Entered CNET Catalog: 09/10/2008
SKU: SERVITUNES8
Manufacturer: Apple Inc.
Product summary
The good: Apple iTunes 8 includes new features such as crowd-sourced Genius playlists and sidebar, an album art Grid view, and a new visualizer engine. Fan-fave features such as Cover Flow, support for gapless audio playback, and automatic album art retrieval are still in the mix; as is its link to the iTunes Store, which offers movies, games, music, podcasts, and mobile applications.
The bad: iTunes 8 continues its unwelcome tradition of hogging RAM; the Genius sidebar feels slapped on when a full redesign would've been more than appreciated; the Genius features require an iTunes Store account; iTunes Store links can't be toggled away; support is still spotty for podcasts and album art retrieval; movies still have a resolution of only 640x480 and cannot be burned to a watchable DVD.
The bottom line: Apple iTunes 8 is the industry standard for multimedia jukebox software and despite the need for a UI overhaul and some liposuction to remove the bloat, iTunes is a solid choice that most users will enjoy.
Editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 09/23/2008
The latest version of Apple's iTunes software (Version 8.0.0.35) expands the offerings for iPod, Apple TV, and iPhone users. The popular Windows and Mac jukebox application remains on top of the heap, but it's not the only game in town for organizing and playing multimedia content on your computer.
The iTunes Store remains the highest-profile media store online, though, and iTunes software is the only way to access it. The Store includes feature-length movies, TV shows, games, a free University lecture podcast section titled iTunesU, a smattering of unrestricted (DRM-free) and more expensive music downloads called iTunes Plus, and the App Store offering third-party applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
The big new feature for iTunes 8 is Genius, which offers up playlist and iTunes Store recommendations based on user ratings. Despite the new feature and a few design tweaks, the essence of iTunes remains: it is an intuitive and (mostly) all-inclusive refueling point for iPods and iPhones 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 8's new features. For some background on the preexisting interface and feature set, check out the review of iTunes 7.
New features in iTunes 8
The new features in iTunes 8 are geared more toward iTunes Store account holders than anybody else, but Apple probably figures that includes the majority of iTunes users.
The most notable feature introduced in iTunes 8 are the Genius features: the Sidebar and the Playlist. Both require an iTunes Store account to function. The Genius Playlist sends your song-listening and song-rating data to Apple, supposedly anonymously, and Apple, in turn, converts the data into track recommendations. When you're using the Genius playlist, start off by playing any song from your collection. Genius will build a playlist of tracks you have, based on what you and other listeners like. Although some tracks suggested seemed incongruous, since the playlist is created from music you own, there's less of a chance for completely off-the-wall offerings.
The Genius sidebar offers album and artist recommendations from the iTunes Store using the same algorithms. We found these suggestions not only to be much more random, but it also suggested we buy albums that were already in our collection. It makes the offerings sound good, with headings such as "Top Songs You're Missing" and "Top Albums," but largely this feature was unimpressive because of its inaccuracies.
The Grid view makes for an interesting midway point between the plain and standard text-only layout, and the graphics-intensive Cover Flow. Double-click on an album in Grid view to bring up the tracks it contains, or hit the mouse-over Play button to start playing songs from it. It's nice that the view works under Artists, Genre, and Composer, and has a slider to resize the album art. Go too large and it'll pixelate, though.
The new visualizer mode, magnetosphere, was originally developed as an iTunes plug-in. It has a much stronger "flying-through-space" vibe. The old visualizer is still available, now called "classic," for those of you who want to space out, old school. There's also support for HD television shows.
We've also noticed that links from tracks to the iTunes Store are now a permanent feature in iTunes 8, and can't be toggled out of sight.
iTunes 8's interface
There are several ways to view and arrange your computer's media library in iTunes 8, 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. The new option is Grid view, which offers up clean, identically-sized square images of your album art. When you change the setting from Album art to Artist, iTunes chooses one cover to represent all the albums by one artist. Double-click on it to reveal the artist's albums arranged in a column on the left, with your songs appearing in the standard spreadsheet-style layout in the center. 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 both a graphic and vital stats of your iPod or iPhone, and lets you 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 MediaMonkey and Windows Media Player offer similar integrated management options; however, the use of a nested window rather than a new one or a drop-down 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 a blank space representing 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. Even with improvements made back in iTunes 7, iTunes 8 still struggles occasionally with automatic album art retrieval and could require manual intervention.
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 8, the application automatically analyzes your tracks for gapless playback. It's not actually seamlessly bridging gaps; instead, it is figuring it out the best method for ungapping songs based on format and bit rate. 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 8 integrates both Apple TV and 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. An iPhone/iPod Touch app called Remote also lets you use the touch-screen device as a remote control for iTunes, and works over a Wi-Fi network.
iTunes Store
What began as the iTunes' Music store has blossomed into a multimedia juggernaut. 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. 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 and a handful of high-definition television shows are now available.
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 48out of 48 user reviews
All-in-one music jukebox right on your computer...
Pros: Really cool new view, really nice clearer sounding radio streaming, very convenient - your music list and your album art right on your iTunes. As well as iTunes 8 runs smoother and faster in ways.
Cons: Slow at times and have not fully been improved and could get more interactive and less boring like Windows Media Player and Real Player, although those are two lame-ish media player.
out of 48 user reviews
Apple Ships Out Yet Another Buggy Piece of Crap
Pros: One of the views was revamped and is slightly more pleasurable to the eyes and makes a lot more sense.
Cons: Broke syncing with older iPods.
Genius is a waste of space.
Aforementioned view eats up resources like no other.
Genius is obtrusive for the most part.
Album art retrieval is spotty at best.
Genius doesn't work well.
out of 48 user reviews
Very functional, Excellent content portal
Pros: Good content that is easy to get to.
Cons: Very very very slow. It takes forever on my machine to launch. I had to re-format C and when I downloaded the new version all my songs were gone (even though I purchased them through Itunes). Not sure how to get them back. Anyone who can help?
out of 48 user reviews
Piece of garbage, ONLY program for iPhone syncing.
Pros: It looks decent.
Cons: Can't click and drag to merge albums, goofs up album info, goofs up music on iPhone after synced (such as changing the order or listing the same artist twice because of a letter being capitalized or not), fails to even get album info in general.
out of 48 user reviews
Actively destructive in Vista
Pros: Front end is nice
Cons: Seems to erase mp3 randomly, creates copies all over the place and corrupts mp3 files
out of 48 user reviews
Solid choice my butt
Pros: No pro's - won't run
Cons: Won't run on my toshiba satellite pro with 1.5 G RAM; finicky, can't download earlier versions
It appears there are conflicts between certain codecs which the flv players install, and itunes - quick search on google confirms conflicts between many codecs and itunes.
Which makes itunes unacceptably finicky.
and another thing - apple doesn't allow downloads of earlier versions of itunes, which bites.
out of 48 user reviews
Worst Itunes yet.
Pros: Good way to organize music, easy to rip music from cd, convenient store
Cons: lower quality music, CRASHES ALL THE TIME! Popular music is overpriced, slower than other versions
out of 48 user reviews
Great until you run out memory: then watch out
Pros: Nice sleek fairly easy to understand interface; nice image visualisations.
Cons: Poor help functions; hard to find artwork and cannot use artwork in lossless format; when you try to move the data to a new hard drive beware. Have twice lost the file they store all information you entered over the years to customise ratings, etc.
out of 48 user reviews
"Very Good"? What a joke, CNet.
Pros: - Does basic functions properly
- Relatively easy to use
- iPod syncing is pretty fast
Cons: - CD ripping is slow; makes everything else lag or freeze and creates a lot of hard drive noise
- Start-up is amazingly slow
- iPod must be connected through a specific USB port for it to be recognized by iTunes
- Takes forever to download
out of 48 user reviews
Piece of Feces
Pros: When it comes to organization, I find nothing works better than itunes at keeping everything in its right place.
Cons: The software is far too bloated. To run it you also have to download quicktime and bonjour. Which I recently installed, because I never use, and now itunes ONCE AGAIN.
out of 48 user reviews
holy crap its slow
Pros: it works with the IPOD. And there are few other options
Cons: I have an Athlon dual core 5400+, with 2 GB ram. It take almost a minute to launch. Plug in the IPOD and it becomes ridiculous. Running on XP sp3
out of 48 user reviews
I don't know what to say.
Pros: Easy to use.
Can do basic functions.
Okay, I can't think of any more. Not that this program is absolutely terrible, but you get what I mean. It's just not special.
Cons: Slow with CDs. Almost freezes my computer every time I try, and a strange grinding sound as though my laptop is eating something emanates from the inner workings of my laptop.
If an album has 2 discs it recognizes them as different albums.
iTunes can perform basic functions: rip songs from CD's, burn CD's, load songs onto iPods, blah blah blah.
However, I have a few bones to pick:
1. CD ripping.
It's just slow. Not just that, but every time I try, my computer slows down significantly and whatever else is going on: a Flash game, YouTube, whatever, it stops and starts again and again, just because iTunes is ripping a CD. The aforementioned eating sound is always present and kind of scary, because I don't want anything to break.
Bottom line, it's cool, but there must be better choices out there.
Updated on Jan 23, 2009Another bit about CD ripping: Apple, when you release iTunes 9, would it be possible to add a "Start Loading" function? The fact that you can choose the songs you want is pretty handy, but I almost always download at least one song that I don't want because iTunes starts ripping the songs before I can uncheck the songs I don't want to load. A "Start Loading" button would let you uncheck any songs you didn't want before loading, because it would be user-controlled. CD ripping is also amazingly slow and drags down everything else I happen to be doing on the computer.
2. Syncing
iTunes usually ejects my iPod before I'm done modifying content. It's extremely irritating.
3. 2-disc albums
If you have an album with 2 discs, iTunes will recognize them as separate albums, even if the name, artist, and artwork are the same. Once you load it onto your iPod, though, it's all clumped into one album.
out of 48 user reviews
Big, bad, and bloated.
Pros: iTunes does a lot, there is no doubt there, it sorts music, podcasts, images, movies/videos, internet radio, and of course guest libraries. Many other players like up till recently Songbird and also MusicMatch.
Cons: Holy cow this software takes a lot of memory and slows things down. I was decompressing a file that would take ten minutes, opened iTunes and the files ETA went up to 34 minutes. I also found the interface to be cluttered and seemingly random.
out of 48 user reviews
great program, medicore update
Pros: looks great, runs well(in vista sp2) its easy to navigate trough a rather large music library
Cons: movies is still badly intergrated, and as a full update, it blows, everthing is the same, only thing added is genius
alot of ppl say that it is a ram hog, its not. but software evolves along with hardware. just because your c64 can't run it doesnt mean its a hog :)
out of 48 user reviews
Too slow. Unusable.
Pros: Pretty Icons...thats about it..
Cons: Extremely slow on a PC. Software is literally unusable. Poorly written. No known solution. Neccessary for iPhone sync.
Updated on Jan 2, 2009I booted to safe mode, and this program still ran like a snail. CPU usage at over 75 percent while in idle!!!!!!! SOMEBODY FIND A FIX DAMN-IT !!!!!!!
out of 48 user reviews
Unacceptable CD play
Pros: Low initial price.
Cons: Unacceptably slow with CDs
out of 48 user reviews
New Features Good.
Pros: New Features, New interface, Easy to Use.
Cons: Slight Decrease in Stability and Durability, A bit slower than iTunes 7.
Ease of Use 4
Speed 3
Features 5
Looks 5
Nice Upgrade to the previous version, but nothing special or nothing enormously better than the previous version.
out of 48 user reviews
Too slow on CD Burning
Pros: It's not a bad interface. I like that you can make a backup by just clicking on the Backup option.
Cons: It took me 16 minutes to burn a CD of 14 songs when prior to version 8, it took about 5 minutes. There is too much latency. Also, Apple's support page has no option to e-mail tech support for general questions.
out of 48 user reviews
DEFINITELY AVOID IT!!!!!!!!!! IT'S AWFUL!!!
Pros: decent interface
Cons: Constantly freezing. must convert WMA files for use. Only syncs ipods
out of 48 user reviews
Unacceptably slow
Pros: An all integrated music player, library, and store
Cons: - It is slow to start up
- The user interface freezes very often for no reason
- It doesn't recognize my music files folder organization
out of 48 user reviews
Ridiculously slow, freezes with large library of tunes.
Pros: 1. Beautiful interface, though I'd like to be able to turn sidebar off.
2. Easy interface with iPods and iPhones.
Cons: 1. Horribly slow with my library of 100,000 tunes. Freezes with spinning beach-ball icon, requiring a force-quit.
2. No support for aac+ (aac-plus, HE-AAC). Come on now!!!
Updated on Nov 12, 2008Banshee is now available for Mac OSX, as of tonight!
out of 48 user reviews
Very Good Program From Apple
Pros: Very good looking. Easy to navigate. SImple.
Cons: Not a con I found yet.
out of 48 user reviews
same ol same ol
Pros: interface is good. Clean visually. Genius sometimes useful.
Cons: RAM hog. Picky about other music on my hard drive. DRM-DRM-DRM. Does not run smooth. Genius usually useless. Lots of issues trying to burn CD's.
out of 48 user reviews
OK music management, integrates well in OS X
Pros: On OS X, fast, nice to use, pretty interface and of course integrates well with iPhone/iPod etc. Great management of podcasts, Genius makes intersting playlists
Cons: I hate being marketed to by Genius. Terribly slow in Windows, and eats over 200MB of RAM in both OS X and Windows. Most of the time is is the single biggest app running in memory. Synching multiple libraries with iPhone is impossible. DRM
iTunes is still better than Wixndows Media Player, but is crippled by not supporting open and free media codecs such as .ogg, DivX. The only reason I use it is to synch my iPhone.
out of 48 user reviews
piece of junk
Pros: none just another add on with the genie
Cons: same old memory hog stiil freezes on my pc have to do a hard shut down by pressing the power button on my computer to get it to stop running
out of 48 user reviews
Pretty face with a greedy, selfish character
Pros: It looks pretty.
Cons: It greedy because it is a system hog and is selfish because it doesn't play well with other MP3. I already have a ton of MP3 ripped from my respectable CD collection. Definitely consider your alternatives BEFORE installing.
I have been using Wimamp forever and I am very pleased with it. I have a respectable CD collection and, over the years, I have ripped them to MP3 so that I can use my PC as my very own jukebox. I love the iPod and can't wait to tear out iTunes.
out of 48 user reviews
Much of the same
Pros: Its features and interface make it a nice utility to store your music library and manage your iPod.
Cons: Insanely resource heavy for a music jukebox program, nothing too new from iTunes 7
out of 48 user reviews
Not Greatly Impressed with Update
Pros: Design is good,
Cons: I still can't buy anything from the Store because of my location
Memory usage has sky rocketed
Updated on Oct 1, 2008Or if you live outside of the countries which the store supports.
out of 48 user reviews
It is Genius
Pros: Works effortlessly and I love the suggestions! The smart agent suggests the tunes and it is easier to use. Simple as that.
Cons: None. If you put it on a MAC!
out of 48 user reviews
i tunes 8 needs help
Pros: i can still download music
Cons: cannot burn cds
i get is an error message i had no problems with the outher
itunes get the bugs out guys
out of 48 user reviews
itunes downgrade
Pros: Nothing really, itunes 7 was just fine, but itunes only takes 50Mb of ram on my Sony Viao, Vista Ultimate
Cons: New Features, Genuis is horrible I wish I could get it totally off, it starts freezing when you start up the radio now, still no offical itunes controller for Vista Sidebar, the settings are now out of order too
out of 48 user reviews
O.K. but not all that!
Pros: Actually good software, at least the stuff I ask for, Bonjour, network detection, I pod interface and a couple others are not even mentioned and apparently can bring a windows pc down
Cons: APPLE :-(. Too much drive by software let ME decide if I need the junk, at very least, tell me you are going to install it......and NO I DON'T WANT SAFARI!!! Let ME decide if I want to start it at bootup cause, I don't, I start it when I want it.
out of 48 user reviews
slow and bloated
Pros: mostly nice interface, though other than the album art grid view there's nothing new there.
Cons: like the review said you cant disable the itunes store arrow links without manual tweaking. unbelievably slow. itunes can make my computers unresponsive when its importing songs.
out of 48 user reviews
It's ok for my use
Pros: The grid is intuitive.
Cons: Still some what slow on my machine.
Still takes some time to recognize when the IPod is plugged into the usb socket.
out of 48 user reviews
DOESN'T WORK PROPERLY ON OLDER SYSTEMS!
Pros: The cover flow view is improved making iit a more visually pleasing experience.
Cons: Put simply, despite not having a completely outdated computer, I cannot run this program. I have 4gb of memory and run XP and the program eats up so much memory that it will not run properly.
out of 48 user reviews
They still dont get it...
Pros: I do like the interface and the new visuals.
Cons: When I rip my cds to itunes, if the artist has used a song or two in a single it splits everything up even when i tell it not to.
out of 48 user reviews
A very dissapointing Update for a MAJOR Player
Pros: New visualizer that used Physics calculations over the music wave and shows up a very espectacular light show of music and light.
The ability to make automatic playlist.
The new grid view that displays your music eather by genre, album or atrist.
Cons: The new visualization needs a fix. The Genius Feature MUST have an iTunes account :(
Also it was expected a GUI Update. The Software is RAM devouring specially coverflow.
And allot of bugs, cant wait to see an update that fix THIS "update".
out of 48 user reviews
It's crashing my computer!!!
Pros: Initially I thought the genius addition was cute, made some interesting playlists without any thought on my part. It worked fine with my iPod Classic - and then we tried to sync my husband's nano. Crash, crash, crash - with no help in sight.
Cons: Did I mention the crashing part?
out of 48 user reviews
A true all-in-one music/video jukebox!
Pros: My default media centre for songs, applications and videos!
Cons: A memory hog though with the price of ram currently, it makes no difference to me.
out of 48 user reviews
Fit in well with rest os iLife.
Pros: I find the the UI fits in well with the iLife suite. I have it for a Mac, and I do realize it's awkward in Windows environment. Very intuitive, never had any problems with any of the podcast issues mentioned, and love how organized everything is,
Cons: No subscriptions and credit card is a must, the latter not a big issue for me but others hate it.
out of 48 user reviews
poor user interface controls
Pros: syncs well with iphone
Cons: can not change appearance
small fonts are difficult to read without reading glasses
dark background makes it difficult to read without glasses
radio - can not open npr.org and put together personalized play list.
out of 48 user reviews
Good program but has at least one big flaw
Pros: Genius does well enough at linking like songs.
Cons: Flaws with the genius add on.
out of 48 user reviews
Awesome Upgrade
Pros: More easy to navigate, the new visualizations, still amazing at everything else it does, GENIUS!!!
Cons: well, it doesn't look terribly different
out of 48 user reviews
Favorite Ituens Update
Pros: I love the genus bar. I like how the interface is similar to iphoto, so that if I need to merge two genre's I could.
Cons: When working the genus bar, it'd be great if Itunes was able to identify those artists that aren't sold thru Itunes (The beatles) and incorporate them into genus bar playlists
out of 48 user reviews
My Favorite version of iTunes so far!
Pros: New views and ways to sort things. The third view is like my favorite thing in iPhoto, where you run the mouse over the genre to see the albums in there.
Cons: A little bloated still and I would like to see it more intuitive at times.
out of 48 user reviews
Best iTunes Yet.
Pros: The enhanced interface options, and Genius (give it time, it is still learning) features are a great addition. Genius produces reasonable playlists that make sense, and has already improved since i first tried it.
Cons: Tagging still leaves a bit ti be desired. I would really like to see enhanced tagging features in future versions. Features similar to MediaMonkey would be great.
out of 48 user reviews
Intuitive, functional and a good performer
Pros: iTunes is a haven of simplicity and intuitive design in a segment of software that is so often marred by a clunky user experience. Excellent search features, great organisation of media and very fast and responsive performance.
Cons: The visualiser is a bit lame it must be said and the Mini Player function is quite buggy.
out of 48 user reviews
ITunes is a solid jukebox, but it has some issues.
Pros: Solid design, well rounded, can connect to the iTunes Music store, nice new visualizer
Cons: THIS THING IS A MONOLITH! HUGE resource hog.
Once you use iTunes, it makes it very difficult to switch.
EVERYTHING goes through iTunes. No choice of using alternative jukeboxes.
