What’s new in Apple’s iTunes 5

34 Comments

Apple today announced iTunes 5, bringing new features and a refined look to the world’s most popular digital music jukebox and online music store.

Using the new features included in iTunes 5 you can:

• Fine tune your search results: You can use the search field and search bar to quickly locate songs and other items in your library or a playlist.
1. Select where you want to search in the Source list. (Note: You cannot search radio listings, because they are not available until you connect to the Internet and retrieve them.)
2. Click in the search field in the upper-right corner of the iTunes window, then type the text you want to find. As you type, iTunes displays the items that contain the text you entered.
3. When you start typing in the search field, a search bar showing buttons with items like Music, Audiobooks, Artists, and Albums appears. Click buttons on the search bar to narrow your search.

You can use the search bar without typing anything in the search field. Choose Edit > Show Search Bar. To hide the search bar again, choose Edit > Hide Search Bar. Unless you narrow your search using the search bar or search field pop-up menu, the artist, composer (or DJ), album title, and genre fields are all searched. The comment field is searched only if its column is visible in the library or playlist. To see all your music again, delete the text from the search field (or press the Escape key). To scan through all the artists or albums in your music library, select Library in the Source list and click the Browse button in the upper-right corner of the iTunes window.

• Fine tune your shuffling: You can play songs or albums in random order. You can set iTunes to shuffle all songs, complete albums, or groupings (collections of the movements of a classical work). Finally, you can use “Smart shuffle” to adjust the likelihood that iTunes plays multiple songs in a row by the same artist or from the same album.
– To shuffle songs, select your library or a playlist and click the Shuffle button in the bottom-left corner of the iTunes window. When you click the Shuffle button, iTunes shuffles by songs, albums, or groupings, depending on the settings in the Playback pane of iTunes Preferences (see below).
– To turn off shuffling, click the button again.
– To choose whether iTunes shuffles individual songs, complete albums, or groupings, choose iTunes > Preferences, then click the Playback button. Select Song, “Complete albums,” or Grouping. If you select “Complete albums,” or Groupings, iTunes plays the songs in the order in which they appear on the album or in the grouping, and then chooses another album or grouping randomly.
– To adjust the likelihood that iTunes plays multiple songs in a row by the same artist or from the same album, choose iTunes > Preferences and click the Playback button. Then move the “Smart shuffle” slider to choose your setting. You can move the slider towards “more likely,” “less likely,” or somewhere in the middle (“random”).

For information about a button, move the pointer to it. For some buttons, you can press the Command key and point to see more information. When shuffle is turned on, you can’t drag songs into a new order in a playlist.

• Restrict access using parental controls: If you have administrator access to your computer, you can disable access to podcasts, the iTunes Music Store, or shared music using the Parental pane of iTunes Preferences. You can also use the Parental pane to hide these items in the Source list without requiring a password to see them again.
1. Choose iTunes > Preferences and click the Parental button.
2. If necessary, click the lock and type your administrator password.
3. Select an item to disable it. For example, if you select Disable Podcasts, the Podcasts item won’t appear in the Source list.
4. If you want to require a user to enter an administrator password to re-enable the items you disabled (or make any other changes in the Parental Control pane) click the lock.

Note: You must be using Mac OS X v10.3 or later to be able to password-protect disabling these items. If you’re using Mac OS X v10.2.8, you can hide the items, but a password is not needed to show them again. You can also use the Parental pane of iTunes Preferences to restrict access to explicit content in the iTunes Music Store. If you disable podcasts, you won’t be able to subscribe to podcasts in the iTunes Music Store. Make sure you protect your password. Anyone who knows an administrator password for your computer can change parental control settings.

• Use folders in the Source list: You can add folders to the iTunes Source list to better organize your songs, videos, and other items. After you make a folder, you can add playlists and other folders to it. You can’t add individual songs or videos directly to a folder.
1. Choose File > New Folder.
2. Type a name for the folder and press Return.
3. In the Source list, drag playlists or other folders into the folder you just created, or drag your new folder into another folder.

Note: To remove a folder from another folder and move it to the top level of the Source list, drag it to the bottom of the Source list. When you select a folder in the Source list, the main iTunes window shows all the songs from all the playlists and folders inside that folder. The window doesn’t show duplicates of songs.

• Enter and view lyrics: If you know the words to a song, you can enter them in iTunes and view them anytime.
1. Select a song and choose File > Get Info.
2. Click Lyrics and enter the words to the song.

To view lyrics you’ve already entered, select the song and choose File > Get Info, then click Lyrics. With some iPod models, you can view a song’s lyrics on iPod if you’ve entered them in iTunes. Make sure your iPod has been updated with the latest software. See the documentation that came with your iPod for more information. Some types of files, such as WAV and QuickTime files, don’t support lyrics.

Also of note: iTunes 5 now supports iPod syncing for Outlook and Outlook Express on Windows PCs.

More info and download link for Apple’s iTunes 5 here.

Related articles:
Apple introduces iTunes 5, iTunes Music Store catalog tops two million songs – September 07, 2005

34 Comments

  6. i can’t wait for an app that will search for, and add the lyrics to the lyrics field.

    if you have a song in your head and can’t remember what it is, just search for the lyrics in spotlight and up pops the song.

    awesome ” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />

    Reply

  7. I like it pretty well, it’s a departure like the new Mail.app in Tiger, but the size of the play window when in mini-zoom mode looks too big…

    Lyrics, cool I like that feature a lot. Now they REALLY need to update the visualizer.

    Reply

  8. I love the look of mail, so I’m pretty amped that iTunes follow along in

    that path, GWWWEaaTT! lol. One thing I hate seeing on these thread is

    when a company brings out a new product and people start their yapping

    if you don’t like it, why even bother wasting ur breath complaing? are you

    stopping the people who like it from buying it by whinning? sheesh its not

    every new product that comes that you have buy, now go to bed! I done

    with my rant.

    Reply

  12. Damn they still haven’t fixed visualizations in itunes. Mac users use multiple monitors on a regular basis yet itunes doesn’t support those basic features.

    I should be able to export visualization to one monitor, while leaving the other open to control itunes itself, or whatever. Let me put it simply I should be able to hook up my powerbook to a 32″ screen use the power book to control the flow of music being outputted to an audience, and use the big as TV to show cool stuff. This is possible today. using standard s video out. why doesn’t itunes support such features

    Reply

  16. Jo jo the dancer says “i can’t wait for an app that will search for, and add the lyrics to the lyrics field.

    if you have a song in your head and can’t remember what it is, just search for the lyrics in spotlight and up pops the song.”

    There are several widgets that do this sort of thing. I like the iTunes lyrics widget. Just hit F12 and there are the lyrics to any song iTunes is playing. Pretty cool.

    http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/

    Reply

  19. I wish Apple would stick to a window color paradigm, or make custom interface configuration a standard feature. Why does Apple think they can be hypocrites when it comes to changing the interface paradigm. Every time a new peice of software comes out, new schemes are used.

    Stick with what you’ve got, and change it between OS releases at least Apple!

    Reply

  24. I love what I have seen so far. The new theme is an improvement to the last iTunes and I hope Safari is the next application to use it.The new Search Bar is a great idea. Lyrics should make searching a lot more accurate. I hope a good application comes out for finding and importing lyrics. Variable Bit Rate AAC encoding is now possible. In short it’s all good. The best just got better.

    Reply

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