Flickr CC Credit: Leo Uehara

Flickr CC Credit: Leo Uehara

The Editor of Wired UK this morning listed 8 features that iTunes 10 needs. While they would all make great additions to an app that is becoming a bit of a bloated war-horse – they are almost completely pie-in-the-sky.

Here is my response and some more realistic aspirations:

Some of these feature requests are all well and good  – yes it would be handy to have a DVD ripping facility built in but I can’t see that happening this side of a fair-use clause – for now though, can we go with a few more grounded ideas?

  1. Better presentation of everything other than music

    We use iTunes because it remains the best way to catalogue a large library of music. It falls flat when it comes to everything else.
    Using the same interface for Films, TV etc just doesn’t work and feels tacked on. This media would be much better severed with a separate UI or even split into a different application all together and then linked seamlessly via some kind of bridge.

  2. Forward and back buttons

    For the love of Jobs, why is there no navigation element built into the local library? When sorting out your playlists or performing various cataloguing tasks, it’s easy to get a bit lost in a large collection.

  3. Multiple HDD Media Folders

    iTunes is increasingly being positioned as the front-end for all our media, not just music. If it’s serious about housing our huge, sprawling collections, then it needs to be able to deal with media spread out over various locations including both internal and external hard drives and even server storage.

  4. Better media handling

    Again, if iTunes really wants to be the de facto home for all media, support for a much large range of formats / codecs is surely in order.

  5. Integration with 3rd party Services

    Apple loves it’s walled garden but it’s also proven that it can play well with others (see iPhoto’s Flickr and Facebook features or iPhone’s Google Map integration).
    Forget the naff DVD-like menus of Apple LP / extras; the user experience could be greatly enriched with hookups to the likes of SongKick (find and book gigs) LastFM (track your listening habits, make your own radio station), and AllMusic (facts and info).
    For films and TV, a connection with IMDB for trivia and then something like themoviedb.org for rich and varied background artwork would be a great way to add value with very little overhead.

Get that lot sorted and iTunes would be on it’s way to becoming a powerhouse and a sexy one at that.