The Home of Music & Media (iTunes)

Member Name: DocDan3

Product:	iTunes
Date:	04/07/09 (57 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy To Use, Great Look, Many Features, Simple, iTunes Store

Disadvantages: -

iTunes is an ideal application created by Apple designed for use with music and now videos, podcasts and movies too. It has many other uses and is closely linked to iPods - especially the iPod Touch (and iPhone) when you will find the iTunes store useful where you can download a variety of applications from. iTunes is available to download for free for both PCs and Macs. The current latest version of iTunes is version 8 and I have version 8.2 on my Mac. You can download it for free from the Apple site at apple.com as well as various other sites. It makes organising music easy to do with the ability to play your tunes, movies and other purchases from the iTunes store. You are also able to import CDs to your music library, from where the music can be played or transferred to portable devices such as iPods for use out and about.

The iTunes window has a grey interface to match the modern Apple look. It has a sidebar on the left, which is a menu for different playlists and options as well as a panel on the upper part of the window, which consists of music controls and more. There is a play/pause button on the top left with buttons either side to switch songs. An independent volume control slider is to the side of this, which isn't linked to your default computer sound so can be used to immediately lower volume or get it to a suitable level independently to your computer sound/speakers. You then have a panel, which displays the songs you are listening to as well as the album and artist names. This panel with a light background also displays information when you're browsing the iTunes store and it lets you know when things are loading, when your iPod is syncing and current activities that are being carried out.

An option to the right of this enables you to display your music and other media either as a list, in grids or in cover flow, which is one of the later innovations from Apple that have been integrated into iPods such as the iPod Touch and new iPod nano. I personally use the lists as I find it simple and practical however the cover flow is good to distinguish easily between albums when you are familiar with their image. Lastly, there is a search bar on the very top right for use with the iTunes store and the search function works very well, however will usually display many options if you're not specific enough. The searches are catogorised into things such as music, podcasts, applications and movies to make things easier. You can view the most related searches or select the 'see all' option to reveal all the other search-related items.

As for the side bar, you firstly have your music library where all your music will be. You then have movies and TV shows which enable you to sync these to the complementary categories on your iPod for viewing. You then have podcasts, where you will be able to keep account of your subscribed podcasts from the iTunes store. You can listen to them from here, download the latest episodes and unsubscribe if you wish. They take any form nowadays from audio to videos, and are basically released at intervals and follow certain topics or hobbies that may interest you such as Sports, Comedy or Gaming. Most of them are free but some may need to be paid for. Free ones, which I feel are worth the buy include the 'Happy Tree Friends' cartoons, which are very gruesome yet comical cartoons. Others include those from the National Geographic channel, and some are really worth it when they're free. Another one I recently discovered was 'Coffee Break Spanish', which consists of many episodes aimed at getting you speaking the World's most common language by the use of audio podcasts along with other resources they suggest within their podcasts.

You then have an Applications title where all your 'Apps' from the iTunes store are stored. These may include Games or other useful applications, widely available from the iTunes store. Many are free but some you will have to pay for too after creating an iTunes account. Lastly is a radio option where you can select from an enormous variety of genres - a radio station to suit your liking. They are all free to listen to and are streamed directly from the internet. The rest of the titles include access to the iTunes Store as well as a whole list of playlists for your music (and videos). Some of these are default and help you to organise and find music such as 'Recently Played', '90s Music' and 'Top 25 Most Played'. You are also able to rate the songs in your library on a 1 to 5 star scale.

Swiftly moving onto the bulk of the window itself, this is where all your music or videos are displayed in either of the formats selected. In the list format, there are a number of titles, which are 'Name', 'Time', 'Artist', 'Album', 'Genre', 'Rating' and also 'Play Count'. All of these are self-explanatory and enable you to browse your music at ease. You can also tick or un-tick music to decide whether you want it to play in the selected playlist. The background of this large panel is white with black writing. As you click a song or single click a row, it becomes highlighted, which enables you to efficiently select music with no difficulties in seeing what's going on. At the very bottom of the window is a summary of your selected playlist. It displays the number of songs, total storage taken up by them and the time they take to play. My current music library has 496 songs with 1.3 days worth of music. If you have selected videos or movies, it will say how many items there are along with the storage they take up and the time they last collectively.

There is an iTunes DJ option, which I am not quite sure how to use but it seems ideal for parties where you can select music. Besides this, you can create as many playlists as you want, whether it is for your different moods or activities and this is ideal for parties too. One last option I am always using is the 'Genius' option. It's a relatively new innovative where a computerised process will create a playlist of similar songs to the one you have selected. It works surprisingly well and can create that ideal playlist from all your music depending on your mood. It seems to take into account the genre but also recognises the tempo of the song as well as other features, which really is quite impressive given that it will create a playlist in around half a minute. It's constantly being improved to with updates from Apple.

General things that can be made use of include the ability to shuffle songs, repeat playlists and all the other controls with music and videos. You can also import CDs and even burn your own CDs if your computer has this ability. You simply create a playlist and then burn the songs to the CD, given it has enough space to store all the songs. The interface is simple, modern and easy to use with a great layout. You can maximise the window to give a very small one with the panel that displays the songs etc, as well as buttons to control it without the other large panel and sidebar. This is useful to keep up in the corner of your screen whilst running other applications as you can view and control your music at ease whilst carrying out other things.

The iTunes application is free to download and extremely useful for anyone who's into music or owns an iPod. It's very easy to use and has many options - some are somewhat advanced that can be taken advantage of. The iTunes store is the key to every song out there as well as videos and movies that can be downloaded directly to iTunes before being synced onto your iPod. This gives you access to all the applications for the iPod Touch and iPhone too. A 30-second preview of songs is a great feature on the iTunes store as well. I would highly recommend this application as it is easy to use, fast and has a large number of features to make use of.

Thanks for reading,

Dan ©

Summary: A superb application, free to download with many features to organise your music and media

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