Well, I installed iTunes 8 today. Some observations from playing with it:
- When you install it, it goes through all your album art to make thumnail covers for its new grid view. This actually didn’t take too long. It doesn’t convert the database.
- The grid view itself is interesting. It comes up in an album grid view, showing all the albums in your library sorted by album. Double-click the album, and you are taken to a track view. You can also just start playing the album. Additionally, there is a slider at the top where you can adjust the size of the album cover thumbnails.
- You can also see grid-views by artist, genre, or composer. Artist appears to sort by album artist, not track artist. As you move around the square for the “album”, it shows you the various covers by that album artist. This is intersting if you do as I do and use an album artist like “1990 Original Broadway Cast” for shows, for you can then see all the shows from that year.
- Grid view by Genre is interesting. For some genres, it has a stock “cover”; for others, it uses an album cover. Again, as you move the mouse around the cover, it shows different albums. Double-click, and you are taken to that album.
- Grid view by Composer is less useful, for there is a large variability in how composers are entered. Still, if you are one that normalizes your composer names, it could be useful. Makes me wish for a “search and replace within field” ability.
- Genius mode is less interesting. When you turn it on, it gathers information, supposedly anonymized, about your library and sends it to iTunes. You do have to log into iTunes when you enable the mode. Depending on the size of your library, it can take a bit of time to send the information to Apple (it took me about 15 minutes). Turning the feature on enables a sidebar on your album view.
- Once Genius mode is enabled, the sidebar recommends music from iTunes that you might buy. This is great, I guess, when you have artists that are popular in iTunes, such as Neil Diamond. If you pick something less popular (such as a cast album track), you get much less. It also tends to focus much more on artist (for example, one might think that clicking a track from the revival of Do Re Mi would suggest tracks from the original cast version — it didn’t). When it can’t figure out the song (say, an Anthony Newley track from the musical Doctor Doolittle, it just lists its top albums and top artists. It also doesn’t seem to recognize when you already own the music. At least from within iTunes, it seems to be more of a marketing feature — nothing I can’t live without.
- For some songs, you can highlight the song and hit the Genius button to make a playlist. Again, this is hit or miss. I selected “People are Strange” by the Doors (it couldn’t figure out what to do with a Cole Porter number). The playlist?
People Are Strange (The Doors)
My Generation (The Who)
For What It’s Worth (Buffalo Springfield)
It’s Only Rock ‘N Roll (But I Like It) (The Rolling Stones)
Suite: Judy Blue Eyes (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
With A Little Help From My Friends (Joe Cocker)
I’m A Believer (The Monkees)
Big Yellow Taxi (Joni Mitchell)
Hound Dog (Elvis Presley)
Captain Jack (Billy Joel)
Wild Horses (The Rolling Stones)
Vincent (Don McLean)
The Purple People Eater (Sheb Wooley)
Hello, I Love You (The Doors)
All The Young Dudes (Mott The Hoople)
Take A Chance On Me (ABBA)
Somebody To Love (Jefferson Airplane)
Daniel (Elton John)
Teach Your Children (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)
Time Is On My Side (The Rolling Stones)
Love Me Two Times (The Doors)
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (Iron Butterfly)
Daydream Believer (The Monkees)
The Sounds Of Silence [Live] (Simon & Garfunkel)
Strange Brew (Cream)Certainly an eclectic list.
- Turning off Genius from Edit-Preferences only removes the playlist. The only way to turn the Genius sidebar off is to go to the Store tab and turn it off, which deletes (supposedly) the sent Genius information (which takes a bit)… meaning if you enable it again, it has to collect it again. My summary of the Genius feature is that it isn’t worth it.
- The default for the non-cover flow list is to now show the album art. There’s an option under view (or type Control-G) to toggle it on and off.
- Cover flow now seems to sort by album artist. Yeah!
- I had seen reports of a sync problem. Other than the fact that the installation of iTunes 8 installs a new driver, I had no problems actually doing the sync on my XP machine. However, it seems a bit slower, especially for an already synced iPod (it took about 5 minutes).
