iTunes 7

At today's Apple Media Event, along with new iPods, a new version of iTunes was released. It can easily be dubbed the biggest change since the original iTunes was released. Here are some of the new features:

• New design featuring dark blue and silver instead of silver alone.
• A 3D Jukebox view that lets you flip through your albums and choose what to listen to that way.
• A Download Manager that tells you how much is left in whatever you're downloading and allows you to order your downloads by priority.
• An iPod Summary page that sums up all of the data you need to know about your iPod.
• The ability to get cover art for any ripped songs automatically added.
• Gap-less playback for all music.
• The ability to backwards sync your iPod with other computers and copy the music off the iPod onto other authorized PCs.
• Downloadable movie trailers for your iPod.
• Movies from the likes of Disney, Pixar, Miramax, and Touchstone; $15 at release, $13 to preorder, and $10 for old titles. They are now 640 by 480 instead of 320 by 240. Most movies will be available on the date of the DVD release.
• iPod Games available for download; $5 a title with 9 games online now ranging from Pac-Man to Bejeweled. Not playable on PCs. Works only with 5G iPods.
• And last but not least, a blue iTunes logo instead of a green one.

Of all of those updates, I like the album art one the best. It may seem kind of silly, but I spent forever over the summer finding album art for CDs I'd ripped. The pain in the ass now is deleting the Amazon stuff and getting the higher quality pictures from iTunes. The 3D Jukebox is pretty awesome too.

I'd like to be amped about the movies, but I only have a 5G with 1.5 hours of video playback, and I now don't plan on getting a new one since the 80GB ones are .55" thick. Not missing out on much though, they're only Disney anyway... And for $10-15 I would expect the ability to burn them to DVDs. The movie trailers thing is a nice feature, I've been waiting on that for a year. I'll try out one of the games in a few days and tell you guys what it's like playing Tetris or something on an iPod.

The problem with this new version of iTunes is copying music to your iPod. Instead of having one thing on the sidebar for your iPod, there's now the main iPod tab, and 4 sub-tabs that let you see the different items on your iPod. You can't just go onto the music sub-tab and press paste to add music. You have to go to the main iPod tab, which doesn't have a list of your music, and press paste. It's very annoying for me. If I were you and you're not itching to get movies or games, I'd wait for 7.0.1 or the next update because it can get to be a huge pain in the ass.

So overall it's pretty cool but could still use some work.