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Apple releases something of interest…

September 12, 2006 – 9:45 pm | by Benjamin Watt

Steve Jobs at Apple does like is little press gathering shindigs where he can make announcements from time to time. This evening (or this morning in his case) was one of those times, and unlike the last few occasions he’s stepped on stage there was something of interest to me. Something better than all the rumours that always precede these press gatherings (anything that’s announced is almost always not as cool as what people predict will be released).

You see, the biggest shocker about this ‘Showtime’ Apple gathering was not that Steve wore something slightly different (unbutton that top button Steve!), not the different coloured Nanos (come on in girls, there’s a Pink Nano!), not the even more stupidly small shuffle, nor the games-friendly iPods, or even the Movie announcements that are US-only. No, I’m talking about the new version of iTunes - version 7.0 and get this, it’s actually quite good.

Show someone iTunes 4, iTunes 5 (if you blinked during its release, you probably missed it), or iTunes 6 and they would have struggled to see the difference, or even feel the difference when using it. Show them iTunes 7 though, and not only does it look a bit more polished and modern, but it has the one feature I’ve been wanting ever since I got my first iPod (I have two, a 4G white 40Gb iPod that I never use, and a 4Gb Black Nano) - the ability to browse by album cover art!

Finally I can find music the way I used to when going to grab a CD off the rack - by the cover of the album. I forget all about albums I own, or particularly good songs - but when I see the cover, it all comes flooding back.

I guess I should point out that in actual fact, this new spinny CD artwork thingy has been around for a little while for Mac users who downloaded the seperate free application CoverFlow, and my first thought was - damn they must be annoyed that Apple ripped off all their work. Luckily for them, Apple paid for the privilege though, and now Windows users get to use it too.

Okay, so YOU might not be that bothered about iTunes 7, but I use iTunes every day, and this new release actually runs very smoothly and quickly on my PC. The best improvement in this area is that I can now download all my many subscribed podcasts without iTunes dragging my PC down for a minute or two whilst it checks each feed (don’t know who originally wrote that feature, but they clearly knew how to NOT write code on quite a spectacular level).

So there you go, iTunes 7 - never mind that shiny box that’s ‘coming soon’ for your TV, I’m just fine.