Oh, how I miss thee.
As we all know, Apple likes to try to make things easier, to streamline things. However, their recent decision to abolish the iTunes shopping cart was a big mistake. Now, instead of adding a song to your shopping cart, you can either add it to a wishlist, or buy it immediately.
Sounds reasonable, right? Wrong.
Say, like me, you want to give several songs to a friend as a gift. Well, unless those songs are in one album, you’ll have to buy and send one song a time. Oh, but wait…you can add them to your wishlist, and then purchase and give them all at once, right? Wrong again: if any of the songs you want to give are already in your own library, they cannot be added to your wishlist.
Some people have claimed the reason Apple got rid of the shopping cart was to streamline the buying experience, similar to the one-click option at Amazon. However, Amazon didn’t get rid of their shopping cart; they merely added the option to purchase with one-click. In other words, they didn’t remove a feature, they added an enhancement. In fact, Amazon not only provides one-click and a shopping cart, they have a wishlist, as well. Why? Because a wishlist is, in fact, different from a shopping cart; it’s a place where you keep things you’re not ready to buy yet, but might want to consider later. Apple’s decision to make the wishlist act like a shopping cart is incongruent with how people think of wishlists.
Is this just a tempest in a teapot? Probably, but it points up an important usability issue: never remove any feature users are familiar with without providing a functional, obvious alternative.
Guess I won’t be ‘gifting’ you all my favorites from Broadway musicals.
(now you’re not so bummed, huh?)