iTunes 8 and the iPod Changes
iTunes 8 has some really great aesthetic changes to program. The way you view artists, albums, etc. has a really nice feel to it. Here is a picture:
iTunes 8 with the song 999,999 from NIN The Slip Selected
You can see the new bar to the right. That is the Genius Bar. Really great idea by Apple. The song I have selected is 999,999 from NIN The Slip, and what the Genius Bar does is it tells you the top album of the artist, NIN, what songs you don’t have by the artist, and below that is the Recommendations section. This gives you recommendations of music that is like the artist you have selected. If you know NIN you can see that the Genius Bar is actually pretty accurate.
Notice the little button on the bottom left of the iTunes 8 screen. This is the Genius Button. When you have a song selected and you click on that button it brings you to the Genius Playlist where it then picks songs from your library that “go well” with the chosen song.
Here’s what mine looks like when I select Echoplex from NIN The Slip:
Genius Playlist with Echoplex from NIN The Slip
Good job Apple :)
As for iPod Changes. I believe that the prices have been dropped on all iPods except the Shuffle. From the iPod Nano to the iPod Touch all support Genius directly inside of the iPod, which is nice. The Nano has a nice new look and the Touch is sleeker and oval like the Nano. Also there’s a cool new feature. Just shake the Nano and it shuffles!
New iPod Nano. I want one.
I think they did really nicely with the design and the multiple colors.
The new iPod Touch also has an external speaker (I’ve wanted this forever) and volume buttons on the left side of the device. Very nice.
New iPod Touch. My old one broke :(
Love it!
Well Apple. You still have my love, and if I suddenly receive a lot of money I will be buying a new iPod Touch and maybe even a Nano because they are really cool.
Some cool ideas, but this doesn’t change my old rant against Apple. I use an iPhone 3G which I enjoy very much, but I can’t stand Apple’s ultra-controlling role with all their products!
iTunes 8 supposedly limits one’s ability to jailbreak an iPod device (completely harmless… just adds more capabilities to the very restrictive native firmware).
Also, with the last firmware update, my universal dock was suddenly made almost useless. I guess it’s Apple’s way of saying that I absolutely HAVE to use their inferior official dock. Are they creative? Pretty much. But they’re creating enemies at the same time with their own devices.
P.S. The new Nano looks like the original “gum-stick” one that broke easily. Wonder if it’s a smart design? The Nano previous to this new one looked the best to me.
@N. Palmer
I hadn’t heard about the inability to jailbreak with iTunes 8! Wow that is a definite downer. I guess Apple is just being a smart company with their products in the sense that they are protecting their assets. Apple has always been really restrictive with their music off of iTunes, and so it doesn’t surprise me that they are stretching out that restrictiveness to their other assets as well.
As for the new Nano, I do agree that it is a lot like the “gum-stick” version, but I bet that Apple has done something to make it stronger and more durable. I dunno maybe I’m giving Steve Jobs to much confidence haha.
Thanks for your imput!
I don’t believe that iTunes8 seems to have REMOVED the little BAR symbols (at the bottom of the primary screen) that clearly showed the amount of space used up and the amount of space remaining on your ipod. Am I crazy? Why remove such a convenient feature? Am I wrong?