shotgunflat

I finally got around to installing iTunes 10.  There are a few changes to the UI that immediately jump off the page. At first rub, I’m not sure what the point to any of them is. 

First off, I noticed upon launch that my music catalog was displayed in a newly designed list style. Now I have four ways to display my stuff: song list, the new album list, grid view, and cover flow. iTunes defaulted to the album list view to show off its new look:

It seems to me that all we’ve done is mix my list view and grid view together.  And for songs not associated with a particular album, there is no graphic anyway.  

Next, I saw a strange application running in my dock.  It was some kind of music app. “Oh, right. The new iTunes icon, because, you know, CDs are sort of out of date and
iTunes is much more than music.” I think that in an attempt at consistency, the quarter-note style stays.  I prefer the old icon to the new, but I’m sure that will go away soon. The new icon:

Finally, an actual annoyance.  For some reason, Apple has changed the three little colored balls to close/minimize/maximize to be vertically aligned instead of horizontally like every other application on the planet.  

These are ultimately subtle changes, but they are changes that seem, at first rub, for their own sake.  Based on the flare-up on my wall every time Facebook changes their UI, and given the new Ping social network also included in iTunes 10, will people yell about this too?