iTunes 9: Keeping In Sync
iTunes 9 brings about a much more flexible setup for syncing. It’s definitely an improvement, in some senses, but still far from perfect. In fact, many might be quick to term some of the options as “feature creep.” Check out some of our thoughts on the new options and look at the side by side screenshots of the syncing options to get an idea.
Syncing in general has been improved in the sense that users can now drill down and sync more specific content. Music can now be synced by a combination of playlists, specific artists or genres. Podcasts can be synced by specific episodes and TV shows can be synced by specific episodes or seasons.
New altogether is the ability to sync iTunes U content which also has its own category, instead of being mixed in randomly between podcasts and music. Photo syncing has also been greatly enhanced, allowing support for specific albums, events or faces. Searching has also been enabled in many of these areas to allow you to quickly narrow down your choices. While these are all great features, they have really intensified the syncing interface. Hopefully it’s not too much for some users.
Still No Love for Audiobooks?
As mentioned in my wish list, I was really hoping for an improved way to sync audiobooks. Apple answered my hopes in an odd way. In the Music section, you can now search through your artists and, upon searching for a particular author, I was able to sync up those specific audiobooks. This isn’t a perfect solution though as a user may have multiple audiobooks from the same author. Why not just add another tab across the top? Apple added one for iTunes U. (I’m completely kidding. Remember, the interface is getting too complicated. iTunes 8 had eight tabs for syncing options while iTunes 9 brings the number to 10.) I personally feel the number of tabs across the top is too many, but I do feel audiobooks are important enough to warrant a more selective approach for syncing instead of just creating playlists for them.
Home Screens, Sweet Home Screens
Of course, the part most of you will really care about is the ability to organize your iPhone and iPod touch home screens via iTunes. This is simply amazing and is surprisingly quite functional. You simply navigate amongst the home screens, deleting or adding as needed and dragging applications between them. If you want to drag an item from the first screen to the fifth, just click and drag the app and hover over the fifth screen. It’ll pop up in the main view and you can place your app.
You can also select multiple apps by holding down the Command (Mac) or Control (Windows) keys. Moving complete screens around is also a snap, just by clicking and dragging them. All in all, this feature works quite well and should give users no excuse for messy randomly placed apps on their iPhones (or at least quell frustrations of people who attempt to switch between pages while editing apps only to grab and app and move it instead).
Generally speaking, these new syncing options do give users more flexible options to manage content on their devices, but I’m curious to see if any of you feel the interface itself has become a little overblown?
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- iTunes 9: Syncing Music
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- iTunes 9: Syncing Applications
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- iTunes 9: Syncing TV Shows
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- iTunes 9: Syncing Podcasts
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- iTunes 9: Syncing Photos
Tweet This (15)
Dave on September 17th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
So why not do away with Manually manage music and integrate it into syncing properly, I’ve always used it but ive just tried switching to normal sync for iTunes 9 so i could use Genius Mixes, it was terrible, i can understand why people use it, and like the addition of syncing all albums by an artist, but i only want specific albums, and no single songs. So bring it all together, i like the fancy interfaces but i want to manage my music how i want too
Dave on September 17th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
For me — once I’ve set my main most-frequented apps on the homepage, I’m good. I can see myself using this feature maybe once.
greenpaz on September 18th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
I agree. Most of my iPhone apps are where they need to be. There is isolated reordering to be done here and there, but it’s easily accomplished on the phone itself, the “old way.” It really would have helped if this feature was available June 19. That was when I first synced the hundred-or-so apps that I had been downloading over the previous months, in anticipation of purchasing my first iPhone. Back then, my app pages were a mess.
Skeptic on September 17th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Any chance of a “iTunes 9: Bugs and Problems” column? We mere mortals can only petition Apple via help forums, but if more blogs and columnists highlighted some of the deficiencies of iTunes 9 (in addition to its many assets), maybe Apple would issue some bug fixes. The multidisk sorting bug is particularly annoying.
Staff Comment Josh Pigford, TheAppleBlog on September 18th, 2009 at 8:51 am
Certainly a possibility. :) If you have a solid list of the current bugs and problems that a lot of people are dealing with, send it on over.
giovanni1975 on September 18th, 2009 at 6:11 am
It would be good in the future if you could command the Apps to be sorted by frequency of use, from the Homescreen ‘downwards’. It would take the headache out of thinking about why I would move an App from here to there etc.
Rich Cassady on September 18th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
There is also something fixed that has not been mentioned. Before, every time I would plug my iPhone up to my MacBook, it would unassociate my custom ringtones, and I would have to redo all of them, (and thanks to Garage Band, I have a lot). Now, with the latest update, all is well, Yay Apple, thanks for finally fixing this!!!
rich Cassady on November 30th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
I spoke too soon, this is still broken, now, it just randomly deletes them, instead of everytime.
matchavez on September 21st, 2009 at 3:14 pm
iTunes should play ALL tracks, with the option to “play unchecked tracks”. Seriously, how hard is it?
JR on October 1st, 2009 at 8:41 am
I have a related issue with syncing Audiobooks, I leave all music to sync automatically for convenience but I don’t want clog up my iPhone with books I’ve listened to. A solution to is to change them to something else. Ie, right click the audio book->Get info->Options->Media kind, and change to Podcast or iTunes U. Now you can have fine-grained control over how it syncs, eg only sync unplayed ‘episodes’. This also works if you download other speech audio files like lectures or sermons and don’t want them mixed up with your music.
TH on November 7th, 2009 at 7:22 am
Thanks JR. I have searched for an easy way to only sync certain audiobooks and you win -Thanks for sharing!
Alex Winter on November 30th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Made the mistake of upgrading to Itunes 9 in September. It’s now almost December and I haven’t been able to synch my Ipod since then due to issues with Itunes 9 not recognizing the device. Have tried just about every thing mentioned in countless forums, help threads, etc. Nothing works.
Asking for a Zune and an Android phone for Christmas. I’m done with Itunes, Ipods and Apple.