Flow (Concept)







A Music app for iPad that doesn't suck. ​

---Introduction---​

The top controls bar is a complete mess; Why is the album art on the far left, but the track details in the middle? Why do the volume and scrubber controls get crammed into the same space with the track details? Why are the buttons on the right text and not icons? Why do we need a 'Create' button with the other controls?

The search is ugly as hell; Does it really need to stretch the width of the screen, especially in landscape? Why are the animations to open/close Search so terrible? What if you want to search from the middle of a list view, and don't want to lose your place by scrolling to the top to access Search?

The main views are ridiculous; Why can I only see only 8 items with Artists/Albums, despite there clearly being space for more? In fact, why isn't the space in the middle used in any way in Artists? Does every song in the Songs view require an iCloud download button? I mean, what if my whole library is in the Cloud and I don't want to download any of them? Why can't I see the song length from this view?

The Artists view deserves special attention: Why on earth are all the albums expanded on an artist's page? What if you have several albums by the same artist? Why should you have to effectively scroll through every song by the artists just to find the Album you want? This is actually much worse on the iPhone/iPod touch due to the smaller screen estate, but still stupid on the iPad's large display.

---Solution---​

It's design is based on both iTunes 11 and the original iOS 3/4 iPad "iPod" app. Most views use the album view from iTunes 11, to display up to 16 items at once whilst retaining a simple and clean layout. Items never feel cramped together.

It incorporates a smart sidebar view that adapts to the user's needs: it's fixed in place wherever you go for power users in landscape orientation, while retracting to allow the user to focus on the content in portrait view.

This sidebar houses a Now Playing view and a Queue system. The Queue automatically changes when a Playlist is started to show what tracks are set to play next. You'll even see the tracks re-order themselves when Shuffle is enabled.

The controls bar at the top stays with you wherever you go in the app, both in portrait and landscape. Even with a permanent search field added, it still has a clean, organised feel and still retains all the essential functionality.

The main feature of the app is a more simple, yet more functional UI, but other features are planned such as: Queuing (Up Next), Night Mode, playback for other file-types like .flac, and imported libraries from other sources. These libraries will hopefully include iTunes Match, iTunes purchases, Dropbox and File Sharing/Documents (added through iTunes or an "Open-in" view in other apps).







Hey guys,So I've been designing an app over the last few weeks that I plan to release at some point on the App Store. Though I'm still in the early design stages, I've got to a point where I not only think it's a viable idea, but also I have a vague idea of what it will look like, how it will function and what features it will include.This is the point where I should open up Xcode and start building an early prototype, to test out ideas, features and animations. Unfortunately, not only don't I own a Mac, I can't code for ****. So basically,. So if you missed that, at the moment. If you're interested, throw me a PM and we'll go from there.So lets talk Music. The current app stock app is pretty 'meh' on iPhone and iPod touch, but fortunately there are several decent solutions that exist on these devices that solve most of the problems. Granted, I don't think any one of them 'nails' what a Music player for the masses should be, but I don't see it as big enough an issue at the moment. But then we come on to iPad.The iPad stock Music app is undoubtedly terrible in too many aspects, and really makes me question whether it was designed by Apple:There's so much to talk about here, but to be honest I can sum it all up much quicker:That's a problem with many iPad apps like Clock and Photos, but for now I'm just going to focus on Music. This is a core problem that destined this app to be crap from the moment it was revealed in iOS 7.is the concept solution I propose. It's a Music app designed for iPad, and it takes full advantage of the device's display and orientations:This design is still a work in progress, and in places still needs refinement (and finishing!), but hopefully within the next few weeks I can decide on a final design. All I need now is a developer, so like I said above,. Thanks!