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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The bane of my existence, with regard to Apple software, is the severe lack of detail given for most software updates. "Various Bug Fixes." If you own an iPhone, you know what I mean. There are a bunch of undocumented changes that I discovered while tearing through iTunes 8. A few are pleasant, but there are two that I am going to be fanatical about in the coming months.

I am anal about having my music sorted and organized as perfectly as possible, and every version of iTunes so far has been a let down. It was impossible to sort albums with multiple artists together when sorting by Artist. There were some sort options, but they just didn't work in practice. Apple has remedied this situation in 8, giving the people the ability to set the sort terms for Album, Artist, Album Artist, and Composer. (Oddly enough, there's a sort field for "Show" even on music; I have no idea why that would be there.) If you want your John Lennon albums to sort with your Beatles albums, just set the appropriate field. I am in love with this feature. In addition to being able to apply sort terms within the library, you can also define the category to which the media belongs. If you have a collection of mp3's for an audiobook, you couldn't place this in the Audiobooks category in iTunes 7. Now, under the options tab of the information pane, you can select Music, Movie, TV Show, Audiobook, or Music Video as the "Kind". I moved a few audiobooks with this new setting, and guess what? No more random spoken word when I throw on Party Shuffle.

The rest of the changes are minor, but should definitely be noted. The TV Show section now gives you the option to view all episodes grouped by show, genre, or only new episodes. This is pretty nice if you like to know what you need to catch up on among your various TV subscriptions. The speed of operation is up across the board as well. Scrolling through your library, checking / unchecking items, and moving between different sections is much faster. Various menu options have been moved around so that their placement makes more sense. The preferences window is now organized in such a way that options are properly categorized. The "Advanced" tab no longer has three subsections, instead spreading those options into other menus and removing some entirely (removing the iTunes Store link arrows doesn't work the way it used to; you have to get into Terminal in OS X and change an option via a command. Windows users, I don't know what to tell you. I'm an elitist, and I have no time to fix problems in your Operating System). All in all, the minor changes come together to great effect. If you've spent a decent amount of time trying to get iTunes to do your bidding, I think you will be pleased with Apple's latest offering.

Conclusion

Apple tends to release major software revisions with a great balance of feature addition, optimization, and visually pleasing modifications. iTunes 8 does not disappoint in these respects. Bug fixes are always good news, and the improvements to organization and performance are just what everyone wants in a robust media management application. HD content from NBC will surely excite those of you who enjoy having high quality, legal copies of television shows available on demand.

Genius will try to sell you lots of music if you let it, but building playlists with it is a delightful feature that may push you to discover some great musical pairings within the music you already own. The sexy new visualizer will leave you staring at your monitor for an even longer period than you may accept, and Grid View may just change the way you look at your collection. All in all, this is an update that is exactly what it should be.

I look at my music collection as the soundtrack for my life. [Kurtis: Alright, Ellen...] There is a time and a place for every bit of audio that I keep in my collection. Along the way, I have used some very good (and very bad) music managers and players, and they all have their charms. My first love was Winamp, when I was dealing with the singles I "acquired" from Napster and the ilk. It was pretty, it was fast, and it worked wonders if you dug playlists. Once my library grew, I needed something more. MusicMatch caught my eye next, enabling me to organize my collection within an inch of perfection. I still have a friend who swears by this piece of software for its robust functionality. Once I moved over to OS X, I was presented with a sort of assimilation - an arranged marriage, if you will. iTunes hasn't always made me the happiest man in the world, but it seems to be getting better with age. I think I may finally be falling for the one Apple forced me to live with.

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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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