There is, I believe, a total of 47* iTunes controller apps. Their rise and fall usually follows the formula n-y3, where n represents initial excitement at some cool quirky design element; y represents the eventually realization that they aren’t worth the memory they consume; and 3 represents me failing basic algebra. And the small handful of included visual styles helps them get old fast.

So understandably, when I saw the release of Bowtie, I couldn’t help but think, “Really, another one?” Today, after a few weeks of great designers taking full advantage of the CSS and JavaScript core of the app, I’ve instead been thinking, “Really! Another one!!” So I sat down at Chateau Marmont* with coder Matt Patenaude and designer Laurent Baumann to ask them some questions on their iTunes controller addition.

* A gross exaggeration. I actually did the entire thing via email but tried very hard to picture the Chateau Marmont in my head the whole time.

Luis Sosa: What’s the first iTunes controller you used? Synergy? A Dashboard widget? iTunes minimized off to one side?

Laurent: The first iTunes controller I really liked was X-Tunes back in 2004. It was the first application to sport a “floater” with controls.

Matt: To be perfectly honest, I never really used iTunes controllers up until about a year or so ago. Before Leopard, I would often throw iTunes into mini-mode and keep it always-on-top in the corner of my desktop—most of my music at that point was from old CDs, so album art display wasn’t a priority for me. When Leopard came—and I could give iTunes its own space and put it permanently out of my way—I started feeling the need for an easier way to control it. At first, I just used my remote control app, TuneConnect, locally connected to my own Mac. Then I got a CoverSutra license from MacHeist, and at the time, I fell in love with it.

Luis Sosa: CoverSutra and Cover Stream are both fairly talked-about and popular iTunes controllers. At what point did your frustrations with these and other options lead you into “I’ll do it my own damn self” mode?

Laurent: I’m often in this “I’ll do it my own damn self” mode, in fact. While I loved X-Tunes’ features, I really disliked its look. That’s what led me to start thinking of my own controller, back in 2005.

Matt: Well, let me put it to you this way: I never saw CoverSutra as anything more than a set of iTunes hotkeys. It was handy, but I never felt the value in it as more than something I could replicate with System Preferences and a few AppleScripts, and it certainly wasn’t something I would pay for. The concept of an “iTunes controller” as something actually beautiful instead of just somewhat convenient wasn’t very obvious to me—until Laurent approached me a handful of months ago, fed up at every iTunes controller he’d used. I guess you could say the idea found me.

Luis Sosa: When conceptualizing Bowtie, were the features of the app something you came up with independent of other apps, or to address specific issues you had with them?

Matt: The other apps were far too bloated—I never used half of the features in either CoverSutra or Cover Stream. I wanted something fast, resource-light, and relatively out-of-the-way. That was it. Too many applications try to be the be-all, end-all of every product even remotely close to their market, and I’ve never been a fan of that (and neither, by nature, is the Mac environment). Do one thing, and do it right. Simple as that.

Luis Sosa: Laurent, you’ve actually worked and designed for Cover Stream. How would you compare the process of coming up with designs to fit another programmer’s work versus knowing you were working on such a flexible, themable app that you yourself helped conceive?

Laurent: Working on someone else’s concept is not something I used to do in the past, but sometimes you have to admit someone else had a better idea (lol). It’s not very hard, actually, as long as the developer is open to suggestions and new ideas and as long as they trust your design sense.
I would say designing my own concept is the same work-wise, but it perhaps brings a bit more pride! In Bowtie, the theming system allowed me to really work on my own, to implement my own ideas—without having to rely on someone else, and this has been a really good experience for a control freak like me!

Luis Sosa: The Bowtie website mentions Cover Stream; do you use both?

Matt: When Laurent and I started working on Bowtie, we weren’t trying to take on the big boys of iTunes control—our product is simple, straightforward, and doesn’t aim to be a jack-of-all-trades. We particularly didn’t want to cause any bad blood with the wonderful Cover Stream folks, since Laurent also worked on that project, so we decided to recommend Cover Stream for people who need something with a little more oomph than Bowtie. For a lot of people, a compact, simple, and free iTunes controller will suffice, but some people do like more. For that, Cover Stream is great.

Internally though, Cover Stream and Bowtie work very differently. Cover Stream uses the new Leopard Scripting Bridge, whereas Bowtie uses Alastair Tse’s excellent EyeTunes framework, and in the future will use the yet-to-be-named TuneConnect 3 engine, powered by objc-appscript. Bowtie is designed very flexibly, and it’s very easy to switch out the internal iTunes control engine.

Not that you needed to know any of that, but I felt like sharing.

Luis Sosa: Have you heard any reactions from the Cover Stream crowd?

Laurent: People that used to love Cover Stream still love it, because it’s much more than just a desktop controller. There are some areas where features overlap, but that will not be the case when Cover Stream 3 will be out, since it will not rely on iTunes anymore to play music.

Matt: Explicitly, no, but I have to assume that all of the people saying “this is the best iTunes controller I’ve ever used” were using something before they discovered Bowtie was better. (Sorry, it’s hard to keep ego small.)

No, I haven’t really heard much from the Cover Stream crowd since it serves a slightly different market, though I’ve heard plenty of people saying they far prefer Bowtie to CoverSutra. Then again, I’ve also heard people saying they like CoverSutra better than Bowtie!

Luis Sosa: What was your reaction when you saw the MacThemes boards quickly taken over with [Bowtie app] tagged post?

Laurent: Very interested and excited about how much Bowtie could unleash imaginations. I saw some real gems, like the spinning CD and the typographic beauties, and I started to collect’em all. I’m glad and proud that Matt and I brought something exciting to the community.

Matt: Honestly, I was absolutely floored. I always knew Bowtie had the potential to be big, but I expected we’d need to do a lot of marketing in order to get it into the spotlight. I was shocked that just posting one link in the MacThemes forums elicited such a positive response. I couldn’t stop smiling for almost a week.

Luis Sosa: Any favorites?

Matt: I honestly haven’t found a Bowtie theme I haven’t really liked. Right now I’m using CD Original, by Abad Federico. I’m also a fan of Scotch Tape, by MisterJack (link unavailable), PHT by Emanuel Sá, an unreleased theme by Philipp Antoni (hopefully out soon), and of course all of Laurent’s themes!

Laurent: I love and use mainly Svart, Subtile, and Mail Stamp (link unavailable). But the one that really stunned me was Lustre. You will notice that I made Nano versions of the vinyl and the modern cases I did for CoverSutra in the past, but I didn’t manage to make a good classic case at this size. When I saw Lustre, I really admired how perfectly Manuel nailed the classic feeling. If he would allow me to, I would really like Lustre to be part of the default bundle for the 1.0 release.

Luis Sosa: Browsing themes has become a bit difficult for me since I’ve installed every single theme released. Any plans to revamp the theme selection screen?

Matt: Oh trust me, we’ve got plans. It’s definitely a pain with the current setup, so we’re going to shift to an iPhoto-style browser for themes. Haven’t fully developed it yet, but when that’s done we’ll be pretty close to having a working Beta 2.

Laurent: Of course, the alphabetic ordering in the latest beta was just a quick fix for big libraries like mine, too. But we plan a much better way to manage themes, indeed.

Luis Sosa: This question is for Matt: as a programmer, on a scale of 1-10 how far do you think the themes being released push the theming capabilities of the app?

Matt: Well, that’s kind of a difficult question to answer—I’d have to say maybe around 2. Immediately after release, I made a couple of small additions to the supported metadata, but the engine itself was already powerful enough that I haven’t had to make many changes.

That’s not to say that the themes couldn’t push the theming capabilities. I love working with designers to try to get special features they want ironed out. So far, it’s just that we’ve been lucky enough to not have many features that required extra work.

Luis Sosa: You’ve placed a big emphasis on simplicity here. Was there any feature you thought to include but scrapped? Was it a design decision or a programing issue? Is this a beta as in “We’re working towards a final release” beta, or the way Google uses beta?

Matt: This is a beta as in “I’m not yet happy with it, and I’ve got a lot of polishing to do.” It’ll definitely leave beta stage in far less time than Google’s products do.

There were a handful of features that I just said no to because I didn’t think they really fit in with the app’s goal, like network control (a la TuneConnect), music browsing, and a search feature (a la CoverSutra). Search, however, I’ve reconsidered: I initially said no because CoverSutra’s was pointless, slow, and got on my nerves, but then I remembered that I do have a bit of experience with fast iTunes searching, and wrote my own implementation. It’s different than what people are used to, and in my opinion, far more powerful and useful. More on that later though.

When I write programs, I don’t scrap ideas just because they’re programming issues. Laurent will tell you: I’ll often whine and complain if he asks me to do something that’s too hard, but I eventually end up doing it anyway. I’ve always been a big subscriber to the mentality that avoiding something because it’s more work for the developer is no excuse if it can make things easier for the user.

Luis Sosa: Let’s talk about design choices. Bowtie’s grab is mostly about giving users a choice in interface. So what was the design theory behind the persistent elements of the program—preference panes and the app icon?

Matt: In an ideal world, everything would be customizable, but that puts far too much burden on the designers, and even more on me to make sure that the app still functions properly if someone does something wrong in their theme. In making those concessions, we settled on a few fixtures of ordinary applications: the preferences window, and the application branding (icons, etc.). The preferences window conforms to the Apple Human Interface Guidelines as nearly as possible. There really isn’t anything all that special about it, though a lot of thought has gone/is going into it to make the most common features as easy to find as possible.

As for branding, we just did our best to make it sexy and, well, Mac-like.

Luis Sosa: This question is for Laurent: of the 11 themes you created for the starter pack, some are what I’d consider standard fare for any iTunes controller. Others, however, are wonderfully inventive. The Vinyl Sleeve in particular caught my eye. It clearly shows the flexibility of the underlying programing used. When first approached by Matt about creating this app, did you have a particular theme in mind? What was the figurative “sketch on a napkin” for this?

Laurent: Honestly, all I knew is that I wanted a desktop controller; I had no idea how it would look exactly. When Matt implemented the theming system, it was an awesome experience for me. With my notions of JavaScript and CSS, I was able to experiment everything I wanted, whatever time it took. I remember having done at least 4 variants of the vinyl theme, each time trying something else.

Luis Sosa: So how long did it take you, from start to finish, to get from first draft to a beta you felt comfortable releasing?

Matt: The first draft probably came sometime in June. It was usable within a few of days, and I had it running pretty well by the first week of August—let’s say 1 or 2 months at the most? After that I just sat on it for awhile because I didn’t want it to take away from Façade and Architect development.

Truth be told, the beta I released wasn’t a beta I really felt comfortable releasing. It crashes if you quit iTunes while it’s running, and that bothers me. I wanted to get that fixed before I released it (I finally have gotten it fixed in the next internal beta), but Laurent kept begging for me to let it out of its cage, so one afternoon I finally decided it’d do for now. Probably the best decision I could’ve made.

Luis Sosa: Why free?

Matt: All of the applications I release under my own name are free. I always like to look at it something like this: it happens every so often that I’ll be surfing the intertubes and find an absolute gem of a Mac app, something that feels so natural and works so perfectly that I absolutely need to add it to my collection. Quicksilver was one of these apps. You install it, you play around with it, you fall in love. Do you know how much more amazing that feeling gets when you realize that app was free?

I try to make the best applications I possibly can, and then I give them away. It’s my way of saying that you don’t need to pay big money to get big quality.

Laurent: When Matt contacted me for the first time, it was about TuneConnect, his free application. Of course he first asked me if I had problems working on free/open source software. We talked about that many times, and we both really like this community and what you feel when everybody enjoys your work. Ho, and I also don’t like deadlines!

Luis Sosa: And finally, why Bowtie? Why not Ascot?

Matt: The initial working name for the app was just “Tunes,” but I wasn’t really a fan, so we started thinking about purpose. When I thought about an iTunes controller, I envisioned a butler who would go over to iTunes and manipulate the controls for you (that’s where the pre-beta tagline “Louder? Of course, sir” came from.) From there, we got “Bowtie,” since a) most butlers wear them, b) it’s something that’s easy to change based on your mood (like Bowtie’s themes), and c) it looks damn sexy digitally imposed onto a CD. The icon and the name evolved simultaneously.

Oh, and “Ascot” is too pretentious. Sure, I work for Slightly Pretentious Software, but that goes beyond even our boundaries!

Laurent: “Tunes” wasn’t bad, but we wanted something “sexier.” The French touch, you know.

You can download Bowtie on the app’s website.