Apple has released an update to iTunes 12, providing support for the new Photos app, but also fixing the Info window. In the first article of my iTunes gripe series, How I Would Fix iTunes, Part 1: The Info Window, I explained how this window was poorly designed. The tags were not grouped logically. Apple has fixed this, essentially returning it to the layout of previous versions of iTunes.
Here’s a window from iTunes 12.1:
As I said in my article:
For most users, the tags you want to edit are the Name (song or track name), Artist, Album, Genre, and perhaps a couple of others. In the previous iTunes Info window, these tags were all grouped in the same area at the top of the window.
I also said:
Why would Apple decide to put the Album tag near the bottom of the window? This is one of the most important tags for music. And why would they promote the Composer, and even the BPM tags? This design was clearly made by people who don’t tag music in iTunes.
Apple has fixed this, as well as some of the other tags. Here’s the window now:
Again, this is very close to the layout used in iTunes 11 and earlier. The only thing I’d change is to move the Comments field up a bit, and leave the Play Count at the bottom, since it’s not editable. But at least Apple realized they had made a mistake, and fixed this.
To better compare them, here they are side by side. The old window is on the left, the new one on the right (or top and bottom, if you’re looking at them on a phone).
So that’s one iTunes problem fixed, a dozen or more to go…