Apple iTunes{Multimedia functionality}
iTunes 10.3 was released on Monday night and includes a beta of the company’s new iTunes in the Cloud service, which allows users to download previous purchases easily, push automatic downloads to all of your devices and also added iBookstore shopping to the media player.
iTunes 10.3 also adds Books to the iTunes Store, where you can discover and buy your favorite books on your computer and automatically download them to iBooks on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
As one of the most popular programs for managing music and video content on a personal computer, Apple’s iTunes software has become an indispensable part of our digital life. Version 10 of iTunes brings a handful of enhancements to Apple’s ubiquitous media software, though notably absent is a much-anticipated cloud music service follow-up to LaLa. By far the biggest change to the jukebox is the addition of a social functionality called Ping.
Interface
The look and layout of iTunes 10 is essentially identical to that of iTunes 9, with just a couple of noticeable differences. The first is that Apple has updated to logo for iTunes. Rather than the old-school music note-over-CD icon, you’ll see a much more applike image. Still, the company hasn’t figured out how to more broadly represent the jukebox’s multimedia functionality: there’s still just a music note.
There’s also been a slight change to the source menu that runs as a column down the left side. The bright blue icons representing the various submenus have been changed to gray–an odd change in our eyes as it makes them stand out even less, which doesn’t make a ton of sense for menu options. That said, they still offer quick access to your media library, the iTunes Store, Genius features, and playlists.
Once a selection is chosen in the source menu, all the relevant content spills out into the large main window, where it can be organized and sorted using an arsenal of sophisticated, spreadsheet-like options or switched into a cover-flow view that hearkens back to the days of flipping through record crates.
