iTunes Review
By Fabian Westerwelle
Since a long time I have been recommending SoundJam MP Free because it has some great features its easy to use and its free. But I think I have changed my mind with iTunes. iTunes has more features, its even easier to use and it is free too.
On the top left are the controls for iTunes which are basically like the quicktime controls. In the middle is the information display (the one with the apple logo) this is where the information about a song or radio station is displayed. On the far right is the button for burning CD's, when you are in a specific play list, or a browse button, when you are in your Library. With browsing you can browse through your whole library easily and select only the songs you want to hear. Click here to see a Quicktime animation from Apple.
On the bottom there are three buttons for adding a new play list, playing the songs in the play list in random order, and a repeat button to repeat one song or the whole list. In the middle there is an information display which shows how many songs are in the play list, how long the playing time is, and how many megabytes they take up.
On the far right are two more buttons. One for turning on the iTunes visuals and one for ejecting the disk.
On the left side of the iTunes window you find your source selection. Here you can choose from your whole library, internet radio stations, play lists, or CD's.
When you choose a play list, for example, all the songs show up on the right, like in all players. You can view and sort the play list by Song, Artist, Time, Album, Genre, Size, Year, Date, Bit Rate, Sample Rate, Kind, Track#, and Comment. At the bottom it displays how many songs are in the play list, how long the playing time is, and how many megabytes the songs take up.
The best part is the search, you can search your whole play list, making it a lot easier to find one file, or even album in your whole big library. At the picture at the top I searched for Creed and it found 21 songs with the name Creed and listed them in the order I wanted. This makes finding whole albums a lot easier.
When you choose the Radio Tuner from the Source frame it will display many different music kinds. They range from Jazz, through Comedy, to Rock. When you open a music folder, for example "Top 40", it will display all the stations in the music group. There are hundreds of stations, so there is something for everyone.
If you have a new G4 with a internal CD-RW you can use iTunes to burn CD's. Just click on the burn CD buttons to burn a CD right from your play list. (If you don't have an internal drive don't worry. There are plans on drivers for 3rd party external drives)
If you want to burn a CD you first have to convert your MP3's to AVI. iTunes also does this for you. iTunes converts MP3 to AVI, or Wav and AVI to MP3.
With iTunes you can also convert ID3 tags and put tracks on portable MP3 players. iTunes supports the Nomad 2, 2 MG, Nomad Jukebox, Rio 500, Rio 600, Rio 800, Nike Psaplay, Nakamichi SoundSpace 2, and USB mass storage MP3 Players like the Iomega HipZip.
The bottom line: The greatest audio player for the Mac I have ever seen. Beautiful. Does everything you need all for free. The only flaws are that the buttons have no text descriptions and that you can not collapse the player window.
iTunes Quick Tips
Press Command-L to show the current playing song.
Press Command-up to play previous song.
Press Command-Down to play next song.
To change between converting form MP3 to AVI or Wav
and AVI or Wav to MP3 go to the preferences.
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