The new "Cover Flow" feature in iTunes 7 displays album art in your music library and allows you to browse and select media, just as you would on a jukebox. Simply access a forward or backward arrow to browse covers in alphabetical order. To listen to an album, simply click it.
"Cover Flow" also applies to movies, TV shows, podcasts, and audiobooks. If you've ripped and imported your CD collection onto iTunes, you can click the "Get Album Art" option and iTunes will automatically populate your library with available album art.
In a MySpace world, iTunes offers self-updating add-ons that may be featured on Web pages, social-networking profiles, and blogs — a means to keep your friends up-to-date with your favorite music, TV shows, movies, and more.
The useful iPod / iPhone summary page provides status on your iPod or iPhone. Beyond name, size, and serial number, you can find how much space you have left for songs and movies, check if your software is out of date, allocate capacity to specific content and more. iTunes also lets you activate your iPhone from your PC or Mac, then syncs contacts, photos, iTunes content, and the calendar.
Movies and TV shows downloaded from the iTunes store are now displayed at 640 by 480 pixels, which is four times the resolution of prior video downloads. With Apple's "Apple TV" hardware you can play movies and TV shows, as well as podcasts, photos, and YouTube videos on your TV. The entry-level 40GB model starts at $299.
Working It
Working with iTunes is only a quick download and installation away. In execution, iTunes remains an intuitive and easy-to-use program that lets you clearly view your collection of music and video and playlists along the left-hand side of the screen. And on the right side are your files or the possibilities in the music store. A player allows you play media on your PC or Mac.
The store is well integrated into the program so it's easy to search by song title, artist, or composer, and you can browse genres and make purchases. (Perhaps, it's too easy — you'll feel it in your wallet at the end of the month.) You can also preview individual tracks.
ITunes has long supported "ripped" music, songs that are digitized from audio CDs and imported into the program. As a result, iTunes can organize your entire music collection — both mp3 files from any source and songs purchased from the iTunes store — into playlists that may synched into an iPod.
To the iTune of...
The iTunes Music Store offers a comprehensive collection of media that at press time consisted of some five million songs, 100,000 podcasts, 27,000 audiobooks, and 350 TV shows, as well as movies and iPod games. Despite the wealth of media and ease of use, iTunes lacks some of the more flexible pricing plans of its competitors such as Napster and Yahoo Music.
If you own an iPod, iTunes is virtually the only way to go. And if you own a non-iPod music player, you'll find iTunes to be too Apple-centric. It's great that the program is truly free and won't make you view annoying pop-up ads that others display to encourage you to upgrade to their "full" programs.
In all, iTunes is an iPod asset and a positive factor when considering the purchase of an iPod. You're not only buying a great music player, you're getting a solid music management system.
For Windows users, iTunes requires Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 or later, Windows XP or 32-bit editions of Windows Vista (Windows XP Service Pack 2 or later required for Apple TV or iPhone); a 500 MHz Pentium class processor or better; 256MB RAM; and a broadband connection.
Pros: Huge media selection; easy to understand and use; store now features music files that may be used by other MP3 players; iPhone support, new video content support, and a new digital-rights policy make their debut in v7.3.x
Cons: Charges more for non-protected files; no support for non-iPod players; lacks flexible pricing plans; is it software — or just a mechanism to move iPods and make more sales?
