Review: iTunes 7
With a quick glance, here’s a quick review of Apple’s latest media distribution thingo. I’ll just get straight to the point.
What’s crap:
Most of the things that have let me down are to do with the UI.
* The tick boxes have desaturated abit. Makes it harder to see (or maybe I need glasses)
* Apple’s trademark scroll-bar design has changed to a grey-to-blue gradient (it’s crap because it doesn’t feel Mac-ish anymore… ~sigh)
* Kinda hard to distinguish the different sections in the library list. It all seems like its mashed together, but you’ll get used to it the next day
* in the Podcaast window, I still have trouble finding the ‘unsubscribe’ button which still sits at the bottom away from everything else. I’m too lazy of a bugger to make my eyes and hands move from the top of the podcast list to the bottom of the screen just to ‘unsuscribe’
What’s cool
A few cool nifty features that makes life a wee bit easier.
* In the library list next to Podcast, sits a number unlistened Podcasts
* iTunes 7 introduces 3 different playlist views.
1) standard: the normal view that we’ve all been using.
2) Album list view: seperates the list into albums and displays the album image and its songs. Kinda looks like your looking at the back of an album with all the songs…
3) something i would like to call the Jukebox view: a more interactive way of selecting different albums within your playlist. Animates and mimics the way you would select songs in a juke box.
* That annoying feature where a download progress bar replaces your current song timeline has gone. This time all your podcast downloads appear in a little podcast ‘download’ list. How neat!
* The new iTunes store is pretty shmick. You can download TV shows (mostly $1.99 US an episode) and games for your iPod (with which I wouldn’t bother with)
Overall is it worth the download? Well, anything free is worth the download. ;)
September 15th, 2006 at 10:24 am
tell me johnny.. where’ve they hidden the porn?
September 15th, 2006 at 10:50 am
haha. i think the closest thing to porn in iTunes is “French Maid Tv”. Go search for it (and its free).
September 15th, 2006 at 10:53 am
“3) something i would like to call the Jukebox view: a more interactive way of selecting different albums within your playlist. Animates and mimics the way you would select songs in a juke box.”
Coverflow mode. It was previously a bit of freeware you could get and use outside of itunes, written by a guy in the ars tech forums that I frequent. Anyhow, apple did the right thing and bought out all the rights and code from him. Hopefully he made some nice dosh.
Long live coverflow!
September 15th, 2006 at 11:59 am
I still think Jukebox view is a better title….
;)