Further Ping integration in iTunes 10.0.1
iTunes 10.0.1 was released today. The update seems to be focused on added integration of Apple’s new Ping service (introduced in iTunes 10).
The Genius sidebar has now been replaced with a Ping sidebar, which shows a listing of recent activity from the people you follow, along with “Like” and “Post” buttons for the selected (or currently-playing) item (as long as it’s available in the iTunes Store).
The inline (→) arrow quick links in list view (shown in selected or currently playing songs, next to the song title, artist, album, and genre) have been removed. In place of those is a single (Ping) drop-menu, with commands to “Like” a song, “Post…” about it, or visit the artist’s profile in Ping. If you use Ping, this will save you a trip to the iTunes Store every time you want to tell your friends about a song or album. These commands have been added to the context (right-click) menu as well.
The (Ping) drop-menu also incorporates the quick link functionality of the (→) arrows, allowing you to jump to the corresponding song, artist, album, or genre in the iTunes Store. It’s now two clicks instead of one, but it does save space in list view, since those arrows no longer occupy space in the artist, album or genre columns.
Perhaps not many people were aware of it, but those (→) links could also be used to jump to the corresponding song/artist/album/genre in your own library, by holding [Option] while clicking the arrow. Similarly, if you hold [Option] before opening the new (Ping) drop-menu, you can show the song in your own library instead of the iTunes Store.
Previously, there was a hidden setting that allowed you to reverse the behavior, so the default action was to show the item in your own library, and required holding [Option] to jump to the iTunes Store. If you changed that setting (as I did, since I use those arrows to navigate my own library far more often than linking to the iTunes Store), the behavior is actually still reversed in 10.0.1 (the default action shows the item in your own library), but the subheading in the menu displays the wrong thing; when it says “Show in iTunes Store”, you’ll actually be taken to your own library, and vice-versa.
If you want to show items in your own library by default, you can still use this command to toggle the setting. Copy and paste this into a Terminal window:
defaults write com.apple.iTunes invertStoreLinks -bool YES
As with other UI changes in iTunes in the past, perhaps there’s a hidden setting to switch back to the arrows instead of the (Ping) drop-menu. If I find anything about that, I’ll update this post accordingly.
One other small quirk in 10.0.1: the “Auto Size Column” commands still leave space for the now-missing arrows. Until Apple fixes that, you’ll have to manually resize the Album, Artist and Genre columns if they’re ending up too wide.
