iTunes 8 thoughts?

Sad Professor

So how is everyone liking it so far?

Personally I'm not too keen on some of the changes to the interface. There's no longer a gap between albums on the album artwork view, just a line separating them. Not a huge deal however. I'm far more annoyed by the removal of the options to turn off iTunes store arrow links and the genre column in the browser panel. However thankfully MacOSXhints has a terminal solution for both (here and here).

Haven't had a chance to really play around with Genius yet but grid view is kinda cool.

J-blk

Sad Professor wrote: »

Personally I'm not too keen on some of the changes to the interface. There's no longer a gap between albums on the album artwork view, just a line separating them.

That kind of annoys me as I use the album artwork view the most - I don't like the new grid view, seems pretty pointless to have to double-click on an album to drill down to the songs (as opposed to using album artwork/cover flow).

Genius seems to work ok for now though I've only tried on a test library I have on my MBP with about 300 songs in it - CPU use was at 100% while preparing the library to be used with the Genius feature, so I'm a bit worried that my Mac will melt when I try to do it with my full 20K+ library...! With the fairly limited sample library I used, the suggestions are quite good - I'm liking it as I was looking for something like that recently (I used to use the Filter, but the latest edition refuses to work for me).

AlanD

I think Genius is fantastic. It creates a party playlist better than I ever could.

cornbb

I don't think I'll be trying it out unless I hear something I haven't heard yet. The "Genius" feature doesn't appeal to me in the slightest - in fact the cynic in me sees it merely as a means for Apple to spy on what people are listening to, enabling them to target products at users based on their listening habits via the iTunes store. No other features worth getting excited about.

I'd much rather see many other things in iTunes - support for flac/ogg formats, and a "Now Playing" playlist that is independent of the music browser. And I'd like it to remember what I was playing last when I open the application, the fact that it just reverts back to the first artist in my library is *really* annoying!

Gerard_Smith

I'm quite disappointed. The visualiser isn't nearly as good as I had hoped, the grid view is utterly useless and I have no intention of turning Genius on. I know my own music collection and frankly its primary purpose seems to be getting you to buy its recommendations on iTunes.

These things are always hopeless anyway, Pandora thought I might like Madonna because I like Bjork!

MagicMarker

Just downloading it now, if it still plays music i'll be happy as i don't do a lot else with it.

ec18

I don't like the way genius can only do some tracks and not others haven't tried the visualiser yet.


I don't like genius, it's not that great and after playing round with it for a while its nothing special. It doesn't really give me a playlist that I'd want based on the album/song I was listening to.

Anyway I can turn it off?

ilovemybrick

Genius is less than thrilling.
Sometimes the greatest playlists are those which have contrasting songs.

The new gridview looks pretty but is nothing special.

The visualiser is nice but lacks the responsitivity to the playing music that some of the more basic visualisers have.

xbox36016

where do you get the new itunes still have 7

mikemac

xbox36016 wrote: »

where do you get the new itunes still have 7

You didn't exactly try very hard my friend but here you go
http://www.apple.com/ie/downloads/

adox

xbox36016 wrote: »

where do you get the new itunes still have 7

Should be available now when you open your itunes. If not go to the Apple home page.

xbox36016

adox wrote: »

Should be availible now when you open your itunes. If not go to the Apple home page.

good one

adox

Mmm quite like the thumbnail option in the artists list in the new grid view.
Hover over an artist with more than one album with your mouse ala iphoto.

Hugh_C

Gerard_Smith wrote: »

Pandora thought I might like Madonna because I like Bjork!

Nothin wrong with that - i like genius but am similarly underwhelmed by its use as a marketing tool

babypink

Hugh_C wrote: »

Nothin wrong with that - i like genius but am similarly underwhelmed by its use as a marketing tool

but it is opt-in rather than being foisted on you, AND you can just turn off the sidebar and stick to the genius playlist. Now, if you're typically inclined to buy lots of music on the iTunes store - here's a really sweet way to discover new music.

What did you expect - free music?

For me, it's all win.

Gerard_Smith

Hugh_C wrote: »

Nothin wrong with that - i like genius but am similarly underwhelmed by its use as a marketing tool

Yes there is. None of these programs can make any judgement on artistic intent.

For those interesting Gizmodo a have posted download links so you can see what Magnetosphere looked like before apple ruined it. http://gizmodo.com/5048237/how-to-get-the-real-magnetosphere-visualizer-in-itunes

Passenger

Aye, the lack of gaps between the albums is aesthetically awful. How such a design focused company such as Apple could make such a simple thing look so jumbled and counter-flowing. The thumnail view is repugnant, counter-productive and just plain pointless. I'm considering downgrading back to 7.

silvine

The thumnail view is repugnant, counter-productive and just plain pointless.

It's pretty ugly alright,especially considering I've about 600 albums iTunes can't find artwork for. That's a lot of gaps.

I like Genius though. It's a handy playlist generator.

dubmick

Genius creates some interesting playlists. I've turned off the sidebar and used terminal to remove the store links from every track. I only use the list view.

Need to find out how to remove the store links in Windows.

J-blk

I've had some mixed results with Genius - on the smaller library (only about 300 songs), the playlists generated are quite good though obviously they use many tracks from the same album. On my main library though (about 20,000 songs), most playlists are rubbish, throwing in the oddest mixes... I think I need to play around with it more or maybe a lot of my music is too obscure. Anyone get an error that Genius cannot create a playlist off the current song? It does that with a lot of my stuff and tells me to update Genius, which when I do, has no result anyway...

keane2097

Is this just available for Mac OS at the moment or can you get it for windows?

xbox36016

ya its good but still the same

J-blk

keane2097 wrote: »

Is this just available for Mac OS at the moment or can you get it for windows?

Available for XP and Vista as usual:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

Gerard_Smith

J-blk wrote: »

I've had some mixed results with Genius - on the smaller library (only about 300 songs), the playlists generated are quite good though obviously they use many tracks from the same album. On my main library though (about 20,000 songs), most playlists are rubbish, throwing in the oddest mixes... I think I need to play around with it more or maybe a lot of my music is too obscure. Anyone get an error that Genius cannot create a playlist off the current song? It does that with a lot of my stuff and tells me to update Genius, which when I do, has no result anyway...

Apparently it can't create playlists with songs that aren't available for download on itunes.

Passenger

silvine wrote: »

It's pretty ugly alright,especially considering I've about 600 albums iTunes can't find artwork for. That's a lot of gaps.

Google Images is yer only man.

Ham'nd'egger

Importing some CD's tonight and I notice that a lot of them are not ripping without a second loading. Is this the first bug of version 8?

dubmick

Passenger wrote: »

Google Images is yer only man.

or Amazon

fionaincork

Just downloaded it - more because it was easier to click "download now" than to battle it out with all the "i'll do it later" messages.
I've switched genius off - I agree it sounds like a plan to suggest music i shoud buy rather than work with whats already in my library.

Turnip2000

Looks alright in my opinion. Bit of variety. Is genius just some way of finding illegal downloaders? It made some funky playlists for me today though.:cool:

Passenger

dubmick wrote: »

or Amazon

Pretty poor quality album images on Amazon.

eVeNtInE

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Red Alert

You can click one of the three buttons at the top which will get you back the old style view - took me ages to get that one!

dubmick

Passenger wrote: »

Pretty poor quality album images on Amazon.

I find all the images on amazon.co.uk perfect for itunes

ethernet

Haven't been on here for a few days so someone's probably already mentioned it, but where's the option to choose what format to rip CDs and the bit-rate? Don't see it anymore

aidan_walsh

I answered your other post

Preferences > General > Import Settings.

Arathorn

I'm loving Genius, I find creating my own playlist totally mindnumbing. Genius is doing a pretty good job and picking some tracks that I wouldn't normally choose that I'm enjoying.

Redhairedguy

I'm loving it... My Mac no longer goes into standby while playing music as used to happen.

Also, the new visualisers are a nice touch. Different.

Have yet to mess about with Genius, but I forsee it being awesome.

eVeNtInE

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faceman

Right, the more im using itunes 8, the more im getting pissed off with it. Loads of bugs.

I was downloading (legitimately) the new metallica album and it automatically added it to my library without the album art. When i clicked the get artwork button, it said none existed!

The "genius" sidebar is telling me i am missing songs that, er, are (legitimately) in my collection!

everytime I click any of the tabs in the Library section on the left toolbar, itunes moves 2 inches to the right and 1 inch down across the screen, thus falling slightly out of view.

Very frustrating.

ethernet

aidan_walsh wrote: »

I answered your other post

Preferences > General > Import Settings.

Thanks Was getting my undergarments in a twist over that!

Genius has a few rough edges. Don't like being recommended buying songs it claims I don't have when, in fact, I do (slightly different title in song being recommended).

NiSmO

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chrislad

I don't see why 80 megs is an issue. We're not on dial up.

I think it's grand. To be honest, I normally switch to the old view, as I've been using it for ages. Genius seems grand. Not too pushed about it. Used it on my iPhone and it works well enough. Handy for getting party playlists, I suppose, without having to scour through your music. I'm really glad I've used proper ID tags now though!!

NiSmO

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chrislad

To be honest, I prefer the way it's done. Patched programs never work as well as a fresh install. Reuse the database but I prefer installing it fresh each time.

I doubt you'd even have noticed the download on that speed connection!

unclebill98

Don't think Apple are making itunes with older macs in mind, its running very very slooooow...... Might be time for a new machine

Never use album view, to annoying cause I'm missing tons of art work!

Still waiting over 2 hour for genius to do its thing....

eVeNtInE

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unclebill98

LOL you got me there.......

Loveless

where the option for "Showing Duplicate songs.." that used to be at the bottom of the View menu on iTunes7 ?

ethernet

Loveless wrote: »

where the option for "Showing Duplicate songs.." that used to be at the bottom of the View menu on iTunes7 ?

Now under File menu.

ZENER

Still no way to turn off that bloody annoying Gapless analyzer thing, really starting to P!$$ me off bigtime !!! That and the artwork search. I have 130GB of audio on a server and every time I add a song iTunes wants to analyze every song over again ! GRRR!

. . . I like the new visualisers though

ZEN

BArra

anyone experiencing an annoying noise everytime u click on a song to play or it changes onto the next song to play

had a look but cant see any option to turn it off whatever it is, its highly annoying