Apple unwraps iTunes 5

Apple today introduced iTunes 5, bringing new features and a refined look to its industry leading digital music jukebox and online music store.

iTunes 5 includes a new Search Bar to make it easier for users to find what theyÂre searching for;Â*the ability to organize playlists into folders; Smart Shuffle, which lets the user change the Ârandomness of shuffled songs; and the ability for Windows users to automatically sync contacts and calendars from Outlook onto their iPods.

The iTunes Music Store has also added parental controls and album reviews, and now features a catalog of over two million songs, making it the largest online music catalog in the world.

ÂiTunes is widely regarded as the best jukebox, with the worldÂs most popular online music store built right in, said Steve Jobs, AppleÂs CEO. ÂWe are constantly improving iTunes with new features like Podcasting and better searching because we love music ourselves and want to surprise and delight music fans around the world.Â

iTunes 5Âs new Search Bar was designed to let users find exactly what they are looking for within the catalog of two million songs, 15,000 Podcasts and 10,000 audiobooks on the iTunes Music Store, in addition to everything in their own iTunes music library.Â*

iTunes and the iTunes Music Store have a new refined look, as well as parental controls allowing parents to determine which music and Podcasts their children can access on the iTunes Music Store.

iTunes 5.0 also introduces the ability to organize playlists into folders and have greater control over random playback with the new Smart Shuffle feature.Â*Windows iPod users can now use iTunes toÂ*automaticallyÂ*sync calendars with Outlook or contacts with Outlook or Outlook Express.

Pricing & Availability

iTunes 5 for Mac and Windows includes the iTunes Music Store and is available as a free download immediately from www.apple.com/itunes.

Really like iTunes 5 so far, very slick indeed.

How do you do the minimised play controls?

Am I the only person who gets an error message ("Please quit iTunes before beginning this update.") repeatedly flash up when trying to install? I restarted and didn't even open iTunes and it still did it...

Will I have to wait for Software Update to get it?

Couple of thing...

1. Could the new look signal a new "sleeker" brushed metal? I quite like it, but will we have to wait for 10.5 to be used through out the system...

2. Seems to be still carbon, I wonder if it is now is a universal binary that runs on Intel and PPC.

3. I was expecting more features for a major release.

4. Seems faster!

I pulled down iTunes 5 for Windows and so far I'm not impressed.
1) They did away with the title bar. Windows apps typically have an icon in the upper left corner of a window followed by the application name and possibly some other info (like the name of the open file). Apple has ignored this convention and mashed the menu into the tippy top of the window. And they've replaced the normal Windows minimize, maximize, and close buttons with their own (very small) ones.

2) The new folders are nice, but you can't Shift-select items in the "Source" pane, so you have to drag each item individually.

3) You can't secondary-click in the Source pane to bring up a contextual menu to create a new folder (or anything else).

4) They STILL bundle QuickTime with the iTunes download. Hello! I already have QuickTime, thank you. I don't need it reinstalling itself and populating my taskbar with icons.

5) They've dropped the brushed aluminum for a grey gradient.

Nothing else to report after using it five minutes.

- Jasen.

I'm stuck at work and the screenshot on Apple's site is too small to see details. Any chance someone could throw a couple of screenshots up on image cave or something? And if not, that's cool too...

looks like itunes 5 can now handle my 4g 40G ipod as well as the 1G shuffle at the same time on my windows machine - did not work before.
however, as they update all the songs again on both pods, they might have been doing some DRM stuff, i do not even want to know about...

1 - It's been a long time since I've used iTunes in Windows, but I seem to recall that was already the case in iTunes 4?

2 - Yah, that does kind of suck, actually.

3 - Weird; are you sure there isn't some kind of shortcut like that? Very unApple

4 - Hello! New version of Quicktime supporting HD codec. So you didn't have it already.

5 - Well, I for one am glad they're moving out of the brushed aluminum; it's been inconsistently applied in apps for some time now. Now all they need to get rid of are the candy-colored menu buttons... like they have on the pro-apps.

Screenshots:

Full-screen view
Little window

BuonRotto called this one when he said that Apple was slowly merging Aqua and Brushed metal. The Unified titlebar/toolbar was part of that. This appears to be another step in that direction.

The search bar looks the same as it always has - what's supposedly new about it?

I pretty much have the same reaction as you. It's really hard to drag the full-size window around without a title bar. It's so disgustingly gross that I wonder if this is some sort of rendering bug, and it was supposed to be reasonable.

I had the beta of Quicktime 7 installed, but it's likely that iTunes 5 required a newer version, so installing Quicktime 7 doesn't bug me... but polluting my toolbar when I *explicitly* set my previous Quicktime install *not* to is very annoying.

It would also be nice to have a quick mouse-driven way to switch between mini and normal players like exists in the MacOS X version.

when Quicktime (v 7.02) was available via "Software Update", why not iTunes5?
was kinda pi**ed when i had to restart after updating quicktime *AND* then after installing the new itunes!!!

"Am I the only person who gets an error message ("Please quit iTunes before beginning this update.") repeatedly flash up when trying to install? I restarted and didn't even open iTunes and it still did it..."

Same problem here! Had to restart (force quit doesn´t work)...

I´ll wait till it pops up in software update....

Am I the only person not loving the new interface?

On the bright side, they have added a lot of things I wanted- playlist folders are handy, and the new search is very useful.

I got the error message regarding closing iTunes too when updating, but it was cured by closing iTunes! I also fell foul to two restarts however (quicktime and iTunes)

Type in a search and all becomes clear. It now allows you to choose what content to search, and if you have browser column view enabled, the column contents now reflect search results, something that pleases me no end!

Nice update. Not sure it deserves being given a "5" designation.

I still wonder, after all these versions and updates to iTunes, why they haven't integrated hierarchical sorting into the software. I'd really love to have my iTunes library be sorted first by artist and then chronologically within the artist. Simple to implement, not too confusing for the average person to grasp, yet all we can do is sort by one factor.

iTunes was definitely closed here...

It looks like the Mail.app look was a preview of things to come after all

I'd played around in photoshop and made a mockup of what iTunes would look like if it used the new style, and it wasn't far off what we see in iTunes 5. I'll post it somewhere when I get home this evening...

I think iLife '06 could be interesting

Neil.
a.k.a. Arnel

YES! I am finally satisfied minus the CD quality of things. I'm sure that's soon to come as new extensions are modified and experimented with. A Lyrics tab is great in the info. I'm so glad they added that. Now Liner Notes can be added there (Or at least that's what I'm going to be doing). I am interested if my liner notes can be replaced with "Booklets" as it appears when searching for something in the new search functions. It's a shame that lyrics aren't searchable though - seems a little funny - I always call the radio with a song in mind but only know the lyrics. Or maybe my testing of the lyrics search function. Now a jazz playlist folder can make it easier than going through the different genres that I have in there right now. Almost perfect!

You could do this in iTunes since way back when. Just minimize the iTunes window, then grab the sizing box in the bottom right corner and drag it to the left. Boom, buttons only.

I know many don't like this... but I'm a fan of gradients... except on cheesey car paint jobs. I'd love to see your renditions. The Menu Bar has it too now. Maybe it will produce a 3-D display with Leopard out and the mactels speaking everything to you. You'll still need fancy glasses though.

Yeah, there was a title bar there (I just looked) and it being gone is kind of stupid (I confirm this for the poster who thought it wasn't there before).

And the only thing I can say about not being able to multi-click on the source pane, someone could argue this is the way windows works, since you can't do that in explorer either (left side, that is).

I think it was, but the top margin is MUCH tighter now. "iTunes" is RIGHT up against the top of the window. Seems there should be more of a margin.


Well, they could have mentioned that. I don't think there's any mention of QT7 (for Windows) being final or required. I've never understood why the two are forcibly bundled.

- Jasen.

Thanks! Looks like a pretty minor update to me too, but I'll wait to play with it before I make a final judgement.

I do like the interface, but for a panther user, it is out of place. I don't have the new mail app! Do I need tiger, or can I download it?

But anyway, this will look good once everything matches, but right now it is ugly and sticks out.

Why didn't the safari update look like this? It also appears that apple is enforcing the bleed to edge effect.

Well, I have it installed now. First I closed AudioScrobbler, not sure if that had anything to do with it. But it still wouldn't work, then I stopped SizzlingKeys. When I did that it worked!

Okay so my first thought when I got this was: Why do I have over 4000 songs in my library? Last time I looked there was only 3900 odd... The answer: Podcasts. So now Podcasts are stored in the Music Library as well as having their own section in the Source? That's awful. Truly. I liked how they seemed to be splitting the sections up; hell I wanted a Videos and Audiobook Libraries like we had the Podcast Library. But now Everything gets crammed into "Music" Library??? That's not good at all. Also "Podcast" should be an Artist...

Secondly, I can't maximize the window to take up the whole display. Now I know I couldn't before, but with the brushed metal it felt enclosed. Now it feels like it should be able to take up the whole screen. Also on the looks front, I don't get why they've used a different shade for the top bit from Mail.app; I thought they were meant to be converging, now it seems every app may have a different colour/style of its own (Dashboard anyone - okay not quite that extreme). One final thing on the looks that's bugging me, the corners are squarer and don't fit with the rest of Mac OS X very well at all...

Folders are excellent, long time needed. Now hopefully my Source can shrink down so it doesn't need a scroll bar! In fact, these new folders are much more powerful than I first imagined, in that putting playlists into them means all songs that are in the playlists show when the folder is selected. Now here's a primitive way to make Smart Playlists with boolean rules. Which in my opinion needs to be done on normal Smart Playlists anyway...

When you start to type something in the search box a "tool bar" appears that will allow you to narrow/filter your search. For instance, you can type the artist name in the search box and it will show all their content, but if you only want to see their music then select 'Music' and you will only see their music. Select 'Videos' and only their videos will be displayed. This same tool bar works when you are in the iTunes Music Store. To see how this works go to the iTunes Music Store and type 'Harry Potter' in the search box and select the different filters to see it in action.

I did not notice it was there when I started to search and I was a little confused as to how I would search, but then I noticed the toolbar only appears when there is someting in the search box.

Where can one acquire lyrics for songs (in the "info" tab)?

No, I think it's FUGLY.


Please tell me you are joking. That is seriously, seriously bad.

Oh well. At least the iPod nano is cool.

Oh, and one last thing. iTunes now does VBR AAC encoding!

The podcast thing isn't a really big deal. Now Apple has included an option in smart playlists for "Podcast: True or False." Make a smart playlist the same way you would have before, but put a podcast option in there if you want them included or not.

I WELCOME the change. I've been wanting a way to put all my latest podcasts in one smart playlist so I can listen to the latest WSJ Tech Briefing, CNN headlines, etc. back to back on the way to work each morning. Before, I'd have to drag them into one playlist manually each time.

Changes to search:

When you start typing in the search field, buttons pop up along the top of the listings window for you to "narrow" down the findings to the type, author, etc. Try it.

I am finding that 5.0 definitely runs faster and with less hard drive churning than the 4.9 that it just replaced.

edit: referring to the windows version

edit: And playlist folders rock!!! Way to go apple for listening to consumer feedback!

There's a widget. With the easy to do developer hack you can just drag that off the dashboard and onto iTunes to use at your dispense. I plan to do it, but I don't have that many songs with lyrics.

If you are having problems with the error dialog once you have downloaded iTunes through the Software Update, I found a fix. Be sure to quit iTunes and then go to Activity Monitor and in the search field type iTunes. This will give you iTunes Helper. Quit this and then click ok on the error box.

Should fix everything.

Also I noticed a lyric box in the song info popup. Pretty sweet.

and here

didn't work - oh it does when i quit sizzlingkeys as well.