iTunes 9 is Quite Good
iTunes 9 is out. It does some interesting things. Still crashes a lot though. Here’s a review I’ve written.
iTunes 9 feels snappier, the column browser is a much-needed improvement and the Home Sharing feature works very well, although on our Mac at least iTunes 9 doesn’t seem any less crash-prone than its predecessor.
12 Responses to “iTunes 9 is Quite Good”
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rutty on September 10th, 2009
You know, iTunes has always been my least favourite Apple program. I’ve always hated the way it organises my music. Back in my Linux days I loved being able to arrange my music (in Amarok) in a nice tree format and create impromptu playlists by dragging tunes across into the larger “play” area in the middle.
I hate having to create a playlist first and then attempt to find stuff in the mess of an interface that iTunes has.
I don’t know why but it seems to me to be the least usable app that Apple does.
Still, tried Amarok 2.0 on my iMac a little while ago and it was awful.
I’ve not played with 9.0 much yet but I do much prefer the new Store and the iPhone apps arranger looks great (hate the Stocks app too)
Gary on September 16th, 2009
> I don’t know why but it seems to me to be the least usable app that Apple does.
I know exactly what you mean, although I think iPhoto’s pretty crap (iPhoto 8, anyway) too. Fine for smallish libraries but really don’t scale very well. Version 9 is better, but it’s still rather clunky.
Tony Kiernan on September 10th, 2009
Crash-prone? Guess I’ve been lucky.
Gary on September 16th, 2009
> Guess I’ve been lucky.
I think you have been. I’ve found iTunes pretty crashy across various Macs. Crashiness increases dramatically when you’re using an external drive, too – which you have to do on Mac laptops because the HDDs aren’t big enough for a decent music library, let alone video.
Squander Two on September 10th, 2009
Yet to find any sort of MP3 interface that I like enough to use it. As far as I’m concerned, Itunes is a handy AIFF-to-MP3 converter, and that’s it.
Gary on September 16th, 2009
Yeah, I get that. Music software – playing software, at least – tends to have awful UIs.
Squander Two on September 17th, 2009
Is there anything yet that can play one track after another without putting a little break between them? That one huge gap in the specs has kept me steadfastly with CD.
CDs are class, actually. You buy a player, buy a CD, put one in t’other, and it just works. No-one’s managed that with MP3 yet. When it comes to compatibility and universality, bloody tape was better than MP3.
Gary on September 17th, 2009
iTunes and iPods do gapless playback, although I can’t for the life of me remember whether you can make it happen manually or not. I’m sure other MP3 players/software do it too.
Squander Two on September 17th, 2009
Ah, finally. Last time I tried Itunes, all it’d do was bloody crossfade. I don’t want overlap! I want one track then the other!
Squander Two on September 17th, 2009
Your Turing test reckons 1 + 6 doesn’t equal 7, by the way.
Yo dawg on September 18th, 2009
t has a few new features. The main difference is the skins have changed.
It’s not really worth downloading the new one to be honest.
You don’t have to re-import any songs or playlists, they are done during installation. However, some of my album artwork has dissapeared.
And it has a new iTunes visualiser. The stupid apple symbol is no longer there and it looks much nicer. But you’ll need a decent computer for smooth animations.
One of the screens below is of the new visualiser.
Some screens of iTunes 9.
http://i267.photobucket.com/albums/ii306/Chrhod/itunes9screencap2.png
http://i267.photobucket.com/albums/ii306/Chrhod/itunes9screencap3.png
http://i267.photobucket.com/albums/ii306/Chrhod/itunes9screencap4.png
http://i267.photobucket.com/albums/ii306/Chrhod/itunes9screencap5.png
http://i267.photobucket.com/albums/ii306/Chrhod/itunes9screencap6.png
http://i267.photobucket.com/albums/ii306/Chrhod/itunes9screencap7.png <- Visualiser.
http://i267.photobucket.com/albums/ii306/Chrhod/itunes9screencap8.png
And you're math thing is wrong.
Gary on September 18th, 2009
I don’t understand why the maths bit is broken. I’ll go look.