iTunes is the media player best suited to maintaining digital libraries (iTunes)

Member Name: HeIsSean

Product:	iTunes
Date:	16/07/09 (15 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Intuitive. Store is easily accessible. Good range of layouts and disc burning options. Playlists

Disadvantages: Radio not comprehensive. Store is expensive. No Windows UI

iTunes is my choice of media software.

What I like about it is its unified appearance (everything on the same screen and the way in which the interface is divided. The large space is the dynamic area, which changes depending on what you have selected. The controls at the top are all to do with with playing/pausing and what is currently playing and the bar at the side is for different menus and playlists. The right can also have a Genius sidebar, a recommendation system, which I think is overrated, but it doesn't bother me.

Building a digital library is an intuitive process. For example, when I add a Kinks CD to my huge digitised Kinks collection, I follow these steps:

1. Insert a CD. At the bottom, there is an option to import. Click this.

2. At the bottom left, click on the Plus to create a playlist. In my case, Kinks.

3. Unfortunately, there is no way to drag the imported files from the CD menu straight to your playlist, but it's easy enough to find them. Click on the Library and then type the name of the album in the search box. Drag these files to the playlist you just created.

4. You might want to back up your playlist to discs. Click on the playlist and, where the Import button is for CDs, you find a Burn Disc button. The interface changing like this depending on context is great because you find similar options in the same place like Import/'Export'.

The number of radio stations is unfortunately limited with no option to add to it. The iTunes Store is very accessible from with the player and is now shifting towards DRM-free files - good news! Nonetheless, its uniform £7.99 album prices face competition from the new Amazon MP3 UK store, which offers some of the latest albums between £3 and £6.

My final criticism is that I would like to see a user interface that better fits in with Vista, perhaps some Aero Glass at the top and more Windows-friendly scrollbars, etc. The latest Safari is an excellent example of Apple producing a Windows-friendly UI.

Summary: I've not been tempted by another media player since I've been using iTunes for a few years now

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