Is there an option to turn the "split screen" off?

You're the only one who doesn't like it.

Turn if off? Why it looks cool!

This guy just wants to be different than everyone else. Why would he want white space instead of album art? Doesn't make any sense.

So, is that a no? :p

You're the only one who doesn't like it.

no he's not

I agree. The split screen looks stupid and it slows the ipod down considerably. The wheel is less responsive than previous ipods.

I dont like the new split screen either. I am very happy with my 5G and the soothing white space on the right of the screen.

As someone else said, what if you dont want to have album art for all your music? theres a lot of ppl who couldnt care less about album art.

Still, I'd prefer my ipod to save that extra battery rather than show some pretty pictures that i dont really care about. I suppose i havent actually experienced the split screen yet, so who knows, it might grow on me, but at the moment id prefer a quicker, more responsive ipod rather than one with an flowery artistic touch.

Perhaps I should just strip ALL of the cover art out of my iTunes before I load up a Classic?

Utilities for that, anyone?

Will removing all cover art get rid of the artsy-fartsy stuff in menu?

Surely the option to go to the "classic" non-split screen wouldn't be too difficult to implement in a firmware update? But I'm no software engineer.

What I want is a Fast, Responsive iPod, which won't thrash the disk (and use lots! of power) every time I go to the menu.

Keep in mind that disk thrashing (finding lots of tiny files spread out over the disk) burns far more power than anything else, AND takes a huge amount of time as well!

I'd just as soon Turn Off all the fancy "Look what I've got" ego-puffing bullsh*T, and just have an iPod that works fast and efficiently.

I was going to buy a Classic, but all this "Slow Menu/Operation" talk has scared me off...

EXACTLY my thoughts

Removing all artwork shouldnt be too hard with just iTunes. Just highlight ALL your library and then right click on it, choose "Get info" and check the box that says "artwork". Click "Ok" and that should do it.That's what I did. It took about 20 minutes to strip all the thousands of cover art data out of EVERY song. (!)

I don't know why apple feels the need to store the artwork in every song. Just a link to a separate database of art would suffice.

( If you have an album with 12 songs, the cover art is stored TWELVE times-- once in each song )

lol ok 1, I'm willing to bet that most people here who don't care about album art don't have a huge collection, or at least a huge organized collection.

2, I don't think the split screen prevents the file names from displaying as if it was full screen. I think when it shows the name of song, the screen is already nearly full screen. If I'm wrong about that, then I guess you guys are right. I wouldn't want split screen either. The main advantage of the bigger screen on the classic compared to the 4g IMO is to show more text because I won't be watching video. But I'm still pretty sure that when you have a list of songs the screen isn't split anymore.

I also doubt that the album art on the split screen is the single factor or even a huge factor in slowing down the UI.I completely disagree.

If the artwork is stored in each song file, then to show artwork in cover-flow, or other menus, you have to thrash the disk to get the Artwork out of the file.

On my 5G iPod, I noticed that when I was playing a song, if I wanted to change the Star-rating, I would have to shift through the Artwork screen on my way...

The disk would spin up to retrieve the artwork, and would often take as much as 2-3 seconds to get it !!!

That's got to use LOTS of power, as well.

I completely disagree.

If the artwork is stored in each song file, then to show artwork in cover-flow, or other menus, you have to thrash the disk to get the Artwork out of the file.

On my 5G iPod, I noticed that when I was playing a song, if I wanted to change the Star-rating, I would have to shift through the Artwork screen on my way...

The disk would spin up to retrieve the artwork, and would often take as much as 2-3 seconds to get it !!!

That's got to use LOTS of power, as well.

Artwork is stored in a separate database on the iPod.

The artwork is only shown in the main/music menu - it is NOT there when browsing by artist, playlist, album etc. (You do get a tiny preview on album view which is speedy and very handy).

The album artwork has LITTLE to do with the menu lag, etc. It's all pre-feteched - there is lag when going between menus (i.e from the music menu to the artist menu - and guess what, there IS NO ART in the artist menu). There is something wrong with the way the menus work, but it's nothing to do with the random artwork.

Artwork is stored in a separate database on the iPod.AND in each song. And the disk often spins up when retrieving art.

No, it stored in each song if you put it there, but the iPod *never* access that art, ever. A hashed database of bitmaps (for faster, easier display) is created at the two resolutions your iPod displays album art at and stored completely separately of the music file. These bitmaps are created by iTunes and stored on your iPod at the time the music is added. The only thing the iPod itself does with the audio files on it is decode them, everything else is handled by separate databases.Ah, very interesting! Thanks.

What you are saying is the Artwork IS in the mp4 song file, but is not actually used directly by the iPod itself.

I know if I copy a single song mp4 file (using the Finder) to my PC, then artwork IS in the file when I view it on the PC.

Creating a separate database cache of artwork for use ON the iPod would still require the iPod thrashing to its disk to retrieve it, particularly in Cover Flow (which I would never use anyway)...

I had 4,500 songs, and I could definitely tell when cover art caused delays on my 5G iPod. (before it was stolen, sigh. I was perfectly happy with that iPod. Now I have to decide whether to go with a 6G or go back to the 5.5G. I am NOT impressed with all the 6G bugs and loss of features!)

Thanks for the info!

One thing Apple has been told 1,000 times:

Don't Take Away a user's functionality.

That really yellow-streams us off !

If you want to add features, fine. As long as you don't diminish the power and features we're used to!

Its described in detail in this thread (http://forums.ilounge.com/showthread.php?t=66435), which is one of the "sticky" threads that is always at the top of the Classic forum.

And while I agree it would be nice to have a choice of speed versus glitz, I doubt Apple will do anything in that regard. As we all have seen in the past, once the firmware is set for a model, they usually don't change the way anything works (just bug fixes).