Ever since the beginning of the Mac, the graphical user interface has worked in the following way: select something you want to act upon, and then use a UI control to indicate what action you want to take. Yet Apple seems to have managed to break iTunes so badly that it no longer complies with this universal contract with the user for the most basic function of playing a song. If I now select a song in iTunes, and then hit the Play button, or select Play from the Control menu, then iTunes does not play what I have selected, but instead resumes playing whatever song it had last been playing. It turns out that the only way to actually play a new song is to double-click on it – even though everywhere else in the Apple universe double-clicking is just a short-hand for something I can accomplish some other way.

I just got off the phone with Apple support and the very helpful guy on the phone actually said “Think of the Play button as if it were a Resume button.” “OK, I said. That’s stupid, but I can do it. But then show me where the actual Play button is.” But there is none. If you want iTunes to play the song you’ve selected, the only way to do that is to double-click it.