I hate Cover Flow
Posted by Dr. Macenstein
How’s that for a headline? I know, it’s kind of like saying “I hate bunnies”, but hear me out.
We all have our favorite way to interact with our data, and I am sure there are some people who use Cover Flow every day in their iTunes browsing, but my god, I sure hope it isn’t one of the big selling points of the new iPods at this Wednesday’s special event.
For those of you who love Cover Flow, more power to you, and congrats on Leopard, where apparently you will be able to enjoy Cover Flow in pretty much every app Apple could think of a way to shoehorn it into, including the Finder. But personally (and note the category “opinion” I filed this under) Cover Flow is a bit of eye-candy that just gets in the way.
I never hated Cover Flow until I got my iPhone. But now that I experience it (accidentally) multiple times a day, I just hope Apple comes up with an option to turn it off, both on the iPhone, and in the upcoming iPod.
Why Cover Flow is annoying on the iPhone/iPod
I’m sure my hatred is somewhat based on the way Cover Flow works (or doesn’t) on the iPhone. For instance, in Cover Flow view on the iPhone, if you are listening to songs on Shuffle, the albums do not automatically scroll and update as the songs change the way they do in iTunes on a Mac. This means, if you select a U2 song (like Apple wants) and then a Metallica song comes on, you are stuck looking at the U2 album art for the duration of the Metallica (and all subsequent) songs. If you rotate the iPhone vertically, bringing the iPod back to the “Now Playing” screen, the album art refreshes, and if you rotate the iPhone horizontally back to Cover Flow mode, you have the correct album displayed. This inefficiency is compounded by the iPhone’s tilt-sensor, which, although truly a technological marvel, doesn’t know what to do when laying flat on my desk, or the passenger seat of my car, or in my hand while jogging. I am subjected to the iPhone’s Cover Flow mode countless times a day when it thinks I want to see it, and I feel like I am dealing with the magic Eight Ball sometimes the way I have to unnecessarily rotate the iPhone to get back control of my songs.
Speaking of control, control is the biggest problem with Cover Flow on the iPhone. This is because you cannot accomplish anything else in that mode other than flipping through CDs and selecting tracks. If I want to bring up the fast forward/skip, volume, or scrubbing controls, I have to rotate the iPhone back to the vertical Now Playing mode. This pretty much makes the iPhone’s horizontal layout useless to me in iPod mode. If I could lock in the Now Playing mode no matter what orientation my iPhone was in, I would be a happy camper.
Now, before you say that my problem is with the iPhone’s version of Cover Flow, and not Cover Flow itself, let me stop you right there. Yes, the iPhone has the worst implementation (to date) of Cover Flow, but it is a largely useless technology no matter where it shows up.
When I first saw Cover Flow back in Sept ’06, I was as impressed as anyone. It made perfect sense for iTunes, I thought. It mimics a JukeBox, and like a real JukeBox, sometimes it’s fun to scroll through and see what music you have on your computer you might have forgotten about. After Downloading iTunes 7.0, I promptly showed Cover Flow to the wife and kids. The wife pretended to care in order to humor me (as she does with most geeky things I show her, god bless her) but the kids really thought it was cool.
For me, however, Cover Flow’s novelty wore off a month later when I found that songs I hadn’t listened too in a long time actually kind of sucked, and as far as a method of actually finding specific music tracks, it was almost easier to go into the attic where I keep all the physical CDs I encoded and find the track that way. Cover Flow is really just Eye-Candy, and aside from using it as an alternative to the Visualizer at parties, I pretty much stopped using it altogether. (The kids, however, still love it. But then, they are 5 and 3 and barely know how to read, so Cover Flow is the only way they can find their albums. Once you’ve entered the First Grade, Cover Flow becomes unnecessary).
I know many will defend Cover Flow, or give me the “if you hate it, don’t use it” speech, and I agree with them. I hate it and I don’t use it. Except on the iPhone, where I can’t help but be exposed to it (and where my kids still think it is cool). I’m pretty sure when I buy my copy of Leopard next month, I will find I rarely hit that Cover Flow button in the view modes – I really just can’t see that being an efficient way to find Word documents, Maya Projects and After Effects files, especially with the rumored improvements to Spotlight. I know we Mac users are supposed to be a “visual” crowd, but text-based searches via Spotlight and Quicksilver will beat Cover Flow any day when productivity matters.
So why am I really writing this article?
Well, basically I am worried by what appears to be Cover Flow’s eventual taking over of the planet. With all this talk about the new iPod/nano being announced in just under a day, the only consistent info I have been seeing in all the “leaked” photos and rumor site mockups (besides a slightly squashed form factor) is the inclusion of Cover Flow. Is this a big deal? Is this what we have all been asking for? Is Cover Flow so beloved it is an actual selling point? Or, is it really just eye candy that seems cool at first, but whose novelty wears off after a month?
I love almost all of Apple’s gear – the iPod and iPhone in particular. But as Cover Flow begins to invade these devices to the point where it actually hampers functionality, we have a problem. Many early critics of OS X (on both the Mac and PC side) criticized it for having too many useless eye candy-like effects just for the sake of having them. I would argue Cover Flow is the “eye candyist” of them all – a sales gimmick masquerading as a search tool that should be OPTIONAL on Apple’s portable devices. Make it easier to avoid, as it is in iTunes (and hopefully) Leopard’s Finder. It should not be a standard view on either the iPod or iPhone, at least without allowing for the full control of the device.
Being the eternal optimist that I am, I have managed to find a silver lining to the storm cloud that is Cover Flow on the new iPods. Hopefully, if Cover Flow is put into effect on all iPods, then maybe enough people will get annoyed with the way it works for Apple to fix it on the iPhone. Come on Apple, at least let us fast forward!
I agree completely. My biggest problem with Cover Flow is that it’s *slow*. I’m a keyboard basher by nature, and while it’s pretty, hitting the left arrow 117 times to get through my albums does not strike me as a clever way of doing things. If I ever get an iPhone, I’m sure I’ll hate it all the more. 🙂
Your post makes perfect sense.
I have always felt one of the things that made Apple superior to its competitors is its ability to take what starts out as useless eye-candy and actually make it functional and feature-rich. Sure, there is alot of pointless glitz in all their products, but I can let that slide; I think the pros outweigh the cons.
But Cover Flow is not one of those good eye-candy things. I like it (not love it) in iTunes, but admittedly only use it when I want to show off some features of the app to some noob friends 😉
./M
Ooble: You do know that you can use your scrollwheel on your mouse right? rofl.
But yes, I agree. It is worthless eye candy and should never appear outside of iTunes.
Yes, I was initially impressed with Coverflow, just because it looked cool, but then I got tired of it. Then during the Leopard preview, Jobs somehow got me excited about it again, but in thinking about it, I really don’t know why. I think it is just because to the end user, there isn’t that much about Leopard that is going to be all that different from Tiger, so they sort of played it up, making it appear more useful than it will be.
I agree completely. I also really hate that Podcasts show up in coverflow (and that video podcasts show up in the audio podcasts), and that there really seems to be no “Browse” mode on the iphones ipod. I haven’t automatically learned how to use On the Go playlists with the iPhone, and I think I have left off syncing my smart playlists because they would reference material I cannot fit on my iphone.
As is the iPhone iPod is not a punch play and let go all day sort of iPod for me
Is it possible, the cult of Mac has begun to see it’s way through it’s foggy glasses.
Sorry to take the opportunity to say that…but I had to.
I’ve been feeling for awhile now that Apple was getting ‘full of itself’ thinking that anything it feels makes sense does, regardless of what the user’s experience really says.
I’m glad to see that I might not be alone.
10668844, Apple didn’t even write Cover Flow, they bought it from some independent developer (who probably didn’t expect it to be so overused). So my Mac-loving conscious can still rest somewhat easy agreeing with this.
Conscience, sorry.
🙂
You’re doing it wrong.
It sounds like you and a lot of the other CoverFlow non-fans are simply using it as a visual browser. CoverFlow works much better if you use it as a normal file list with visual feedback. What the heck does that mean? It means you use the normal interface shortcuts to find your files, like you would in a Finder window, and let CoverFlow give you a quick visual confirmation.
Ryan already pointed out the scroll wheel support. Similarly, you can press left and right arrow keys to scroll. But more powerfully, you can select with the keyboard like you would in a Finder window. If CoverFlow is sorted by album and I type “ach” then CoverFlow will select “Achtung Baby” by U2. This is why commenter Ooble does not have to press the arrow key 117 times to find an album. That’s ridiculous.
In a Finder situation, I would type my filename and when CoverFlow presents it to me, I would look at the preview to confirm that’s the file I wanted.
As long as the iPhone supports the keyboard-driven CoverFlow features, I will not oppose it.
So give CoverFlow a little more time. Your reaction reminds me of when all the DOS-folk used to put down the mouse interface because it was so slow and unproductive compared to DOS commands.
“Your reaction reminds me of when all the DOS-folk used to put down the mouse interface because it was so slow and unproductive compared to DOS commands.”
Have you ever used Windows? It IS slow compared to DOS commands!!! OS X otoh…
Steve Jobs is the god of Apple and he apparently is in bed with coverflow in case nobody has noticed and if he loves it, we’re pretty much stuck with it. It’s pretty, but that’s about as far as it goes. Now if you could flip the art over and have the rear cover and be able to click the songs from that, then they’d be in business. Obviously that’d be a hell of a programming feat, but it’d be sweet!
Your kids are 5 and 3 and can’t read? I was reading when I was 3. May not have much to do with your article, but common man, teach your kids to read now so they can enjoy reading and read more in their life. Introduce good books to your kids, make reading fun! If their only experience is in school it may seem boring to them and they may not want to read, which is a bad thing!
Btw, I agree with you that Coverflow on the iPhone SUCKS, but for me it RULES in iTunes. So ya…I also hope for better coverflow in the future.
So don’t use it.
In my opinion, coverflow is only truly useful on laptops. I say this because, as Ooble mentioned, pressing the arrow key for 5 minutes to find something gets old pretty quickly. Scroll wheels work ok, until you realize that (depending on the drivers and settings) you’ll only be able to select every third album. That’s how it worked for me with Logitech Control Center, because I had the wheel set to scroll 3 lines. SteerMouse scrolls one album as I’d expect it to, but I’ll probably switch back to LCC because Steermouse can’t detect two my my buttons.
Getting to the point, it works great with the scrolling trackpad. You have perfect control over whether it scrolls through every album in a quarter second or just goes one at a time. Maybe this is also possible with some of Logitech’s newer Revolution series mice with the free spinning wheels, but for mice with the clicky ones it’s a pain to use.
I think the point of Cover Flow is to ‘browse’ not ‘find.
For instance I have a folder of movie posters that I use to complete my artwork for my iTunes movie collection. Rather than scroll through looking at 128 x 128 icons, I would really appreciate a Cover Flow interface.
It’s obviously not the most efficient way to locate a file, but sometimes I’m not in an efficient mood and just playing with the eye candy is fun.
Jo jo, that’s nice and all, but that really sounds like something a 3rd party should have made (and did) to address a very small section of the Mac audience with a specific need, not an OS-wide feature we all have to deal with.
On an ipod, especially a scroll wheel one, coverflow doesn’t add ANY steps to the selection method to get to an album. You enter your album list, which shows up as coverflow rather than a text list, and scroll to the album you want, and then press play. Exactly the same process, just with cool added eye candy.
“every app Apple could think of a way to shoehorn it into”
So you mean, Finder.. iTunes and..?
In Finder, its a visual cue to which file you have selected. It is also fantastic for photos/illustrations/photoshop files/whatever. You’re not supposed to scroll through the thing looking for the file you’re after, you use the normal means. it’s like the finder preview made a whole lot sexier looking and faster (at least in leopard, tiger iTunes coverflow is clunky, leopard’s isn’t)
And the thing you mention with regard the iPhone? Well that splits into two parts. One, the art not updating, is a bug. Tell apple about it. The other, the lack of play/pause/scrubbing/etc, is a missing feature, without the scroll wheel the interface is severely restricted without these icons on screen.. so I agree on that point. But it’s hardly a downside to the whole coverflow experience, and is present in only one of 3 (currently) iterations of the interface, as of tomorrow to be 4/5/however many more.
Heymbit,
‘but common man’??
I guess you meant ‘but come on, man’. I am not going to point out the obvious irony 🙂
“This inefficiency is compounded by the iPhone’s tilt-sensor, which, although truly a technological marvel”
Umm. Every digital camera for the last 5 years has had the same tilt-sensor, which is how when you are taking a vertical picture the LCD screen rotates too so you can see what you’re taking a picture of…and how the camera can record the orientation in the EXIF information so your digital photo app can get it right.
They’ve got the shortcomings too…lay it down flat and watch it fail to perform correctly.
Apple finding ways around that shortcoming, *that* might be a technological marvel. Maybe.
Cover flow, at least in iTunes, is faster. With a few mouse wheel rolls, you’re in the general vicinity of what you want to listen to, and then with a little fine tuning you’re there. Also, album art can inspire me to listen to something I’d forgotten about, and might not notice as readily when dealing with just text. I can understand if it’s not quite fleshed out properly on the iPhone. The idea of things constantly bouncing around while jogging sounds like it could be a waste of battery life (though I imagine you can turn off the screen and still listen to music, right?)
I agree completely. I also really hate that Podcasts show up in coverflow (and that video podcasts show up in the audio podcasts), and that there really seems to be no “Browse†mode on the iphones ipod. I haven’t automatically learned how to use On the Go playlists with the iPhone, and I think I have left off syncing my smart playlists because they would reference material I cannot fit on my iphone.
For me, Coverflow works horribly because most of the music in my iTunes library doesn’t have any artwork associated with it, since I ripped a lot of the albums from CD’s that I might not even have anymore before I even thought of caring about the artwork. When I scroll through Coverflow now in iTunes for fun, I come up with almost everything missing the artwork, and iTunes doesn’t even find a lot of it when I searched.
I love coverflow!!! On my Macbook Pro, it is faster and more fun to flip trough my albums just by swiping two fingers back and forth in order to get to an album. Also, if I wanted to get to letter D from letter Z, you can just hit it like in the regular iTunes browser
@ Kim –
If you have to explain how to use it properly to folks, then it obviously has a problem.
I used the 10.5 preview for a month after WWDC. I had to go back to 10.4 because some things weren’t working for me. But the ONE thing I miss the most from 10.5 is Cover Flow in Finder. It’s amazing.
For my download folder, finding pics, files, PDFs, word docs ($%$&$), movies… Just excellent.
Also when browsing the fonts folder with Cover Flow, I got great previews and both huge samples and all the characters.
The iTunes folder. Ditto. Cover Flow rocks.
But – admit – haven’t tried it to much on iPhone.
Could we all agree to never say “happy camper” again? No matter what?
I see your argument and I think you have many valid points. But as people have said… don’t use it.
You can navigate the iPhone (and yes I have one, I am not just speculating) without ever touching (lol, a pun) Coverflow. iTunes too, works perfectly fine without it and if you don’t see it as “pretty” then just organize music like you used to. And as with Leopard, it is completely avoidable! That is one of the beauties of a Mac (or any Unix or Linux based product) is that it is pretty simple to get it to do what you want.
Personally I believe that Coverflow is not, by any means, necessary. But I believe it adds an attractive look to everyday applications and can be somewhat helpful when (photos and videos only) organizing folders.
Thanks to those of you who read.
I think you have a valid point with the iPhone, but as far as Leopard goes, I think it will turn out to be useful… I’m a keyboardist myself, so I hardly ever use finder but CoverFlow would be nice when browsing a movies/pictures directory. As a separate view it wouldn’t be in the way at all and would be easier to access than a 3d party tool.
Just adding my voice to the bulk of people here who feel coverflow is primarily useless despite the cool looking factor. I never use it and would not care if it were not there. Apple should stop pushing it. It’s a very inefficient way to peruse my music. It’s a gimic looking for a reason to exist, using too much memory/processor power that could be put to better use.
I still use CoverFlow occationally. And by CoverFlow I mean the app that Apple bought from SteelSkies. I use it because I listen exclusively to whole albums, and CoverFlow lets me find albums that I have forgotten. (I have a visual memory.) It also adds each album I choose to play in a separate playlist so that when the album finished, the music stops. It doesn’t continue to the next album in the sorted way. I may add an album to the playlist if I so choose.
The Cover Flow view in it self isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I use it for the use that the original developer intended, so I’m slightly biased. It’s a shame most of the features I love in the original CoverFlow is removed in the Apple implementation.
You’ve got to be kidding! CoverFlow on the iPhone freakin’ rocks. It’s the perfect way to browse using the touchscreen interface. Harkens back to the glorious days of flipping through your record collection.
Will the whining never cease?
Another HUGE issue with Cover Flow on the desktop in iTunes was that Cover Flow was sucking a massive amount of memory. iTunes was routinely eating up half a gig of memory until I turned it off. My covers are embedded in the MP3s that I have, and some are probably decent size, but good lord, does iTunes need to load them all into memory.
Worthless feature.
Quite honestly, I think the iPod features are my least favorite of the iPhone. Having to unlock the phone every time I want to change the song is infuriating. And I don’t want to hear about the remote in the gumball machine garbage headphones they give you. That is not a solution.
Some of us listen to Classical Music. Unfortunately, most covers look pretty much like any other (especially the Naxos label, but hey, they are a budget label). The rest of my content is either ripped from CDs or from other sources than the iTunes Store (which until recently, was pretty weak when it came to classical music choices). Using Coverflow to find a piece of classical music is a non-starter. It can’t be done.
I suspect that there are other iPod owners like me (maybe). For us, Coverflow would be an unused feature.
I have no problem with iTunes’ Coverflow. It doesn’t hinder the playback controls, it respects playlist groupings (when you are in a playlist or an album and you hit coverflow, you only see what’s in that album or playlist, like you should), and you can hide it and never see it again.
I have a huge problem with iPhone’s coverflow. It removes all the playback controls except for play/pause, it shows you your entire library no matter what playlist or album you are in, and therefore kicks you out of that playlist when you pick a song via coverflow, so unless you plan on either 1) listening you every song on your iPhone randomly or b) plan on choosing each new song as the track changes, it’s totally worthless, but worst of all, it shows up whenever you accidentally tilt it.
It’s good for browsing. It’s awful for finding or playing back. Which do you do more?
Let. Me. Turn. It. Off. It’s a blindingly simple request that in no way affects those who like coverflow.
I agree wholeheartedly.
Several terrible things I can’t seem to fathom with coverflow…
1) I am presented with a song which happens to be on an entire album I encoded/downloaded. WHY can I not flip that album cover over and choose any of the songs from that album? It makes as if I have 11 copies of the album when really I want 1 with 11 songs on it (i.e. just like an album would.
2) Even on my duo-core macbook it still feels slow. It isn’t response speed, it is the animation that feels slow.
I love the idea of being able to browse my songs like this but I personally prefer the methods in FrontRow that are used for trailers. This grid layout of movies would be excellent if it had albums which I could then ‘enter’ and select the song I want to listen to. I suspect this would be easy to make (well for Apple) and certainly would be better in my eyes than Coverflow is.
First, I was very skeptical to coverflow when I first saw it on iTunes. I never use it, but my friends like to play with it when they hang around. However, coverflow in finder makes perfect sense for me. I download hundreds of documents every month and many a time do I feel bogged down with pdf files. Even with spotlight, it is a real pain to look through 20 – 30 items in the search-list.
I am really looking forward to coverflow !!!!
Please file a bug for:
“””
For instance, in Cover Flow view on the iPhone, if you are listening to songs on Shuffle, the albums do not automatically scroll and update as the songs change the way they do in iTunes on a Mac. This means, if you select a U2 song (like Apple wants) and then a Metallica song comes on, you are stuck looking at the U2 album art for the duration of the Metallica (and all subsequent) songs.
“””
That’s certainly a legitimate gripe, and IMHO an important bug to get resolved. While you are at it, file bug reports for disabling Cover Flow.
I use Cover Flow in the Leopard Finder a lot for document folders. Perhaps you haven’t experienced it yet, but it is *very* useful.
Cover Flow, and various other Mac-isms that are being forced onto the ordinary productivity worker, is just one of the reaons I chose a Dell laptop instead of a MacBook Pro when my boss recently asked me which one I wanted (since I had been harping on about how fantastic the MacBook Pros were since I finished some Apple training in Sydney).
At the end of the day, CoverFlow is just a nuisance, and the lack of a docking station, insufficient USB ports, and cumbersome multi-monitor support (that is, boot up, close lid, then connect monitors, I believe) are just going to drive me nuts and I don’t care that I’m still going to be using Windows XP on a Dell. At least it’s not going to frustrate me the whole god-damned day!
If Apple could actually think to provide some options to turn off these annoying Mac-isms (especially to woo potential PC-switchers like me) and improve their laptops, I would happily switch tomorrow. But if I have to keep changing the way I do things to accomodate the Mac, then I’m just going to stick with old faithful, Windows XP.
eh, whatever. I think it’s fun. Not EVERYTHING has to be super usable, it doesn’t really get in the way. But it’s there if you want to take a quick visual spin through your music. I don’t use it much, but I like it.
when you lay the phone on its side while listening to the ipod, just lock it first. also saves you from the possibility of accidentally touching it and skipping a song or something.
Your music sucks!!!!!
…is what I always fear if I put up my own coverflow on a website. Kudos to you. Maybe not a big fan of TMBG, but they’re respectable for sure.
I think most of you are missing the point of CoverFlow. It is an added tool, not the only way to search for your music and files. It is a visual aid and nothing more. Lets say you forget what a song or album is called but you would know it if you saw the cover art, than CoverFlow (in my opinion) is an incredible tool for that situation. You don’t have to use it but I bet there will be times when your glad its there. Some people just work quicker and even absorb information better when they can visually see it. Others don’t. Basically what it comes down to is….IT’S A TOOL!!! You may not be required to use a screw driver all that often but you will have to use one sometime in your life, so why not have one? (especially if someone is giving it to you for free)
Actually, my only problem with Cover Flow is that 1/2 my music collection is missing cover art because I have a lot of rare ep’s and demos by bands, and cover art for them is not readily available. So browsing my music through Cover Flow usually looks pretty lame when 1/5 albums actually has the cover there.
Dude, whatever, get a life!
I hate iTunes (please Songbird… come and give us wings with iPod / iPhone support)… it is probably the least usable and most annoying “app” that has ever been thrust on me. It’s naggy (must update to newest version or nothing works) , crippled as hell, DRM-laden, and locked-in.. it’s like the Internet Explorer w/ Live search for music.. but worse.
What really gets my goat abot Coverflow is that I purposely CAN’T add album art to albums I’ve ripped in the .WAV format. .AIFF or Apple Losless is fine.. but if i want my albums in lossless .WAV for intercompatibility with other DJ software… it will say “Album Art Not Modifiable.” So it has to be lossy or Apple-only format or there’s no Covrfow for me..
Also.. I think Coverflow in iTunes is a way of trying to get them to push people into buying from iTunes Music Store. If you download from ITMS.. it’s easy as 1-2-3 and the art works automatically. If you just bought 4 CDs from Germany, like I did this week, and want to rip them into .WAV and go hunting around the internet for artwork and then being told “Album Art Not Modifiable”.. it’s a incredible cumbersome experience.
It’s all part of Apple’s plan to shift away form hardware design and become a MTV-like content and multi-media renter, with everyone locked in a DRM sandbox.
Not only do I agree, but it is also simply broken on the new Ipod Classic. See below.
PLease report Coverflow\Compilation Bugs to APPLE
——————————————————————————–
Please verify and report the following bugs to Apple at
http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipod.html
MAYBE if enough people report these glaring bugs, they might actually fix them. for now Coverflow becomes useless if you have a decent amount of compilations.
1. Coverflow shows multiple covers for compilation albums since it sorts by artist.
2. Compilations show up ok under compilations, BUT the artists still show up under artist, and they should not if they are part of a compilation. if set correctly it eliminates tons of artist with one or two tracks only.
3. Missing sorting options for Coverflow.
I CANNOT believe that these two bugs, and the omission of coverflow options are on the new Ipods.
It makes me wonder what else is broken!
Also, the coverflow itself and scrolling through albums seems very sluggish and that’s with small sample of cds… Geez!
I agree! I hate ITunes.
Nice man.
Well i like it. I really follow the apple philosophy and i use every product i can get my hands on, but i am to cheap to buy a new mac. My best computer is an iBook g4 12 inch 1.2 ghz. i use itunes 8 and coverflow. I dont think coverflow is slow at all.
But what do i know, I haven’t got a ipod or a iphone. i have never used a intel mac or even a g5.