… ask the banks!!!).