iTunes 8

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iTunes 8

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Cameron Baker
Kurtis
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Sep. 12, 2008

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Eye Candy

What would a piece of modern Apple software be without some eye candy to distract users from any flaws? iTunes 8 has a few new tricks up its' sleeves, including a mesmerizing new visualizer and an additional "grid" library view. The visualizer was leaked last week and it is exactly as trippy and gaze-captivating as it looks. You can make various modifications to it through a settings menu, invoked by pressing the "?" key while visualizing. The options let you set things up exactly how you want. It's a major improvement over the existing options. For one thing, when you run it full-screen, it displays at a full resolution so you get the most out of staring into your computer screen for hours on end. The old default visualizer would run at a resolution native to the window in the regular mode, but when you switched to full-screen, it would scale back to something like 640x480 - kinda not pretty. The other thing about it is that, well, it's just really pretty. Did I mention that? Moving on.

The new grid view in iTunes 8 is another way to browse your library visually. Cover Flow, when it came out, was an eye candy feature that made it into the rest of the operating system with the Leopard upgrade. It was marginally useful for browsing photos in Finder, but in iTunes, it was - and still is - too limited to get anything done. It runs kinda slow in most situations, and doesn't add too much substance to browsing a music library. Grid view is, to me, what Apple wanted Cover Flow on a desktop operating system to be. Cover Flow works great on the iPhone, but it seems confused UI-wise on the desktop. You can scroll through your albums, but you can't double click to see the songs in that album like you can on the iPhone. Instead, you have to look to a list of songs located below the Cover Flow interface. It shouldn't work that way. But it does. So I don't ever use it.

Grid View represents the first time that I actually want to use a view other than the basic text list. Grid view displays your music much like the "events" view in iPhoto. For those of you who are not familiar with that software, it's basically a grid of your photo sets that you can zoom in / out on and double click to see what is within. The new grid view is exactly like this, except albums replace the photo events. If you choose to sort by something other than album, iTunes gives you a list of artists, composers, or genres to peruse. Mouse over any grouping, and it shows you the various albums as you sweep by, much like the MobileMe galleries that can be created with iPhoto. When you hold your mouse over any grouping, you are given a play button. One click, and the album begins. So simple. It's a very satisfying UI experience when you take into account all the little components that come from other parts of the operating system.

Grid view is the way I choose to get into my library now. For my browsing habits, it fits so perfectly. Keep in mind, though, that I have been slowly and steadily building up my collection of proper album art for this very occasion. I actually spent three or four hours last night finishing that operation. It was worth it. I tend to listen to music by album, and there is nothing more gratifying than scanning through for a favorite and playing it right from that view.

NBC + HD Television Episodes

Even though the whole NBC departure mess seems like ancient history, there were - and still are, most likely - thousands of folks who got their television fix from iTunes episode subscriptions. If I could justify spending the money (or watching an episode enough times to warrant owning it), I would do the same. It's just too easy. Apple had the formula down right, but NBC spoiled the party by pulling all of their content. The recent music event, however, brings all of the NBC goodies back to the iTunes Store.

Heroes, Life, The Office - all of the usual suspects are back in action. Even better, they are available in HD for a one dollar premium. Apple posted several free HD episodes so folks could preview the jump in quality, so I checked out the pilot for Life. It is a marked improvement from the standard resolution that has been in use so far. It's not 720P, but it is good enough to make watching shows on your computer a much more enjoyable experience. It looked wonderful on a 20 inch screen from about six feet away, with a noticeably higher level of detail than the basic resolution.

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Page 1: Introduction & Genuis
Page 2: Eye Candy & NBC + HD Television Episodes
Page 3: Odds and Ends & Conclusion

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