This week speculation online pointed towards a complete UI refresh coming in iTunes 11. This is seriously overdue, but more important that the UI design is the speed of the application. The source of the rumour is iDownloadblog which sites a ‘reliable source’ who says that “iTunes 11, the next major update to iTunes, will be revamped from the ground up.
iTunes is the slowest app on my computer.
Despite running quad-core with 8GB RAM, iTunes is still dog slow, even when performing pretty basic operations. By comparison other media applications like Zune are light and responsive, so its not a matter of the size of your media collection, but likely just some really out-dated code.
Wether on not this source is correct, I think we can all agree, an iTunes refresh would be welcomed with open arms. One system that I think works well is the Kindle store, buying content via the web (from any device) and sending it to a specific registered device. While a dedicated Mac and Windows client is still likely for version 11, there’s no reason both couldn’t co-exist for ultimate consumer choice.
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