First Look: iTunes Is All New. Here’s Why You Need It

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Complaints Department

iTunes Store, for all it was trying to do, had plenty of detractors. The interface was nightmarish and just plain cumbersome to use. Where is the App Store link? How do I find TV shows?

To be fair, iTunes Store has a lot going on. There’s upwards of 10-million songs, thousands of movies and TV shows, and 75,000 apps in the App Store. That’s a lot to ask of any single screen Mac application.

Search was limited and gave you a little of everything, including music, TV shows, movies, apps, games, music videos. From there you had to rummage through the results and dig deeper. It was time for Apple to Think Different.

iTunes Store

Remarkably, not every Mac or Windows PC user also uses the iTunes Store. Apple claims to have over 100-million iTunes Store accounts, which is less than half the number of iPods sold since 2001.

Still, the store is where you go if you want to buy music online (73% market share), and the only real place to buy applications for the iPhone or iPod touch. Simply put, the Store is easier on the eyes, easier to navigate, but still complicated.

At the top of the iTunes Store you’ll see improved drop down tabs—Music, Movies, TV Shows, App Store, Podcasts, Audiobooks, iTunes U. If you just click on the tab you’ll get the whole section. If you mouse over, click and hold, you’ll see a drop down menu which makes drilling down to sub-sections much easier.

Search Me, Please

The iTunes Store search field remains in the upper right of iTunes. This is not to be confused with the search field when viewing music or whatever in your Library. The results are different.

For example, enter “apps games” in the iTunes Store search field and you get a handful of games on screen. One more click and you get a gargantuan list of all games, one window at a time. That’s not what you want.

The real fun begins with the Power Search button. Click it, and more options appear. Click Applications, and the search filter options change to include Developer, specific Category, Device, as well as Title/Keywords. That is the only way to search through tens of thousands of items. That alone is worth the price of admission (still free).

iTunes LP & Extras

Do you remember 33 1/3 albums? The vinyl record of 10 or 12 songs was tucked neatly inside the cardboard cover, which often had printed liner notes, sometimes a full album of extra information, often photos, and fanatic fan information.

CDs had something similar, though scaled back to dwarf proportions. The iTunes Store and digital downloads pretty much killed the extras you get with albums. Until iTunes LP.

Art, photography, liner notes and other goodies have made a comeback with iTunes LP. There’s not much to choose from yet, but more will come as artists get with it and try to outdo one another with extras.

Speaking of extras, there’s iTunes Extras. Think of this as that section on a DVD which included outtakes, documentaries, deleted movie scene footage, and even galleries. Some movies in iTunes Store are available now with such Extras, and more will come.

Tidbits

Here and there you’ll find other touches. The left column side bar can be hidden, which gives you more iTunes Store in the full window. The Genius Playlists will play music forever, just like a radio station, except it’s your music, mixed by the computer.

In an anemic, almost experimental way, Apple is getting all social, too, and lets you send specific iTunes Store items as gifts, create and add them to your personal wish list (it’s like a wedding registry for kids to parents), even publish them to Twitter or Facebook. Why? So people will know what you want and get it for you without asking them to.

Anemic? Yeah. In iTunes click on the arrow beside the Buy Song or Buy Album and you get a drop down menu with options. You can share on Twitter or Facebook, though what gets shared differs with each. Facebook gets the album picture and a link back to iTunes, so you’re advertising for Apple. But do you get a commission?

Is iTunes 9 the best iTunes yet? Yeah, it is. Just remember that iTunes is poorly named. It’s not just about music anymore. It’s also trying to do too much, but certainly does all it does better than any other application for the masses or online music store.