I was looking forward to the new style and features. Now that I have seen and tried it (a bit), I am vastly disappointed.
Just one thing I do appreciate: Reviews now “normal” black on white instead of white on dark photo. That annoyed me each and every time, because it projects a striped pattern on the retina that is just bothersome.
The main thing I don’t like at all: It seems like we are supposed to see as little as possible on the GUI / screen. I mean: As little information as possible.
What I need, in terms of information, is a) photographic info, meaning foremost album covers, then also artist pictures, but far less importantly – and b) text, meaning album titles, track titles, meta info etc.
But apparently all of this – photos, text – are only secondary for the genius designers of the new version. All they like is blank space. Depending on what view / feature is being displayed, more than half of the screen is just nothing. Emptiness.
So the effect of this is endless scrolling in order to get to what one wants to deal with.
- Take the track listings for an album. The vertical spacing is absurdly generous. If they put double the number of lines into a given space, it would still be overly generous, but mostly all album titles would actually fit into the screen space and all the scrolling would be unnecessary.
- On the other hand, album titles are being displayed in yelling big font sizes. We are apparently supposed to have perfect eyes for tiny little typo and at the same time awful eyes that need placard font sizes.
- Similarly, both the album covers and the text info are ridiculously small, e.g. when looking for all recordings of a certain composition. The covers could easily take three times the real estate on the screen, within the same basic structure. But no, it’s just unrecognizable blotches of color, in favor of useless empty space all around again. My gosh, I’m looking at my screen and get nothing back.
I could go on with instances of dysfunctional typography, endlessly, but I’m already fed up.
What they apparently went for was pretentious “gallery style” or something, but actual readability, structural clarity and functionality got third tier treatment.
That’s what happens when “artists” create the visual style, instead of actual real-world craftsmen who know how things work.
This is the equivalent of a “beautiful” super sports car that is just a pain in the ass when you need to drive to work, bring children or buy stuff at the supermarket.