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Apple Archive

iTunes 5: Lots of Little, Worthwhile Improvements

- 2005.09.23

I downloaded the iTunes 5 upgrade shortly after it became available online without reading the feature list or even looking carefully at a screen shot.

Opening it I was impressed - I like the new look. Apple's finally gotten rid of the glaring brushed metal look and replaced it with a look that's much softer on the eyes and much less intrusive than in previous versions.

There also appears to be less wasted space in this version, and that's definitely something I appreciate, especially when using iTunes on my 12" PowerBook.

iTunes 5

I was actually a bit surprised that the icon for iTunes was still green. Every major revision that Apple's done so far has had a different icon color - pink for the first version, blue for the second, purple for the third. Green seemed to be reserved for iTunes 4, yet 5 seems to have exactly the same icon.

You'd expect that 5 should be a drastic change from 4, but if you look, the new version's really not that different. Sure, there are parental controls and the new search bar. Yes, iTunes now displays the number of files you're adding to an iPod when you drop them on the device icon. But other than those things - along with the new interface - there's not a whole lot new. A makeover of iTunes 4 is more like it.

I suppose it still warrants the 5 label - what more could you really add to a music player that's already gone through four major releases?

While iTunes 5 isn't exactly full of new features, the one that helped me decide it was worth the upgrade was the search bar. I don't have podcasts, audio books, or videos on iTunes - but I do have a lot of music. Sometimes the name of a song will come to mind, but I'll forget who the artist is. Sure, I could just type the entire name of the song into the search box and it'll show up, but if I don't have to, then why should I bother? Why sort through 20 results when I could have two to sort through?

Burning a CD also seems a bit easier, which is a welcome change. In iTunes 4 and earlier, if I wanted to burn a CD, I'd click "burn disc" and wait for it to ask me to insert a CD, put in the CD, and wait for it to tell me to click "burn disc" again. Sometimes waiting for the second click would take a while, so I'd get up to do something else. Of course, by the time I'd return, the computer would have canceled the action altogether, and I'd be stuck right back at the beginning.

iTunes 5 just requires you to click "burn disc" and put in a CD. No waiting for the computer to read the media. It just burns the CD, finishes, and you're done.

My 40 GB iPod had a bit of trouble initially with this new version - iTunes simply wouldn't recognize it, even though on the iPod said that it was connected and charging. Applying the latest iPod update seemed to fix this problem.

It also seems that Apple was aware of some problems in iTunes 5, and it addressed them by issuing a 5.0.1 update. I've yet to download it, as 5.0 seems to be working well for me.

I also downloaded iTunes 5 on my Windows PC. While it's essentially the same program, I dislike how Apple's put the menu bar and open/minimize/close buttons so close to the top of the application. The control buttons are almost touching the "browse" button. It works, but it doesn't really look all that nice.

That's a minor point, though, and overall iTunes 5 seems to be up to my expectations. Like I mentioned, there wasn't much that Apple could have done to make this version of iTunes much better than previous ones without making it something like Windows Media Player is on a PC (I avoid using WMP on Windows).

iTunes remains a very easy to use application, good at what it does, without being excessive.

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