iTunes 11

By Michael Hansen, 29 November, 2012

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

iTunes 11 was released today. From what I've read on Twitter and from my initial testing, it appears accessible...though everything has been totally redesigned.

Has anyone upgraded to iTunes 11 yet? If so, what do you think?

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Comments

By AnonyMouse on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team
Well, the layout is certainly something you have to get used to. There are quite a bit of re-learning where they have placed everything. That part doesn't really bother me to much as long it is for the better. So far I love it. I really do like the new makeup of it. I think it is certainly more accessible and easier to navigate around. I did notice that when I did an update to my apps that it no longer ask for the password. Very much like on the IOS 6 on my phone. The only downside for me is that I am still using the old Jaws v12 and it has a few areas where it doesn't play nice. I will get a script error on it. Overall, two thumbs up for me.

By Holger Fiallo on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

I installed and do not find it accessible. If you do so, how are you moving from music, podcast, apps, radio and so on. I do not like it but if someone can shared how they are doing it will be good

By AnonyMouse on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

In reply to by Holger Fiallo

Well, no problem! What you do is find the Music button. Hit your space bar. This will reveal a combo box. Use your arrows up and down to select for example the Apps. Now hit the spacebar again. Now you are in the App section. Remember everything has changed and been moved around. For example, back in the Music you can use the tab button until you reach for say the Playlist. Hit the space button. Now tab some more and you will now see your play list. It really isn't that bad. Like I said it is a whole new way of learning where to find everything. Where are you having accessbility problems with? HTH

By Austin Grace on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

In reply to by AnonyMouse

Itunes 11 is awesome over here. I like the layout of it. I also like how you switch the views from music to movies and so on. This is on a mac with Mountain Lion BTW. I have not tried on my windows VM with NVDA 2012.3 but plan to do so. Hopefully accessibility for windows folks does not break in certain updates like in the 10.x series.
I'm wondering if someone could post a link for a iTunes 11 64-bit for windows on dropbox. This would really help as I do not have Internet for my computer. I also would like to know the whole what's new for it as well. Thank you so much in advance!

By Bat on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

I haven't installed it yet but I did see somewhere that one can get the sidebar back under the view menu. BTW, one can display the status bar as well.

By Scott Wheat on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

I have installed iTunes 11 on my Mac and love it!. I haven't yet had a chance to try it on a Windows machine with WindowEyes. Hopefully I will be able to do that tomorrow evening.

By amyg90 on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

upgraded on my mac, for some reason it wouldn't do it through the ap store, it kept giving me 102 and 103 errors. so i had to go to the apple site and get it. i really like it, the bit that's going to take me a bit of getting used to is the grid view thing, is there any way to change it to a list? i've installed it on my windows vm and i can't seem to get the itunes store to work, i can't use the jaws curser with vmware, do you have to use jaws curser with the itunes store anyway? or is it inaccessible with 11?

By Larry Thacker Jr. on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

I took the upgrade this morning and so far it is working ok. I don't like the interface changes but Window-Eyes seems to be reading everything. Reports coming out of GW Micro suggest there may be problems reading menus, but I have not had any so far. I am running 8.0 Beta 2, which may make a difference. They also mention that "If using 1st letter nav in albums view, make sure to press Esc after landing on album as expanded view opens."

By Pete De Vasto on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

On the PC side, it's very very different, and for me it would appear I've lost lots of stuff unless I'm missing something. I can get to my music OK, but I can't find anything else in my library like podcasts, apps, books, etc. Help continues to be very inaccessible,too. I got so frustrated that I uninstalled iTunes 11 and tried to go back to 10, but when I did that I got the message that my library's dot I D L file couldn't be read any longer because it had been created by a newer version of iTunes. Will be watching this thread closely to hear what others are finding. For anyone else, if you haven't downloaded iTunes 11 for the PC, you might want to wait. I'm not sure what I'm going to do in my situation, especially since I have a number of podcasts I monitor regularly and now can't seem to get updates!

By Brian Hartgen on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

In reply to by Pete De Vasto

Hi Regarding finding your podcasts, press Space Bar on the Music button, which you can reach by pressing Tab. This will reveal a tree view of items including an entry to your podcasts.
I am using iTunes 11 in window seven. The library is a mess with my audiobooks. There are no short cuts and I need to do much tabbing. I see much things that do need to be there.

By Michael Hansen on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

In reply to by Holger Fiallo

How do I see devices I have connected to my PC? I have an iPod Touch 5th Generation and no way to access it. ;-)

By Ivan Cardenas on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

Hey all, I like this update. As a lot of you mentioned, it does take a lot of patients and playing around with. One thing that bugs me, actually a few things, is that even though I have iTunes minimize to the system tray, when I minimize the window, it still shows up when I do an alt+tab. Also, the web part of iTunes is a little bit of a pain to use, NVDA just says blank when I arrow around but when I press tab it says links and lists but again says blank when I arrow around. I tried restoring, maximizing, and going to the homepage and still got the same results. Any help would be great!

By Wahid Raza on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

Hi all, My name is WahidRaza i have a problem with new update of ITunes11, when i update it im getting some accessibility problem, i am using jaws13, i cant naligate on ITunes11 please help me in this matter, how do i naligate with Jaws on ITunes11, and second problem is that, after upgrading ITunes from 10 to 11, when i connect my IPhone to pc through USB cable, a dialog appear that mini player you want to make defalt? i suddenly hit enter and make it defalt, now i am facing problems after making it defalt, please also help me in this matter sorry for writing long queri. Hope to here from all of you soon

By Daniel on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

Has anyone been able to figure out what the button that just says iCloud does, if anything? Pressing it seems to do nothing, unless there's something visual happening.

By jrjolley (not verified) on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

Hi folks, One of the things I am completely at a loss as to how to do is copy and paste from your library to iPhones and iPods using the new interface. The standard shortcuts don't seem to work, and the only way i've managed to work is to bring back the sidebar with Command + Option + S and the Status bar with Command + /. Whenever I try to do it via the interface by selecting the stuff you want to copy, then pressing the iPhone device dropdown list, selecting that iDevice and trying to find the music table, I can't then paste. I've tried everything. Dragging and dropping, opening multiple windows, the lot. Any ideas? If not, it's not a big issue because i'll just keep the sidebar there anyways for speed if nothing else. Just want to put this one out there though in case anyone figures it out.
I'm using Jaws 14 and it works pretty well. I use my alt-f,alt-e,alt-v,alt-s, and alt-a to view File, Edit, View, and Store menus. The first thing did was to go to my View menu and select Show Side Bar. This makes navigating like ITunes 10. With the ITunes 11 interface I just use Tab, F6, the arrow keys, and the application key when necessary. Good Luck!

By DPinWI on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

Over all, I like the changes to iTunes, but I'm having trouble with a couple things First, when I'm in my music library, and F6 to the library search box, typing into the field doesn't seem to work. JAWS goes silent for a bit, and unlike the previous version, I don't seem to be getting the search results in the main screen It seems unchanged. Second, when in my podcast or apps sections, using F5 no longer seems to look for updates. I have to tab to the update button. Has anyone else had these issues? Anyone have any work arounds? Thanks...
Hi, Wahid, setting iTunes not to be your default browser requires specific steps. However, I don't know what windows you have--in XP, for instance, you can do it through the "set program access and defaults." Perhaps if you specified the type of windows you have, I could provide more detailed instructions.

By Ro on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

It sure sounds like the Windows users are having a rough time with the update. It's too bad because I'm loving it on the Mac! I thought I would do all those things to make it look like the old iTunes but I fell in love with the new layout pretty quickly. I don't miss the sources table at all. The store is still extremely slow for me but I don't accidentally get hung up on it now that I don't use the sources table. One thing I noticed in the store was that it was difficult to select the SD button while looking at a TV show. Form controls wouldn't see it so eventually I just tabbed from the first button and VO found the second button but only pressing enter was able to select it. Odd, but not that bad. That has been the only issue I've had. I also discovered the ability to sync my iPhone with specific playlists which apparently you could do before but I never saw it. iTunes 11 makes it ridiculously easy to select the playlists and now I'm able to sync it wirelessly no problem. I'm also very impressed with the Cloud. I watched a TV show and then deleted it since my old Macbook doesn't have a ton of space. iTunes let me know the episode would be available in the cloud if I ever wanted it back and it still shows in the TV shows area. Awesome! I am thrilled with this update. I'm running Snow Leopard on my old Macbook. If you update, just take some time and get to know it. It's totally different but accessible on the Mac side. I haven't lost access to any of my content; it's just located in different areas.
I'm using Windows 7 with iTunes 11 and, turning on the side bar in the view menu, alt v brings the old source list back like in iTunes 10. I can see my iPhone in the devices list, all my music, tv shows, podcasts and apps are in there just like before. Why apple chose to hide the sidebar by default is a mystery to me. But you know those apple guys, their motto is to think different and they sure did on that one. *shakes head*

By the 13th bat on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

Okay, I was trying to figure out how to get to my phone and put iTunes in mini mode and now nothing works. I can't get to the minus or anything. Does any one know how to get it back to the way it was?

By Herbie Allen on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

In reply to by AnonyMouse

I have window's 8 and Jaws 14 and I have been very comfortable with using iTunes since late 2010. While I can figure out for the most part how to operate this new one, quite frankly, the interphase is way too clunky. It used to be that I could search for a song in the library tab three times and my results were right there. the treeview to get from music to my phone or the store, etc, no problem. And all this without having to use scripts which did slow my window's seven machine down. Now I have to do way to much tabbing around, the search option keeps losing focus, and the preview is no longer working in the iTunes store.

By jrjolley (not verified) on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

In reply to by Ro

HI Ro specifically, I agree that the interface by itself is actually good and unique. My earlier comment regarding copying music to an iPhone/iPad still stands. I like to manage my own music and the traditional way of selecting, copying to the clipboard, moving to the phone and pasting doesn't work in the fancy interface. The only workaround for me is to enable the sidebar for those occasions. I suspect that the sidebar's generally more efficient for speed but i'd love to figure out how you can copy stuff to our iphones with this new interface.
Hi James, Wow yeah I just tried and tried to paste a song onto the iPhone the way I used to. Definitely can't seem to do it with the new layout. That's really too bad. I ran across something that said you can drag and drop items but I don't have Mountain Lion. Do you? If so, I wonder if that would work? Maybe this will be fixed in a later update. Seems like another fix could be to create a playlist in iTunes with the content you want to manually add to the phone and do it that way rather than enabling the sidebar. Just another option. The silly up next thing has thrown me a few times when starting a playlist haha! I wonder if that can be turned off.

By Sean Terry on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

In reply to by the 13th bat

If anyone wouldn't mind, could you please put the Windows 64-bit version of iTunes 11 and dropbox for me and send the link here? Thank you very much.
Again for Ro Specifically" Glad someone else confirms the difficulties with copying/pasting to iPhones. I think the best bet is to do it manually for now using the sidebar. It's not exactly a big deal but you know how things are, you want to try and figure stuff out for yourself.

By Carl de Campos on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

Hi all, I by mistake selected "switch to mini player" from the view menu in Itunes 11, and now I'm totally stuck in that mode, can't find anything on the keyboard to switch back to full screen mode or anything. I even uninstalled and reinstalled Itunes 11, but no luck, and now CTRL plus O or N or Y doesn't even allow me to open new music file, get to preferences, etc. I'm totally stuck now. Seems like the reinstall kept my library in tact though, when I connect my Iphone 4S it makes the sync complete sound after a while and my phone's music and stuff is the same. Anyone have any idea how one can switch out of this mini player mode, or is this so inaccessible with Jaws 13 on Windows 7 64 bit that I need sighted help?

By Deborah Armstrong on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

On my computer at work, where no iTunes library is active, when I select a media file to play, iTunes now automatically opens, starts playing the file, creates a library and adds that file to it. This is different than previous versions' behavior which asked you to either select an existing library, create a new one or quit. OS is Windows XP. Note that iLounge has a complete tutorial on iTunes. Though it is of course mous-oriented, it's always good to know how you are expected to work with the interface using a mouse. As blind users, its best when we're skilled at translating mous-oriented instructions in to something we can use anyway. Also the iLounge article points out everything one should be seeing onscreen, and described the best practices for working fully with iTunes 11. For me, reading this articles first, before tabbing and arrowing around is a lot more helpful. Read "Secrets And Features of iTunes 11 at: http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/instant-expert-secrets-features-of-itunes-11/
Hi, I haven't clicked the mini view but I think it's just another window, at least that's what it sounded like in David's podcast. Can you try closing a window and see if that helps?

By Camilo Glas on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

In reply to by the 13th bat

Hello their! Wen switching from miny pllayer to the regular player. Just press control plus 1 or 2 to switch from miny player to normal player. This is for windows though. Hope this helps. :)

By Camilo Glas on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

To switch from miny player to the standard player press control plus 1 or try 2 if that doesn't work. This is on a windows device. Hope this helps some people.

By jrjolley (not verified) on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

Thanks for the link in the above comment. Good introduction and review. Well worth the 10 minutes or so to listen to it.

By frank perry on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

Hi. I don't know how iTunes 11 is working on windows computers or with windows screen readers as I use an apple Mac which currently has mountain lion version 10.8.2 installed. I upgraded to iTunes 11 on the 30th of November and I posted a short guide to this website on that date as well. On the plus side, the screens are less cluttered, the pop up button for select sources such as music movies books etc is easy enough to understand. I want to talk about the search box. If you select music or movies etc on the pop up button the search box says search library. Two interesting observations, and one comes from the fact I have sight to see a screen with zoom. 1. The search box comes back empty even after you type a search word when voice over is on. 2. For some reason when voice over is on, when I type in something in the search box every single song in my library comes up, this even happens if I select the songs radio button before doing the search. This doesn't always happen with voice over off. Creating playlists with voice over on is a nightmare to be honest. Ok here's what I'm doing. I've made sure the pop up button says music. I select the playlists radio button. Then press VO keys with right arrow until I locate a playlists table. Ok there is a new playlists menu so press VO keys with right arrow to find that menu, then open the menu with VO keys and space, select the create new playlists option. Type in the title of my new playlist. Ok now there is another screen, so press VO keys with right arrow and now there is an add too button so select that. Why don't you just copy and paste Frank? I hear people say. Because if you only want one song from the library on your new playlist from each artist, you can't, the copy and paste isn't working. So I've selected the add too button, and as I've already set my column browser up in music to tell me how many artists and their names, album names and how many albums and how many types of music I've got, like rock pop etc, the add too button takes me to my music browser. Oh yes, I did try turning all the columns off in the view menu, but then what happens is every song ends up on the new playlist, and I only want one song from each of the 500 artists I have. So I have to interact with the browser, find the artists column, then down arrow to the artist I want. But still no copy and paste works for one individual song when I finally find the table of songs from the artist I've selected. No, the only way I've found is to select all the songs then use the copy function as it works then. Now comes the tricky pasting part. I've added my new playlist, so I have to find that with the cursor VO keys with left arrow or right arrow, and there is a vertical splitter just to the left of that playlists name, and that is where we have to paste the songs. We're not finished yet, before we go and delete the songs we don't want, we interact with the table of the playlist. Now when voice over is on there is only one way to delete an individual song now. Insure the cursor is on the song and then press VO keys with the backslash key, on my apple mac it is the key above the enter key. What a mess. Another way to do it is to select the artists radio button, interact with the table of artists, insure your cursor is on that artist, select the songs by that artist, copy that, then find your new playlist, find the vertical splitter just to the left, paste, then interact with the table of the new playlist and insuring your cursor is on the song you want to delete, press VO keys with backslash. Somebody Please. Surely, there's a quicker way. Could somebody please help me with this matter please.

By treky fan on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

I am using window-eyes with the new itunes. I plugged in my i-phone for the first time, and it said something about a new i-phone. Then window-eyes went silent. How can I prevent this from happening so I can get itunes to see that my phone is not active and how can I preven window-eyes from going silent in the devices area?
Hi. I can only help out with apple mac and not windows. 1. Connect your IOS device to apple mac. 2. Insure iTunes 11 is open. 3. Press VO with right arrow to find your IOS device. Note iTunes doesn't say iPad or iPod unless it's connected, iTunes 11 assumes it is an iPhone you are connecting. 4. I'm going to assume you want to copy music and that you have a playlist you want to copy from. 5. Select the music button in the IOS devices list. 6. Now find the sink selected playlists button and activate that. 7. Now a table comes up, so you have to interact with the table and press VO with space to check the relevant things you want to copy. 8. Exit the table and find the capacity bar section. 9. Interact with this section, find the sink button and select it. If that doesn't work please reply either here or too. frankperry2011@gmail.com

By frank perry on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

I have found the solution for the search box for apple mac users and voice over users. 1. In iTunes 11, press VO keys with m to bring up the menu. 2. Select view menu. 3. Press down arrow key until you hear something about show or hide side bar. 4. We want to show the side bar so make sure voice over is saying show side bar. 5. Press escape key to exit. 6. Now press VO keys with left arrow key and lo and behold the sources are listed just like they were in iTunes 10. 7. to the right of the sources lists are radio buttons. 8. I'm going to assume you want to search for a song. 9. So press VO keys with left arrow key until you locate a pop up button. 10. This pop up button needs to say music pop up button. If it doesn't insure your cursor is on the pop up button, press VO keys with space key to interact with the pop up button, then press up or down arrow keys until you hear music. When you hear music press enter. 11. Now find your search box. Insure your cursor is on that search box. 12. Start typing. You may hear your mac making sounds that's to tell you it's refining its search. 13. Now unfortunately, although the search results come up, VO won't let you copy and paste all of them to a playlist.. See my playlists post in this forum for details to create copy paste and delete songs from a playlist. Feel free to contact me at. frankperry2011@gmail.com
I'm running JFW 12 on a win XP machine and I agree with you about the tabbing around thing. The search field does also keep losing focus for me too and I can't for the life of me figure out how on earth to copy/paste tracks over to my iDevice. I've had to get a mouse userr to do it. Can't seem to see the trracks even when I find the album

By Kerry Fielding on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

In reply to by Holger Fiallo

If yo'ure using windows pc, press alt and V for view and arrow down until you find show sidebar. If you press enter on that you will see the source list similar to in iTunes 10 HTH

By DPinWI on Tuesday, December 25, 2012 - 17:15

For those who use JAWS, the latest FSCast podcast is great. I have been rather frustrated getting around in iTunes 11. Jonathon Mosen explains things and offers suggestions on how to get around in the new interface, or make it more like the old one. Well worth giving a listen to. http://www.freedomscientific.com/FSCast/default.asp
Hi folks, Can you believe how stupid some people can be. I'm talking about me of course. I didn't think to look in the submenu called "add to" because I assumed that it was just used to add the current selection to playlists. Guess what, it also lets you copy stuff to your iDevices as well. So: •Select the songs you want to copy over •VO + Shift + M •Select "Add to" •Right arrow in to that submenu then select your iDevice I can't believe I missed it. Goes to show you how the little things throw you at times. I'm sure Roe will find this useful specifically as we were discussing it a week or so ago on here.
I'm going to be updating to the new iTunes and iOS 6 soon I'm glad to know that there are now usable YouTube apps and that copying to an iDevice is still possible without having to use a playlist! Thanks for figuring this out, James! I would have been very frustrated otherwise. Thanks, Shersey
It was so irritating because I wanted to get the most out of the new interface. I realised that you could get the old behaviours back by showing the sidebar but I didn't want that. I figured that if Apple ever removed this ability in the future, it's best to make an effort now so that we can copy stuff to our devices. Glad I helped you guys out.
As the subject of this comment suggests, I'd like to be able to put playlists into folders using iTunes 11. I can create a folder, but how do I find it after it has been created? Similarly, how do I then add playlists to it? Is this feature accessible using NVDA on Windows? Also, are these folders only for organizing your playlists on the iTunes side, or do they also sync to an iPhone? Thanks, Shersey