Appletell

In a recent article on his personal blog, Adam Fisher-Cox has details on how he thinks (and now how I think) the new Grid View in iTunes 8 should work. I personally have had issues with the Grid View (details in my review of iTunes 8), and this has the potential to be the perfect fix for those issues. Take note, Steve Jobs, as this may be a great idea for you to take in to consideration for iTunes 8.1.

Read on for more thoughts on the fix.

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Apple has just announced iTunes 8, at the “Let’s Rock” event. After rushing to download it, I immediately fell in love with the Genius playlist maker, but I didn’t particularly love Grid view. While ushering in the Grid view, you may notice there is no dedicated button for a List+Art view mode, as there was in iTunes past. I discovered that there is a way to bring back the old view, which I enjoyed quite a bit.

Learn how after the break.

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MacNN has found a Microsoft patent application patenting a program with features similar to those of CoverFlow.

The patent idea revolves around “stacking wheels” and is mainly designed for mobile applications, and possibly the Xbox 360. Personally, the patent reminds me more of the iPhone, as it is based around the idea of having multiple windows open and rotating through them as if they are laying on a giant wheel, which is like swiping through pages of applications on the iPhone home screen or moving through Safari windows.

Overall, this is just another way Microsoft is adding Apple-like features to it’s products.

Read [MacNN]

Erica Sadun is currently working on writing a book on the iPhone. While she was tinkering and playing around, she creates a great iPhone app. She brings Coverflow to your iPhone, so you can browse all of your apps using AppFlow. It is an interface for installing apps and icons. Simply install the app on your jailbroken iPhone, and tap and glide through your icons and apps. To activating an app is as simply as flipping an album cover, just double-tap and use the application. Webclips are launched a different way, that isn’t flipping but, TUAW has an insider source that claims it “maybe in a later update.”

I’m very surprised that Apple didn’t make this method of launching apps as they have it in iTunes and Leopard. If they could do this with the album art on the iPod Touch and iPhone, why couldn’t they do it for apps as well? If this is the type of things we’re seeing before the SDK is even out, we can expect things even bigger when Apple drops the SDK.

Via [TUAW]

Most people will know CoverFlow as a new feature in Mac OS X Leopard. But it actually started as an app for the Mac, simply for scrolling through album art. Apple purchased it not long before developing Leopard, and made good use of it. It’s now built-in to the core of the OS - and developers that write software for the Mac can even integrate CoverFlow into them. It’s on our iPhones and iPods too. But what if you just want the plain old CoverFlow that it used to be? Well, there are no copies floating around the (legal) internet anymore.

Cover Stream is an iTunes helper app that basically re-creates the old CoverFlow app. They’ve also added a few new features - like the “flip-browsing”. Similarly to the iPhone/iPod Touch, you can click on an album cover and it will flip around, allowing you to choose a song to play. Cover Stream is available from the developer’s website for $14.95.

Via [TUAW]

There seems to be a trend of creating an add-on app for iTunes that displays the current song on your desktop. CoverSutra is the app that most recently received the hype through the MacHeist bundle - I use it all the time and I love it’s sleek and simple interface. The Last.fm integration is what sold it for me, though.

Another great iTunes desktop app is Cover Stream (similar names seem to be a trend, too). This costs just $14.95 from the developer’s website, and has the basic feature that you’d expect from it. One neat feature that Cover Stream has that the others don’t have is a new thing they call “mini flow”. It’s basically a mini CoverFlow of all your iTunes albums on your desktop.

You can scroll through them the same way you would in iTunes or even Leopard’s finder. When you find an album you like, double-click it and it will start to play - simple. Other updates in version 1.2 is the new status window, jewel case artwork, volume indicator and colored text. Snarb.tk has fixed bugs, including some potential crashes, and has corrected an issue with album titles that have diacritical characters in them. Cover Stream 1.2 only supports Mac OS X 10.5 or later.

Via [Macworld]