This week we’re taking a break from our regularly scheduled discussion of the cool new features coming in Mac OS 10.5 “Leopard”. Instead, we’re going to discuss a very popular program that runs on Microsoft’s Windows operating system. This program manages the music and video content on roughly 75% of all personal digital music players. Its built-in music store sells almost 90% of all music sold online – it’s the fifth-largest music (in any format) reseller in the U.S., behind Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target, and Amazon (which they expect to pass early next year). Over 1.5 billion songs purchased and downloaded to date.

One could arguably contend that this software is the most popular Windows software in the world today. No, it’s not Windows Media Player. It’s iTunes, the free “front-end” of the iPod experience, and available for both Macs and PCs.

This week Apple revved iTunes to version 7, in conjunction with their announcement that the “iTunes Music Store” would be renamed the “iTunes Store” (hereafter referred to as “iTS”), because it’s not just about music anymore.

Actually, Apple has offered a wide array of video content on the iTS for quite some time. It started with music videos and progressed to TV shows. Apple started a year ago with five shows from one network (ABC), and today offers over 200 shows from over 40 networks. Over 45 million TV shows have been purchased and downloaded.

This week Apple announced their entry into the online movie sales market. Purchasing and viewing of movies requires iTunes 7, which in turn requires a free upgrade to Quicktime 7.1.3. Both are free downloads from Apple’s website, and also appear on Macs in the Software Update panel of System Preferences.

Before we get to the movies stuff, let’s look at some general improvements in iTunes 7. The graphical user interface is much cleaner (no more polished metal) and most likely foretells the interface we’ll see on other applications when Leopard struts onto the stage.

The sidebar on the left of the iTunes window is now divided into Library, Store, and Playlist sections. When downloading music or video from the Store, a Download Manager Window is available that displays detailed information, like how big the file is, how fast you’re downloading, and how long its going to take to finish. You can also pause downloading and continue it later.

iPod management is now a part of iTunes. Attach your iPod to your computer, and you can control the syncing of files (like only uploading TV show episode you haven’t watched yet), update your iPod’s software, and see detailed information on what’s taking up space and how much space you have left.

You can create multiple iTunes Libraries and keep them on different drives as your music, video and movie collection expands. There’s also a new one-click “Back Up to Disk” feature that lets you easily back up your entire iTunes library to CD or DVD.

You can now close the gaps between songs that were intended to flow seamlessly together. Video viewed through iTunes now gets the Onscreen Video Controls available in standalone QuickTime movies.

iTunes 7 gives you two new ways to view your music and video library. The Album view organizes by album (duh) with album art and a list of each song title. The “Cover Flow” view displays your albums by their cover art, in a beautiful, fluid, floating interface that scrolls horizontally through each album cover. As each cover reaches the center of the screen, the songs on the album are listed below.

But what about movies? We’ll get into that next time.

© 2006 Peter F. Zimowski