Initial Impressions of iTunes 7

I'm not a die hard Apple fan, per se, but I do enjoy a couple of their products. I've been using iTunes for a couple of years now, not because their media player is any better (in fact I use WinAmp about 99.99% of the time) but because I like to buy songs every once in a while. I don't own an iPod (and if my wife has anything to do with it, I never will) but I decided to abandon version 5 of iTunes to be able to get the season finale of Lost.

Getting videos was just as easy as downloading music, the only gripe being that I had was that I didn't the progress of the download. I kept an eye on my incoming bandwidth and was pleasantly surprised that it was maxing out my 7Mbp line, but without knowing exactly how big the file was going to be, there was no way to know how long it was going to take.

The interface has gone through quite a make over since I had downloaded it last, and it appears to be more user friendly and intuitive than the last. Another feature called 'gapless playback' makes it so that two songs that overlap on the CD actually paly smoothly together without the noticable playback gap as the player is loading and playing the next song. It's nice, but necissary feature that attempts to make the listening experience more in line with the original recording.

My verdict? Two thumbs up and definitly worth with the time it takes to install. I imagine as time goes on some of the glaring missing features as previously discussed will be addressed.

Posted on Sep 25
Written by Wayne Hartman