Genius iTunes

iTunes is the one piece of software I use every day without fail, no question. In some way shape or form I always have music on, having transferred all my CDs to the Mac some time ago, and having spent way too much money on the iTunes music store. I was, therefore, looking forward to the release of iTunes 8 in a really nerdy way. I really wasnt disappointed. What’s interesting though, is it isnt that remarkable in terms of an upgrade. Everything is the same as it always was in effect. However 2 features have made it an upgrade I wondered how I did without.

1. The new grid view for albums is what I have been hankering after for a while. An easily accessible way of getting to the artists and music in my collection is genuinely now at my fingertips, and as much as I love the prettiness of COver Flow, I never found it an easy way to find what i wanted. The new grid view solves that easily. One click plays an entire album, a double click shows all the albums by an artist. If Apple are attempting to replicate the feeling of browsing a real life CD library, I think this is a big step towards it. A couple of little extras would be good in the next update (even though they are just cosmetic really): A nice little ‘flip over” animation equivalent to what I get on the iPhone would be a nice addition when I double click an album and maybe even, in common with the iPhone, the vertical alphabet listing down the grid view to allow a quick jump to a section.
2. The Genius feature. Subtle yet increasingly clever, it generates playlists based on recommendation from the iTunes store and other users. The first two playlists it created for me were genuine Genius, pulling out songs from my library I hadn’t heard in an age. Yeah so ok you might get the odd song in there which doesn’t fit, but in time this will improve, and you only have to hit delete to remove any stray ones! It’s a feature which I love for the simple reason its refreshed my library and kick started my listening again. Brilliant

I havent used any other media player in years now after originally spend years trying out different ones. The day iTunes came along everything changed, and in my opinion changed for the better. Its done me, and the music industry and lot of favours.