Love it or hate it, iTunes 11 is here to stay. This is one more step in the slow transition over to total touch interfaces that we’ll likely see in the next decade. There is no real reason to despair however — you can get your old interface back.
The first thing to do is to set iTunes up to sort by songs instead of albums. I happen to like the new album view, but it does limit how much music can be shown on the screen at once. I have over 24,000 tracks in my library and even on a 27” screen, it can be a chore to go through the library by album cover. If you look across the top of the information section of the iTunes window, just under where it shows what song is playing, you’ll see a tab for songs. Just click that.
Step two is to bring back the side bar. To do this, click on the View menu and choose Show Side Bar. This will change the library navigation from the drop down menu style to the full list style. This will also give you access to the playlists from all file types, not just music.
Step three will bring back the status bar at the bottom of your window. Again, go to the View menu and click on Show Status Bar.
Step four is to open iTunes preferences and make sure that Podcasts has a check mark and “Use custom colors for open albums, movies, etc.” does not have a check mark.
This should bring you as close as is possible to the old view of iTunes.
Here are a couple of tips for people who are trying the new interface. The first one is that your iDevice will now be listed as a button on the upper right hand side of the window, right next to the new iTunes Store button. Second, to quickly create playlists, just click on the files you want in the playlists and begin to drag them on the window.
As long as your side bar is hidden, a playlists window will slide out of the right hand side and allow you to drop those files into a new playlist. The window will disappear once you’re done. To see the playlists, choose Music from the drop down menu and then click Playlists.
You can see all the other new new features on Apple’s website