itunes 8 announced

[hugh]

Announced this afternoon by Jobs onstage...


Apple is also introducing iTunes 8. It will have HD, accessibility for those with disabilities, new browsing, and something called genius.



Genius
Puts songs together that go together based on associations by other Apple users. Information about your iTunes library goes anonymously up to Apple, mixes it with info from other iTunes users, and gets a sense of what songs people are putting together in playlists and libraries.


I will post a news release later today

[hugh]

from press release

Apple today announced iTunes 8, the next major release of Apple's ubiquitous music and video player for Macs and PCs which is seamlessly integrated with the most popular online content store in the world. iTunes 8 includes the new breakthrough Genius feature, which lets you automatically create playlists from songs in your music library that go great together -- with just one click. Genius helps music fans rediscover favorite songs in their existing music library and suggests related music on the iTunes Store they might want to add to their music collection. iTunes 8 features new ways of viewing your music and video libraries, and adds television programs in stunning high definition for sale on the iTunes Store.

Using Apple's breakthrough Genius feature is easy-select any song, click the Genius button, and iTunes instantly creates a playlist of songs that go great together from your own library. You can preview the playlist Genius creates, refresh the list to choose different songs and save Genius playlists to enjoy again later. You can even create Genius Playlists on-the-go with the new iPod classic, iPod touch, iPod nano and iPhone(TM). The Genius sidebar appears right in iTunes and recommends music from the iTunes Store that you don't already have, based on the songs you select.

When you turn on iTunes 8's new Genius feature, information about your music library is anonymously sent to the iTunes Store, where it is combined with the anonymously-gathered knowledge from millions of other iTunes users and processed through Apple-developed algorithms. The Genius results, specifically tailored to your personal music library, are sent back to your computer to enable users to automatically create Genius playlists in iTunes and on your iPods, even when they are not connected to the Internet.

iTunes 8's new visual browsing interface displays your music and video libraries using your album and video covers, and also provides a great way to navigate your movies, TV shows, iPhone apps, podcasts and audiobooks.


Pricing & Availability

iTunes 8 for Mac and Windows includes the iTunes Store and will be available as a free download .

[PokerChip]

Downloaded and installed. New vizualisations are cool, but I hardly ever use them. I like the new grid view for album art, although it's another reminder I need to retrieve album art for quite a few albums.

Can't wait for the 2.1 software for the iPhone on Friday to see how much faster syncs will be.

I'm not sure about the Genius feature. Will have to play around with it. Sounds like a gimmick to sell music, quite reminiscent of "Just for you" incorporated into 7, which everyone I know turned off in a hurry.

[MarcP]

I was expecting something bigger worthy of an incremental major version upgrade, but I'm rather disappointed. There isn't much new. I was hoping for a reworked interface.

[mrhooie]

Genius sounds like a great idea. I however, won't open an ITunes account just to use. I don't D/L anything from ITunes

[heybirder]

There's been a couple of major bugs with iTunes 8 people are reporting. The biggest is Touch users (mostly) getting BSOD's when plugging in their devices. It's been traced to a faulty USBAAPL.SYS and reverting this file to an older version stops the crashes. You can also remove other usb devices attached to your computer before trying to sync. Main conflicts appear to be HP printers and cameras.

[Bobby Clobber]

Originally Posted by mrhooie

Genius sounds like a great idea. I however, won't open an ITunes account just to use. I don't D/L anything from ITunes

I like the Genius feature. Select a song from you library, right click it and selecet "Start Genius". It generates a twenty five song playlist, which is a big improvement over the Party Shuffle. Of course it also make up another list of recommendations from the iTunes store, which I ignore.

[Mole]

Is there some way to turn of the Genius feature?


All it does is recommend that I buy songs that are already in my library.

[urbanlegend]

you can hide the sidebar with a button on the bottom of itunes (i don't have itunes on this machine so i can't give more detail than that right now).

there may also be a way to get rid of the genius playist icon that appears in the left hand pane with a preference change.

john

[Mole]

Thanks,


I will poke around at the bottom when I get home.

[hugh]

To completely turn off the Genius features, not just hide them, click on "Store" at the top. On the dropdown just choose "Turn off Genius".

[bgclarke]

I'd be happy if they'd make iTunes less bloated.

I've never been able to get songs purchased from iTunes to play without skipping.