When the iPhone was first revealed, a long year and a half ago, Steve Jobs proclaimed that it was "The best iPod we've ever made". That was probably true. But with the new iPhone Remote application, this may no longer be the case. Tom, from The Small Wave, took a look at the native iPod interface and the new Remote interface, and the Remote app wins.
The shot above shows the different approaches to playlists (iPod on the right). The small amount of extra information makes a huge difference here. You can tell which are normal playlists and which are smart, and you get a nice number telling you how many songs are in them. Here is the song listing comparison:
This is even better. Now you can see which of your 70 versions of Stairway to Heaven you are about to play (I recommend the Dolly Parton). Finally, Tom points out that there is a search feature. Granted, dealing with a 16GB iPhone music library is a lot easier than dealing with your 100GB iTunes library, but search seems such an obvious addition now that we have seen it, we'd like for it to find its way into the native iPod interface.
That's not to say that it ever will. ITunes still notably lacks the iPod's ability to flip over an album cover in Cover Flow mode to see a song listing. That should have been ported over a year ago. We'd be surprised if at least some of these tweaks don't make their way across at some point, though.
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