iTunes 9 and where it has led me so far

September is when Apple traditionally launches new hardware and software, and this year one of the unvelied products was an upgrade to iTunes, version 9, which I downloaded, along with the corresponding software update for the iPod touch, this weekend.


It does bring quite a significant restrutcturing of the main page, with the introduction of columns which can be set, for example, for artist and album name, vertically, as opposed to the old horizontal split screen. This can be seen from the screenshot below:

This actually works well, beside being a novelty and new way to visualise youcollection, for grabbing and dropping into playlists, alongside which the columns now appear. I tested this out when I decided that I was getting nervous about my iPod being full to within 1gB of capacity, as if it might somehow burst or low a gasket from running so close to fullness, so set up a new core playlist to copy, and simply dragged across all the albums I reckoned I had around a 50:50 chance of listening to any time soon, ending up with just shy of 3000 songs; when I set the sync options to copy these plus all my usual self-made playlists and Genius selections (to give a flavour of randomness by bringing across songs I surely would not have picked by album) I think I got a good selection for carrying around, and had freed up around 6gB. This sort of decluttering was way easier in the new layout than the old.

When an iPod is attached, you can also quite easily move around your Apps between screens using the PC interface, which is actually quite useful, and let me set up a utility screen, a games screen etc. I invertoried my games apps as follows:

Alien Attack (addictive old style space invaders game)
Asphalt 4 (not a big fan or car games but looks good)
Biball lite (early shower-offer for accelerometer)
Bloom (Eno makes it cool but actually a bit boring?)
Brothers in Arms (played a bit, too hard)
Chess free (keeps beating me)
Doom Resurrection (played a bit, best shooter found yet)
Four free (addictive, keeps beating me!)
Imagini (really hard word game, too hard)
Labyrinth 3D (like biball, bit hard, bit boring)
Monopoly (way too slow and complicated)
Ragdoll Physics (cleverest and best, really cool)
Scrabble (an old reliable)
Shooter (not played yet)
Soduku (it is soduku - does what it says on the tin)
Star Wars (Force Unleashed) (good graphics but complicated)
Terminator (new, haven't played much)
Tetris (hard to control on small screen)
TT star lite (new but looks good)
Wurdle (like this a lot, word search under time pressure, like Boggle)

This looks like a lot, but I reckon I still spent less on these than I would on a new PC or Wii game, and they have filled in many a quiet moment in an airport or on a plane or train. I like the apps side of the Touch, and the extra dimension it gives the iPod. I much prefer playing games on it than either a DS or PSP, and know that may put me in a minority.

One of the other new 'big launch fuss' items was iTunes LP, which I heard about and then found very hard to actually find. The new iTunes store interface (not that huge an improvement, in my mind) does not exactly highlight them despite the fuss, and I had to do quite a bit of googling before I found what artists were on it, and the only one that semi-appealed was the new Muse album, because I had read some good reviews recently, so I downloaded it in ‘LP’ version, for the same price I would pay for a regular iTunes download album.

The LP format actually means very little in terms of what goes on your iPod; the content is all on your PC, but the track list now include a LP icon, and clicking that brings you to a ‘homepage’ for the album (first screen short below), from which you can navigate to pages with comments on each song, lyrics, photos, videos (3 short live clips) and full credits. I like it and think that, for an album I love, this will add a huge amount of added value.




So, what about the music for this guineae pig download? I had not actually listened to any Muse-ic (cue groan at pun) before this, and it is too early to do a detailed review, but so far I do like the sound of it (particularly the drums). I found a live clip from the last few days on Youtube of one of the songs I like so far as below:

Yesterday, I also, in a completely spontaneous decision, bought a bargain bin (€5) CD of the greatest hits of Dusty Springfield; several of the songs were familiar, and I loved 'Son of a preacher man', discovered of course through 'Pulp Fiction'. A few partial listens tells me that (a) I know more than I thought and (b) the voie is simply amazing, and send shivers up and down my spine (like Karen Carpenter does). A clip of her doing 'I just don't know what do do with myself' is below:

Of course, when I get and like a CD like this, it is something of a departure from my normal listening, and prompts sudden panic attacks of age-induced diminution of my critical faculties, but then a little digging reassured me that it is okay for like Dustry, even if you are not QT. Fans include the White Stripes, who can be seen doing the same song below:

And finally, what about the apparent gulf between my two purchases on the same day, Muse and Dusty? More digging proved that the gulf is not that wide after all, as it seems they have a habit of playing 'Can't take my eyes off you' live:

Yes, I know, it is not Dusty (but Andy Williams) but it is in the same ballpark, as opposed to this post, which started off on software and ended up on Andy Williams. Blame iTunes 9!