Riccardo Mori

Flickr 2.0

December 14, 2012

A whole new app

The other day, Flickr published an update to its official iPhone app and I must say it’s a remarkable improvement over version 1.x., to the point that it really feels like a whole different app. The previous version wasn’t particularly bad, but UI-wise it didn’t look all that different from the mobile version of Flickr’s website. Flickr 2.0’s redesign was made to further emphasise the ‘social’ aspect of the venerable photo-sharing service. Many observers were quick to point out how much ‘Instagram-inspired’ the new version looks, but it’s not bad at all, and the approach doesn’t lack originality. I especially like the Contacts timeline navigation: you scroll down and see the most recent photo of each contact, but if you start swiping to the left, you can explore each contact’s photostream right on the spot. It’s a clever, simple, well-executed idea. The whole app feels smoother, more polished, and generally more useful. I like how the Flickr team has removed a lot of friction in finding and adding new contacts, and the Activity section is really well laid out.

Flickr is dead. No wait, it’s alive!

For months, on the Web and on Twitter, I’ve been reading of how ‘Flickr as a community is dead’, of how ‘Flickr is a desert’, of how ‘Flickr is not social enough’, of how ‘Flickr is not mobile enough’, of how ‘Instagram killed Flickr’, and so on and so forth. And now it seems there’s some sort of Flickr renaissance simply because the new version of the official iPhone app has removed a little bit of friction. On Twitter I couldn’t resist quipping: The fact that people were waiting for a better iPhone app to ‘go back enjoying Flickr’ says a lot about their laziness… Let me elaborate on this a bit.

Flickr, as a photo-sharing service, was born in the pre-iPhone era, when sharing photos meant photos you took with a proper camera, and when uploading, tagging, exploring other people’s photography, interacting with other members, and participating in forum discussions were all things you did from a computer. Then came the iPhone and the revolution it brought, especially starting from the 3GS, when you could take nicer photos with the 3‑megapixel built-in camera. Taking snaps and sharing them instantly was getting easier and easier and with the advent of Instagram we all could see how it was possible to build an entire social network on that simple sharing model, with a touch of vintage stylish filters and, more importantly, around a single platform and a single device — iOS and the iPhone.

With the constant improving of the iPhone’s camera, first with the iPhone 4, then the 4S and now with the 5, an increasing number of people have taken to use the iPhone as their only digital camera (or at least the camera they use the most). The combination of iPhone and Instagram has created a powerful point-and-shoot-and-share phenomenon which is so ‘viral’ that every other photo-sharing model looks painfully slow and awkward in comparison. This, I think, is what made a lot of people neglect Flickr.

(Brief aside: let me tell you, that kind of defection wasn’t all that bad: lots of casual users who uploaded dozen of crappy shots at a time — mostly taken with terrible point-and-shoot cameras or cameraphones — had finally found easier to upload those crappy shots on Instagram, and make them just a little less crappy by using Instagram filters. So, from this point of view, Flickr members like me who have always been in for the quality could utter a sigh of relief.)

As I have said more than once, convenience and quality haven’t always been a successful marriage when it comes to photography. A lot of people have embraced the Instagram way of sharing simply because it’s perceived as faster and more convenient than the ‘old’ way of taking a memory card out of a camera, transferring the photos on a computer, choosing the keepers and uploading them to a place like Flickr. And yes, it’s faster and more convenient, I’m not denying that, but in my opinion it also sacrifices quality for the sake of speed and convenience. And speed and convenience are just what (lazy) people want from today’s technology. So, make the experience more Instagrammatic, and people are more than happy to rediscover you and your service.

So what if it’s not like Instagram?

When pundits were deep in their ‘Flickr is doomed’ phase, some of them suggested that Flickr should follow more closely in Instagram’s footsteps, because Instagram got the mobile, social and sharing parts right, and if Flickr didn’t do something of that kind, the risk was a stagnant, withering community. At that time I was too busy to express my point of view with a proper post, but I jotted down some infuriated notes, like “So what if it’s not like Instagram?” and “Community’s very much alive from where I stand”.

What I mean is that, first of all, as a long-time Flickr member, and as someone who has never stopped using Flickr, I haven’t really noticed a stagnant community around me. Sure, some contacts have gone quiet, but new ones have appeared, and a lot of groups I follow (especially those revolving around film photography) have maintained a very healthy activity over the years, seemingly unaffected by the Instagram-mania.

At a certain point I also thought: even if the Flickr community has indeed shrunk and now who’s left are those who really care about the quality of the photos they upload and share, well… so be it. I was starting to think that Flickr’s disregard for a proper standalone mobile application was intentional, a move to drive snap-happy smartphone shooters towards more suitable services and transform Flickr into a distinguished community of pro and semi-pro members, of people whose idea of good photography goes a little beyond the application of faux vintage filters. And whose idea of feedback and discussion goes a little beyond a ‘Like’ button and a quick appreciation shorthanded with emoji icons.

Snobbish? Perhaps. Why not? I was even ready to pay more per year, if the shrinking of Flickr’s general community demanded a higher cost for existing ‘pro’ members to help sustain the service.

Instagram and Flickr, as I see it, represent two very different ways and models of sharing photos, and I can’t resist making the fast food/slow food analogy. Why can’t both be prominent? Each has its strengths and I believe it could be interesting if their differences were to be emphasised rather than blurred. That’s why I never agreed with those who claimed that Flickr should ‘freshen up’ by following Instagram’s model. Flickr and Instagram are two different, very distinct methods of expression through the use of images. At least for me: most of my Instagram shots have a fundamental diaristic element. They are a collection of almost-daily fragments, glimpses, impressions, sketches. They catch ephemeral moods, passing feelings, they’re the graphical equivalent of tweets. On the other hand, the photos I post on Flickr, at a much slower pace, are the result of a careful selection process aimed at delivering something more permanent and ‘artistic’. The interface is different. The language is different: Sets and Collections for me are terms that inspire the creation of photographic projects, or small geeky series like The setup, Of Macs and men, The return of the 5.25″ or IBM WorkPad. The few Instagram shots that I also upload to my Flickr account are themselves a result of an accurate selection, not just mere, automatic crossposting.

So, on one hand I’m glad that the new Flickr 2.0 app has revived Flickr a bit in the eyes of pundits and snappers out there, and I myself have registered quite a spike in activity around my photos and contacts. On the other hand, I hope these differences in models and languages will remain and that Flickr won’t become just another Instagram lookalike, both in language and contents.

Keeping MarsEdit drafts in sync

December 12, 2012

by Riccardo Mori

Software

I have been using MarsEdit since around 2006, and it is without doubt the best tool for managing and writing on blogs. Most of the times, my MarsEdit workflow is really simple: I sit at my desk and write my articles, like I’m doing right now. But not always an article is born, developed, finished and published on the same Mac. Since I keep my main machine, a MacBook Pro, mostly in a desktop configuration, and I’m occasionally working elsewhere, I also rely on two other Macs, both still quite dependable: a 12-inch PowerBook G4, and a 17-inch model. Thus, it’s not infrequent that I start writing down ideas in MarsEdit on either of those PowerBooks when I’m on the move, to then finish and do the final edits at home on the MacBook Pro. Or vice-versa. How to keep things in sync?

True, if I start writing a post on the PowerBook G4 17″, I could simply finish it on the same machine once I’m back home. Or, when I start on the MacBook Pro, I could then bring the MacBook Pro with me, etc. The fact is that I don’t have a comfortable spot in my flat or home office where I could sit and finish things with the PowerBook. And the MacBook Pro is connected with a bunch of peripherals that it’s simply better to leave it there as a desktop machine rather than disconnect everything, especially in cases where I have to just grab a laptop and go away, without much time to plan things in advance. I figured that some way to synchronise things would be a much more hassle-free option.

Being a fan of Notational Velocity, my obvious first solution was to start writing articles there, and then have them ready on whatever machine I planned to finish working on them. It was just a matter of copying and pasting from NV to MarsEdit. The good: flawless, invisible syncing. The bad: not having the little handy tools MarsEdit gives you for text and HTML formatting. Sure, I usually rely on another great tool — TextExpander — for automatically insert HTML tags, but I really missed handy features like copying a link from Safari and just adding it to the selected word with a shortcut. In a nutshell: I liked the syncing, I missed MarsEdit’s interface for writing.

The next thought was: why not use Dropbox? I then proceeded to locate MarsEdit’s Draft folder ([username] /Library/Application Support/MarsEdit/LocalDrafts), create an alias of it, and have the alias point to the original LocalDrafts folder now moved to Dropbox. So easy and too good to be true, I thought. It turns out that this method doesn’t work: after moving the folder, opening MarsEdit, and clicking on Local Drafts in the left sidebar, all the previously saved drafts were nowhere to be found. Evidently MarsEdit doesn’t like having to deal with aliases, but only with true folders.

After thinking about it some more, I managed to find a solution that works for me. It involves splitting the sync workflow a little, but it works.

I created a MarsEdit/Drafts folder in my Dropbox folder.
On the MacBook Pro, I set up a new rule in Hazel to sync the contents of the original [username]/Library/Application Support/MarsEdit/LocalDrafts folder to that other Drafts folder in Dropbox.
Now, if the other Mac had been an Intel Mac with at least Snow Leopard installed, I could have done the exact same thing in Step 2, but in reverse. I.e., set up a rule in Hazel to sync the Drafts folder in Dropbox with the local MarsEdit Drafts folder. Since the other Macs are two PowerPC machines with Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard on them, I simply chose another folder syncing software to do the same thing. Again, here your mileage may vary. I wanted something really simple and that also gave me a bit of manual control on the sync process, so I opted for Matt Neuburg’s SyncMe2 (scroll down a bit in that section and you’ll find it). It’s free, it’s solid software written by someone I trust, and I like that it lets me cherry-pick the files to syncrhonise, if I’m so inclined.

As I said, if you just have to keep MarsEdit’s drafts in sync between two Intel Macs, the cleanest solution is probably to have Hazel handle the sync via Dropbox. If you sync between an Intel Mac and a PPC Mac, it’s only a matter to choose what folder syncing application best suits your needs.

Update, December 15 — Luca Soldaini, via Twitter, suggests a possibly simpler solution: using symbolic links (symlinks) instead of aliases. It’s a clever idea, and admittedly I did not think about that (I don’t happen to use symlinks that often). I have tried it and can confirm it works.

The fundamental mechanism is similar to creating aliases: you put the [username]/Library/Application Support/MarsEdit/LocalDrafts folder in a folder or subfolder of your choice inside Dropbox, then you specify a symbolic link that points to that folder and you place the symbolic link where the original LocalDrafts folder was (in [username]/Library/Application Support/MarsEdit/).

Creating symbolic links is a process that usually involves the Terminal (enter the Terminal and type man ln for more information). But there are also simpler, GUI-based solutions. This 2010 article on Macworld explains how to create a symlink using a shell script and Automator, and also points to another Macworld article where they suggested creating symlinks with AppleScript. But it also points to what is probably the most painless solution: SymbolicLinker, a piece of software created by Nick Zitzmann.

It’s a free download and consists of a plugin (for Macs running Mac OS X 10.5.8 or earlier) and a service (for Macs running Mac OS X 10.6 or later). Once installed — make sure to read carefully the installation instructions — you will have a new functionality for creating symbolic links via a Finder contextual menu, and it’ll be as easy as creating an alias. Once you’ve installed SymbolicLinker, the method for synchronising MarsEdit’s LocalDrafts folder is simple:

Drag the original [username]/Library/Application Support/MarsEdit/LocalDrafts folder in a folder or subfolder of your choice inside Dropbox;
Right-click or Ctrl-click the LocalDrafts folder in Dropbox and choose Make Symbolic Link from the contextual menu (if you don’t see the command, look under More… at the bottom of the contextual menu if you’re on Leopard, or under the Services… menu if you’re on Snow Leopard and later);
SymbolicLinker will create a folder called LocalDrafts symlink: drag this folder where the original LocalDrafts was (inside [username]/Library/Application Support/MarsEdit/) and rename it to just LocalDrafts;
Repeat Steps 2 and 3 on the second Mac. This way, both Macs will point to the same LocalDrafts folder inside Dropbox.
That should be it!

It is actually easier done than explained. The great thing about this method is that the sync process is ‘invisible’ to the user and totally automatic. Open MarsEdit on Mac 1, write, save the draft, let Dropbox work its magic, go to Mac 2, open MarsEdit, select Local Drafts in the sidebar, and there you have all your drafts in sync. My original method is still valid if you want to have a more fine-grained control over what gets synchronised between the two machines and don’t want everything done automatically behind the scenes. Again, if you choose to install SymbolicLinker, make sure you read the installation instructions carefully.

Make a Donation to the Internet Archive

December 11, 2012

by Riccardo Mori

Handpicked

InternetArchivepetabox

The Internet Archive is an incredible, invaluable resource. As Jason Scott rightly says:

The Internet Archive is a non-profit (that, I disclose, I work for as a “free-range archivist”) that has, since the mid-90s, provided many petabytes and millions of items for free, to the world, to better the world along the way. Movies, radio, books, TV news, software, you name it… the Internet Archive has it, and continues to make it go for everyone. Every day, every night, with an eye on “forever” as a goal, and not just “until we try to sell you an upgrade” or “until we’re bought by someone else”. It’s a library and an archive and it just kicks ass.

I’ve been using the Internet Archive mainly to discover and read huge amounts of stuff I either didn’t know existed, or didn’t even imagine to find again. The WayBack Machine alone has helped me to retrieve useful resources (images, articles) from websites that have been updated, changed or deleted/abandoned over time. And I guess you did the same.

Now the Internet Archive needs our help:

A generous supporter has offered to match every dollar we raise 3‑to‑1 through December 31st. We are trying to raise $150,000 in donations by the end of the year — with the match, that will give us $600,000, enough to buy 4 more petabytes of storage.

Help us keep the library free for millions of people by making a tax-deductible donation today.

It’s only fair to give a contribution also as a way of saying Thank You. You can donate through Amazon, PayPal, or use the Internet Archive’s Bitcoin Address.

I’ve set up a little reminder on the footer of my website, and I’ll leave it there until the end of the year. Now go donate!

The all-new Twitterrific 5

December 7, 2012

by Riccardo Mori

Software

#alttext#

I was really looking forward to the new major update of Twitterrific for iOS. Not that there was anything wrong with version 4.4.10 — I was simply curious to see what the Iconfactory guys would come up with this time. And they didn’t disappoint. (They didn’t disappoint me anyway).

This isn’t going to be an in-depth review of the app: MacStories and Macworld did a good job at that. I only want to share a few observations as a long-time Twitterrific user.

As you can see in the images above, Twitterrific’s visual path from version 2 to version 5 has been a path of progressive de-cluttering. It is also evident how the latest version introduces significant changes in the UI. The details I really like are the new colour palettes of the light and dark themes, the improved customisation options, and something I was missing since version 2: the row of buttons for Tweets, Mentions and Messages, that can ‘light up’ when there are new items. I’m glad they’ve reappeared over the main timeline: they’re both faster to access and are useful status indicators, as I can see at a glance if there are new replies or private messages waiting for me.

Thanks to the improved customisation options now you’re not limited to just choose a dark/light theme and specify a Text Size as in version 4.x, but you can also choose the size of the avatars in the timeline, the amount of line spacing and — last but not least — your preferred font (Helvetica, Proxima Nova, Signika, Museo Slab, Calluna). There’s also the nice option of having the Dark theme kick in at night.

These things may look trivial on the surface, but they really help make reading Twitter a pleasant experience both on the iPhone and the iPad. I was happy with Twitterrific 4’s somewhat fixed settings, but now that the visual elements can be tweaked a bit more, I found out that, for example, I prefer the Light theme with Proxima Nova and a tight line spacing on my iPad, while I favour the Dark theme with Helvetica and a more generous line spacing on the iPhone (see the images of Twitterrific 4 and 5 above, which are actual screenshots from my iPhone).

The little animations are also a lovely touch: pulling to refresh is more fun, as you’ll see an egg hatching and Ollie (the Twitterrific bird) pop out and fly away. And yes, gestures are another welcome detail. I’m usually a button guy when it comes to user interfaces, since I believe that buttons are more obvious and accurate, but as more and more iOS apps are implementing the very natural pull-to-refresh gesture, it was something I was really missing in Twitterrific. I’ve also got used to sweeping left to reply and sweeping right to show the related conversation.

All this makes for a great user interaction and experience. The new Twitterrific feels light, snappy, responsive. This is an obvious result of the reworking that has taken place behind the scenes. This process of rebuilding an app from the ground up has also resulted in the loss of certain other customisation options, like the ability to choose the Media Upload service, Link shortener and Bookmark service (although if you have Instapaper or Pocket installed on your device, Twitterrific will let you use those to save links). This ‘lightness’, feature-wise, seems to have annoyed more than few people, from what I could see in my Twitter timeline, and I noticed certain destructive criticism towards Twitterrific that I consider unwarranted. If you wanted a Twitter client with all the features of, say, Tweetbot, just go buy Tweetbot. Different apps bring different choices to the table: that’s diversity, and that’s a good thing. In the afore-linked post, Craig Hockenberry has explained what’s behind some of the design choices the developers have taken for this new version of Twitterrific, and I happen to agree with a lot of them^[1].

I’m not a casual Twitter user, yet I don’t miss some of the features other people seem to be awfully missing. Push notifications, for example. I didn’t imagine it was such a deal-breaker. I didn’t imagine that there were so many people who wanted to get notified every time someone mentions or messages them. To me, push notifications are mostly annoying, and I’m with Hockenberry when he writes: Personally, I find myself actively disabling notifications in most of the apps I install these days. Notifications are great when used in moderation, but it’s very easy to use them to the point of distraction. These days, the only notifications I really pay attention to on my iOS devices are work-related emails.

Others are annoyed by the lack of inline photos: do you really want to see every picture put up by the people you follow? I prefer to read tweets and see the pictures I want to see after deliberately clicking on their links, so I actually appreciate that Twitterrific isn’t shoving images in my face like other clients or web interfaces do. (If by ‘inline photos’ people mean the ability to expand a photo in place inside the timeline, then I don’t understand what the big deal is in having pictures displayed in an overlayed window like Twitterrific does. Or am I missing something obvious here?)

That people aren’t happy for the lack of mute filters is a bit more understandable, considering the noise level of auto-tweets generated by external services. But these and other things, as the developers themselves have admitted, are on their radar and on Twitterrific 5’s roadmap. In rebuilding the app, their choice has been to start with a core of basic features and to create a solid ground to build upon, and I respect their decisions. Overall, I’m really pleased by Twitterrific 5 and if you want a clean, fast application that delivers a pleasant reading experience, then I suggest you try it. If you’re a long-time Twitterrific user, version 5 won’t disappoint. If you want more customisation under the bonnet, if features like a streaming timeline, support for editing lists, push notifications, or timeline filtering/muting are a deal-breaker for you, then you’ll be happier with other clients like Tweetbot.

(Image of Twitterrific 2 and 3 taken from 148apps and slightly modified)

1. The only thing I don’t get is why the in-app browser doesn’t take the whole screen in the iPad version of the app, like before. Having to navigate a website in a smaller window can be impractical.↩

Let iTunes be

December 4, 2012

by Riccardo Mori

Software

Firstly, to those who were waiting for yours truly to write an in-depth analysis of iTunes 11: don’t despair, it will eventually come. I simply need more time with the latest version, because some changes are significant, and I’m still deciding whether I like or not certain UI decisions. That is not something you can decide after spending ten minutes with an application, especially an application such as iTunes, with lots of features and a major redesign after 10 versions of generally looking the same.

Then there are people like Farhad Manjoo who bash iTunes 11 completely, probably without even trying it extensively — you’ll notice that his article, iTunes 11: It’s time for Apple’s horrible, bloated program to die, was published the same day iTunes 11 was officially introduced.

I’ve expressed many times my negative point of view about iTunes. Too bloated. Too overwhelmed by features. A minefield, UI- and UX-wise. But let’s get some facts straight. Manjoo writes:

Anyway, so iTunes 11 finally hit the Internet today. If you start downloading it immediately, you might be able to get it up and running by the time the ball drops over Times Square. People always wonder why this is — why a simple music player weighs in at around 90 megabytes and requires many long minutes to install and “prepare” your library before it becomes functional.

This is simply wrong. I have two sizeable iTunes libraries on two different Macs (around 60 and 90 GB respectively), and on each version update iTunes took only a few seconds to update the libraries. There was nothing to “prepare” and no long waits before being able to access my music collection or play some songs. (And I even keep my iTunes libraries on external USB 2.0 drives, which should slow things down a bit.)

Don’t ask questions — this is just what you get with iTunes. Each new upgrade brings more suckage into your computer. It makes itself slower. It adds three or four more capabilities you’ll never need. It changes its screen layout in ways that are just subtle enough to make you throw your phone at the wall. And it adds more complexity to its ever-shifting syncing rules to ensure that the next time you connect your device, you’ll have to delete everything and resync. At this point, you shake your fists and curse this foul program to the heavens…

That’s not strictly true, either. Granted, I’ve never understood why if I decide to sync my books or ringtones at a later moment, iTunes will have to delete the music and videos I have manually synced. But these ‘rules’ have never shifted, either. It’s been this way for a long time. It’s also not true that “[with] each upgrade [iTunes] change[d] its screen layout in ways that are just subtle enough to make you throw your phone at the wall”. iTunes has retained the original UI scheme for 10 versions! There has been visual polishing through the ages, but the placement of the media buttons, ‘LCD’ display, view buttons, search bar, sidebar, main window and bottom controls has basically remained unchanged since version 1. iTunes 11 is actually the first iTunes version where things start getting visibly rearranged.

Now, instead of a pane of options on the left side, you click between functions using buttons and menus on the top. Is this a genuine improvement, or just a face-lift masking the rot beneath? I suspect the latter: While some parts of iTunes move a little bit faster (the iOS app management screen, for example, used to be unusably slow; now it’s OK) most of it still feels lumbering.

On my machine, a mid-2009 MacBook Pro, with the main iTunes library hosted on an external USB hard drive, I can say that iTunes 11 is overall noticeably snappier than previous versions. Not only as regards to iOS app management, but also when it comes to basic navigation and browsing through sections — music, video, books, apps, etc.

What’s more, the new version doesn’t solve the key problems plaguing iTunes. First, it still does too many different things — it’s a media player, a store, and a sync manager. Second, it remains a local file manager in a connected age. The new software does have deeper integration with Apple’s iCloud service, but at its core iTunes is meant to manage “your” music files—that is, stuff you’ve purchased or burned—on a single computer. That’s an outmoded model, one that’s being replaced by subscription systems like Spotify, which feature no distinction between stuff you own and stuff you don’t. Instead you have rights to play everything, all the time, whenever you want.

I’m a satisfied Spotify Premium customer overall, but I’d never let the Spotify application manage my local music and media files. I really like to keep things separate on this front. I treat Spotify as a (premium) radio, while iTunes is my personal hi-fi stereo, so to speak. Anyway, I really don’t get this latest cloud mania. Sure, having access to a service that acts like a giant juke-box and streams all the music you choose whenever you want is definitely handy, I’m not denying that. But what’s so horribly wrong in managing local files? In wanting to ‘own’ music and have an application which, despite its flaws, is perfectly able to handle all the albums I’ve ripped from my CDs (and some vinyls) and the music I’ve purchased?

Streaming services like Spotify, Rdio, Pandora, represent a huge advantage for the listener, and perhaps they’ve outmoded the ‘old’ model of purchasing single albums (or songs) so that now you just buy access to a service. As I said, I’m a happy Spotify customer and the 10 Euros per month are a good investment in listening convenience. But I also wonder: is this the best model for everyone involved? Considering how little artists earn from these streaming services, I’d say no. And one of the reasons I still buy records and CDs and music files online is because I also want to support the artists. Just because one particular way of enjoying music is fashionable now (or represents ‘the future’ according to some), doesn’t mean: a) that’s the best for everybody, and b) that we should ditch an application which enables us to enjoy music in another way.

Another reminder: these streaming services are, at the moment, available in just a bunch of countries worldwide. This might be “the connected age”, as Manjoo says, but certainly not for everyone everywhere. (The iTunes Store is available in many more countries, at least for music purchases.)

So even if the new iTunes is an improvement, it’s not a permanent solution. The only way for Apple to fix it would be to throw it out and start all over again. Perhaps — as Macworld’s Jason Snell has suggested — iTunes should be split into multiple programs: One to play your media, one to sync your devices, and one to buy or subscribe to stuff from Apple. Or maybe it could be replaced altogether with a quicker, lightweight Web-based system.

I’ve thought about that too, every time I criticised iTunes’ apparent feature creep. But it’s not an easy solution like it seems on paper. Sure, iTunes takes care of too many tasks, but how would a suite of three separate media software applications work? Each one of them should have access to a central music library, for obvious reasons. A segmented workflow, though, sounds as cumbersome as iTunes as a whole: in such scenario, the app that syncs media content across my devices or the other app for purchasing stuff on the iTunes Store wouldn’t be able to also play such content (there’d be the ‘media player’ app for that), which is ridiculous. And, despite all the bad things we can say about iTunes, I’d really love to hear what pundits and people would say if Apple really split iTunes in a three-app ‘iTunes Suite’.

A Web-based system also looks like a nicer option, but its speed, reliability and responsiveness would depend on the speed (and availability) of an Internet connection. Not everyone lives in downtown Manhattan.

Whatever Apple does, it shouldn’t aim merely to fix iTunes but instead come up with a brand new system better suited to our age. iTunes 11 is enough. Please don’t let there be an iTunes 12.

Looking at iTunes 11, I have the impression that Apple is trying to get to a new system by transforming iTunes from within. iTunes 11 isn’t perfect, for sure, has its quirks and everything. Still, I’m fairly impressed by the general rework, and it’s better than I expected for a .0 release. It may be a horrible, outmoded and awkward software, but it still has a purpose.