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
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 !!!