Find great computer deals at Staples
Entered CNET Catalog: 09/13/2006
SKU: SERVITUNES7
Manufacturer: Apple Inc.
CNET editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 09/15/2006
The latest version of Apple's iTunes software (version 7.7) expands the offerings for iPod, Apple TV, and iPhone users. The popular Windows and Mac jukebox application has come a long way since version 6. Its integrated iTunes Store includes feature-length movies, TV shows, games, a free University lecture podcast section titled iTunesU, a selection of unrestricted (DRM-free) music downloads called iTunes Plus, and a newly added App Store offering third-party applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. iTunes 7.7 has taken on an ambitious amount of features since the days of iTunes 6, but the essence of iTunes remains: it is an intuitive and (mostly) all-inclusive refueling point for iPods as well as a media platform that aims to be part of your living room.
In this review, we'll take a closer look at iTunes 7's new features. For some background on the preexisting interface and feature set, check out the review of iTunes 6.
iTunes 7's interface
There are several ways to view and arrange your computer's media library in iTunes 7, but one interface element remains constant--the source panel. Located on the far left side of iTunes, the vertical baby-blue strip known as the source panel includes separated sections for Library (Music, Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts, Audiobooks, Applications, Radio, Ringtones), Store, Devices (your iPods or iPhones), Shared Libraries, and Playlists. Selecting a source reveals all of its content in iTunes' main viewing pane, which offers an exhaustive amount of ways to sort and view content.
View options
In addition to the plain-vanilla listing of your tracks and movies, you get two additional views. First new option: a simple list grouped with large album art, and a second option dubbed Cover Flow. The Cover Flow view displays a big window (that can be resized) for a virtual shelf of album art or movie covers, which reflect elegantly against the black background. You can scroll through and watch the graphics whiz by, or you can point and click one. Content associated with an album or a movie cover spills down below. As a new song plays, the appropriate cover will flip into place. Owners of slower systems will notice processor lags, though the gee-whiz visual appeal of this feature offers an extra dimension to the listening experience.
Integrated device management
Your iPod and iPhone settings are all managed within the iTunes interface. The main landing page displays a graphic and vital stats of your iPod or iPhone and allows you to check off universal settings, such as "Only sync checked items." Additionally, you can Update or Restore your iPod or iPhone from this Summary page. Content is managed by clicking tabs for specific content types such as Music, Movies, TV Shows, and Contacts. Finally, at the bottom of this window is a color-coded capacity meter that visually breaks down Audio, Video, Photo, Other, and Free Space. Competing applications such as Windows Media Player offer similar integrated management options; however, the use of a nested window rather than a new one helps.
Download Manager
This is a Source pane option that appears when you purchase content. Basically, it lists your selections along with a progress meter, and it's very useful if you want to reorder the queue to get the song or movie you want quicker. You can also pause a single download or pause all downloads, and it's a great way to keep track of interrupted downloads.
Automatic album art retrieval
With Apple's emphasis on album artwork in both iTunes and the devices served by iTunes (iPhone, iPod, Apple TV), it can be jolting to come across an album with missing cover art. Apple makes it easy to automatically add artwork to you music collection by matching your music with album art from its iTunes Store catalog. The Get Album Artwork feature (found under the Advanced menu), can take several minutes to process your music library. We've noticed that iTunes has improved its ability to automatically retrieve album art compared with the spotty results we experienced in an earlier version of iTunes 7, but you'll still have some gaps in cover art that you'll have to hunt down manually.
Gapless playback
Many music fanatics, especially those who like dance music, can use iTunes to enjoy their music without annoying gaps. When you first install and run iTunes 7, the app automatically analyzes your tracks for gapless playback. It's not actually seamlessly bridging gaps as I'd thought; rather, it is figuring it out based on format and bit rate, the best method for ungapping songs. If you turn Cross Fade off, all tracks will be played gaplessly. If not, you'll have to multiselect all tracks in a gapless album, Get Info, then indicate that you want the selection to be part of a gapless album. So far, gapless playback works very well on both iTunes and the iPod. Nothing is more annoying than encountering gaps in "seamless" mixes.
Apple TV and iPhone integration
To further bolster its position as a touchstone in your digital life, iTunes 7.7 integrates both iPhone. If you own an Apple TV, you can stream iTunes library content from computers around your home. The iPhone is not only integrated into iTunes, it's partially dependent on it. Key iPhone features such as syncing contacts and calendars, data backup, and music and video transfers all happen within iTunes, unless users pay for extended services such as Microsoft Exchange or MobileMe. iPhone users also have the option of creating personal ringtones for their phone using songs purchased from the iTunes Store.
iTunes Store
What began as the iTunes' Music store has blossomed into a multimedia juggernaut in iTunes 7.7. Beyond its extensive selection of music and podcasts, Apple's iTunes store offers movies, TV shows, university lectures, iPod games, and third-party applications developed for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Compared with the iTunes store's humbler music-only beginnings, the current store is more difficult to navigate than in the past. Those who make it past iTunes' dizzying storefront are rewarded with attractive product-specific pages offering previews, summaries, customer reviews, and recommendations.
As of iTunes version 7.6, you have the ability to rent some video content offered on the iTunes store, which can be viewed directly on your computer or transferred to some supported devices, such as the iPhone, iPod Touch, Apple TV, iPod Classic, or iPod Nano (third-generation). Once a rented movie has been downloaded from the iTunes store, you have 30 days to begin watching the movie and 24 hours to complete it once playback has begun. Videos downloaded from the iTunes store have a general resolution of 640x480 (H.264), although some movies are letterboxed to appear as wide screen.
New features in iTunes 7.7
The new features in iTunes 7.7 are almost entirely made for iPhone and iPod Touch users. In fact, iPhone 3G owners must update to version 7.7 of iTunes as a minimum requirement.
The most notable feature introduced in iTunes 7.7 is the addition of an iTunes App store, which offers a selection of more than 500 applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch, made by third-party software developers. iTunes applications run the gamut from instant-messaging clients and voice recorders, to video games and virtual pianos.
The sole Apple-developed application included in the launch of the iTunes App store is arguably one of the strongest of the bunch (and it's free). Apple's Remote application turns your iPod Touch or iPhone into a remote control for your iTunes music library or Apple TV, allowing you to browse, play, pause, and skip content from anywhere in your home.
Version 7.7 of iTunes also introduces a new Parental Ratings Preference for games purchased through the iTunes Store. Game purchases can be restricted to age ranges of 4+, 9+, 12+ and 17+.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210
User Rating: 
10/10
GREAT GREAT great!!!
Pros: Playback; equalizer; video playback; visualizer; great itunes store; reads lots of files; unbeatable interface; coverflow; simplicity; ease-to-use; awesome add-ons; works flawlessly with ipods
Cons: when playing single audio file it ads it to the library;
User Rating: 
1/10
As usual, apple products are terrible.
Pros: The fact that you can buy songs rather quickly.
Cons: That it rarely works. I have only about 10 purchased songs, but heres why. I currently have NO PURCHASED PLAYLIST. It's freakin' hidden.
The docs are terrible. They tell me what I can plainly see in the app.
Take note that people who like apple are always artsy people. Anyone who is technical and knows something about computers prefers a PC. I am through with Apple.
User Rating: 
3/10
They need to rethink this one
Pros: it will sync your ipod
Cons: its the only thing you can use to put music on your ipod, sync wont work i have to drag and drop everything. store isnt worth it at all. an enormous resource hog
User Rating: 
5/10
Mediocre music/entertainment player. Only use it because of my iPhone.
Pros: Works well with other Apple products; supports a fairly wide range of media; intuitive interface, minus the store; as far as digital music stores go, its a good one; sharing of media across network
Cons: Works poorly with Windows; the Music Store responds slowly and overcharges for music, but thats the music industry's fault; poor video player; can't share media with other programs; no Linux client
That said, it works pretty well for syncing with my iPhone. Screwed up my cover art pretty bad though. Coverflow is cool, but does not run as quickly as it should on my computer.
User Rating: 10/10
7.7 failure
Pros: Not Anymore
Cons: Doesnt work
My PC crashes every time i call it on, PC OS (XP) itself giving me a notice that it memory is full, it can save anything in ITUNES or in any other,... and then crashes... every time (since i install a new update)!!!
...Just want to know if they( Apple) willing to pay for my F...Up hard drive on my PC (which i need to restart every time i put the system on)
I have 70 GB of WAV files on ITUNES. Before yesterday i had a very nice music station, now not anymore! I think i going to use JET audio (Cowon) for the future, it is not so convinient as ITUNES, but its not crashes 4 times a year, with every new automatic update! I cant understand how that possible, Or Steve is not in charge anymore? Last two years Apple heading more to the mistakes than anything else... I'm dedicated Apple user, who actually not so dedicated anymore.
...15 minutes ago i've solved the 7.7 problems on A PC (XP).
All you need to do, is to go preferences/software/remove, then just remove Bonjour and Apple Portable Device Manager... And then the rest of the newly updated 7.7 working just perfectly... I dont think you'll miss those parts which odesnty work properly, But if occasionally you have got those needless things (I... Blah Blah), you might miss your boat!
Take Care
User Rating: 3/10
The Worst Yet
Pros: Looks nice
Cons: Continual glitches with iPod Touch
User Rating: 
9/10
Heaven for Iphone/Ipod Touch users
Pros: Music, movies, podcasts, apps for my iphon...wat more can i ask for?
Cons: Apple domination and therefore pricey, iTune itself is resource hungry..
User Rating: 5/10
iPod users use it because we have to
Pros: Clean interface. Little hassle when trying to connect an iPod or iPhone to the software. Very clean layout.
Cons: This player is trying to do it all and requires a lot of memory. Player chokes and skips while downloading or syncing content.
Coverflow interface is integrated into the product, but adds little to the experience. Coverflow was designed for small screens. It goes to waste within iTunes.
The product needs a lot of work and needs to streamline its purpose. As a player it tends to choke when downloading or playing content. Even with the ample amount of RAM, you'll find that iTunes doesn't run smoothly all the time. It does offer a nice interface for your media and a no-hassle approach to syncing.
Be careful when upgrading. It has been a mixed bag, as iTunes has occasionally lost my folder associations. Overall an average product. Apple users don't really have any other choices though.
User Rating: 
4/10
Still no real big deal....
Pros: Some neat, new, unnecessary junk
Cons: Still unaddressed issues like adequate, managed backup recovery
Anyone tried to restore a full music/video library yet? Good Luck !! How about managed backups? Maybe a wizard to guide you throuh the process?
User Rating: 
8/10
James Kim is back!!
Pros: good to see Jim again
Cons: he is no longer around
User Rating: 1/10
Apple Sucks
Pros: Handy to have all devices in one
Cons: AT&T is horrible
User Rating: 9/10
Very good organization and music playback, but stay away from the iTunes Store
Pros: Good music organization, pleasing aesthetics, easy to use interface, easy syncing with the best PMP around
Cons: iTunes store DRMs you to hell and does not have too many movies. If you do not have an iTunes store account, you cannot automatically download artwork.
Now, let's take it one by one:
*Interface*
The interface is easy to use and pleasing, as is Apple's trademark. Playlists are easy to make, you can really tailor the Smart Playlists to your needs. Sorting through playlists is easy, and you can do it by a wide variety of attributes, like Artist, Album, Rating, Composer, Kind of File, Time and so on.
One thing I especially like about the interface is the way you can click that little eye at the bottom right, and it will drop down a table with which you can browse your music collection through Genre, Artist, or Album. I have quite a large music library, so this is very useful to me. You can choose which albums are compilations, and it will separate these in this view.
Besides the list view, there is also an Album+List view, which displays the album cover and average rating of the album (from your individual rating of the tracks) on the right, and the list of tracts on the left. There is an Album artwork view, where the album covers of all the albums are displayed on top, which you can make full screen, and list of songs is at the bottom.
*Organization*
What good is a music player when you have to create folders to organize your songs, mess around with which track is what number... GAHHH it's a mess, and frankly, it's boring and you shouldn't have to do it.
iTunes makes YOUR part in organizing your music virtually nil. All you have to do is import the song through iTunes and be connected to the Internet. iTunes will automatically get track information, and organize your music into folders and subfolders based on that information. Even if you have to manually enter this information, iTunes still does the whole, make-the-folders part for you. Neat, huh?
Within iTunes itself, there is a search feature, so if you really cannot find that song, you can search for it by Artist, Song, or Album. It's a well implemented feature.
As I mentioned, it is very easy to organize your music into sorted playlists, and you can create smart playlists based on a variety of attributes.
*iPod syncing*
This is also a really simple thing. If your iPod is big enough for you to add your whole music library to it, all you need to do is check the playlists to be synced in the 'Music' tab of your iPod. If not, then iTunes will create a playlist for you, which I THINK will be filled with random songs, but I am not sure as I have never used an iPod smaller than my library. iTunes will automatically sync that playlist from now on. You can choose do cancel automatic syncing and do it manually by drag-and-drop. A similar system is in place for videos, podcasts, photos etc.
*Supported File Formats*
I cannot really speak for videos, as I never watch them, but I can speak for music. iTunes, as well as the iPod supports all the major formats: MP3, AAC... no WMA, but that's an inferior format so you should not be using it anyway. I have never had compatibility issues with iTunes/iPod, as far as audio is concerned.
*iTunes Store*
Ah, we've hit the reason why I didn't give this a 10. The iTunes Store.
Why is it so bad? Well, first of all, it's the DRM. I don't wanted to be treated like a ******* criminal when I am LEGALLY purchasing my music. There are too many restrictions on the music: you can only use it on iPods, you can only burn it to a CD x number of times, you can only play the file on y number of computers, it's absolutely unacceptable. I like Apple, but believe me don't buy from iTunes. To quote a video on CNET, "DRM will break your music, and your heart." <-- That's no lie. There is however, an iTunes Plus section, which is not DRM'd. However, this is limited to music from EMI.
...Just stay away from the store and you should be fine. If you insist on buying music online, just go to the Amazon MP3 store. CDs are still the best though.
Second problem with the store is the quality of the music. 128 Kbps? DON'T.
The good part about the store is the podcasts. There are some really interesting ones, and make up for quite a few GB in my 'My Music' folder. They're free to download, so check 'em out.
This is the ONLY negative part about iTunes, and you should not let it stop you from downloading it. Once the record companies allow no-DRM music on the iTunes Store, consider my rating 10/10.
*Bottom Line*
This is the best music player out now. Download it, you won't regret it.
9/10
User Rating: 5/10
Caution: Do Not Buy Things
Pros: Cover Flow, Great Organization, Beautiful Interface
Cons: Can't Play WMV, ANYTHING YOU PURCHASE FROM THE STORE
User Rating: 4/10
There's a worm in this Apple
Pros: Clean interface, generally slick
Cons: CPU intensive, not enough advanced features, doesn't allow standard "eplorer" type function for pictures
If your a complete end user and have no desire to mange your content (music, pictures, etc..) on such a limited space device, your hard pressed to find a way to do it. Songs are easy as you can drop and drag from the library, however you don't get this functionality with photos, your forced to synch all or pick a particular folder(s) where you can manually sync from. There is no way to go to the individual file/picture level. In other words, it's all or nothing unless your willing to create a separate folder first and them use explorer to move all the pictures you want to that folder and then sync it.
Time to plant a new Apple seed.
User Rating: 5/10
Good organization. Performance issues on windows machines.
Pros: Great organization tools. It is very easy to find the file that you are looking for. Interface is simple and unclutterred.
Cons: iTunes for windows is crudely conceived. Load times are slow. Restoring from minimization often brings up a black window.
User Rating: 
7/10
Good When Working, Shocking when Not working
Pros: pretty, iTunes music store, iPod compatibility (duh), Free Album Art
Cons: When it stuffs IT STUFFS!!!, signing up, fixing it on Windows, no WMA on Windows
But the downside is the fact that it won't run .avi files.
The worst part though is when it stops working. Firstly it renders your iPod or iTv use less. Secondly it is a complete B**** to fix because PC services haven't a clue what to do with it and if you cant find the area where your downloaded music is 'cos then it is GONE!!!
Apart from that it is a great program
User Rating: 
2/10
A rip-off!
Pros: Can edit existing MP3 files quick, simple
Cons: iTune files wll not Burn to a CD. Feel like I was screwed!
User Rating: 5/10
needs improvement
Pros: coverflow feature,music library,fast interface
Cons: artwork for albums,bugs in artwork section
User Rating: 5/10
pretty and easy to use but lacks important features
Pros: cover flow is dynamite; iTunes is intuitive to use
Cons: no convert on the fly for most iPods
User Rating: 1/10
Overpiced music with too many confusing restrictions
Pros: Decent music selection
Cons: over-priced low quality down loads. DRM free files reportedly are embeded with user information to track your usage.
User Rating: 8/10
Simple and Streamlined
Pros: Easy to use, easy to buy music, automatically organizes your library, supports videos, automatically syncs your iPod, just easy to use all around
Cons: Won't let you import DVD's, no play speed feature, problems downloading
User Rating: 10/10
Best music player ever.
Pros: Audio enhancements; continuous playback; interface; quick search; unlike general perception, works flawlessly in Vista.
Cons: When opening a single audio file, it automatically adds it to the music library.
User Rating: 9/10
Easier to use
Pros: Easy to move from computer to computer
Cons: None that matter to me.
User Rating: 7/10
Glitchy but user-friendly
Pros: User-friendly interface, match with the MacOSX, looks nice and provide a decent song searcher
Cons: Very Glitchy and Crashes alot of times according to my experience
Unfortunately, the iTunes is haunted by glitches and crashes according to my experience. When transfering songs to my iPod, it tend to disconnect without pior notice and jams halfway. Sometimes it also takes up to much Ram that it slows down the entire computer if you don't have a decent ram. The iTunes installer isn't that good also since the recent iTunes I donwloaded had problems with my computer. Either my computer is glitchy or it is the program itself. Not to mention it had fail me a couple of times when I'm trying to close by crashing on me
User Rating: 1/10
Total waste of time
Pros: You can buy songs online
Cons: You can't play them on anything but ITunes
User Rating: 9/10
The Best Music Player Out There...Recommended
Pros: Looks Great...Very Easy To Organize & Good iPod Sync.
Cons: None Really
User Rating: 5/10
I wish that it worked as smoothly as the iTunes 6.0
Pros: It's iTunes - if you've used it you know
Cons: Not sure if problems are with iTunes of MS Vista - but I am not really happy with this version (yet?)
The music already in iTunes doesn't play.
?
User Rating: 4/10
Nice extras but too much of a cost
Pros: Looks good, music store works, it updates my iPod
Cons: Requires way too much power
User Rating: 1/10
Worthless upgrade that doesn't work
Pros: None - Doesn't work
Cons: Simple... Doesn't work
What is this based on? Not my experience. I was forced to upgrade my iTunes from 6.0 to 7.0.2 after buying a new 80G ipod. It now attempts to analyze gapless playback then immediately freezes. So I have an 80G paper weight.
I've tried everything I can think of and everything suggested on apple.com. Nothing fixes this. (completely uninstalled and then re-installed trying 7.0 & 7.0.1, turned off podcasts, created new user accounts and still have the same freezing)
To prove it was the upgrade, I re-installed 6.0; which works. However, I cannot synch my ipod because it requires 7.0 or higher...
Finally, I saw a thread on "ilounge" that says it may be a bug w/ iTunes and NAS's. I am using a Maxtor Shared Storage NAS and have too many playlists to load directly from my machine. (I had no such issues w/ iTunes 6.x)
So, I put a request on apple's on-line support and have heard nothing for 2 days. I decided to call customer support today. I am currently on hold - my 3rd hour - and giving up.
Not sure how you can hold on to your market share if the software to make your player work doesn't work...?
I will be taking my ipod back tomorrow and spending some time on Cnet's reviews to see what options I have for MP3 players.
User Rating: 8/10
A great way to manage your music.
Pros: Search compatability. The Apple "cool" factor.
Cons: You only have one visualizer to start from, and it disappears when you minimize iTunes
User Rating: 2/10
I want to go back to 6
Pros: it plays songs
Cons: it blocks Musicmatch from opening
Thanks
User Rating: 1/10
Horrible. CNET overrates. User reviews closer to truth
Pros: Gapless playback. The only good thing
Cons: blocks use of personal videos, hard to use, worse
User Rating: 2/10
It's bad, but only consumers will say so.
Pros: iPod integrates better, visual tweaks.
Cons: Mytunes and OurTunes stop working. Stability.
User Rating: 2/10
If your PC library is empty, it is a good companion for playing iPod.
Pros: Pretty, Cuts the gaps between the songs.
Cons: Full of bugs. Worthless and doesn't serve any purpose.
On the good side, iTunes 7 looks pretty and shows summary of my iPod in a pretty graph and picture.
Bottom line, STAY AWAY and DO NO UPGRADE from 6. I had to reinstall my iTunes 6 back. Luckily I knew how to backup my library, so I did not lose anything.
User Rating: 2/10
This program is horrible
Pros: Cool new features
Cons: Slower than a snail whish I hadn't downloaded it
User Rating: 1/10
DO NOT DOWNLOAD THIS IT IS A WASTE OF TIME
Pros: Organizes music very well
Cons: tracks skipping, iTunes store is messed up, bad sound quality
User Rating: 3/10
Nice interface but does not work
Pros: Easy install, nice interface
Cons: would not add files to library
User Rating: 4/10
What It Was Isn't What It Is Anymore?
Pros: Good sound quality, iPod connection, Fantastic music service, Good shuffling, Great equalizer, Parental control settings
Cons: Runs much more RAM/memory than version 6, Interface downgrade (?), Seems like a roughdraft, Bland visualizer, CD burning is hit or miss, Thousands of bugs, Nothing really new
I was excited when Apple announced the seventh edition. I have dial-up and this download took (I believe) an hour and a half so if you're using a dial-up (56k) modem it will take a long time for this to download, especially if you're using the internet at the same time. The install was eventless. iTunes will download album artwork to all of your songs if you wish, but you have to have an iTunes account. It only takes a little time to sign up, you do need a credit card but Apple claims to never give it out to anyone.
Also know changing from version 6 or 7 will NOT delete your old playlists, settings, or even equalizer settings, so it is safe to download. Speaking of safe, it of course comes with no adware or spyware to clog your computer.
New things are sadly slim. There's the new blue icon, but honestly I did like the green better. The overall look seems a bit darker in color, this makes it seem a bit dull. iTunes is still missing customization of the main page. Two new things are the two new ways to view your playlist, one will display the song and artwork at the same time and the other will show huge artwork in a black background. Both seem a little buggy and useless if you didn't download artwork. I personally like the basic.
The navigation of your playlists is simple, it's always on th left and in alphabetical order and it's small enough to not get in the way of anything. However, it is difficult in navigation in other terms. The equalizer, visualizer, and MiniStore are hidden in view, which is pain since the last version just had them directly for one-click service. Also, the main page seems a little busy. What, Apple couldn't put one or two more one click access squares? The preferences section is still a bit disorganized and messy. Another same problem from iTunes 6 that still exists is the CD burner. It will refuse (so far) to save my burning speed settings and is always hit or miss for me. There is also no way to rate song with the one lcick on iTunes 6. Buggy? I think yes.
Along with interface, this one uses much more RAM than the previous. It's not too bad, depending on the memory on your computer, but using it and the boring visualizer or the two new playlists--it really can eat your RAM up.
Overall, it's your choice. If you have a computer with killer RAM and have an iTunes account, I'd try this new version. Otherwise, stick with six.
User Rating: 3/10
Still in 2nd release there is no pause in full screen playback.
Pros: I'd like to focus on one serious shortcoming.
Cons: No pause in full screen playback
Apple still has not fixed, v.7.0.2, a serious bug that makes iTunes worse than a VCR. It is not possible to pause in full screen mode.
When the pause button is pressed the movie stops and user is sent back to the 'song list' screen.
User Rating: 1/10
piece of junk - which means Cnet will love it
Pros: read the dubious review by Mr Kim
Cons: Too many to count
User Rating: 3/10
Very unreliable
Pros: New UI. Cover Art (Good and bad). iPod settings within iTunes
Cons: Crackling sound during playback. Huge resource hog. Cover Art. Very slow. Etc...
I don't know if this is due to iTunes or the new Nano's but all of my synced Podcasts don't play correctly. I have a playlist of all podcasts and once I start playing it, if I press the forward button, it goes to the main menu and stops playing. If I load the podcast as a regular mp3 file, it plays just fine.
I wouldn't be using iTunes or a Nano if there was another player which I could use with the Nike+ kit. As soon as one comes out, I will sell the Nano, uninstall iTunes and use WMP 11 with another player. I think iPods/Nanos and iTunes are not up to part with other options available in the market. Their popular because of all the advertisements and peoples blind loyalty to Apple.
User Rating: 1/10
IGarbage 7.0 (and 7.1)
Pros: Album artwork (when it works)
Cons: Absolutely, completely unstable...great if you never want to use your ipod again.
Jobs should issue a public apology to all windows users (and, from what I hear, a good number of Mac users as well.) What are the chances of that happening?
Oh yeah, also, still haven't made obvious improvements to Podcasts (as in podcast-specific retention policies etc.) and roku (oh my, not a non-apple hardware product!) support is completely (intentionally I must assume) broken.
Way to go apple. Maybe you should pull some guys off of the 'interface polishing team' and put them on the QA department (assuming you have one.)
User Rating: 3/10
waste of time
Pros: can't think of any
Cons: songs jump
User Rating: 3/10
Going backwards here
Pros: Looks nice, I guess.
Cons: Buggy. 7.01 does not fix all problems
User Rating: 3/10
Horrible System Hog
Pros: Excellent user interface as usual (and I still had a download of 6 for when I became incredibly mad at 7)
Cons: Incredible system hog, was almost unusable with XP SP2 P4 3.2 with 2gigs of ram
Itunes 6 tends to use 60 megs of ram, and 0% CPU while playing.
Itunes 7 tends to use 200 megs of ram, and 12% CPU while playing.
First of all I have a hyper threading enabled so I'm using a virtual dual processor. Meaning that if any process uses 50% CPU it is completely processor bound in one thread, and if it goes above that it has a second thread tying up the processor.
While using the UI of iTunes I routinely see 6-12% CPU and again 60 megs of ram.
Using the UI of iTunes 7 has processor jump up to 50% and at some times 75%. This is insane usage on a P4 3.2 gHz processor.
I have a suspicion that is because I enbabled gapless playback (it took a line time to go through everything and do the detection.)
Of course I can't find anything on how to turn it off.
Well I uninstalled 7 and went back to an old download of 6 that I have around.
User Rating: 8/10
Great after installing the newer new version (7.0.1)
Pros: Good interface, very good play back, easy use for Itunes music store
Cons: The original version of Itunes 7 had more bugs than the South has Mosquitos
I downloaded and installed version 7.0.1. So far so good. While the interface was always easy and the appearance good, the play back with version 7.0.1 is clean and crisp. Use of graphics programs and the internet has not produced the previously experienced interference or audio problems. It appears that Apple has fixed the original problems, and I am very satisfied with the product.
Upon further use I have to down grade my opinion of Itunes 7. I still have playback issues when the computer is heavily involved in on-screen graphics, either Internet or Digital photo editing. The problems seem directly tied to heavy video activity. It is better than the original version, but still not what it should be. I am downgrading my rating to 5 and that is, I think generous. Unless you want to see movies on your Ipod - stick with version 6 until Apple completes the fixes to version 7.
Upon further use I have to down grade my opinion of Itunes 7. I still have playback issues when the computer is heavily involved in on-screen graphics, either Internet or Digital photo editing. The problems seem directly tied to heavy video activity. It is better than the original version, but still not what it should be. I am downgrading my rating to 5 and that is, I think generous. Unless you want to see movies on your Ipod - stick with version 6 until Apple completes the fixes to version 7.
Upon further use I have to down grade my opinion of Itunes 7. I still have playback issues when the computer is heavily involved in on-screen graphics, either Internet or Digital photo editing. The problems seem directly tied to heavy video activity. It is better than the original version, but still not what it should be. I am downgrading my rating to 5 and that is, I think generous. Unless you want to see movies on your Ipod - stick with version 6 until Apple completes the fixes to version 7.
User Rating: 1/10
i personally dont recommend
Pros: it's new nothing more
Cons: worst nightmare
1. i lost 500 songs on my ipod after downloading it
2. sync my old ipod photo but artworks were not available.
3. shuffled artworks.. artworks appearing on different artists.
4. audio is very bad
this is the first time i've seen an upgrade that is worst than its lower versions..
i dont recommend this version..
User Rating: 3/10
IT7 messed up my Nano
Pros: I like the iPod updater built in
Cons: My podcast downloads are all screwed up
User Rating: 1/10
Lordy Its Slow & Glitchy
Pros: Uploading page with time & data amount
Cons: Slow slow and really slow with a host of bugs - beware
User Rating: 1/10
Broken Sound / CPU Utilisation High / Bloatware
Pros: None in my opinion
Cons: Do better testing Apple.
User Rating: 5/10
Fresh new interface, buggy song playback
Pros: LOVE the new layout
Cons: It cuts out when playing songs!
User Rating: 4/10
I'd avoid 7+ if possible
Pros: Runs much better than the initial 7.0 release
Cons: Still a CPU hog, no smooth playback while using other programs
I'd recommend not upgrading past 6.0.5 unless you absolutely have to. My rating of 4 is generous, at best.
For those of you who have "no problems", you're lucky.
User Rating: 9/10
Great, NOT resource hungry!
Pros: cover flow's cool and easy to use, gapless playback, sleeker design, organization of source list, Download Manager
Cons: gaps in cover flow
User Rating: 4/10
Released too soon - too many bugs. I'd expect this from a Windoze product, not Apple
Pros: Attractive interface, good new features
Cons: Issues with bugs - problems with audio books, missing drivers, locating cover art, importing and burning CDs and DVDs
User Rating: 1/10
Would rate ZERO if possible.
Pros: It was pretty while it worked. If they could make it work flawlessly it'd be a great app.
Cons: Will it ever work again?
Have disabled artwork and all those other things everyone says disable...and still...CRASH.
WISH I could have disabled that stupid checking for gapless playback, but they won't let you do that! I would stop it as soon as it started, but sometimes I just wasn't quick enough! I'm sure checking for gapless playback had something to do with iTunes' errors and it crippling my PC (oh yeah, by the way, when iTunes 7 crashes, it crashes the whole PC, not just the app.)
Made my iPod a paperweight, too. Thankfully I have another PC w/iTunes 6 on it, and could reload my songs from there.
However, I am unable to successfully reload 6 on the PC that had 7 on it. I can run it, but I cannot sync with it. I keep getting this dialog box about there being an iTuneshelper.exe Visual C++ runtime error...can't fix it after multiple tries of uninstall, clean reg, reboot, reinstall. Still get the same message.
What happens to people without another PC to reload their stuff? Their iPods are paperweights until Apple gets around to distributing a fix that actually FIXES the problems.
I'm used to weird errors (yep a windows person) but this one is one of the worst I've ever encountered - and it's apple software. I was really thinking how great it was to be able to rely on Apple software being high-standard - until now.
Oh, and it's not great, either, that Videos (TV, etc.) won't play on iTunes before v7.0.
Smooth move, Apple.
User Rating: 1/10
Worst release ever
Pros: it didn't blow up my computer
Cons: it did lock it up, cause slowdowns, and not let me play music
music doesn't even play back properly anymore, isn't that the point of a media player? Downgraded to 6.0.5
maybe next time apple
User Rating: 1/10
Horrible Scratchy Playback
Pros: It's free.
Cons: Useless until fixed
http://www.softwarepatch.com/software/itunes.html
I am using Quicktime version 7.1.3 and they are working great.
User Rating: 1/10
7th Heaven this is NOT
Pros: The only pro I could see is the ability to download PacMan. But I can't use it because I have an iPod Photo 60.
Cons: Can I have about 10 pages to list them all?
If you have, like I unfortunately did, don't open it until you have backed up all your music.
From the start it ran very slow, froze up my WinXP P4 1536MB ram laptop, crashed my system, and deleted some music from my library.
Then after I removed the app and tried to go back to iTunes 6, I could not launch 6.
"Itunes has encountered an error and needs to close."
I tried two different versions of 6 without success. I even tried re-downloading 7 but kept getting the error message.
After 5 hours of downloading, uninstalling, reinstalling, etc. I finally found the fix.
I had to download/ install Quicktime 7 stanalone WITHOUT Itunes. Only then would iTunes work again.
This all started because of my mistake in installing this bloated processor crashing piece of CRAP!
Run, don't walk away from iTunes 7.
User Rating: 1/10
Not Usuable on my MacBook Pro
Pros: None: can't use it
Cons: Absolutely not usable, a pain to uninstall
After hours of fighting with it, I gave up. But to uninstall I had to figure out what file to delete to make the iTunes 6 installation proceed again on my Mac. After figuring that out, I finally was able to install iTunes 6 and can listen to music again.
Apple got its free QA this time, but in the future it won't be able to rely on this customer to find out that it's new release doesn't work, from now on I'm taking a wait and see approach on iTunes downloads unless they are planning on paying me to test.
User Rating: 2/10
Not an option
Pros: Looks great with get-real functions (unexpected from Apple)
Cons: Extremely por playback, resource sinker
BTW I have an AMD 3400 and 1GB ram!
User Rating: 
6/10
iPod Update 1.2
Pros: Refreshing Format
Cons: Update 1.2 for the 5G Predecessor didnt include Gapless Playback and new Search Function
Would anyone know what is the "cool quick scroll" included in the update 1.2?
Well, I don't have a problem with the new iTunes 7. The new look is a refreshing change.
Lastly, I believe anyone would agree-for those that have 5G predecessors, that they wont upgrade to the new updated 5G. Only minimal changes were made that is not worth spending again for a new iPod.
I would rather wait for the 6G!
Could anyone share or help if they have the same experience as i have.
As everyone did, I updgraded to iTunes 7.0.1.8 (latest). I dont know what happened but when I unchecked and re-checked to show album art, it doesn't show anymore in my iPod vid! Weird thing is, the album art still shows in the "viewer" in iTunes and on the song's info.
Have invested a lot of time downloading pictures for each song in my playlists. Well for me, I find it "bland" when no album art is showing in my iPod.
User Rating: 3/10
Where's the Apple quality?!
Pros: Still plays music
Cons: Way too many bugs
User Rating: 2/10
Apple trying to give Zune a hand up...
Pros: looks good
Cons: keeps crashing...
User Rating: 9/10
no probs here
Pros: Download album artwork
Cons: Consumes no processer power than 6.0
User Rating: 1/10
stay with iTunes 6! Don't Upgrade
Pros: Album art retrieval, cover flow
Cons: uses too much memory, uses too much memory, uses too much memory
User Rating: 5/10
wiped out my ipod
Pros: no pros i can think of yet
Cons: wiped out my ipod
i did not uninstall it though was afraid to do any more changes LOL
User Rating: 1/10
Horrific. Do not download until Apple apologizes and issues a fix.
Pros: I can say nothing good about this program.
Cons: Absolutely everything.
User Rating: 1/10
choppy music please fix apple
Pros: nice lookinng
Cons: fix these bigs
User Rating: 7/10
A huge improvement ofer previous iTunes brings Apple even more ahead of its competition
Pros: Super cool new interface; Coverflow; TV shows and movies; several freebies you can cash in on if you're quick enough
Cons: iTunes has now become resource-heavy; movie offerings temporarily only majorily from Disney; takes a really long time to download software, music, and movies compared to other applications
Now, there are several glitche which I am sure Apple will work out. Some podcasts don't work quite as one might desire. The radio section, I'll agree with cNet, is very underdeveloped, and downloading the software itself is a hassle. The download speed of music and movies are not as fast as those of Sonic Stage 4.0 and Movielink from Sony, and so far there aren't many choices for you to choose from concerning the downloading of movies, although this, too, will most likely change shortly.
The iTunes 7 is also very resource heavy. It's now like the Norton of music download services. You might as well forget about trying to do anything remotely productive with iTunes and all its features turned on unless you have a very high-end system. I don't so this in particular annoys me very much, as do iTunes' DVD ripping restrictions. You basically can't do much with DVDs, so read Apple's FAQs and fine print and liscense carefully.
Finally, one last major gripe: Why can I download a certian show ONLY ONCE if I paid for it? If you have previously donloaded a TV show FULLY, then you may not download it again. (As related to me by an iTunes 7 representative.) This is annoying if you need psace on your hard drive, or if you don't have the time to rip the material to tens of CDs (as they may not write to DVDs at seemingly random times).
Apple has improved iTunes, but hopefully some of the glitches and features can be further improved in the near future.
- Nick
User Rating: 3/10
Do not download iTunes 7 full of bugs
Pros: free album art
Cons: to many bugs that need to be worked out
User Rating: 9/10
Was a flawless upgrade for me
Pros: Coverflow Rocks, Nice to be able to grab high-quality covers from the store
Cons: No Moviesor TV in Canada
User Rating: 1/10
WARNING DON'T INSTALL THIS PRODUCT
Pros: Great if you are using a MAC
Cons: Doesn't work with windows and no help from Apple
User Rating: 1/10
iTunes 7 upgrade impossible to use
Pros: I can think of absolutely nothing for "pros"
Cons: loss of purchased music, iPod resets randomly
User Rating: 6/10
iTunes was a resource hog before, too
Pros: Some nice new features
Cons: Don't do anything else with your computer
And as always, you can't weed out downloads on your iPod without going thru a lot of contortions.
User Rating: 8/10
Excellent product
Pros: Good look'n feel, easy to use, lot of features
Cons: A bit buggy, Apple need to qucikly release à 7.01 version
I do not experoence at all the high CPU usage reported by some users.
On my Athlon 65 x2 3800+ and 4 GB of RAM Itunes uses only 2 or 3 % of the CPU .......
User Rating: 4/10
What happened????
Pros: It finally worked
Cons: It took long enough
User Rating: 2/10
Free crack for crackwhores!
Pros: someday will be good again
Cons: crashed my XP
Horsetitts! Give me the complaintbook!
Lately iTunes ******************, I have never experienced so many network timeouts, no-connects before. Nearly impossible to search and download music now. Somebody please sue these people, so we can download music again.
User Rating: 2/10
Can't Believe it Was Released
Pros: Looks good and has a lot of potential.
Cons: Would love all the features if they worked correctly.
Looking forward to an updated version.
User Rating: 3/10
album art gapless playback problems!
Pros: album art in itunes showing gapless awesome
Cons: nothing works on my nano!
User Rating: 3/10
It's okay as long as you don't want your computer to do anything else
Pros: Looks nice. Gives you video, if you care. I don't
Cons: processor intensive is an understatement
I upped the priority on the task a couple of times, which seemed to help a little. How do I get iTunes 6 back?
1. Go to CONTROL PANEL.
2. Double click QUICKTIME.
3. Choose the ADVANCED tab.
4. Under VIDEO, uncheck ENABLE DIRECTDRAW ACCELERATION.
5. Also under VIDEO, choose SAFE MODE (GDI ONLY)
6. Select OK. (Or APPLY if you wish).
User Rating: 2/10
iTunes 7 disaster!
Pros: nice UI, Cover Flow
Cons: unstable, scratchy sound, bugs, eats up lots of system ressources,
User Rating: 3/10
Itunes 7 required!!!
Pros: great new features and new layout
Cons: required to purchase music, bugs, memory hog and a lot of crashing
User Rating: 7/10
Improving Slowly
Pros: Agree with C-net review, plus: Can now include CD Text when burning audio discs
Cons: see C-net review, plus: Music videos stored with music; still only 128 bitrate for audio
The big benefit for me is that iTunes 7 comes close enough to what I?m seeking that I might be able to make it my sole Jukebox program. iTunes 6 was lacking so many features that I purchased a third-party app called Media Monkey to manage my files.
Media Monkey still does a better job at finding album cover artwork, but searching Google Pictures provides even better results.
I?m still frustrated that in iTunes 7, I cannot change the file naming convention. I would like my files to be named ?<Artist> - <Track Title>? and not iTunes? default of ?<Track Number> <Track Title>?
A new annoyance in version 7 is that all Music Videos are now lumped in with your audio files in a Music library. There is no longer a Video folder as in previous versions. TV Shows and Movies have their own folders ? which is great. But Music Vidoes are now scrambled in with your audio. If you use Smart Playlists, and you don?t want to include Music Vidoes, you?ll have to add a rule that Video Kind is not Music Video.
My final disappointment has to do with the quality of the audio files. While I really like the higher resolution video files being provided, I don't understand why we're still stuck with 128 kbps bit rate audio files. Apple has their downloads locked and secure. Why wouldn't they want to offer a higher quality file? The only reason I can think of is that they would have to revise the estimates on the number of songs each iPod would hold.
On the plus side, I?m happy to see that CD Text can now be included in audio discs. That means you?ll be able to read the track names in newer CD players, such as those in most cars.
So while I agree, it?s not the complete dream jukebox, I appreciate it?s improvements and hope for corrections to it?s shortcomings soon.
User Rating: 3/10
Not ready for Wide Release
Pros: nice interface, you can hide the video sections
Cons: warbled sound, lost the proper links from song title to the actual file
Not worth the 'upgrade' stick with the older versions of iTunes.
User Rating: 1/10
Stay Away!
Pros: Makes me appreciate Winamp even more
Cons: It won't work
Now run my Ipod with Winamp and use Quick replacement as well. I'm all done with Apple. Even Itunes 6 crashed my system twice while burning a disc, something I haven't seen it do in years.
User Rating: 1/10
Itunes crashes before it opens
Pros: nothing good for me
Cons: the stupid thing won't work.
Now, Itunes 7 won't even open. It crashes while it's loading.
User Rating: 2/10
It looks like Rafe's opinion was pulled.
Pros: Continues to play music.
Cons: Needs significant system resources.
User Rating: 4/10
No Apple for whoever put the Grade-D effort into this release.
Pros: Album art, DirectX for visualizations
Cons: Everything else!
I would have rated this lower, but the album art search is nice enough. What sucks about it is that it misses a lot of titles, and popular ones at that. It missed the Dave Matthews Band and the Beatles! How can it find things significantly more obscure than that, but miss the Beatles?! Cover flip and grouping also look cool, but as far as being useable? They aren't! And this last thing is totally pointless, but the new blue icon is ugly.
I tried "downgrading" back to iTunes 6 and I was told that the library couldn't be read because it was created with a newer version! Geez! If I could re-rate this, I would and I would give it a 2 for not only being a piece of junk that operates like it's Alpha software, but being impossible to remove and revert back to something good.
Curse you, Apple!
The only thing that has me keeping this absolute piece of garbage software is that I've worked long and hard on my library and don't wish to revert back to square one. This has been one of the worst, if not the worst, pieces of software I've ever used. Put it this way, I can't wait until Apple actually releases something worthwhile again. My video playback has become absolutely atrocious to the point where it's more like watching a slideshow.
User Rating: 4/10
A system hog that gets in the way
Pros: It looks cute
Cons: Stop with the "get a mac" excuses already
User Rating: 7/10
With new iPod you have to have iTunes 7
Pros: Great - just don't use the cover art feature!
Cons: Had to do some minor tweaking
User Rating: 9/10
For Windows, maybe not, for Mac, definitely
Pros: Great features, fast, great integration
Cons: None on a Mac
User Rating: 9/10
Simply Great Upgrade for Mac and Windows!
Pros: Excellent new clean interface
Cons: Can't understand why we can't burn playable DVD's...
I also use this program on Windows and have had ZERO problems
User Rating: 9/10
Woks best on a MAC
Pros: Coverflow, new configuration on sidebar, new "views,"
Cons: None for me so far
I looked at all the comments, and the realization is that iTunes works best "right now" on a Mac, and that Apple takes care of it's own users first, which is how it should be. Microsoft would do the same for Windows users. The software works fantastically on my Macs. But wait... I also have a windows laptop, and I'm seeing no problems. I also have fully populated memory on that PC,so that might make a difference?
There are many stop-gap solutions one can do right now. One can always go back to iTunes 6.0. Or one can BUY a Mac that runs Windows with the Intel chip. Or one can be patient until Apple works out the bugs. From the user reviews, it's obvious Apple needs to improve the Windows version. And I'm SURE Apple will fix it in the next revision. They usually do.
User Rating: 9/10
The best version yet - I liuke it a lot
Pros: Much nicer interface; easeir to upload entire CDs
Cons: Album Covers are mostly MIA
User Rating: 3/10
I had a problem too
Pros: Looks better.
Cons: Caused some songs to skip
User Rating: 1/10
Very buggy,
Pros: None, as it won't install
Cons: Unable to install after several attempts
User Rating: 9/10
Not perfect but...
Pros: interface, performance, album art features
Cons: still some things I would like to see implemented in future versions
It is not perfect. I would really like to see them improve the rating system and fix access problems to features such as "Just for you" which seems to periodically hang from time to time, but all in all I find it a big improvement over the previous release and I am definitely *not* going back.
User Rating: 5/10
Not a fully tested procuct. Apple released 7.0 too quickly.
Pros: Still one of the easier Music Players on the Market to use and download on.
Cons: Problem of viewing video on all my old videos downloaded from Itunes store and already converted video.
User Rating: 9/10
Going Great for me..
Pros: Loving the new layouts
Cons: Music Videos mixed in to songs
I installed it on a Mac, a Win2k machine, and a CP. All 3 machines have the same library. On all three machines I asked it to find the album art for me. What I noticed was huge CPU hits until the album art was loaded or until it thought it found everything, other then that I never had any issues, less then 2% cpu usage on each host.
User Rating: 9/10
CPU is fine, after initial spike
Pros: Nice new features (movies, cover art)
Cons: None, so far.
User Rating: 9/10
Fantastic new version
Pros: It feels like browsing your old CD collection
Cons: Can't replace completely Windows Media Center
And no bugs so far..
User Rating: 8/10
Fast, stable ... a worthwhile update
Pros: Better views and layout, better encoding, faster smart playlists
Cons: Not a fan of Cover Flow
The only thing I am not a fan of at this point is the "cover flow", so I dont use it.
NOTE: The reports of being a system hog are apparently overblown. I am writing this now while iT7 is running, along with Mail, Firefox, Keynote, BBEdit, and Aqua Data Studio. No slowdowns or hiccups. *shurg*
User Rating: 3/10
Mac version is buggy too!
Pros: New features & interface.
Cons: Frequent "freezes!"
User Rating: 9/10
Great upgrade !
Pros: Good new features, better GUI
Cons: Not much, can't really find any cons.
User Rating: 10/10
Get a MacBook Pro
Pros: SImply the Best iTUnes Release Ever
Cons: None whatsover
It would be interesting to see the complaints of XP users placed against those who are running iTunes on a Mac. I'm sure that such a complaint might be similar to the clever commercials Apple has been running comparing the PC to the Mac.
User Rating: 9/10
Works great on my Media Center Mac Mini
Pros: Overall better UI, cover flow, videos
Cons: Not many videos yet
Some people complain that the movie resolution is "only VGA" while others complain that it takes long time to download a movie. Perhaps MPEG4 VGA at this point is a good compromise with the ADSL and DOCSIS cable modems out there. I think so. We have to be realistic about current technologies.
The fact of my experience is that I use iTunes 7 on my Mac Mini Intel Dual Core connected to my TV. It's the absolutely best media center "PC" and with iTunes 7 it has even become more attractive. Period.
Only wish I have is that Cover Flow would be integrated into Front Row. That would be very very cool.
Today my laptop with Windows XP crashed one time. My phone with Windows mobile also crashed one time today while I was browsing. Nothing special...
But I have yet to see any instability in iTunes 7. In fact I have yet to see a crash on any of my two Mac Minis since I got them (6 month for Intel one and about one year for G4 one).
Yes I'm not Mac crazy. I've used Windows/DOS heavily since 1984.
But perhaps Apple didn't do enough QA on the iTunes for Windows. I didn't check it, but for the Mac version running on Intel Macs I think iTunes 7 is great and it runs fast on my Macs.
User Rating: 3/10
should be a beta
Pros: cool interface, ipod functionality
Cons: bugs, glitches, dreary UI
User Rating: 2/10
No iTunes store for me!
Pros: Great looks and exciting music offers with promised downloads, however ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,(see below)
Cons: I signed up for an account, except at the payment option stage, I find that I cannot buy from iTunes store because SINGAPORE is not an acceptable country.
What gives?
User Rating: 3/10
Thanks, but I'll keep my iTunes 6.
Pros: All the features of iTunes 6. For the iTunes 7 features, forget them.
Cons: Looks dumb and Windows-ish. Skips lots of songs, resorts order of songs...buggy.
User Rating: 6/10
Can You Here Me Now? NO!
Pros: Nice Design, Virtual CD Album Flipping is Cool, Movies in Store
Cons: Poor Audio Quality
User Rating: 8/10
Great upgrade, few issues but worth it
Pros: New download process, album art
Cons: Slower than before
Album art additions are excellent. I know they have all been done before but worth having.
Application is a bit slower and new visualisations would have been nice.
User Rating: 2/10
Scratchy playback of music. Can't do anything else while playing music.
Pros: Nice visuals
Cons: Inability to hear smooth playback of music.
User Rating: 10/10
The best jukebox on the market
Pros: It does everything, rips CDs, plays MP3, AAC, WAF, podcasts, video, slick modern interface
Cons: When you play a video, it would be nice to set a full screen mode as default
User Rating: 3/10
MAC heads unite.....Windows geeks revolt
Pros: Elegent implementation - after all it is an apple
Cons: Poor Windows integration, ITunes format only, Limits Portability
User Rating: 3/10
incredibly glichy
Pros: movies, itunesness
Cons: SO GLICHY, DO NOT UPGRADE
Three words: WAIT FOR PATCH!!!!
User Rating: 2/10
Back to the drawing board
Pros: What pros? See cons section.
Cons: Crash, crash, crash.
User Rating: 1/10
Apple software works.... Always....
Pros: Album covers are kind of cool, when it works.
Cons: It's glairing problems sound/crashing/library problems.
User Rating: 4/10
Mixed blessings with this upgrade.
Pros: Great enhacements!
Cons: Non-specific bugginess. Mucho problemas.
Stay away from this upgrade until the bugs are worked out and a patch or an update is posted.
User Rating: 9/10
GREAT PRODUCT
Pros: Always great media organization
Cons: slightly slow if you have a very old computer.
User Rating: 6/10
Did Microsoft help
Pros: Works on one machine
Cons: Doesn't work on one machine
User Rating: 3/10
Slow and Buggy
Pros: Cover Art looks great
Cons: You need a fast processor and art retreival slow
User Rating: 4/10
Very upseting...
Pros: None so far
Cons: Can't even start up...
User Rating: 6/10
I find it lukewarm at best
Pros: auto volume leveling, the general commonality of the iTunes store
Cons: UI is very unfriendly to people with disabilities, resource intensive
And yes, iTunes 7 is such a resource hog.
User Rating: 4/10
Nice additions but way too buggy to make useful.
Pros: New additions like cover flow, gapless playback and album art retrieval are welcome
Cons: EXTREMELY buggy, power intensive.
User Rating: 3/10
iTunes 7.0 RUINED MY DAY!
Pros: Slick interface, Better iPod Synching
Cons: VERY BUGGY!!!
Needless to say it sounded like someone had stuck a record player with a blown speaker under water and cranked the volume.
I spent my night trying to figure out the cause of my problems...was it a Windows setting, was it my speaker setup, did my sound card need new drivers, was the file I downloaded from Apple corrupt, etc. Nothing seemed to work.
After installing and re-installing iTunes several times, and playing my MP3's without issue on WMP (Windows Media Player) I came to the concluson that these problems were an iTunes problem, not a "me" problem.
I went to Apple's forum and come to find out, I wasn't the only person who had these problems (see these links for more info.)
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=637218
or
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=650565
My suggestion is to NOT download / upgrade to iTunes 7.0 until a fix is found for the existing bugs. Hopefully this will save others the pain and suffering
of not being able to listen to their MP3's...I tried to track some of the posts on Apple's forums and ended up running into this...
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/
IF YOU'RE HAVING PROBLEMS WITH iTunes, DOWNLOAD IT ASAP AND FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS IN THE FOLLOWING LINK...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93610
Hope this is useful to everyone!
If you are having problems with iTunes 7.0, download 7.0.1 ASAP!!! Here's the link...
http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/
It's not a perfect fix, but it will hold you over until the next version / update. If you still have problems, check the link below for further help...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93610
User Rating: 4/10
iBugs might be a better name!
Pros: Nice interface, love the iPod status window
Cons: Keeps saying I have a file open! What file?
User Rating: 3/10
Nice new features that don't work
Pros: Movies, improved sidebar/source-list, Coverflow
Cons: Some interesting changes to UI layout
The Browse and other interface elements are moved in this version which will take some getting used to and the equalizer is less accessible.
Apple needs to flush out problems with stability, processor-hogging, and interface.
User Rating: 3/10
Ipod Issues
Pros: Improved Left-side panel; Album Art scroller
Cons: Album Art scroller eats insane amounts of memory. (seems to use less when I run itunes without using this feature). Video/Audio playback issues; Poor Ipod Synching
Frist off, the interface is probably the only notible improvement. Itunes seems a bit more organized now, and includes nice TV/Games features.
However, its compatiblity with <b>ipod</b> is horrible. The player "updated" the new ipod which I purchased for here 2 weeks ago. It did not properly update it though. The Ipod reads (under the new summary page) up to date , with version 2.1 of the firmware(update and reset buttons greyed out). The issue is that we can no longer synch music to the pod. When attempting to due so it claims the pod is of an incorrect version.
Even worse, this morning itunes would not even load the ipod into the interface, claiming that it needed to be reformatted. I found this incredibly disheartening. Now I'm in need of finding a 3rd party program to "hack" the music off the pod before I reformat.
I think the imature release of Itune 7 was a major mistake by apple.(at least the windows version) I strongly recommend that if you have an ipod, wait until a newer version, 7.1 or whatever, is realeased to upgrade.
**5G 30gig Ipod video**
User Rating: 1/10
Unbearable to Use
Pros: Attractive Graphics
Cons: Stutters...Unubearable
User Rating: 3/10
complicated and buggy...
Pros: great album viewing...
Cons: processor-intensive; crashes my WinXP SP2 PC frequently...retagging/naming my mp3 files erroneously; music videos disappeared from Video section on iTunes...
User Rating: 3/10
A bad dream came true
Pros: Cute. Now it shows the file size. Good if you're playing local songs.
Cons: Bad support and really slow download.
I had the previous version and last week changed for this version. By then, I thought it was really slow, now I know that I was wrong, this version is even slower.
Before the change I could download a file something like 300KB in 6 hours (I have a 128KB connection). Now, I can't download a thing. I write to support and they say I have to use the help on their site and thats all. I did it before I wrote them, so, now I have store credit that can't be used.
Maybe next version will be better, by now, its just a disapointment.
User Rating: 9/10
Excellent on a MAC
Pros: It works almost flawlessly on my 2 Macs - an older iMac 20" and an new Mac Book Pro 17"
Cons: Not all album art is there, but Clutter does a good job filling in when needed.
I have been VERY pleased. I have not tried to work with it on a Windows machine though.
User Rating: 8/10
I have had a great experience so far...not that taxing on my system.
Pros: Album cover art feature is a nice touch, much better layout visually.
Cons: I did have intial problems getting album art, but after a couple tries I got all the art that iTunes has in its database. I think.
I am running this on a Dell notebook with a T2400 Dual Core, 2GBs of Ram and an ATI X1400 video card. The CPU had ~30% usage when iTunes starts up and whenever I change to a new song using the fastforward/next track button (probably due to switching to the appropriate album art).
However, when it starts to play the songs it goes down to 4% to 6% usage. No problem with that.
User Rating: 6/10
Good product with a few bugs
Pros: improved side-bar organization, movie downloads, free album art, higher resolution tv shows
Cons: requires more processor activity, distorted sound with certain settings, can't burn tv shows or movies to playable dvd
After reading about some of the sound distortion issues some users were experiencing based on their Quicktime preferences (e.g. output format supported by your audio hardware) I decided to change my own settings to see if I could replicate the distortion others were experiencing and also to match the maximum settings my sound card supports. My initial settings were Rate=48kHz and Size=16bit and iTunes 7 performed fine under them except for the processor issue described above. I changed my settings to Rate=192kHz and Size=24bit and got extremely distorted sound despite the fact that my SB Audigy 2 ZS card supports those settings. After reverting to the initial settings, everything was fine. Hopefully Apple will fix this with the next update.
User Rating: 1/10
Major Bugs...Do not download!!!
Pros: Slick user interface, flipping of album covers is very cool
Cons: All my songs play back with static, pops, and crackles
Don't just take my word, do a Google search for "itunes 7 problem".
User Rating: 9/10
Overall I just like it
Pros: Looks Better, CD Covers, Podcast Organized, Ipod movable between 5 authorized machines
Cons: No Podcast covers
User Rating: 8/10
Works Great on a Powerbook
Pros: Nice updates to interface; like the movie section
Cons: PC's can't fully experience the ITunes functionality
User Rating: 4/10
so much for quality! wait for the update.
Pros: new layout, interface, etc pretty nice.
Cons: bugs. won't play in stereo for more than 30 seconds.
if microsoft released something like this, there would be a massive outcry. apple is lucky they have such a large fan base
User Rating: 10/10
This program kicks butt!!!!!
Pros: It's apple.
Cons: There are none
User Rating: 7/10
Wow...and...oh no!
Pros: Cover flow, iPod update, download manager
Cons: Buggy, many studios still in negotiation
The iPod update information is great and very informative and the download manager is flexible.
Video playback of 640x480 television episodes was much improved over the 320x240 versions.
The downside to the whole thing is that it's buggy. I ripped a few dozen CDs after installing and that worked well but I've read various reports of problems.
QuickTime and iTunes 7 need to be tuned and the bugs need to be handled.
It'll be a good release at 7.0.1, though.
User Rating: 3/10
Ruined my day
Pros: Slick if that's what you're going for
Cons: Too slick & buggy; not straight-forward, if you just want to get in & out quickly
Hogged my resources, didn't function properly, disabled my ability to do a (Windows) restore to get back to earlier version & had to go through an all-night frustration to go back, and 6 now isn't completely as it was, nor is my iPod when connected. I'm sure I've got V7 data hanging around in my registry till the end of time.
I just wish they'd do their testing with a variety of users - I'm a heavy Public Radio podcaster, in addition to some movies, music, TV (and a 58-year-old female), so I probably use it differently than a lot. I *love* my iPod and iTunes 6 works really well for me, but I felt exactly as BetterthanurX stated when V7 loaded up - my stomach started churning after I had a look at it. It's so supposedly user friendly with all the cover art and slick graphics that now it's not just a simple, functional tool to get stuff on & off the iPod fast. It grinds my system to a halt - and from what I've read on Apple's site about various advanced features you can use with iTunes (practical things, not cover art) - you must upgrade or you can't do any of it.
If they'd provide a way to test it out and revert to earlier software easily, I'd be ok with this beta stuff, but it's a tortuous process that makes you hate an otherwise outstanding product. I know I'm going to find in the near future that I'll be forced to upgrade, and I'm just dreading that day.
User Rating: 2/10
Lots and lots of Bugs
Pros: Too many bugs
Cons: Too many bugs
User Rating: 9/10
I'm very satisfied
Pros: Next gen interface, movies well integrated
Cons: a little slower on my Mac
for those who are having troubles, i do feel apple should have made this more bulletproof before launching.
User Rating: 7/10
Nice, but with problems
Pros: Continues iTunes' easy user interface, nice Cover Flow
Cons: Album Artwork doesn't work, slow
User Rating: 2/10
more bugs than before
Pros: its free to use
Cons: still buggy
Still have grey text on blue background unreadable.
labels in screens don't wrap so you only get 70% of the text to describe what the form is suppose to do
User Rating: 10/10
What Is Up With These Negative Reviews?
Pros: Just Like iTunes 6 only better and cleaner
Cons: Needs more movies
And yet, I'm reading review after review of people swearing the thing won't run.
Is it possible ALL these people have computer older than mine or even LESS RAM then I have??
Are they all PC users and iTunes just doesn't work well on PC's??
What's going on here? Why does my old iMac seem to outperform all these other users????
User Rating: 2/10
What good is an ITune if its not tunned.
Pros: nice interface
Cons: BAD BAD BAD SCRATCHY SOUND
User Rating: 2/10
Like all apple thinks it's the same
Pros: It is a good player
Cons: processor-intensive , copy from WMP11
User Rating: 3/10
Shuffle no longer works
Pros: I like the cover art importation
Cons: Missing the full screen button, shuffle stopped functioning
User Rating: 4/10
too many bugs
Pros: nice skin, you can dowload movies
Cons: problem with CNET's podcasts
Movies at 640 x 480 ?.. you must be kidding !!! I can go rigth now to blockbuster and rip any movie at 720 x 480 !!!... and what about the bitrate ???
User Rating: 2/10
98% CPU Usage? It's so bad I had to uninstall it.
Pros: Nicely cleaned up interface, Cover search is pretty, but completely useless
Cons: 98% CPU Usage, rendered my computer useless when I used it.
Love the latest interface updates, though I'll still probably just stick with the original browse, the cover shot feature was nice to look at but completely useless, in my opinion. I'd rather have a solid perfoming product.
Thought the product was going to be excellent, loved that Apple incorporated the iPod utilities into iTunes. So far I had to uninstall 7 and go back to 6 so I could acutally use my computer when iTunes is running.
User Rating: 3/10
Not ready for end-users. Downloadable video not "near DVD" resolution.
Pros: New features look promising.
Cons: Buggy. esp. on Windows. Apple has not done due dilligence.
Apple advertises their downloadable video as being "near DVD" quality of 640x480. But in fact widescreen iTunes Store content - movies and TV dramas is letterboxed and uses a resolution of 640x320 or less. By comparison most DVDs produced in recent years use 720x480 resolution and create a widescreen image through anamorphic stretching (sometimes called "enhanced for 16:9 displays"). So the iTunes Store's widescreen video is actually less than 60% of DVD quality. That's like saying Kansas is "near" New York.
The procedure for downloading and installing games on an iPod is completely unintuitive. You can't just drag and drop a game onto an iPod. You must sync the game with the iPod even if you don't sync anything else.
I've run into too many major and minor bugs with iTunes 7. It's barely beta quality. Plus it seems to be more buggy on Windows. It doesn't bode well when Apple starts to take Windows users for granted.
In addition to the big problems I ran into (failure at updating a Nano; the complexity of updating the video iPod to 1.2 - 1.2 is required for the new content, but it isn't included with release, it must be downloaded separately once the iPod is connected; problems with iTunes authenticating my Audible account.) I've run into dozens of small bugs (Party Shuffle doesn't shuffle. Drag and drop or copy and paste of album art doesn't work to a group selection of tracks unless you paste
to a single track first. Airtunes to an Airport Express seems to make iTunes extreemly sluggish. All sorts of wierdness with the Album Artist getting automatically filled in, but inconsistently. The new coverflow view not displaying a large portion of the library intermittently. The installer doesn't work to upgrade iTunes on Windows Vista unless you know how to stop a service
manually - I know Vista is beta, but there are other things, for example account authentication, where iTunes seems to know about Vista.) I'm not just talking about things I've read about. Those are all things I've run into personally.
I feel like I could fill out bug reports all day. But iTunes 7.0 is too buggy for me to feel like Apple has done due dilligence. Unfortunately it's not obvious that one could downgrade back to iTunes 6. iTunes 7 updates your music library, installs a new version of QuickTime and updates your iPod. Would iTunes 6 be compatible with all those updates? I don't want to find out, but unless Apple gets their act together I may be forced to.
User Rating: 8/10
An improvement on version 6 (Windows)
Pros: Coverflow, integrated iPod updating, album grouping
Cons: Occasionally slightly sluggish on powerful PC
I enjoy the new features such as Coverflow and the album art thumbnail views. The second of these made the process of setting my multi-artist compilations as compilations a much easier task! I've also set all of my mixed albums to gapless playback and this is noticeable when listening to the tracks through the application.
Performance-wise, I haven't noticed much of an impact on my system, except for when I try and run Coverflow in more than 50% of the screen. Even then the application is only slightly sluggish. I'm running on an XP3200 with Windows XP SP2 and 1Gb RAM, but haven't experienced the same problems as others with more powerful PCs.
The built-in iPod firmware updating is excellent, I just hope that they extend this to incremental iTunes application updates for point releases, so that we don't have to go through the entire download each time there's a minor bug fix.
As a minor eye-candy-related point, I find the iT7 interface a lot easier to read than it's predecessor. I don't know whether it's the improved layout of the sidebar or a change in fonts, but it seems a lot sharper than before.
Overall, a worthwhile update to an already excellent music application (from my perspective, at least!).
User Rating: 7/10
Pretty good
Pros: Better layout
Cons: idk ...........
User Rating: 3/10
page from microsoft's book
Pros: video and other new features
Cons: too many to list
ok, and whats with 5 minutes to load itunes library? that's progress?
then the bugs - plays like crap on a PC, pops and hisses (sounds ok on my mac) and the download cover art feature is a complete joke.
c'mon apple! dont release this stuff until its not going to make you look like microsoft.
my advice... WAIT until 7.02 or beyond when they might have fixed this crap.
User Rating: 4/10
Slower than Molasses on a Cold Day
Pros: It's iTunes, the interface is pretty, it plays music
Cons: It's processor intensive, it eats more RAM than WMP11, it's useless for background music while playing a game, it didn't remember my settings.
It's not worth updating to version 7 yet. Wait until a patch comes out to fix all the problems it introduced.
User Rating: 3/10
Will Probably Go Back To iTunes 6
Pros: Easier process to burn CDs
Cons: Incredibly slow processing of commands
I was able to do pretty much what I wanted to with no problems using iTunes 6. However when I started using iTunes 7 I noticed major differences in operation. Here are things that I immediately noticed:
1. Uses way too much memory compared to iTunes 6.
2. I can only import 3 files at a time. With older versions I could import as many files as needed. I was importing 12-15 files. I had to submit them 3 at a time before they would appear on my list.
3. Sometimes ID3 tag updates have to be done more than once before the updates stay.
4. After updates at times I had to shut down iTunes and open it up again before updates showed up.
I was thinking about getting a new iPod but they require iTunes 7.0. I may reconsider my decision until a newer version comes out or if they change them to allow iTunes 6. I don't want to purchase a fairly expensive piece of equipment when the required software is not up to par.
User Rating: 2/10
Udder garbage
Pros: It works for some people
Cons: It doesn't work for others
This software is positively buggy. Its all out alpha. Many users are experiencing errors ranging from minor to complete unusability.
On a windows machine I have to consistently refresh the com object just to get the iPod to be viewable by iTunes 7. The iTunes 7 software fails when it tries an update or restore. Everything was fine on a powerbook, until after I had noticed that the album art would not longer display on the iPod itself.
(All the settings are correct! Completely went through every Apple trouble step)
On the whole, FULL of bugs! I'm one ticked off iPod user! Apple is only following suit on the habit of releasing software that isn't ready for an open market.
User Rating: 2/10
A leap backwards
Pros: the number 7 is bigger than the number 6
Cons: Filled with bugs
User Rating: 9/10
Great enhancement of great product
Pros: Brilliant eye-candy, gapless playback, iPod integration
Cons: Time-consuming adding of album art
User Rating: 6/10
Nice new features, works well, bad new ui
Pros: Cover flow is awesome, new sources list
Cons: New grey yukky user interface
User Rating: 9/10
coverflow alone is worth it
Pros: coverflow, newness
Cons: i haven't experienced any problems with this...
coverflow integration is cool. i really liked the standalone coverflow app, and think it's great that apple bought the rights to that technology.
User Rating: 8/10
Works great, no problems
Pros: Cover Flow is very cool; Download Manager is a useful addition
Cons: nothing significant
User Rating: 3/10
Rendered entire playlist unlistenable
Pros: easy install, album art views
Cons: audio playback useless, skips, pops, scratches
User Rating: 9/10
Great new featuers, looks amazing and it's free
Pros: Album art is great, picking songs by art is great, works well on all my hardware (from G4 to 2.16 Dual Core Intel), iPod syncing errors now list all errors, iPod tab view is very helpful
Cons: Missing some album art
User Rating: 9/10
Solid improvement over iTunes 6.
Pros: Better navigation and organization, coverflow
Cons: Slow on older machines
User Rating: 9/10
Change is good, this proves it.
Pros: New interface, coverflow, movies.
Cons: Uses a lot more resources, especially when using coverflow.
User Rating: 8/10
If you are a ipoder its a must
Pros: Nice TV collection to download. Just fun to browse the store
Cons: Still Not as user Friendly
User Rating: 9/10
Apple iTunes 7 is Great
Pros: Interface, Movie downloads, Cover flow...
Cons: my download works fine
User Rating: 2/10
iPod (old Nano) doesn't connect WARNING!!!
Pros: Features looked jazzy
Cons: Won't work for me
Many windows users have reported that their old iPods, generally Nano's, did not connect and the only way to survive was to go back, not easy, to version 6.0.5. see: http://discussions.apple.com/search.jspa?search=Go&q=iTunes+7.0+can't+detect+Nano
I spend an additional $60.00 and 4 hours with Apple support and the problem was still un-fixed. Finally, I needed to go back to 6.0.5, by un-installing, deleting other files, installing a copy of 6.0.5 from a non-apple site, and then re-creating my libraries.
If it finally works, then I might re-try to upgrade it, but would prefer a program that has less Cute features, but JUST WORKS and can be run as a lean and mean application.
In general I can decide to use a program that is feature full, or one that is tight, fast, etc. but since APPLE has bundeled the iPod and iTunes, I have almost no choice and am disapointed that the new iTunes does not work, is difficult to revert from, and had decided to be more CPU intensive and I have little choice....
User Rating: 2/10
Not worth upgrading
Pros: Coverflow is neat, not much else
Cons: Slow, bloated, very glitchy
User Rating: 9/10
A little buggy, but shiny just the same
Pros: Great sorter w/album art enabled, sleek new search tools
Cons: Getting album art is a little buggy for now
User Rating: 3/10
Very Buggy
Pros: Cover Flow
Cons: Resource Hog
The cover flow feature found almost all of my album covers, but it mis-tagged a lot of tracks numbers. The majority of my music?s track numbers now show up with numbers ranging from 40 through 50's. My tracks were right before. Now, even Windows shows them with the wrong track number. If they don't release an update, it's going to take me a long time to go back and fix all of them. I can't sort by track # according to albums either, because the track numbers are all wrong. Very disappointing and frustrating. It?s enough to make you mad.
User Rating: 4/10
Great features but imature release. UI could be better
Pros: Organised source list, embedded download manager/ipod updater, Coverflow view, gapless playback
Cons: EXTREMELY buggy!, ugly/horrible UI, can barely maintain playback while multitasking, cuts down on some iTunes 6 fatures
You can no longer do multiple album art pastings like iTUnes 6. You can no longer view videos in the album art pane unless "play in the main window is selected"
Plus side is things are more streamlined. Source list is easier to navigate. Also there is gapless playback and find album art features which are nice
This will have to be the worst upgrade for me in terms of UI and most mediocre in overall usability. Downgrading to iTunes 6 as we speak.
User Rating: 1/10
A Leap Backwards
Pros: gapless playback, free album covers
Cons: degradation of usability, stability, quality, reliability, efficiency, speed, and interface
It is more bug-ridden than any other app on my computer. Apple has damaged a fantastic piece of software.
User Rating: 9/10
Works fine, no problems so far...
Pros: Refined interface, Cover Flow is fun, new download manager is nice
Cons: Cover Flow doesn't go full screen.
User Rating: 2/10
Overhyped Sofware
Pros: Browsing for Podcasts
Cons: Installation is prone to errors; even post installation has errors; More emphasis on presentation than usability;
My first installation ended in an inexplicable error message. I uninstalled/reinstalled the software and I was able to get it to work.
Movies: there was a decent selection of movies to choose from, but I quickly learned that you can't do anything with them other than playback on your computer or video iPod. I think this speaks for itself: the feature is somewhat useless if you can't enjoy a movie on your home theater system. I suppose the iTV product will help change this, but until then there isn't much value in this feature.
Album art: again, I was disappointed with this new feature. Compared to WMP 11 (beta 2) -- which I am using with my new iRiver Clix -- it was terrible at identifying album art. Why can I select an album in my library and then see the album in the mini store below with the album art, but it isn't showing in my library? This impacts the effectiveness of their new album art scrolling feature -- which is in itself novel but not how I look for music anyways.
Gapless playback -- so what?
Reliability -- after a day or so of using this new version, iTunes crashed on startup again. It wouldn't even start again after I rebooted. Now it's in the virtual trash heap.
I have tried giving Apple a lot of chances to impress me, and I'm very disappointed. I'm sure that I'm just one of many that finds the commercials ironic -- considering I have never had a complete positive experience with their products.
2/10: 1 point for podcast browsing; 1 point for duping the general public into thinking that they are the epitome of stylish and functional software design.
User Rating: 3/10
Bugs Bugs and More Bugs
Pros: Great Features. CD-TEXT YEA!! and I like the new Layout
Cons: Bugs... HIGH CPU Usage, HIGH memory Usage.
It all looks great but cant enjoy it with all the bugs.
User Rating: 7/10
It has a good foundation, yet needs some tweaks
Pros: The app now offers many new, useful features.
Cons: Most of those features are buggy.
User Rating: 3/10
Podcasts crash, so what good is the rest
Pros: sleeker interface, cover art
Cons: Podcasts crash I-Pod; others report bad sound
The look and functionality of I-Tunes has a nice facelift, but who cares if you can't use the I-Pod. Others report scratchy sound, but I don't play music on my computer, so I can't comment on that.
User Rating: 3/10
Too buggy to have been released; wait for 7.01 or later
Pros: Sleek new interface is great, CoverFlow is nifty, movies are a welcome addition
Cons: Users of Windows XP will probably encounter playback crackling/hissing or other bugs; extremely chip-intensive makes it unsuitable for middle and low-end systems right now
User Rating: 1/10
MY Ipod has been updating for two friggin days, I give up!
Pros: The number seven looks cooler than six.
Cons: It is a house of bugs.
User Rating: 6/10
Nice but OUCH!!
Pros: New features and layout.
Cons: Lenghty video downloads, cover art searching?
Downloaded a 45 minute TV program......hhmmmm....zzzzzzzz.....hate to think how long a movie might take!!!!
User Rating: 9/10
VERY impressed
Pros: Interface is clear, organized, Album Art view!
Cons: Not so great for the color-blind, Album Art download is not "complete"
User Rating: 8/10
The new "Cover Flow" feature is wonderful.
Pros: "Cover Flow" makes looking at music on the computer feel as nice as flipping through a stack of old LPs. Downloaded without a problem. Works fine with all my old content.
Cons: Some "crackling" in the playback from time to time. Takes a long time to load, but all the versions of iTunes did.
With "Cover Flow" you can scroll through all the album covers of your music collection and it is a wonderful way to see your music and select something to listen to.
I love the way that you can see one album cover in its entirety and also see partial albums to the left and right. It really does feel like flipping through a milk crate of LPs and it gives the music on my computer a physical, almost tactile feeling.
Some people have complained that the iTunes feature that automatically downloads album cover art hasn't worked that well. I don't know about that because I haven't even tried to use it. I actually enjoyed going on the Internet and finding album covers and other graphics to illustrate my various albums and then pasting them into iTunes. It took a while, but it was worth it.
I also love the new view that iTunes 7 gives of your various iPods when you plug them into the computer. I plug in my Mini and I automatically get a front summary page of exactly what is on the Mini as well as tabs to pages that control the syncing of music and podcasts.
I also find the way iTunes content is listed to be quite intuitive and easy to use.
I have had some problems. In particular, I've gotten some loud crackling sounds during playback when I've been on the Internet while playing music. This only happened some of the time and seemed to be connected largely to pasting the album cover art. This could be a bug in iTunes or something else going on on my computer.
Gapless playback has worked well for me as well and I like being able to hear albums as they were meant to be and as I remember them, without the gaps between songs.
All in all, I'm very pleased with iTunes 7.
User Rating: 1/10
Horrible!!!
Pros: None that i can tell
Cons: Video stopped working all together
User Rating: 7/10
Very good in theory.
Pros: Every feature you'll ever need.
Cons: a fair few bugs and changes
User Rating: 1/10
The worst thing Apple has ever done.
Pros: There are no PROS to these horrific update
Cons: There are too many Cons for maybe even their "test" department to find, obviously.
User Rating: 3/10
Not suitable for release
Pros: cleaner interface, more intuitive navication
Cons: very buggy. everything bad you've heard is true
User Rating: 2/10
Beta software- do not download
Pros: Potentially very nice interface
Cons: Very buggy, not ready for prime time
1. Won't load up consistently
2. Crashes frequently
3. Cannot drag and drop podcasts
Bottom line
Wait for the next update. I'm sure some people will not have problems. That doesn't mean the problems don't exist. Until there is a simple way to rollback you should wait to test this program. This software was not tested properly. Shame on you Apple! To make matters worse I had to watch the Mac vs Windows commercial while trying to debug this thing.
User Rating: 9/10
Works like a dream on a 17" iMac!
Pros: Much better interface, movies available for purchase, games available for purchase, Much higher quality of videos, plenty better features for viewing album artwork
Cons: Music videos don't show up automatically in front row movie playlist
User Rating: 2/10
Sorry choice!
Pros: none--looks good on the monitor
Cons: was not a smooth transition on XP. Could not downlaod anything from music store.
Itunes 7 does not recognize my ipod 30G.
Lost all my Limewire....
User Rating: 5/10
Definitely moving towards the multi-format librarian tool.
Pros: Gapless playback, album art making more sense than it did before.
Cons: Noticable lag on my new MacBook Pro, auto Album Art Work match and gapless CD matching features don't do a good job.
It's also my main librarian becuase of the spotlight syle searching, xml based library and intuitive auto filing features.
So why the glum score? I love the visceral idea behind the flip art cover work; but it needed to be combined with much better A.I. to load the album art. I have a nearly 1400 CD collection, of which next to no artwork was loaded prior to installing iTunes 7 (Who wants to scan all those covers?).
After loading iT7? I guess it got about 25% of the album covers; so only about 1050 to go until the new features start to make sense!
I know that iTunes will never know a 14 Iced Bears White Label from a MAAS "Angel 911" 12, but you would have thought it would know the Pet Shop Boys albums!
I've just noticed that iTunes couldn't even find Yellow Brick Road by Elton John. Or the latest Glove "Blue Sunshine" reissue. Shock horror!
Oh! And iTunes 7 took 1 hour to scan my entire collection to look for gapless albums, and didn't work out any (even there are probably about 100 or so - some of which were purchased from the iTunes store!!!). Expect to spend some time multi-selecting and making albums gapless. It's worth it when you do. They play perfectly.
So.. It's slower. It's a bit more garish (probably to get more Windows people onboard), but the separation between drive content, on-line stores, devices and playlists is a bit more apparent, and welcome... So what can I say?
5 out of 10. With a bullet.
User Rating: 2/10
Very nice but so FULL of bugs.. Playback is horrible
Pros: It looks great! Gapless was cool on the Ipod
Cons: Playback is Horrible
User Rating: 2/10
Horrible playback
Pros: Nice architecture
Cons: Horrible sound playback
PS Apple has been no help!!!
User Rating: 3/10
Sounds Like S**T and is a Resource Hog!
Pros: Retooled side bar, iPod dock interface, Gapless playback
Cons: Music plays scratchy and program runs Sluggish
I was excited to see a new version with a new cleaner look and loaded with cool applications. That was until I actually downloaded and installed the beast. It's not only slow and frustrating, while it's running other applications were sluggish as well. Then I actually played a song and was shocked to find out Apple released this garbage well before it was ready. I hope there is a patch or new version coming very soon.
User Rating: 6/10
Apple's now copying Microsoft? What the...?
Pros: Nice little features added
Cons: Slow, some design and features are from Windows Media Player 11
User Rating: 5/10
Slow on a Mac?
Pros: new views, new sidebar, automatic album art fetching
Cons: album art issues, lack of color, SLOW, even on my mac
I'm not sold on CoverView yet. It's not the greatest way to browse if you've got a lot of music, as it's difficult to find things. I love my cover art (I've always had the little cover art browser open), but this doesn't seem like the most intuitive use of it. Also, it screwed up the two most necessary keyboard shortcuts: forward and back. Instead of being just the arrow keys, it's now command-arrow keys, because arrows now move through CoverView. An annoyance. [Update: it turns out that if you select "Music", the old shortcuts work. Strange.] Plus, the animation itself is a bit funky. It would have looked a bit smoother to make it look like a jukebox or something, instead of flipping everything around all awkwardly.
Auto album art fetching is great, but not if it gets the wrong thing. There needs to be a better system for managing this, where you can delete album art for an ENTIRE ALBUM at once, and add it the same way. Also, a zoom-crop tool (like the buddy icon selector in iChat and Adium) would be nice--I end up with a lot of album art with white borders somehow.
I do like the new sidebar; it's a bit more attractive. I do not like the shift from blue to grey. This does not bode well if Leopard is all so drab, too. Basically everything but the activated shuffle button is some drab grey. I much preferred the old brushed metal look.
I also have an issue that the new views don't work with PowerController, an iTunes alarm clock plugin, but again, that's just an annoyance that PowerController is just as likely to sort out as Apple.
As for movies, I really don't use it. Maybe eventually, but that's not how I watch movies at the moment. Higher resolutions are nice, but it seems to me that they need to be still higher to be fully functional with bigger displays and TVs (via iTV).
The dock icon that changes color when it's on is a nice touch, but I think I prefer the green icon. Ideally you'd be able to choose, or make your own, like Adium (that ideal of an open source program done right).
And is gapless playback really that big of a deal? Maybe if you listen to a lot of classical, I guess. Or don't use shuffle almost all the time like me, I suppose. Whatever.
In sum: Slow transitions=not up to the Apple standard. Animations=alright, but not quite up to that standard, either. Color=missing, and supplied only by album art. Feels a bit limiting in some of its options to me, in general, but functionality must come first, so all features must work flawlessly, and not slowly. Really, not a work up to Apple's standards. Still likely the best music program existant, but I feel an update is forthcoming, because this obviously has a lot of flaws, and is not half as well liked as its predecessors.
User Rating: 5/10
It's all about the movies... and not much else.
Pros: Movie downloads, new iPod settings editor
Cons: Can't add album artwork without iTunes account, resource-hungrier than iTunes 6
There's new organization and that's not bad - just not necessary. And iTnues 7, for some reason, seems to drain your computer of resources way more than iTunes 6.
CoverFlow (a jukebox-style album viewer plug-in that Apple purchased) is nice, but try adding your own cover art without an iTunes account and you are out of luck. (And not all of the covers download even WITH an account.)
The new iPod settings window is great. The video controls that appear when you play movies in fullscreen is great, too.
The best features center on movie playing.
User Rating: 6/10
Fantastic player but awfully resource hungry
Pros: -Great organization options, fantastic audio quality
Cons: -Resource hungry
But it uses up resources like no other. I have a fairly new system (AMD X2 3800+ AM2, 2x 1GB DDR2 800 )2GB total), 320GB 7200.10 HD) and every time Apple releases a new version, it just seems to get slower and slower. Rather than putting in so many features, most of which a majority of non-iPod using people won't use, they should find ways to make it more efficient. Everything on my system runs blazing fast... except for iTunes (and Quicktime). I need my background apps (like music) to use as little resource as possible because I do some heavy Photoshopping and Premiere work.
Really, it's not much of a draw but the very first iTunes used less resources and had everything feature I wanted and ran faster on my old desktop (P3 733MHz, 512MB PC133, 30GB 5400RPM HD).
I used the new WMP11 beta and found it to be quicker but came back to iTunes because WMP11 wasn't stable enough and was missing some features (it is a beta after all). But if Microsoft can get it right, I might be switching soon.
But all in all, there really isn't an alternative to iTunes. The low score is only due to it's resource requirements.
User Rating: 9/10
one word.....AWESOME
Pros: Just about everything, especially the view finders i.e. Cover Flow
Cons: nothing really....maybe a "all" source list, that puts together all the media in a window regarless of media type i.e. Movie, Podcasts, Music, etc....Truthfully, this is not really a Con for me tho.
User Rating: 8/10
Going against the tide: iTunes 7 has been stable and fast on XP SP2
Pros: Stable, fast, excellent new features, still easy to use
Cons: Album view mode - sluggish to dynamically load album covers
The initial download was somewhat painful because (I can only imagine) there were 28 million humans trying to simultaneously download it after it was announced. Once the Akamai-hosted download was complete however, it has performed great both in terms of stability and speed. The usability of iTunes never ceases to amaze me, especially in relation to Window Meida Player.
I have downloaded and used WMP 11 now for a couple weeks and while it's a big improvement on version 10 and before, it pales in comparison to iTunes 7 (would not pass the wife test in other words).
User Rating: 9/10
Same great experience with new added features
Pros: Easy update, different views of music-including album covers, movie downloads added
Cons: None so far
Different views of content available-same text structure or can choose album covers(also available in video section).
Also have option when iPod plugged in to download all of the purchased content from it onto the PC-as long as the PC is authorized to play content.
User Rating: 5/10
Great player, if only it worked
Pros: Excellent look, smooth features, Easy to get around and search music
Cons: Huge resource hog, scartchy sound.
Submit
User Rating: 8/10
Vast improvement
Pros: slick album cover index, and now gapless playback
Cons: slower install that we are use to, and reboot for windows users
User Rating: 3/10
A bad apple
Pros: Nice new features
Cons: Woeful Performace
With iTunes 7 I was impressed with the promise of gapless playback (about time too) and automatic album art retrieval. The new album art interface looked useful too. And to be fair, these features are quite good in the new release.
But somehow Apple have managed to make a nice nippy simple program into a judering sluggish monster. Not impressed. I have a 3.6GHz P4, and iTunes 6 just flew on my computer, but this is terrible.
Also, for some reason if I move the iTunes shortcut in my start menu iTunes re-adds a shortcut everytime it is opened. pah!
Sort it out Apple!
When they release a slicker version I will update, as gapless playback is good, but untill then I'm going back to version 6.
dsasdadadasdads fdfsfsawww
User Rating: 2/10
No way of getting artwork
Pros: Better user interface
Cons: No way to get artwork without credit card
User Rating: 5/10
Great potential - shoddy first release for Windows
Pros: Love the album artwork search function and the gapless playback!
Cons: First release has too many errors - wait for update
Anyways, I spent the rest of the night searching through the Apple support forums, and it looks like a lot of other Windows users are having similar problems. I tried all the fixes that I could find, but to no avail.
Wait for the next release!!
User Rating: 6/10
A Disapointment
Pros: Movies, Intersting new views
Cons: UI changes, performance on PC's still half-decent
I will admit, I like iTunes for my music functions largely due to the simple interface and how it just simple does what it does, lists your music and allows you to order and create playlists as you like.
Anyway, iTunes still is one of the best media players out there, but their preformance on the Windows version need to improve! I mean, it's no better than 6 with preformance on the PC.
User Rating: 3/10
One step forward, two steps back.
Pros: gapless playback
Cons: ugly UI, increased installation time, dark and gloomy
If iTunes 6 is a nice clear, sunny day in San Francisco, then iTunes 7 is akin to a densely cloudy storm system that doesn't show any signs of letting up: the interface is a drab GREY everywhere you click. It's as if they Photoshopped the interface and desaturated all color, texture, and style. Where'd my light and friendly blue liquid-filled scroll bars, column headers and checkboxes go? What happened to my EQ button?? What's with moving Burn Disc to the bottom and reducing that cool "totally Apple" animation to a frickin GREY BUTTON on the bottom?
Puke on Apple for this release. I'm sure it does some pretty cool stuff like gapless playback and now you can watch movies, TV, etc., but holy crap, they've gone against all things Apple in that the program is no longer a pleasure to use--it's like bright and sunny outside, but inside iTunes it's always a cloudy day.
