Sure enough, late last night when I returned to my office, I had a software updated bouncing at me. I opened it up, and iTunes 8 was ready for me to install. ‘Great’ I thought… I was wondering how long it would take for this update to arrive. It was only 5 or 6 hours since the Apple event earlier in the day… So all in all not that bad… and I did do an Apple > Software Update… a few times to see if I could grab the new iTunes, but to no avail.
At any rate the install went quick and I had to reboot my system. Upon restart I quickly opened iTunes 8. First thing I was greeted with was the new album view of my music. I could see all of the album artwork, right there in front of my face. A slider at the top right let me adjust the size of the artwork from small to large. Kind of cool, I thought.
There were also 3 other buttons in addition to ‘albums’ in my music library. Artists, Genres and Composers sort options were also available. If you’d like to go back to the more traditional ‘list’ view, go to View > as List. Oddly enough I had always had View as List on in iTunes, so I honestly can’t say if the Album/Artist/Genre/Composers sort option was available before!
Next of course is the Genius Sidebar. How could you not notice this. It takes up a good fifth of my iTunes window on the right side of the application. According to iTunes, the Genius ‘makes playlists from songs in your library that go great together’. Really huh? Sounds interesting. It also says ‘The Genius sidebar recommends music you do not already have from the iTunes Store’. Oh, now I get it… You’re getting me back into the store to buy more music… You sneaky devils.
I’ve yet to fool around with the Genius Sidebar much, but it does look interesting. As I write this I’ve just clicked the ‘Turn on Genius’ option. I wonder what will happen?
Have you tried the Genius Sidebar yet? What do you think? What are your overall impressions of iTunes 8?
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