Jon: iTunes 09 Overview

So iTunes 9 was released at the recent apple media event on the 9/9/09 and has brought with it some great new features. Features I think have no doubt improved it hugely.

The first main difference you will see is the interface. It's now a lot lighter than the other windows are in leopard or snow leopard, also in grid view the background is now white rather than black which I'm not a big fan of but it is growing on me. I think this is a key step towards what 10.7 could look like? Everything seems more defined, buttons seem to have more depth to them, along with the new scrub bar in the top and the new media controls when playing video through iTunes which bring the theme through from QuickTime X. Again a step forward for people using Snow Leopard.

Genius has been updated which is something I've actually been expecting for a while. I at one time had every artist in their own playlist, that was until recently when I sorted though it all, now I hardly use playlists unless creating a audio CD or once I had created a genius playlist. Now it's a simple click away and they are kept within the sub-catagory for Genius. This is something I can see myself using a lot more now.

Another section of iTunes that has changed is the iTunes Store. The iTunes store has improved so much it's actually hard to put into words. This has been coming for a long time. It's now so much faster to find what you're looking for, everything appears to be so much snappier than before. Artists will now have pages designed and laid out better for them. A new feature is being introduced in the form of iTunes LPs. These are special editions of artists work which will include art work, information which would normally only come with a special edition hard copy. One last thing is movies and TV shows (more movies), will have extras now included just like buying or renting a DVD which wasn't available before.

Home Sharing is the last feature I'm going to talk about. In previous versions of iTunes you were able to share music over a LAN (Local Area Network) which allowed other people who were given permission or access your music content and play it, basically streaming it from your computer to theirs. Now with Home Sharing you are able (with the other person running iTunes 9) to copy music and other media content across to their computers. Then disconnect and play that media. As far as I know it's only purchased items you are able to do this with and they have to have your iTunes account information to copy it across to keep but other than that it will work just like the old sharing feature did. And if you have two computers on your network, one running Snow Leopard and the other not you can still use the old sharing feature too, that hasn't gone missing in the upgrade.

So to conclude this blog, I hope that I have educated some of you to what's new in iTunes 9 and for my first blog for newmacgeek, I hope I've done a good job. And if I've missed any new features out then don't shoot me, I haven't been using it for very long.

Don't forget to keep checking back for more tech news!

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