On the 13th of July 1998, Jeff Robbin, Bill Kincaid, and Dave Heller released the first version of SoundJam MP. Two years later, the developers of SoundJam sold their software to Apple, and continued development (in secrecy, as is typical of Apple) of the software for the Cupertino based company. In 2001, iTunes was released and, to this day, Jeff Robbin continues to guide the direction of iTunes under the ever watchful eye of Steve “boom boom” Jobs. All was going great. That is until the latest update, when they decided to substantially redesign the application icon.

Released last Thursday, the decision to ditch the antiquated Compact “I haven’t bought one in 6 years” Disc and focus the icon on the music note, has caused quite the uproar. The new version of the icon seems to be following the standard “more is more” approach of on screen design: drop shadows, glows, bevels, gradients? We got ‘em all! Even the much lauded simplicity of Adobe’s icon set for the crash-tastic Creative Suite is an illusion — on close inspection there’s a gradient, a bevel and a drop shadow spoiling the typographic straightforwardness.