# iTunes 10 First Impressions



## West Coast Boy (Sep 3, 2004)

I think the album view is great, however the vertical alignment of the Max/Min/Close buttons is going to take a little getting used to


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## Stephanie (Jul 21, 2004)

West Coast Boy said:


> I think the album view is great, however the vertical alignment of the Max/Min/Close buttons is going to take a little getting used to


Yeah, it looks very wierd - I wonder why the departure from their standard horizontal orientation... I hope this doesn't indicate that all the max/min/close buttons are going to be vertical in the near future.

As for the rest... Album view looks ok to me, but it's more of a take-it-or-leave-it thing. 

I notice that in list view, it fits fewer lines on the screen for some reason. I think it must be that the lines or the font is larger... It's subtle and I wouldn't have noticed except I had the exact number of apps to perfectly fit the screen in 9.2.1 but in 10 it scrolls off the bottom by 5 lines. No big deal of course, just a slight difference.

The sidebar area looks a bit cleaner and neater.

I haven't found any way to turn off or hide "Ping", i.e. there's no setting I've found so far to make it go away. Probably not a big deal for most folks anyways, but I'm more of an anti-social networking sort of person, and was looking to see if it could be disabled or locked out or whatever. 

For me the only big disappointment was that the iTunes store wasn't really improved in any way. I really think it needs to be given a huge overhaul, or at the very least, it needs an 'advanced search' function. I.e. if I want to restrict my search to, say, a particular category of Apps, or a certain genre of music, etc. then that would make life a lot easier. Instead of now where any search goes through every media type and every genre/category etc. etc.


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## Andrew Pratt (Feb 16, 2007)

The new icon is very ugly and the alignment of the close/min/max buttons looks odd. I thought apple was much more militant about GUI changes...this one's all over the map compared to SL. Still it seems very quick!


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## Chimpur (May 1, 2009)

I agree that the icon looks ugly. To me it doesn't have the expected polish that the previous icons have had. 

Also I'm not sure I like the monochrome icons on the left. I like my colours lol. Don't get me started on the apple logo or spotlight logo on the task bar


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## Mycatisbigfoot (Nov 2, 2008)

I hate the new look, I went over to pc a while back and itunes 9 looks better then Itunes 10, ( has colour, 10 has none) 
Why apple?


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## Dennis Nedry (Sep 20, 2007)

[deleted]


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## iphoneottawa (Apr 21, 2010)

Here are some alternative icons to use:
http://m.gizmodo.com/5309449/77-itunes-icons-apple-would-never-dream-of-using


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## iphoneottawa (Apr 21, 2010)

For those who haven't seen it yet


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## rgray (Feb 15, 2005)

Agreed. The Dock icon for iTunes 10 sucks, blows and bites... looks very amateur hour-ish.

Ping = :yawn:


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## (( p g )) (Aug 17, 2002)

Agreed about the icon. It looks like it was rushed. As for the relocated jelly buttons, at times in the past, iTunes redesigns have been harbingers of changes that get applied later to the OS. But other times, not (i.e., marble blue sliders). Wondering if it was done so that it would not take up space compared to the win version (I haven't seen that version, so I'm just speculating here). 

About Ping, I understand why Apple is doing this, but personally I doubt I'll use it. There are better tools out there for talking about music and following others.


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## polywog (Aug 9, 2007)

Had to come in to the office this morning, so I can only comment on the windows version. It's lightning fast compared to 9. I don't mind the GUI changes too much, though it'll probably bug me more when I get home to my Macs!

Ping is going to fall flat on it's face if they leave it as it is. It's not about music - it's about iTunes Store purchases and it's not at all flexible. There isn't much relevant content yet, so its recommendations are a bit of a farce. It simply doesn't hold a candle to last.fm or similar services feature wise.

EDIT -- Just crashed on playback. Oh Joy! Hope it was an isolated incident!


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## Rounder (Aug 9, 2008)

I'm liking the new iTunes, seems much faster than 9. I always liked that when syncing the iPhone it was showing exactly what it was doing instead of just saying Syncing.

The traffic lights change and icon don't really bother me all that much. I adjust to change instead of reject it. 

Ping= Meh... 

All in all, I like it's new look, especially list view. It was time for a change and I think they did quite well.


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## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

I don't mind iTunes 10, though I wish they let it keep some colour - all the grey scale icons in the window (Music, TV Shows, Movies) make it a tad boring looking.


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## DynamicOverride (Aug 29, 2010)

I haven't had much of a chance to play with the new iTunes yet. But at first glance, I'm not liking it very much. I did play around with Ping for a while and I'm not really seeing the point of it. It's just a mix of FaceBook and Twitter in my opinion (both of which I'm not a big fan of). I'm going to need some time to figure out what I really think of the album view for music. As for the colours, or lack there of, I don't really like. For me, it looks too washed out and bland.


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## DDKD726 (Feb 21, 2005)

I was excitied to hear about Ping, but then I found out that it only posts iTunes purchases  I think I will give it a go anyway as it's the only kind of social network that I might be interested in. I loath Twitter and Facebook, I don't care to know what you had for breakfast or what you did last night, but a network designed specifically to share music is something I could get into.


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## dona83 (Jun 26, 2005)

It's faster, that's all I care about. Oh and Ping is pretty neat too.


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## a7mc (Dec 30, 2002)

Having played with it since last night, I have a few thoughts.

Like most everyone else, I think the lack of colour does make the interface a little bland. I don't hate it, but would have preferred some colour. I think the idea is "focus on the music" so all the colour comes from album art.

The traffic light buttons kind of threw me off at first. It's mostly because it looked odd. We've been trained to see those icons in a horizontal view on every OS ever created since the beginning of graphical interfaces. But now that I look at it more, it's grown on me. It actually makes sense. The only reason for the top window bar is to show those icons and the name of the application. I'm pretty sure I know which application I'm using, and if for some reason I get confused, it tells me in the top menubar. With the vertical layout, they've taken away the top window bar entirely, and gained more usable space in the process. Quite smart actually. My only gripe with it is that it's the only app that does this, so it breaks the common look and feel of the OS.

The new icon isn't that horrible. My guess is they wanted it to look similar to the old logo, so they didn't stray too much. The blue does seem a bit off and clashes with other OSX icons though.

The other thing nobody mentioned are the changes to the device views. I really like the new "capacity" graph at the bottom. Easier to see and nicer colours. What I dislike is the category tabs at the top. They are way smaller and can very easily be missed by new users. They seem too close to the top edge.

Oh, and one last tiny little annoyance. The round "button" part of the volume slider is now shaded oddly (to look like a reflective metal button I guess). I think it looks stupid and it's really distracting. Minor thing, but it really bugs me for some reason.

A7


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

Chimpur said:


> *I agree that the icon looks ugly. *To me it doesn't have the expected polish that the previous icons have had.
> 
> Also I'm not sure I like the monochrome icons on the left. I like my colours lol. Don't get me started on the apple logo or spotlight logo on the task bar


So just change it... easy peesie.


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## monokitty (Jan 26, 2002)

I like the new dock icon, personally. Change is welcome.


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## greydoggie (Apr 21, 2009)

New iTunes looks pretty much the same to me. It came up with album list for the songs that looked different and the icons on the left seem a bit different but the rest looks the same or close to it. The only thing different I noticed with the graph for my ipod is that it looks a bit bigger. I don't even mind the new icon much. It seems to stand out more but maybe just because im not used to seeing it.


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## West Coast Boy (Sep 3, 2004)

My wife found a video @ Leaving Facebook... | Facebook which tells you that you can use the following Terminal Command to put the buttons back to the original layout 

defaults write com.apple.itunes full-window -1


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## Guest (Sep 2, 2010)

The UI is totally against Apple's own UI guidelines with the close/minimize/zoom buttons. Why? Who knows ... maybe to be "cool" or something. Bleh.

Please, please some developer out there ... build us a better music management/playback app. Then I'll only be forced to use iTunes to sync podcasts, books and other files to my "i" devices


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## a0rez (May 13, 2005)

Personally I like the new icon. I do agree about the negative comments regarding the vertical alignment of the widgets. Thankfully there is a way to revert as outlined in a post above. I like the idea of Ping however it's not about music, it's about iTunes Store music. You can't seem to favourite/like songs that are not on the iTunes store. Maybe it's just me, but I like Beatles tunes, and I would like to show people that I like Beatles tunes. All in all, a good upgrade, even if they did change the UI elements a bit too much.

a0


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## rgray (Feb 15, 2005)

West Coast Boy said:


> My wife found a video @ Leaving Facebook... | Facebook which tells you that you can use the following Terminal Command to put the buttons back to the original layout
> 
> defaults write com.apple.itunes full-window -1


More or less the same hint was posted today on macosxhints: Make the iTunes 10 control buttons horizontal - Mac OS X Hints



> iTunes 10 provides a different layout for the Close, Minimize and Maximize buttons. Instead of being ordered horizontally, in iTunes 10 they're arranged vertically, like a traffic light.
> 
> Reverting the buttons to a horizontal layout can easily be done. With iTunes not running, open Terminal and enter the following code:
> 
> ...


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

I'm not bothered about the vertical buttons too much because I can't even recall the last time I used them. It's a bit weird though.

I'll be interested to see what Ping "grows into." Right now it's not that interesting, but the stage is set that it COULD be.

New icon -- whatever.

Cleaner layout, I agree with those who say the gray folder look is a bit boring.


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## MacUnited (Nov 1, 2009)

Good job with finding the command to re-allign the buttons horizontally..
now we need someone to figure out someway to bring back the colours to the icons!


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## Heart (Jan 16, 2001)

> defaults write com.apple.itunes full-window -1


Nice, Thank you. :love2:


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## spiffychristian (Mar 17, 2008)

.


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## iphoneottawa (Apr 21, 2010)

Been using it today and frankly not much of a difference to me. Didn't even bother to activate ping.


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## Crystal009 (Aug 7, 2010)

When I watched the Special Event and the new iTunes logo was revealed, I was sorta sad. Maybe it was outdated but I liked it. The new one is alright I guess, just gotta get used to it. I dropped off my Macbook Pro for upgrades on Wednesday, got it back today with iTunes 10 among other things because I finally have Snow Leopard. I wasn't expecting a whole lot but it is really nice. I didn't notice the lack of colours until someone pointed it out, but now I think maybe they should have kept them. 

Overall I like it, it's still iTunes, no huge changes and I'm not big on social networking sites so Ping will probably wait awhile.


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## iphoneottawa (Apr 21, 2010)

It seems you can't make Ringtones anymore.


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## iheartmac (Jan 5, 2006)

I was expecting to hate the new look based on what I was reading but I don't mind it. It's nice and clean. I bet everything will look better when viewed on a 27" cinema display which I plan to pick up later this month

Didn't bother to activate Ping and never will.


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##  Dumpling (May 28, 2010)

Not a fan of the colours and lack thereof. This look is fine on an iPad, but is too bland for OS X. The memory usage bar when syncing devices is also horrid. One cool feature (not sure of this was there before), when you double click on artwork in the sidebar, it opens a mini window with controls if you hover over it with your mouse.


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## SINC (Feb 16, 2001)

iphoneottawa said:


> It seems you can't make Ringtones anymore.


I make all my own iPhone ringtones using my iTunes library and Quicktime Pro and import them into iTunes, then onto the iPhone. Works like a charm.


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## Vexel (Jan 30, 2005)

You can also easily make ringtones in Garageband... piece of cake. 

I'm in the camp that likes iTunes 10 as well.. it's definitely cleaner.. and faster. Don't mind the dock icon either.. it'll just take getting used to.


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## Stephanie (Jul 21, 2004)

You can make ringtones with any software that can create AAC files. Just make a sound clip that is no longer than 40 seconds, save it as an AAC file (extension .m4a) then change the extension to .m4r and voilla, it's a ringtone.

-Stephanie


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## fjnmusic (Oct 29, 2006)

The old dock icon was a picture of a CD, which has become somewhat of a passe medium, so, yeah. I liked it too, but my music collection sounds the same either way. I kinda ;ike the new arrangement of the "traffic lights." Closer to what you see when you're waiting to make a left turn (red on top, green on the bottom).


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## MacUnited (Nov 1, 2009)

I actually went after reading the post that you can't make ringtones on iTunes 10 anymore and created a couple myself.. so, I suppose you can still create ringtones there..


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## M.A. (Aug 11, 2010)

my iPhone 4 no longer syncs (doesn't even show up on the list on the left hand) in the iTunes 10 (and that icon is hideous). Still haven't found a solution to this. Frustrating. Did Apple hire some Windows guy or something?

ETA: finally found solution: downloaded iTunes10 from the Internet (it had previously upgraded as a result of recently installing Snow Leopard) and then my iPhone4 & iTunes did the sync. I'm a happy now.


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## Benito (Nov 17, 2007)

Have you guys had problems with AirTunes/AirPlay since installing iTunes 10?
I'm not sure if anyone else has had this problem yet, but I haven't been able to get Air Tunes to work since I installed iTunes 10 on our MBP's. I have an Airport Extreme and two Airport Expresses. Normally I can stream music from either MBP to the Airport Expresses, but I now get errors when I try to hook up the stereos connected to the Airport Expresses. I have powered off and rebooted the AE's. When that didn't work I opened Airport Utility and unchecked enable Air Tunes and rebooted again. When that didn't work I restored to factory settings and then went through and reprogrammed the AE. Still nothing, has this occurred with anyone else?


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## polywog (Aug 9, 2007)

Mine are working no problems. In fact, I just noticed today that there are separate volume controls for each remote speaker in the "Multiple Speakers" dialog box.


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## Mycatisbigfoot (Nov 2, 2008)

 Dumpling;1006770 said:


> Not a fan of the colours and lack thereof. This look is fine on an iPad, but is too bland for OS X. The memory usage bar when syncing devices is also horrid. One cool feature (not sure of this was there before), when you double click on artwork in the sidebar, it opens a mini window with controls if you hover over it with your mouse.



Yes, it may look like shi% but I noticed it will tell you befor you start to snyc if what you are puting on will not fit, 

Quite nice, 9 told me while snycing and pised me off


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## Benito (Nov 17, 2007)

Benito said:


> Have you guys had problems with AirTunes/AirPlay since installing iTunes 10?
> I'm not sure if anyone else has had this problem yet, but I haven't been able to get Air Tunes to work since I installed iTunes 10 on our MBP's. I have an Airport Extreme and two Airport Expresses. Normally I can stream music from either MBP to the Airport Expresses, but I now get errors when I try to hook up the stereos connected to the Airport Expresses. I have powered off and rebooted the AE's. When that didn't work I opened Airport Utility and unchecked enable Air Tunes and rebooted again. When that didn't work I restored to factory settings and then went through and reprogrammed the AE. Still nothing, has this occurred with anyone else?


I was able to fix this by unplugged my Airport Extreme and rebooting it. All is well again.


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## Fox1971 (Sep 23, 2009)

I have a US iTunes account and I download a lot of cable TV programs that aren't available here in Canada. One of the features I liked about the iTunes store is that they used to have a "Latest Episodes" section right there when you selected the TV tab. It made it easier to find the most recent episode to download. Now with iTunes 10 they have done away with that option in favour of pushing the rental options for episodes. I wouldn't mind so much but the episodes they are offering to rent are from old network programs, not the current cable shows I watch. I also have to manually search for the new episodes that I want to download. Not very convenient as far as I'm concerned.


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## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

For those who want some color back there are a few sites with instructions:

"Get color icons back in the iTunes 10 sidebar"
Get color icons back in the iTunes 10 sidebar - OS X Daily

Hack Returns Color to Gray iTunes 10 | AppleToolbox - Tools, Tips and Fixes for iPhone, Mac, iPad and iPod

And I see the method to get the rather unorthodox Apple window buttons back as Apple's own User Interface Guidelines states was previously posted, and for some reason my son's wedding yesterday seemed to have been a much higher priority rather than posting to a list. ;-)


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## CubaMark (Feb 16, 2001)

Thanks for the tip, pm-r. Just applied the hack, and my iTunes is wonderfully colourful again!


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## westonc (Dec 18, 2009)

CubaMark said:


> Thanks for the tip, pm-r. Just applied the hack, and my iTunes is wonderfully colourful again!


Beautiful - I have colour back!! Thanks so much


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## iGloo (Sep 5, 2010)

I love it 
I don't know why everyone is complaining about the icon. From what I've seen, the replacement icons that everyone's make aren't that great (most of them are worse than the default icon)


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## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

Thanks for the thanks but I noticed the link to the downloadable iTunes 9 "iTunes.rsrc" file comes up with "Bandwidth Limit Exceeded...."

So if I even install iTunes 10, I made a copy of my own iTunes 9 "iTunes.rsrc" file just in case which others may want to do if they want to keep the old "normal" colors before downloading and installing the 10 version and use it for any file replacement.

Or just rename the old iTunes app to "iTunes 9" and then if necessary download the iTunes 10 from Apple's site as a separate application and then one would have an option.

BTW: It was interesting opening the "iTunes.rsrc" file with a Mac OS X resource editor and was very similar to the good old days of using ResEdit when one needed to do some application mods etc.


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## westonc (Dec 18, 2009)

pm-r said:


> Thanks for the thanks but I noticed the link to the downloadable iTunes 9 "iTunes.rsrc" file comes up with "Bandwidth Limit Exceeded...."
> 
> So if I even install iTunes 10, I made a copy of my own iTunes 9 "iTunes.rsrc" file just in case which others may want to do if they want to keep the old "normal" colors before downloading and installing the 10 version and use it for any file replacement.
> 
> ...


That is correct but if you scroll down the page a wee bit there are some comments and someone posted an alternate link to the file


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## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

Good to know there's now an alternate download site that seems to have just recently provided:

Armin Soyka says: September 5, 2010 at 3:16 pm

And the URL: itunes10colors.zip
itunes10colors.zip


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## eMacMan (Nov 27, 2006)

I see iTunes 10 is available for PPC Tiger. Any one have it running on a G4? My experience with iTunes 9 was that response times within the iTunes Store were so sluggish that I eventually gave up and reverted to version 8.


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## rgray (Feb 15, 2005)

iphoneottawa said:


> It seems you can't make Ringtones anymore.


Make free iPhone ringtones in iTunes 10 - OS X Daily


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## ertman (Jan 15, 2008)

iphoneottawa said:


> Here are some alternative icons to use:
> Gizmodo, the Gadget Guide


Actually there are 2 icons on there that looks like a draft version of the new one... weird.


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## cap10subtext (Oct 13, 2005)

Who cares, Apple will change it all again in 6 months anyways. Although I get what ppl are saying about the lack of color. Would be nice if Apple started allowing for some nice, elegant, subtle skinning. 

Ping is okay I guess. I'm undecided but it's already lead me to some new tunes. And there's at least a few artists i'm happily following.


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## mgmitchell (Apr 4, 2008)

It hasn't prompted me to update yet. I should read the whole thread, see if I should pass for now.


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## pm-r (May 17, 2009)

pm-r said:


> ... ... ...
> 
> So if I even install iTunes 10, I made a copy of my own iTunes 9 "iTunes.rsrc" file just in case which others may want to do if they want to keep the old "normal" colors before downloading and installing the 10 version and use it for any file replacement.
> ... ... ...


I don't think my suggestion would work properly to use the old iTunes 9 "iTunes.rsrc" file with iTunes 10.

Having a look at each "iTunes.rsrc" version, the 10 versions are much larger with a lot more resources:
iT 9 = 12.9 MB (13,569,608 bytes)
iT 10 original = 14.5 MB (15,237,641 bytes)
iT 10 from the "itunes10colors" download = 14 MB (15,212,302 bytes)

Too much of a difference between the iT 9 and 10 versions.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

Ok so I waited to install iTunes 10 because of all the complaints, but I finally did.

When in Genius Mixes, not Genius, I can no longer get a list view and see what is playing next i.e. a list view and not just the different categories. Is their a way to see what is in the Genius Mix? If not I HATE that change. 

As far as those who already posted re: the "stop lights"... Really? Who cares... they make perfect sense the way they are now... ever been at a traffic light?... Is this really a problem? A few mm difference in where you click?

As for the icon.... true it isn't sophisticated from a design perspective, but the old one ceased to be relevant because of the fact that it was based on a CD... who uses iTunes primarily for CDs anymore? IMHO people should get over it... things change. Like I said from the beginning... if you don't like it change it (easy peesie) not even worth complaining about. IMHO.


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## Rubber Ducky (Apr 21, 2005)

Thanks for the rsrc file to change the icons back to color. I'll be trying to bring color back to the rest of the player as soon as I finish typing this. Haven't played around with it, but I do like the "2 Speakers" down in the right hand corner letting me know if I'm hooked up to others around the house.


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