I like it, it’s all transparent and stuff too. However, it certainly could’ve been done better. —- It really sucks, Apple can do better.
Personally I agree that it could have been done better.
The goals, it would seem are to have a highlight selection indicating the song being played, which doesn’t exclude selection of songs in other rows of the table, and to show the current song relative to previously played songs (greyed) and upcoming songs. An ordinary row selection wouldn’t do, but what they’ve got going is just a misuse of a UI element.
It doesn’t bother me at all - the appearance is clearly different than the table headers as used in iTunes, and I immediately ‘got’ what it was representing. Sounds like a successful UI to me. Perhaps the double-selection case (when the currently playing track is selected with the mouse) could have been handled better, but that’s not a showstopper. Are you sure it’s a table header cell? I would never have thought that if I hadn’t read this page - it looks to me just like a iApp-style gradient selection indicator with a drop shadow.
It just looks like crap. :)
What I can’t stand about Party Shuffle is its stupidity. When adding random songs, it oftens plays the same song more than once in a short time duration. I have almost 1000 songs and it has played the same song twice in a row on more than one occasion. You have to constantly babysit the playlist.
It’s sad that Apple is one of the worst offenders when it comes to the AppleHumanInterfaceGuidelines (save for a few freeware/shareware hobbyist hackers with colour-blindness). See AHIGHypocrisy. –TheoHultberg/Iconara