Thank you Apple! (iTunes)

Member Name: rachieb123

Product:	iTunes
Date:	20/09/09 (61 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great piece of software for music!

Disadvantages: None

Itunes is a piece of software originally designed to be the companion programme for the apple ipods. Since the ipods first came out the software has had evolved considerably and is now set up to cater for the iphone, ipod as well as anyone who simply wants a good prgramme on which to prganise their music files.

Itunes has a very pleasing aesthetic; the colour tone is greys, whites and blues and is very simply organised. The main part of the screen will contain your music library, the left hand column contains a set of categories, such as playlists by which to filter the music in the library to a list of certain songs. The left hand menu also has the itunes store option, which will direct you to the online shop where you can rent movies, buy songs, films and tv shows and subscribe to podcasts, all of which are downloaded to your itunes. Under the library category there is the option to view rented films, your music library, tv shows, podcasts and radio stations you can search through and listen to.

Itunes gives you the option to create your own playlists for your digital media, by clicking file and then new playlist. You can then give it a name and when you have decided what to put in the playlist you can open the main library and then click and drag songs placing them on top of the title of the new playlist which will be displayed on the left hand menu.

As mentioned previously this software is primarily for connecting with an ipod/iphone. It is incredibly easy to do so, once the ipod is connected via the usb cable itunes will detect its presence and will begin adding your digital media to the ipod or iphone. Once complete the display bar across the top of the page will tell you it is complete and that the ipod may be safely removed. It is possible to pick and choose what goes onto your ipod, so that you can have say 500 songs on your itunes but only 200 on your ipod. Beside every song in your library is a small blue box which is either ticked or unticked; if ticked it will be added to your ipod if not it will not be added. One thing which I find interesting is that itunes will retrieve data from your ipod and will cumulate it with information from your itunes in order to give you information such as how many times you have played a song, which ones you have rated higher and which playlists you have created on your ipod. The playlists created on the ipod will be added to itunes and the data about ratings and play counts will be used to compile playlists of your top rated or listened to songs. If you prefer not to have these playlists they can be deleted and then itunes will not compile them anymore, although the data will still be transferred to itunes to give a total play count/ rating etc.

As far as bugs goes with this programme I have never experienced any; the programme has never closed without warning or even given an error message. When there is a new version released your itunes will ask if you want to upgrade. Furthermore if you do have any problems it is possible to contact apple via email to ask for a solution. The programme is available for both the pc and the mac and so is versatile.

Overall I would definately recommend downloading this programme from the apple website as it is a great piece of free software. I much prefer it to windows media played and think it is a lot easier to navigate then media player! It has a wide variety of functions, to the point where sometimes I find new ones I have never utilised before. I have never had a problem with this software crashing my computer or closing down or anything and it was so simple and quick to download, I give it a well deserved 5/5.

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Summary: A great piece of free software from Apple which is easy to use!

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