Portable Audio

[Phil]

I recently installed the iTunes version 8 and I have mixed feelings about it. I like the look and feel. I'm glad that they haven't remove the search bar because it makes finding songs, artist, genre's or whatever, so much easier, but I don't like how it looks like Windows Media Player now. I believe it was either version WMP 10 or 11 that started with this layout, but it was because of that version of WMP that I decided to make iTunes my default player for music, and not use it strictly for adding/editing/transferring songs for my iPod. Now I have two media playing programs that look so much alike and that's what I don't like. But overall, iTunes still looks good works great, my iPod has become my life LOL.

[John-BBY Social Media Specialist]

Howdy Phil,

First of all, I want to thank you for your concise review of iTunes 8. You make some excellent comparisons to Windows Media Player, which I have hardly used at all since the advent of iTunes. I admit that I too was a bit surprised with the iTunes interface changes. But, as an admitted Apple fan, I go where they point me – but not blindly.

Based on your comments, I opened WMP 11 for the first time in a long while and was somewhat dismayed to see that the album views between the two are quite similar. I guess I’m not shocked by it though; since the two applications do essentially the same thing, WMP was bound to look like iTunes (or the other way around) eventually! Here’s where I differ on the interface though: iTunes still has more intuitive playlist capability and media burning options, at least in my opinion, and that’s very important for how I manage my music collection.

In addition, with iTunes 8, one gets the new Genius feature. Now, I was somewhat skeptical about the ability of the software to dynamically create a playlist based on one of my favorite songs, but was surprised when it pulled selections from my library that I hadn’t heard for a while. Also, as more libraries are analyzed by Apple through this feature, the selections made by Genius should improve. No personal information was given to Apple for this to happen, only my very large library of songs. I look forward to seeing how the Genius feature evolves. Truthfully, I’m a little excited about it!

Thanks for writing!

[hockeycanuckjc Community Veteran]

cnet Download.com recently had a piece about Ipod compatible alternatives for media players.