Thread: iTunes V 8.0

RAMP UP THE MEDIA Many people who don't own an iPod use iTunes to manage their music, because it is an easy way to tag and catalog a media library. Well, Apple has made it even simpler to do this, and we are going to take a look at the features available in version 8, as well as compare its performance with the previous version 7.6.



Features
The first new feature we are going to look at is 'Genius'. Intelligent playlists can be created with a click of the 'Genius' button, which analyses the currently playing song and compiles a playlist of similar-sounding songs from your library. Similarly, the Genius Sidebar displays songs available at the iTunes store, from which you would be able to pick and choose, if the store was available in India. The way you view your music library is also enhanced, since the grid view that was earlier restricted to the 'Movies' panel is now applied to the 'Music' panel as well. So, iTunes displays all the albums with their cover art, and users will be able to navigate their library hierarchally. The Visualizer has some new options, for instance, 3D spheres, and goes a long way towards heightening the pleasure of listening to music.

Performance
compared this latest release of iTunes with its predecessor to see if the changes to the media player were only superficial. We calculated the program's start-up
time using AppTimer and looked at the CPU and the Private Bytes occupied by the application during audio and video playback. The test files were WAV and 320 kbps MP3 audio, and MPEGl and MPEG4 video. The result is clear for all to see-version 8 is the winner hands down with a good five percentage point lead. Though there wasn't any noticeable difference in program startup, there is a considerable improvement in audio and video playback.

VERDICT: If you have an earlier version of iTunes, upgrade to version 8. FOR: Genius playlists and sidebar for easier music catalog compilation.
AGAINST: Not a choice for non iPod or iTunes store users.