Is a search feature too much to ask for?

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paranoidxe

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They are up to 32GB capacity now, every other iPod has a search function why is apple too lazy to implement it into the iPod Touch?
 

Teechur

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Obviously they're lazy...yup. Just lounging around in Cupertino sipping lattes and laughing while they roll around in your money.

You can "scroll" alphabetically. In the song or album list you'll see the letters A-Z down the right side. Just touch the T and you go down to T. Touch the Z and you go down to Z. It's like alpha-magic.
 
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The problem with implementing that feature in a playlist is that your playlist is not necessarily sorted alphabetically... The playlists on the iPod will be sorted in whatever order you have them in iTunes, be it a manual arrangement, alphabetical sort, or even a shuffled order. If you're using playlists as a catalogue, then you might sort them alphabetically, but since they're playlists, the reality is that most users sort them in the order that they would like to listen to their music in, which is rarely alphabetical.

This would make the "A-Z" scroll-bar very complicated to implement without being ridiculously confusing to the average user.

The "Search" feature, on the other hand, is a very odd omission for a keyboarded device like the iPod touch and iPhone, particularly when you consider that the traditional iPod models have it. I can only assume it's coming eventually, and that it hasn't been a priority to implement as of yet.
 

Teechur

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dragontit said:
I know that. I want that feature in my playlist as well.
Well since playlists are not organized by song alphabetically, there would be no point.

Of course you can always move into cover flow and find the album and choose the song from there.

I guess it's something that doesn't actually bother me, since I tend to just shuffle my playlists. If I need a specific song, I go to songlist and use the alphabet feature.

I'm all about KISS. I think that the iPod, in all incarnations, is elegant in that it doesn't have 150 barely or rarely used "features". Of course you're never going to please everyone...that's just the way things are. But it does seem silly to call a company "lazy" because they didn't include a feature, into a feature-rich piece of hardware, that you "want".
 

paranoidxe

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Teechur said:
Well since playlists are not organized by song alphabetically, there would be no point.

Of course you can always move into cover flow and find the album and choose the song from there.

I guess it's something that doesn't actually bother me, since I tend to just shuffle my playlists. If I need a specific song, I go to songlist and use the alphabet feature.

I'm all about KISS. I think that the iPod, in all incarnations, is elegant in that it doesn't have 150 barely or rarely used "features". Of course you're never going to please everyone...that's just the way things are. But it does seem silly to call a company "lazy" because they didn't include a feature, into a feature-rich piece of hardware, that you "want".
Yeah its completely silly that I call them lazy when a search feature has been implemented in the iPods since 2006..but yet it can't be done here. I'll refrain from calling them lazy but they certainly over looked the feature on the iPod Touch.

One could argue the 8GB Nanos don't need it because they have Quick Scroll and only holds about 2,000 songs..but yet there it is a search function.

Are you going to think the same thing when iPod Touch reaches 64GB capacity and 128GB capacity? I really doubt it.
 
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paranoidxe said:
Yeah its completely silly that I call them lazy when a search feature has been implemented in the iPods since 2006..but yet it can't be done here. I'll refrain from calling them lazy but they certainly over looked the feature on the iPod Touch.
Well, considering that internally the iPod touch has been built by a completely different development team from the iPhone, it's quite possible that their priorities are different, or it's something that may not have even occurred to them.

There are a lot of odd disparities between how the traditional iPod models work as compared to the iPod touch (and iPhone). Search is an obvious omission, but the list actually gets quite long if you start to think about it.

The Search feature has been a bizarre saga for even the full-sized iPods.... Remember when this was the one single feature that Apple held back from the v1.2 firmware update for the 5G iPods, limiting it to only the new 5.5G models? They gave away gapless playback yet held back the search feature.... That one still has me shaking my head..... :shake:

Stay Alive 305 said:
Hopefully an SDK application will give us a Search Function.
It's funny how people are expecting the SDK to be the holy grail that will save the iPod touch from it's present limitations. From what I can tell so far, the reality is that there will be very few ways that the SDK can be used to actually enhance existing features based on Apple's present sandbox restrictions.... People can write whole new apps, but anything that's already there looks like it's going to be largely off-limits, with only a few exceptions for things like contact data.
 

Code Monkey

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paranoidxe said:
Yeah its completely silly that I call them lazy when a search feature has been implemented in the iPods since 2006..but yet it can't be done here. I'll refrain from calling them lazy but they certainly over looked the feature on the iPod Touch.
Having watched multiple gens of iPods come and go, it seems that Apple still can't treat them like a platform versus a one-off consumer electronics product. You'd think a company that writes a pretty good computer OS could handle the division of labor of letting one group handle the low level code that interacts with the hardware and another group write interface code that works regardless of the underlying hardware. You don't need to re-write iTunes for every single different combination of CPUs, hard drive controllers, and soundcards out there, so why is it that every generation change of iPods is clearly written from the ground up and, particularly recently, slipshod and months behind the hardware rollouts.
 

DerekVOF

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In some respects, I agree -- they don't look at them as long term products. However, that does make sense because as a consumer electronics product, more likely than not, they'll be dead or upgraded within 2 years... You buy a computer, you expect it to last for 5 years at least, but you buy an iPod, and you figure you're in good shape if it survives all the drops and bobbles and splashes to make it to age 3... I've seen fruit flies with longer life spans...
 

Code Monkey

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DerekVOF said:
In some respects, I agree -- they don't look at them as long term products. However, that does make sense because as a consumer electronics product, more likely than not, they'll be dead or upgraded within 2 years... You buy a computer, you expect it to last for 5 years at least, but you buy an iPod, and you figure you're in good shape if it survives all the drops and bobbles and splashes to make it to age 3... I've seen fruit flies with longer life spans...
That's true, and completely irrelevant. You don't have to write a different version of Windows or Mac OS for every single different processor there is becauser there are a fixed number of higher level instructions that are generalised for the OS programmers. All that has to be changed is very low level code that takes the higher level instructions and decodes them to the specific families of supported CPUs. This raises the issue the dubious value of the development costs with designing each iPod model's firmware from the ground to the very top. You know you're always going to want to be able to sort through lists, shuffle according to songs, albums, groups, you know you're always going to want a clock, an alarm clock, etc. etc.

Does it make sense that they do this from scratch every single time? Take live updating of smartlists, I think every iPod from the 2G on if not the first gen supported this, yet it's clearly been re-written from scratch every damn generation. They managed to break it so badly on the 4G family (while it continued to function on older iPods) that it didn't work for more than year and it wasn't until the 5G had already shipped (with it working out of the gate) that they managed to finally get around to making it work again. Then they screwed it up again with the 6G, touch, and iPhone. These are NOT blocks of code that should need to written de novo each time, but based on what we see time and again, that's what they're doing, and it's flat out stupid.
 

dragontit

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Teechur said:
Well since playlists are not organized by song alphabetically, there would be no point.

Of course you can always move into cover flow and find the album and choose the song from there.

I guess it's something that doesn't actually bother me, since I tend to just shuffle my playlists. If I need a specific song, I go to songlist and use the alphabet feature.

I'm all about KISS. I think that the iPod, in all incarnations, is elegant in that it doesn't have 150 barely or rarely used "features". Of course you're never going to please everyone...that's just the way things are. But it does seem silly to call a company "lazy" because they didn't include a feature, into a feature-rich piece of hardware, that you "want".
That makes sense. But I hope they somehow could make that feature an on/off thing.

My playlists consist of Rap, Rock, R&B, Soundtracks, JPop, etc. So you can see how tracks in a playlist could add up quick. I alphabetize the tracks on the playlist. It sucks having to scroll through 300 songs just to go to the T tracks.
 
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If you're building your playlists on the basis of genres, why aren't you just browsing by genre directly? You can find the "Genres" option under the "More" button on the right-hand side of the menu buttons, and can even add it to the bottom button-bar by hitting "Edit" if it's something you regularly use.

Browsing by Genre will also allow you to filter by artist and album on the way in, but you can still see an entire list by selecting "All Albums" and then "All Songs" -- the result will be an alphabetical list with the letters scroll bar present.
 

dragontit

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Because I can't do it with a "Love songs" playlist. It consisnt of Pop, R&B, Soft Rock...etc
 

emjoi

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Yeah the Artist/Albums/Genres/Songs do help in searching.
But a simple Filter... type in a few letters and the list shrinks to only show the songs starting with the text... would be nice.
 
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