Apple today released iTunes 7 which includes many overall enhancements and new features, including:
• Play games on your iPod
The iTunes Store now offers games you can play on your iPod: If you have an iPod that can display video, you can purchase games for your iPod from the iTunes Store.
To purchase and play games on your iPod:
1.In iTunes, click iTunes Store.
2. In the store, click Games.
3. Browse for a game and click Buy Game.
4. Connect your iPod to your computer.
iTunes automatically loads games onto your iPod when you connect it. You can play the games only on your iPod (not on your computer).
• Watch box-office hit movies
Download movies from the iTunes Store.
• Back up your iTunes library
Use the new backup feature to protect your iTunes library. Easily back up new songs or videos, iTunes Store purchases, or your entire library to CD or DVD:
You can easily back up your iTunes library, playlists, and iTunes Store purchases for safekeeping. To reduce the number of discs needed for a backup, iTunes can perform incremental backups (only items added or changed since the last backup). To burn a DVD, your computer must have a SuperDrive. Some third-party DVD burners may also work.
To create backup CDs or DVDs:
1. Choose File > “Back Up to Disc” and then select your options.
2. Insert a blank disc (CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, or DVD-RW).
3. Click Back Up Now.
iTunes burns the number of items that fit on one disc, and then asks you to insert subsequent discs to continue burning the remaining files. Don’t eject a disc while a backup is in progress. To restore backed-up files, insert a backup disc, choose File > “Back Up to Disc,” and then click Restore. Spoken programs purchased from the Audible website are not backed up. Discs you create using the iTunes backup feature can be used only to restore; they can’t be played in a CD or DVD player.
• Browse by album cover
Flip through your collection by album cover using Cover Flow. Many songs, albums, and videos include artwork that appears in the artwork viewer when the item is playing or selected. To display the artwork viewer, choose View > Show Artwork. To see the artwork in its own window, click the artwork.
You can also browse your iTunes library using Cover Flow:
1. Click the Cover Flow button (the rightmost View button).
2. To browse your collection, drag the scroll bar or use the arrow keys on your keyboard.
3. To play an item, double-click it when its name appears below the artwork.
Tip: To sort items by artist or album title, click a column heading.
More info and download link for iTunes 7 here.
Related articles:
Apple releases QuickTime 7.1.3 – September 12, 2006
Apple debuts iTunes 7 – September 12, 2006
And a new ugly user interface which takes away the aqua like scrollbars.. icons are too flashy.. (the blue is tooooo flashy on the itunes icon).. what’s up with Apple?
I am also a bit concerned about the choice of songs chosen by Steve during the presentation.
1. Don’t Panic.
2. Trying to go to Heaven.
I want backup function or make an image on iPhoto. I have almost 7k photos in the HD.
The revised UI is a mixed bag, in my opinion. Most of it is an improvement, the Library icons are a great improvement. The Store icons and Playlist icons look like something out of a Windows app – and a cheap one, at that! A mixed bag …
I woudl like to see back-up also ableot back up to another HD – otherwise, I like the new look and feel of iTunes 7
Is Coverflow in the window version ?
I agree with the criticism of the new iTunes interface. It’s got a decidedly distinct Windowsesque feel to it. The interface has lost it’s clean lickable quality and been replaced by the dreaded ‘throw a gradient on it’ design theme.
Overall I like the new look, but I think it’s pretty telling of the way things will look in Leopard. I believe that one of the main things that they aren’t showing us about 10.5 is the new UI, but I’d bet it’ll be similar to iTunes 7.
“Is Coverflow in the window version ?”
I’m guessing you made the same quick assumption that I did, which is, “Cool! Coverflow must have been done with Core Animation!” Then I remembered, that, duh! Core Animation is a feature of Leopard! Tiger doesn’t have it! So I assume that the answer is yes, the Windows version does have it.
Confirming that the Win version does indeed have Coverflow.
Windowsesque? Are you kidding me? The new interface is perfect. The Coverflow is smooth and sick. Apple is making really good advancements right now, and I don’t think that anything they do/change is going to make everyone happy. Not everyone will like or appreciate a Monet, but please don’t call it a Warhol.
yeah…this sucks…I prefer Unbox.
I back-up my whole HD to an external drive — you mean I won’t be able to restore my iTunes library if my main drive crashes?
The section with the Library/Store/Playlists area does look a bit clunky, but the sections are more separated which is easier on my aging eyes.
Downloaded and played Mahjong — a bit awkward with my current case (the Neoprene inCase), might have to try out a different case to see if that helps. Will come in handy for the times when I’m waiting in the car for the spouse.
I really like having the iPod software updater as part of iTunes, instead of in Software Update; makes far more sense and ties things together more seamlessly.
One thing I don’t like is there’s no way to tell what progress you’re making on downloads, especially podcasts — I liked having the progress bar so you had an idea of what was downloading and what was stuck.
Thought there was supposed to be a way to search by first letter — that doesn’t seem to be coming up with the 1.2 update. Possibly limited to the new iPods? 🙁 Definitely want to get the 80GB model anyway…
Disappointed that “Fantasia” was not among the early releases — don’t see too much that I’m going to rush out and download…
CoverFlow was a shell/UI for iTunes, developed by one man. I take it he used primitives from Core Graphics to create it – and that someone at Apple was smart enough to persuade Jobs to hire him. It is a great interface – simple, yet profound in the way it encourages people to listen to music according to records (as in the olden days) rather than by the track (the fragmentisation popularised by iPod).
Interestingly, in the webcast the integrated Coverflow seems less fluid and responsive (alive) than in the original Coverflow. I suggest people download it and check it out.
It shows great vision to extend the use of it to the rest of iTunes’ media, and to make it possible to view albums according to Artist, Composer, Genre, etc. It was just about the only improvement I found missing in the original.
On the other hand, I believe the same graphics ideas have been used to implement the confusing, slow-moving “slave-trail” of possibilities on the left side of the screen in the new (iTV-ready) version of FrontRow. That usage looks like too much enthusiasm….
Nope. Didn’t assume it used Core animation, as Coverflow exists now.
I don’t think it looks as good as the real coverflow. Jagged edges, unsubtle reflections, less ‘alive’ (doesn’t respond to mouse movements with the button up). Is harder to stop on the right album. And the angle of the albums in coverflow is nicer.
Used ‘alive’ to describe coverflow independently. Guess it was the right word !
The visualizer button seems to be missing.
Right click/ Find album art. Cool.
Where did the equaliser go? Why can’t I have the visualiser in a window? Why do the icons along the bottom look so amateurish? Why can’t I get rid of the ‘STORE’ from the source list? Why does iTunes still not fade out of one song when I start another? Why has the ‘Burn Disc’ icon been relegated to the bottom where it looks clumsy and oversized? What happened to the ‘Search Bar’? Why does ‘cmd+1’ no longer bring up the main iTunes window?
Grr this sucks
Have to agree about the icons on the left – what is going on? Suddenly the usual polish we’ve come to expect from Apple is missing. I’m pretty sure I could do a better job myself.
The separation is interesting on the left though, what other devices are likely to be used? Can we now use two iPod devices, or perhaps this is to allow the coming (greyed out option in custom setup) iPhone device to sync its songs.
I miss the EQ button on the bottom. Other than that I like it.
I also used CoverFlow before it was integrated into iTunes, and it doesn’t seem “less fluid and responsive” in real life. It may have been the webcast framerate that made it seem that way.
The perspective changed just fractionally. In CoverFlow, you looked slightly down on the covers, in iTunes, you are looking straight at them, perhaps that is contributing to the difference in your perceived fluidity. I’ve got both programs running on two monitors right now, side-by-side.
Equalizer and Visualizer are now under the View Menu, instead of the Window menu — just did some exploration. Don’t see a separate Window option for Visualizer, but some interesting options that might be worth checking out…
MW=keep; I’ll keep playing with it till I get it right…
I think the ‘real’ coverflow perspective is better, but that’s subjective. It doesn’t seem quite as responsive, but there’s not really much in it.
The ‘alive’ factor comes from the way coverflow (not iTunes) reacts to the mouse. The covers shift around a little to show more of the cover under the pointer. This is WITHOUT having to hold down the mouse button. It’s like those albums are trying to get your attention. It’s small, but the original does it better.
Album art population pretty much sucks. Nothing really wrong with it as long as your music is on iTMS. Most of mine seems not to be,
Coverflow…
And where’s the big round context sensitive button that used to be in the top right corner? If I selected the Podcast folder, this would turn in to an Udate button, and I’d click it to download the latest editions of my subscribed podcasts. With iTunes 7 it’s gone. How do I update my podcasts? (NB as of writing, Apple’s support pages have no info on iTunes 7)
I am underwhelmed by coverflow. I have a .Mac account and I asked to get album artwork. I noticed many albums that the iTunes store has did not transfer to my library. Aren’t these supposed to be free now? For example, half of my my Rush albums do not have covers, Signals, Roll the Bones are two examples.
Is this because I am in Canada?
Hmmmmmm………I am feeling ripped off.
i love it as a whole, but I really don’t like the new dock icon. at all.
I LOVE the gapless playback. it brings joy into AAC downloads. Ever download an album from the store/rip it and be sad because of the gap between songs? no more! yaay!
And I forgot…yeah its cool when you right click and can select find album art. One problem though, it says that you can only get artwork when purchased (and yes I have looged into my .mac account in iTunes).
Crap
I’ve found that it takes a few tries to get all the album covers that are available on iTunes. Compilations seem to be a bit more problematic. Nonetheless, I was pleasantly surprised how many of what I had thought were obscure albums were found.
Oddly, some albums that come in multiple disks only show 1 or 2 covers but not all of them. For example, Ken Burns’ Jazz series only has a cover for one disk, the 3rd I think. Perhaps I should just keep requesting covers until all are found.
Actually one of the most useful features hasn’t been covered really–the new Downloads pane. Obviously, this was necessary for longer downloads like movies, but an ancillary benefit is that now when you buy an album (or more than one song) you can download more than one at once and see the progress of each.
As far as the UI, mixed bag. I love the coverflow and list formats, but I don’t know why they’re dulling down the interface. The scrollbars need to go–I REALLY hope that’s not what they have planned for Leopard. C’mon Apple, I know you want to make the OS look more “serious,” but you don’t need to make it dull, lame, and Windows-like in the process. Also, cut down on the use of ALL-CAPS–yuck.
Another difference between iTunes 7 and the past versions is that when you put the Visualiser in full screen mode it no longer changes the resolution to 640 X 480. I liked the old way better because now the Visualiser performs slower and the album art is smaller on the screen.
I like the original coverflow better. If you have an album with a unch of artists iTunes presents them as different albums in it’s version of coverflow, sucks, should be one of course!
oh, and the new gui theme sucks ass 🙁
defining an album as a collection does the trick! it takes FOREVER though, i have my music on another computer and access it over a 54Mbit wlan, no joy! it will take a couple of days
One tip: Downloading album art is a bit hit-and-miss. Don’t assume that because a download didn’t work that Apple doesn’t have the cover. If the download fails for whatever reason, it gives no indication. I successfully downloaded cover artwork for a J-Pop album after trying five times.
mentioned some of this in the other thread on iTunes 7, you can refresh podcast with rectangular button in the lower right hand corner of the podcast page. sadly no quick way to get to the EQ, did Apple make it slightly harder to find so that movies and tv shows audio stays ‘flat’ in the EQ? Also when you’re downloading anything, i.e., podcasts, a temporary listing shows up on the left, and you can check it’s progress or cancel, nice.
when I click a song, nothing happens…the music files are OK. did this happen to anyone?
Hmm, album art is cool. It’s been downloading a bunch I did not have. It seems to be storing it in a Folder in the iTunes folder. That is a LOT better than embedding them in the MP3s like before.
Anyone know if iTunes will unembed previously embedded files?
Also, I’m a little concerned about giving Apple data about what songs I have in my collection….
Sol,
I noticed the opposite with my iTunes visualizer actually… now that it runs at native screen resolution (I assume) it actually runs faster, as that is what resolution the graphics card and screen in your Mac is optimized to deliver. That’s my understanding at least. I can report that my iTunes visualizer regularly gets 20+FPS now when it used to get ~12-15FPS. A marked improvement.
15″ 700Mhz iMac G4, 512MB RAM.
–mAc
Oh, and did anyone notice that iTunes takes forever to load now?
Yup, the new scroll bar is hideous. What’s up with breaking up the unified look of OS X? I seriously hope Leopard won’t have scrollbars like iTunes 7. Otherwise it’s just different than before, pretty much OK I guess. I’m missing the top right context sensitive button, though,
MW: ‘for’ as in ‘old Aqua-style scrollbar for me!’
UGLY. iTunes now looks like a drab Gnome app. Is this Fedora or OS X? I really hope this isn’t the leopard UI. I agree, the icons on the bottom look awful too. Bad, bad job apple. Dull.
Oh, stop your bitching. Go throw a chair, you’ll feel better.
I think that in general the overall look of the new iTunes is good, it just needs a few refinements.
If you try to play a song and nothing happens then you have to unistall all 3rd-party Plug-Ins
You can found it here:
(/Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-Ins/ and ~/Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-Ins/)
Just installed itunes 7.0 on windows XP Pro and I was impressed with the new features but when I pay a song the music sounds all distorted, I tried windows media player and the same songs sounded fine. So re-installed itunes 7.0 and still no change. So I went back to itunes 6.0.5 and everthing plays Ok again.Anyone else experience distorted sound after upgrading to itunes 7.0 ?
bob,
update your quicktime
What’s with the “EXPLICIT” tags? Has Apple gone nannyfied? Had to root around in Preferences to find out how to turn the stupid things off. Let’s think of the adults, not the children.
Don’t know if anyone mentioned it…
But iTunes is back to a blue music note icon…from 1.0 version.
YAY! I’m a GEEK!
For Windows users with distorted sound, check your QuickTime preference panel and that the Sound Out is set to 16 bit. I believe this could have been set to 8 bit.
The icons in the bottom is too dark and i really miss the burn icon (spinning radioctive sign in an aperture ish, cirkle ) Iwant that back !!!