Very few people, on the other hand, would agree that you should have to go back and forth between screens twenty times to subscribe to a list of ten podcasts. It’s common sense to most average computer users; when you go to any web mail client you will see check boxes next to the list of emails that you can check and perform the same action on a group of items.

You might argue whether it’s “wrong” or not, which is just semantics, because they can do it however they want and not be “wrong” necessarily. It’s just that they didn’t do it very smart this time, that’s all I’m saying. I’m even pointing out that it’s abnormal considering their other work.

Like I said before, initially it was easy to blame it on the fact that they were rushing to add podcasting support to iTunes since they were so LATE to do it initially, but that was quite a while ago, and (as far as I’m concerned) they’ve had plenty of time to go back and polish it up; I’m just not sure why they haven’t.

But they didn’t do anything wrong they just could make it a lot better.

But like I said before, that’s not the main point of my criticism. My main problem is that even with the music store “link/button” allowing you to go back to the screen (that it shouldn’t have taken you away from in the first place) is that it requires going through 20 screens to subscribe to 10 podcasts from a single list when you should be able to do that all on one screen. That is a usability issue, and you even agreed with that on Sunday.

My ego isn’t bruised, and yes, I am dragging it out more because it’s Apple. Like I said in the initial post, Apple is known for doing great user interfaces, which is why it’s so hard to understand how they could screw up on something like this.

Second, tabs would work for us but tabs aren’t very intuitive. Even the devs of firefox agree with that.

now you’re saying that the music store link should take you to the homepage no matter where you were before, that’s crazy. But then you say that the podcast link should take you to where you were. Are you just fishing?

The podcast directory is a link. A link takes you to a pre-distinguished page its not a button. The music store is more of a button, similar to a tab were you go back to where you were. I understand the reasoning and it’s not just because of it being Apple, it’s because it makes sense.

I don’t agree with your definition of usability here. Just because you had a problem doesn’t mean everything else is wrong. Sara isn’t very tech savvy but she has no problems with understanding that pressing the music store link takes you where you were. And that’s my definition: if it’s intuitive enough for you not to think about it it’s usable.

Sounds like your ego was bruised a little or maybe you’re just dragging it out because it’s Apple.

Since the music store (as you said) is its own kind of pseudo-web site displayed within iTunes, it would make sense that the music store link on the left would take you to the music store home page, not to an existing session (with results) that has just been hidden.

If they wanted to show it in an intuitive way that mirrors how it actually works, they should use tabs, which would indicate that you have an active music store window or frame behind what you’re seeing on the screen when you’re looking at your library, for example.

To make it intuitive, it would have to be obvious to the new user that clicking on that “music store” side menu link would take you back to the search results you just saw. I don’t believe this would be obvious for the average user, because no side menus that you will find on the web (or in other applications, unless they are drawn as tabs) work that way.

To make matters worse, they have a link in the main window (under the subscribed podcasts) that says “Podcast Directory” where, (even if you were just browsing through the directory) it will take you back to the home page of the podcast directory, not your previous results. They could at least make this part consistent with the “music store” link, in that it would take you back to your populated list.

The bottom line is you shouldn’t have to go back and forth between two interfaces for every podcast within a list of podcasts that you want to subscribe to anyway. If you do a search for podcasts and want to subscribe to ten of the ones in the results, you will have to go through twenty screens in order to do that, where it should only be one.

So, like I said before, the issue of whether that “music store acting as a back button” functionality is intuitive (which we disagree on) is a minor issue that is only relevant because it is an only slightly helpful (yet still annoying) workaround to the main underlying usability problem.

I really don’t think your original complain can warrant unintuitive since clicking music store was intuitive to me and I’ve never had a problem or even thought of it until you brought it up.