AppleInsider Staff
Apple on Thursday issued the third beta build of iTunes 12 to developers and members of its Apple Seed program, bringing minor tweaks and backend enhancements to the stalwart media app.
The most recent iTunes 12 release does not appear to contain any substantial modifications and, aside from a few user interface tweaks, remains largely unchanged from the last beta build released in September, which itself was a near carbon copy of the initial beta seeded in July .
When it launches alongside OS X 10.10 Yosemite this fall, Apple's iTunes 12 will bring a refined design fitting in with the next-generation operating system's "flat" aesthetic. The media storage, purchase and playback platform will feature translucent windows, reorganized navigation bar and new library viewing options, among other UI adjustments.
iTunes 12 will also support new Apple cloud service features rolled out with iOS 8 like Family Sharing, which allows content sharing between up to six family members registered under the same credit card.
Apple is expected to release iTunes 12 to the public alongside OS X Yosemite some time this fall, with the latest rumors pointing to a debut in October.
Developers and AppleSeed members can download the latest iTunes 12 beta through the Software Update mechanism in OS X 10.10 Yosemite.
Christine McKee
Charles Martin
Oliver Haslam
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22 Comments
Nice.
The look is nice, yes. Unfortunately that is where it ends. Extensive album, movie etc. lists scroll like molasses, constantly reloading artwork while displaying a SPOD (and no, that's not because of the beta state, it did work in beta 1 and got worse with every improvement). The handy sidebar view is gone. WiFi Sync still unreliable. Newest 'feature' in beta 3 is no more grouping of TV Show seasons.. series with 10 and more seasons now show as a list of 100 and more episodes %u2013 add the terrible scrolling behavior and you have a winner :-( In addition to removing the sidebar feature (which is bad), the new Store integration is not well thought out. E.g. you can't change from the movie page in the store to your local music with one click; if you click on Music you get to the music page in the store and need a second click to show local contents. The other bad joke is the implementation of the 'Devices' popup. It just takes over the application and even Mission Control. If you watch a movie in full screen mode and a known device gets on the WLAN (e.g. girlfriend returns from shopping) then the device popup will open and the active space on the Mac changes from the full screen movie to the main iTunes window. Bugs are unavoidable with complex software, but neither does Apple read feedback, nor does iTunes 12 add anything useful to justify them. Sincerely hope that this will not be released before it gets a lot more work.
I don't like the last version. There are many many views you can switch between and its not immediately clear which choice results in what view. It's overcomplex. I hope Apple will switch to an entire new system after this version: Music - Beats and iTunes songs app. Photos - As planned, browser and editor. Videos - Video browser and simple editor. And I hope they will get rid of 'videos' on iOS as well because it's very inconsistent with Photos and Music on iOS (it's basically iTunes for videos)
[quote name="dreyfus2" url="/t/182646/apple-seeds-itunes-12-beta-3-to-developers-ahead-of-os-x-yosemite-launch#post_2612022"]The look is nice, yes. Unfortunately that is where it ends. Extensive album, movie etc. lists scroll like molasses, constantly reloading artwork while displaying a SPOD (and no, that's not because of the beta state, it did work in beta 1 and got worse with every improvement). The handy sidebar view is gone. WiFi Sync still unreliable. Newest 'feature' in beta 3 is no more grouping of TV Show seasons.. series with 10 and more seasons now show as a list of 100 and more episodes %u2013 add the terrible scrolling behavior and you have a winner :-( In addition to removing the sidebar feature (which is bad), the new Store integration is not well thought out. E.g. you can't change from the movie page in the store to your local music with one click; if you click on Music you get to the music page in the store and need a second click to show local contents. The other bad joke is the implementation of the 'Devices' popup. It just takes over the application and even Mission Control. If you watch a movie in full screen mode and a known device gets on the WLAN (e.g. girlfriend returns from shopping) then the device popup will open and the active space on the Mac changes from the full screen movie to the main iTunes window. Bugs are unavoidable with complex software, but neither does Apple read feedback, nor does iTunes 12 add anything useful to justify them. Sincerely hope that this will not be released before it gets a lot more work.[/quote] Do you use any Shared Libraries? I ask because that is how I mostly use iTunes; I don't have much local data, but I have an old Mac with a RAIDed external drive that I used as my "iTunes Server" until such time as Apple graces us with a proper Home Media (and Time Machine) Server. More specifically, I have Smart Playlists set up in iTunes on that old Mac I'm using via Home Sharing. I typically set up this up show content for various shows that have been played less than 1 time. However, with the first beta of iTunes 12 this "feature" of showing Playlists of shared devices was gone. Would you happen to know if it's back? (That was a very long intro to ask an otherwise simple question)
iTunes Radio now says how many skips are left(it didn't in the previous version).