Make iTunes window more like a standard OS X window

iTunes started out as a pretty un-Mac like application, but over the years the platform and iTunes have grown together.

Except for one real oddity.

Every Mac application has 3 "ball" icons in the upper left side of the window - red, yellow, green. In Safari if you mouse-over they display a symbol as well.

Red closes the window. Yellow hides it. So far, so boring. But what about green?

Green is the expand window button. This isn't well documented, the OS X zoom window (expand window) behavior is quite different from windows. A well behaved app doesn't necessarily zoom to full screen, it zooms to the maximal logical size (which for many apps is full screen). It doesn't always work as expected, and I think apps are behaving more like Windows zoom over time, but I personally like this smart zoom.

So the green button is the expand button ... except in iTunes, where it instead launches the iTunes mini-player! How annoying.

Happily, there's a workaround, which I came across here  and have since added to an old post of mine on iTunes shortcuts and modifier keys...

Gordon's Tech: iTunes keyboard shortcuts, safe mode, prevent mounting, and more

.... option-click the top-left round green window (+) icon: instead of switching to a mini player, the iTunes window adjust to an optimal size for the current display. In other words, it behaves like the green icon on every other OS X app...

I'd prefer iTunes behave like a standard Mac app, but option-click is better than nothing.