Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Suggested Enhancements for iTunes/FrontRow

I would really like the ability to remotely control iTunes. I'm not talking about sharing/streaming a library. For instance, I use a MacMini as a Home Theater PC, and using Front Row is tedious when I have 100s of artists to scroll through. I've tried stuff like SlimServer, and although it's much better, it's far from ideal. Giving iTunes on my laptop the ability to remotely control iTunes on my mini would be a huge improvement, especially if Apple updates their product line with a Tablet Mac. This feature alone would prompt me to buy a tablet.

Next, there doesn't appear to be a way to add a song to a current playlist within Front Row. Currently, if the PLAY button is held down on the Apple Remote, the mini goes into sleep mode. This behavior is different from an iPod, where holding PLAY upon selection of a song adds the song to the "On-The-Go" playlist. To take things a little further, the selected song should be added to the currently playing playlist, and not the default one (unless no playlist is playing).

Also, how about allowing the visualizer to kick in when in Front Row? Actually, there really needs to be a more in depth configuration panel for Front Row.

Lastly, within iTunes, the lower left corner is usually reserved for the album art. I think this space can serve other functions, as well. Why not have a dropdown to allow selection of a playlist (which will contain the option to view the album art). When I'm building a playlist, I like to view what I've added as I'm searching for new songs to add. More so, I should be able to insert/move/remove a song from this "quick view." This bring up another point. If I search for a song in my computer's music library, then jump to my iPod song library to see what I have, my search & browse results are swiped out when I return to my computer library. I would really like iTunes to remember the search and browsing state when switching between libraries/devices.

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