I've been trying to use iTunes 11 without the side bar, and it gets a little better. My flow for navigation requires more clicks - like I'm in the store and I want to sync, I have to click the devices buttons, select my iPhone, and hit sync.
It's not crazy bad, but I turned on the side bar again to view how many app updates I had on a non-logged-in account, and it was such a breath of relief. The side bar is generally so much easier and flowing to navigate. I might just switch back.
I mena I LOVE the cleanness - like removing a bunch of buttons, and assigning views to each 'mode' (album/artists, etc), but it's just a little less functional. I can see if they worked on it a bit, it could be better though.
iTunes has ALWAYS been a testing ground for Mac UI (why, I don't know), and I would like it to be improved upon and extended to rest of Mac OS. Stuff like a cleaner header bar and things. Something I think I heard on MAcbreak brought up a good point - the interface with grid view is very much suited to a touch screen interface - touch albums, bigger buttons, less fiddly little click targets (when side bar is off). Whtehr this is just a unification of OS style or something more foreshadowing....
Is there a way to show the currently played song in the library? There's a command "To current song" (*) in the context menu of the LCD pane, but it doesn't do anything for me.
* translated, don't know how it's labelled in the English localization
When I click on "Go to current song" in the context menu in the "LCD" panel, it highlights the currently playing song.