Apple’s iPhone Remote application is great. It’s so convenient to control an entire iTunes library — and any AirTunes speakers — from any iPhone or iPod touch.
But instead of telling you how great it is I’d rather take the time to request that Apple add the Remote app’s interface improvements to the iPhone’s native iPod interface. In my opinion, the native iPod interface on the iPhone/iPod touch no longer makes it the best iPod ever. The Remote app’s interface supersedes it. Let’s take a look.
Playlists.
Below are listings of playlists from the native interface (top) and the Remote app:
The latter is more useful. Not only because it displays the number of items in each playlist, but also because it displays the lists’ icons. Currently, when you sync a playlist to an iPod it doesn’t retain the icon for being a folder, smart playlist, etc., but I find it useful to know this information.
Song Listings.
Below is a song listing for a selected playlist in each interface:
What a difference. Two changes make the latter much more useful.
- The artist is listed below each song. This is huge for me when I’m in a playlist and want to scroll to a specific artist. The way I do it now is by recognizing artist’s song names to see where I am in the alphabet, which is cumbersome.
- There is a line of dots along the right side for quick scrolling. You can scroll the usual way, of course, but now can also run your finger up and down this line for rapid movement. Wonderful!
Some of my playlists are quite large, and these easier methods to keep track of the artists and scroll in a playlist are incredibly useful to me.
Search.
There’s another great new interface improvment in the Remote app:
Search! I’d love to have this on the iPhone right now. Hit the button, type in your artist, song, or whatever and you get the same live updates as you do in iTunes on the computer:
Finally…
I strongly suspect these interface improvements are because the Remote app was designed to navigate an entire iTunes library. The native interface would fall well short of that function for anyone with even a moderately-sized library. In other words, the improvements were necessary to make the Remote app a lot more useful than it would have otherwise been.
However, having created these interface improvements, I hope Apple brings them to the native interface as well. My iPhone has only 750 songs (8 GB, but I use high-quality encoding for larger files) and I could still make full use of these. I’m already frustrated by their absence when using the iPhone’s native controls. And if I hold out for a 32GB iPhone — which I’d like to do — I’ll have four times the music and the current interface will be even more of a hindrance.
Truth is, after using the Remote app for only two weeks the iPhone’s native media interface looks almost primitive to me.
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Excellent catch. Now that Ive seen it, I have to agree that this is spot on!
Great article, haven’t seen anyone else notice this.
My pet peve with MobileMe involves similar issues. After wrestling with the settings for the last two weeks or so, I finally realised that one of the biggest issues with the service is the completely different interfaces on the apps. MobileMe has one UI that allows you to do some things, the iPhone another, and the Mail app a third.
Each UI has a completely different way, using completely different language, (both visual and written), to manage one’s mail folders, mail, and sync options. Apple’s MobileMe sync Pref. Pane and the sync services preferences have a fourth and a fifth, completely different interface. Add to that, the fact that one sometimes has to dig into the Network prefs., to get MobileMe working or your email syncing properly, and you have a confusing UI nightmare.
It is a little ironic, or at least funny, that Apple who is the undisputed “King of the UI” has managed to muck things up so horribly with the launching of the iPhone and now MobileMe.
Nice finds. The iPod app, despite being intro’d as the best iPod ever, could certainly use a little love. These would certainly be worthwhile additions, as would the bizarrely missing (still! After a year!) shuffle-by-album setting that’s been in iPods since the beginning.
Remote seems to sort TV episodes completely randomly, though, at least when controlling my AppleTV. This makes it basically useless to me.
You are SO right, I found myself musing the same thing last weekend!
My biggest pet peeve with the iPhone iPod app is that it does not group compilations. This. Drives. Me. CRAZY!
I usually browse by artist but when the list is polluted by so many one song listings, it is just annoying.
Please, Apple, grouping for compilations as per the iTunes application!
You hit the nail right on the head. Very good observation. Now, what else about the iPhone can be improved?
I’d like to see better home page management. Or at least keep my apps in the same order when I update them.
It’d be great to have a way for me to customize my network, GPS, brightness, volume, ringtone, and other settings in one menu. Like “airplane mode” except more powerful and customizable.
[...] habe ich das bei The Small Wave, wo noch einiges mehr darüber [...]
I disagree with your basic premise. Apple believes less is more, and they are clearly striving for simplicity. I believe they have made the correct decision. And frankly, the larger type is very important for older users and for users whose attentions are not entirely on the screen (and should not be, in any number of real-world situations I can envision).
At the same time, I see your point – the added information is useful.
Therefore, I would suggest an interface with the option to toggle both pieces of information on finger-rollover, or some other gesture (a second finger elsewhere on the screen). The idea being to bring up that extra information when (and only when) the user is prepared to fully engage it – not before. ‘Just in time labeling’ if you will.
Addendum: I see that, in many instances, the ‘toggled’ info could easily appear, in grey, to the right of the original label. It could scroll-left under the user’s touch, if more space is needed. The speed of such scrolling could be user-defined.
better yet – how about doing away with the remote/ipod apps altogether and replacing them with ONE app with a single ui that either uses your itunes library when it is in range, or your iphone’s local music library when it is not. That we have two different apps that perform nearly the same exact operations with one dataset and then a dupilicate (subset) of that data makes no sense whatsoever to me.
This is only half of the story. The other half is that the Remote app could learn some things from the iPod app. The Remote app’s main shortcomings arise when you play movies and TV shows on your computer or Apple TV. When you flip a movie over in the iPod app, you get a convenient list of the movie’s chapters. When you flip a movie over in the Remote app, it gives you a list with one item: your current movie. WTF!?!
TV shows are even worse. TV shows are displayed by episode order in the iPod app — just like in iTunes and on the Apple TV. In the Remote app, TV shows are displayed in alphabetical order by episode name. Again, WTF!?!
To make matters even worse, the Remote app is accelerometer disabled. That means there is no cover flow view in the Remote app. Tilt your iPhone and you will only be looking at your current song sideways. That also means you get a much shorter bar for jogging through movies, which are already hard to navigate through due to the fact you don’t get visual feedback directly in the Remote App.
Lastly, the Remote app has some stability issues. It likes to crash. A lot. Of course, the Remote app is 1.0 software, and I am sure Apple will iron out all these kinks soon enough. Remote app 2.0 will probably be much more consistent with iTunes, Apple TV, and the iPod app.
Lots of good comments here…
Phil Dokas,
I’d like the shuffle by album on the iPod as well.
Robert M,
TV show sorting on the Remote may just be a bug. It’s not a new “feature”, but rather something Apple will fix. I was trying to focus on specific new enhancements, not the bug they need to fix in this version 1.0 product.
Matt,
I do not understand the lack of Compilations on the iPhone. I’d like to see it as well, especially since I frequently make my own compilations.
Mister Snitch,
My old eyes would never argue with a larger font, but the fact is even in the new interface the font is larger than most of what you see on the iPhone, and larger than any other iPod as well. I’m not against a “dual” interface, but then again asking Apple to do more in order to implement a less is more strategy seems a bit counter-intuitive.
JoeBoy,
I think the reason there are two interfaces right now is because one uses WiFi and must deal with huge libraries, and one is local and deals with smaller ones. While the latter excuse is fading fast (come on 32GB iPhone!) the former is a very real limitation I think (see me next comment).
Galleyhannon,
Good points, though as I said above I think the TV sorting may be a bug. As for cover flow, when you play a song in the remote app sometimes you see a delay when the album art comes up (not always, but sometimes). Personally, I think there’s no cover flow in Remote mode because there’s no way those album covers would stream worth a darn. It would be a jerky, ugly performance. Chapter markers in movies, however, I’m not so sure of. Apple may have just not gotten to that one yet. I do not see the stability issues you do. I’ve had it crash on me once and I use it a lot (almost always for music).
Tom: I understand what you’re saying. I’ve been especially enamored lately of web design that leads the user easily and intuitively, with big buttons and information that only appears when/where needed. So I am kind of on a roll in that regard.
I see that some folks from Apple clicked through your site to mine, so I am guessing you have at least reached some eyes and ears over there.
Uhh, in the main view of the IPod app I’ve got Albums, Audiobooks, etc,….. and Compilations.
hmm, Maybe you (matt) meant the Remote app, because I don’t see Compiliations there.
Josh,
Yes. I was thinking about how in iTunes, when you’re in Browse mode, the Artists column lists Compilations first, then the rest of the artists alphabetically. This is where I access my compilations, and not through a category of its own.
This may not be what Matt was referring to, however.
To be honest, it could be argued that Compilations does not belong at the top of the Artists list, and a separate entry is what it should always be. Still, I’d miss it if it were removed, and it always made sense to me as a sort of pseudo-artist anyway.
[...] The Small Wave s’interesse à l’une des applications les plus téléchargées de l’App Store depuis son lancement: Remote, qui transforme un iPhone/iPod Touch en télécommande WiFi. [...]
[...] Dear Apple: Please Make the iPhone’s Native Interface Like the Remote App Apple’s iPhone Remote application is so convenient to control an entire iTunes library from any iPhone or iPod touch. I request that Apple add the Remote app’s interface improvements to the iPhone’s native iPod interface. [...]
Don’t forget you can swipe the “Now Playing” cover in the iPod app to return back to the previous screen. I’m always trying to do that in the Remote app, they should definitely steal that from the iPod.
But with the rest you’re dead on.
I love the iPhone Remote. It’s missing the ability to go into Full Screen mode while watching podcasts, and it lacks the ability to browse and subscribe the index of podcasts in the iTunes Store.
And maybe, I’ll buy a few things if I can have a buy feature on my iPhone Remote.
[...] Dear Apple: Please Make the iPhone’s Native Interface Like the Remote App [The Small Wave via Daring Fireball] [...]
[...] Dear Apple: Please Make the iPhone’s Native Interface Like the Remote App. Seriously. (tags: apple design gui ipod interface music ui iphone remote) This entry was written by Ryan J. Markel, posted on Tuesday, 29 July, 2008 at 07:32, filed under links. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. « Off to bed. Hoping some of thi… [...]
[...] Tom Reestman has a nice post showing differences between the Remote application, for controlling iTunes from an iPhone, and the built-in iPod application (via John Gruber). I agree that Remote is much nicer, although it’s missing a few features. It would be nice if iTunes’ unzoomed controller could show the cover art and controls like that. [...]
One other thing I’ve noticed is that albums with similar names will be grouped separately, (for example. “Greatest Hits”).
@Tom re: combined iPod/Remote apps.
Hrrm. I doubt that the limitation you describe (library scale discrepancy) are what is preventing apple from developing a single app that does the job of both the remote and the iPod apps on the iPhone, but I also have no guess as to what the blockade might be – aside from time and priorities.
Storage capacity is not the problem, as it would be expected that your iPhone music library is a subset of your full iTunes (WiFi) library, as it is in the current scenario … My iTunes (WiFi) library is about 60 gigs, whereas my iPhone music library is only about five. When I use the remote app I have access to my full iTunes library, when I use the the iPod app I only have access to my iPhone music library. I would assume that a combined app would auto-detect whether or not you have access to the WiFi library and give you access to the full thing, or simply provide you local to access to the partial library that you have on your iphone when out of range (and provide some kind of visual indicator as to which library you are currently using.
In terms of being able to work with both libraries, they already have two apps that handle each data source individually, so it would “just” (ha!) be a matter of creating a single app containing handlers for both data sources, and selecting the appropriate data source automatically based upon availability. (I would hope they would also create an override of some kind such that you can use the iPod privately when still in range of your wifi library).
So I really doubt that the differential in library size is the issue here.
I have a few theories about why this wasn’t done:
1) Offering Remote (arguably the coolest app available for the iphone 2.0 release) for free on the iTunes App store would immediately drive hordes of trafffic to the app store. Offering remote as a “feature upgrade” to the existing iPod app in the 2.0 release would drive no traffic to the app store. So apple has a strategic incentive for offering remote as a separate app at the iTunes store rather than a feature upgrade to the iPod app.
2) The common edict: “[Good software does a very few things very well, bad software tries unsuccessfully to do many things but does them all poorly]“. What side of that statement a combined iPod/Remote app would fall under is hard to say. I’d say that if they pulled it off well and it worked and made sense from a UI perspective, they would be in the good software that does very little very well camp–if not they would be in the “overburdened and ineffective” app camp. I think it can be pulled off, but every development task seems easy until you roll up your sleeves and start doing it.
3) They didnt have enough time to pull it off, along with everything else they were doing for the 2.0 release.
My bets are on 1 & 3. I wouldn’t be surprised if we eventually saw a combined app, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t either.
Spot on!
I completely agree with you on this. I love the remote app and wish it had the search feature
[...] lo había notado, pero en The Small Wave lo dejan muchísimo más claro: la interfaz de Remote, una aplicación para el iPhone o iPod touch [...]
I agree except for maybe the playlist icons. You can’t copy folders of playlists to the iPod. Smart playlists lose their smart status when they are on the iPod. They are just a list of normal old non-modifiable playlists. Now, if Apple changes this I can see a use for the icons, but it’s more likely to confuse users as it stands now.
[...] lo había notado, pero en The Small Wave lo dejan muchísimo más claro: la interfaz de Remote, una aplicación para el iPhone o iPod touch [...]
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Apple – are you listening to us?!?!
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Playlists of hundreds of songs, and the iPhone iPod app only gives us a list of Song Titles, in font 30! Are you expecting us to memorise all of our song names??
iPhone 2.0 ….. this simplified display of playlist contents was last seen on the original Nano – but iPhone v2 doesnt even deserve the update?! Seriously, look at the usability of the entire iPod app package, not just introducing CoverFlow.
I have requested this as a feature enhancement with Apple, I suggest that all others concerned about this half-baked excuse for a modern iPod do the same. The more complaining the more chance they’ll take it seriously: http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html
[...] should make the native interface just like the remote app’s. Here’s why. →Link ⊕ Related [...]
[...] Dear Apple: Please Make the iPhone’s Native Interface Like the Remote App. « The Small Wave. [...]
[...] it sports a far better interface. I found came across this editorial about precisely this, called Dear Apple: Please Make the iPhone’s Native Interface Like the Remote App. They definitely have a point here, I’d love to see those changes integrated into the standard [...]
[...] to local storage if it ever makes the scene. In the meantime, how about working in some of those new UI elements from the Remote app into the iPod app?[Via Macrumors, thanks [...]
I like to add that Remote app doesn’t control Party shuffle!
Remote app should be connected a bit longer after you turn off the screen!
Remote app is a killer app for parties!!!
[...] Some guy named Tom has some other wish list items. [...]
You nailed it. Just complaining about the over-simplification of the native interface and the obviously missing features. Didn’t realize why I liked the Remote app *so* much. Thanks for pointing this out. What we need is a proper suggestion submission website/form/etc to Apple that captures all these ideas and comments. I know they’re are a number of them already but a consolidated list would be perfec. I’ve already started a list of my own on the notes app….
Josh
[...] to local storage if it ever makes the scene. In the meantime, how about working in some of those new UI elements from the Remote app into the iPod [...]
[...] to local storage if it ever makes the scene. In the meantime, how about working in some of those new UI elements from the Remote app into the iPod app? [Via Macrumors, thanks [...]
[...] from the Small Wave asked that the UI for the iPod.app on the iPhone be as useful as the Remote.app. It looks like he [...]
One out of three in the new iPhone 2.1 software (which is already out for the iPod touch).
[...] to local storage if it ever makes the scene. In the meantime, how about working in some of those new UI elements from the Remote app into the iPod [...]
Just bought my from here http://iphone-unlocked.com. Still learning the functions.
I would just like a search function in the iPod app so when I want to hear all the songs from a specific artist including songs that they are featured in it can put them all together.
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