Big improvements to the Mac version
Today we are letting out a new version of The Filter for Mac, which addresses one of the biggest problems of the app - the user interface.
We’ve talked to lots of our users and we’ve worked out that some of you have a little trouble using The Filter, especially the first time you run the application. To solve this we’ve made some big changes to the look of the application.
Take a look at the new version of the application;
The biggest major difference is we’ve swapped the ‘F’ button for a button that now says ‘create playlist’. There’s also a little dial to the right of this, which lets you control how long you would like the playlist.
Hopefully you’ll find this version of The Filter a bit easier to use. We also hope that you’ll use more of the features of The Filter that were a bit hidden before such as the iPod filling aspect and the music recommendations from the iTunes Store.
Anyway, tell us what you think – yay or nay?
5 Comments, Comment or Ping
aljuk
A big nay I’m afraid. Basic functionality has gone.
There doesn’t seem to be any way to select the kind of playlist to be generated (artist / genre / song). I thought that was the best thing about the program - and it made genre tagging really useful.
It wouldn’t scan all of my music library (it’s only 2700 tracks), it kept hanging. Sync with itunes library didn’t seem to do anything.
I tried to generate a playlist using three seed tracks. The generated playlist only included those three tracks, no matter how many tracks I set it to generate via the little “knob” icon. ie. it didn’t generate any playlist.
The knob icon is too small - it’s hard to select a specific number of tracks to generate- it might be set at 18, then the tiniest movement to the left and it’s at 58. It would be good if the number could change while the knob rotates as opposed to only when it’s released, or if a number could be input into a text field.
I’m going back to the previous version for now. My only gripes with it were that it deletes the first track of every playlist once the track has been played, and that it always appears “on top” when it starts up regardless of how that option had been set in preferences. I haven’t yet tried the ipod functionality, but to me that comes second to the generation of good playlists, and the previous version is awesome in that respect.
This will be a great app when fully functional - keep up the good work!
Jul 30th, 2007
cob
Nay, nay, nay!
I’m sorry but the previous mac version was much better. I too am going back to the previous version.
Like aljuk says, the key feature of the filter is making great playlists, not artist information and a spinning globe. The playlist length knob thing is excruciating, and why have the controls moved to the left? I think the user interface has got worse on this version.
I really like the previous version that is just simple and works great.
Aug 3rd, 2007
Bernie
Thanks for the feedback - we’ll take it all on board.
The reason we changed the interface was because we ran a series of user-interface testing with the previous version, and the results were a little depressing. We found that lots of new users couldn’t work out that they had to press the ‘F’ button to make a playlist - and many simply weren’t aware that they could get song recommendations or fill their iPod with the software.
For this reason we decided to make the interface larger and do away with the tiny buttons - so we could put the features in a more menu-like position. It looks like we haven’t quite got things right.
Were you aware that if you pressed the green plus button the view changes so you see a ‘mini-player’ which is essentially the same as the previous version. (Albeit without an ‘F’ button)
Thanks again for your feedback.
Aug 3rd, 2007
eoin ( exabre mac team)
“The playlist length knob thing is excruciating, and why have the controls moved to the left? I think the user interface has got worse on this version.”
The knob is a standard apple widget ( a circular slider). You are correct that it should probably give real-time feedback though. The idea is to make setting the playlist length a deal easier than going to the preferences every time. The controls on the left are there to balance the widgets on the right. The removal of the F button necessitated this. As bernie said clicking the green button will restore the old versions look and feel which is now our “small player” ( except for the missing F button which makes it look cleaner to me), and you will always get that look across restarts. All the previous functionality is there ( info window etc.). Plus it fixes the always on top issue.
Aljuk. There was a bug in 2.4 with regard to external hard disks which may be causing the problem with the seeds being returned. Try it out.
2.4.2, out early next week will return the genre options. Usability testing reported some issues with that, but if you guys like it…..
Aug 3rd, 2007
aljuk
I keep my audio on an external HD so it sounds like the bug you describe was affecting the playlist creation for my setup.
I personally don’t mind going to the prefs to set the playlist length, as most of the time I’m looking for a similar (album type) length. Of course others users may feel differently.
I also like the f button! On an aesthetic level I find it funky and idiosyncratic, and really cool. Just a personal opinion…
I look forward to checking out 2.4!
Aug 4th, 2007
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