[k95dl01]

As far as I can tell, the Genius playlists are the first big addition to iTunes' functionality as a MUSIC player (thus, the Tunes in iTunes) since the party shuffle feature was added in version 4.5. Maybe skip count is an addition there (but it's not documented well, and hard to use in smart play lists to its maximum potential), but additions to iTunes that actually make it a better music player (as opposed to a bloated hub for everything) are few and far between. I'd call this one of the best updates in a long time.

[tony_d]

For me the best ting about iTunes 8 is that its snappier. It no longer takes forever to load my library (70GB on a FW800 external drive.) The program on a whole feels much faster than 7 did. The spinning beach ball is gone.
@airhead:
I found a script that will search the iTunes store for the song playing in a internet radio stream. I think I found it on Doug's Applescripts for iTunes. It's called Search iTMS for Current Song in Stream and another one is called Search iTunes Store for Current.

[Rugby]

Well have to say I like the new Genius, have already used it and bought some new songs and some I had "missed" not bad...
just wished that there would be a "light" editor in the new release and still saddened that still no video content in Denmark, might not be Apple´s fault but still

[tatilsever]

The list view now has the option of displaying the artwork as the leftmost column. However, it does not look as good as the old one. In the old one, most of the background was white, with alternating backgrounds of white and subtle grey behind the track info. If there were not enough tracks from each album so that the artwork occupied more vertical space, the left over space was left white.

Now, at least in Windows, the background behind the artwork column is grey and the left over space has alternating white and grey backgrounds even for empty lines. The whole thing now looks like Daltons' prison uniforms.

[palms831]

To lessen itunes bloat, all ipod, iphone, and apple tv syncing should be handled through isync in the os x version. Obviously this wouldn't apply for windows.

[kirkmc]

Scott sez:
"In fact, iTunes 8’s interface as a whole was snappy on my Mac, though using my 35GB library, I didn’t note any major speed enhancements compared to iTunes 7 during normal operations."
Well, Scott, those of us with big libraries (mine is about 220 GB) are delighted, because this update has greatly improved speed for all operations involving the actual library file (tagging, ripping, etc.).
Kirk

[mdawson]

Actually, iTunes 7.0 added the Album Artist field making it possible for people that properly tag their content to keep tracks from a single album grouped together when they have different text in the Artist field for various tracks (e.g., most tracks are ArtistName and some are ArtistName featuring GuestArtist ). When the Album Artist field is properly applied you can avoid the Cover Flow duplicity issue that many iTunes users experienced when iTunes 7 was first released that Christopher Breen, Dan Frakes and Rob Griffiths discussed in NOV 2006 (?3 thru 5). Unfortunately, that same fix does not extend to organized music folders that will still treat such entries as multiple artists thus defeating the preference the user intentionally enabled.

iTunes 7.1 introduced 6 sorting fields (e.g., Sort Name, Sort Artist, Sort Album Artist, etc.). Using the sorting fields you can have Cyndi Lauper sorted as Lauper, Cyndi, but still appear in the proper form when displayed. Previous to iTunes 7.1, you would have had to put proper names in the ?Last, First? format in the Artist and Album Artist tags in order to have these fields sort properly. Unfortunately, Apple again ignored the ?organized music folder? setting and continued to default to the Artist tag for naming artist folders in the user?s iTunes music folder.

In iTunes 7?s subsequent releases Apple never corrected the organized music folder issue. As of version 8 it is still not corrected officially making this oversight a bug. So iTunes 7 did take great strides to make it easier to properly organize your music in the iTunes library but unfortunately did not carry that capability over to the user?s music folder when they enable that preference.

[mdawson]

Agreed. The problem is that it is no longer a separate album view, but a list view with an artwork column enabled; and it looks the part. The presentation is definitely not as clean as it was in iTunes 7.

[guslov]

I upgraded to iTunes 8 last night and already discovered two amazing bands I may have never been exposed to using the Genius feature. I love that new feature. My wallet? Maybe not so much. :)

[luckylou7]

Sort Album Artist and related fields are awesome - too bad they aren't honored by AppleTV. An album that has several guest artists, when viewed by Artist in AppleTV, shows all those as separate entries, unfortunately, so if you just pick the one artist, you miss every track that was a collaboration. This is hugely disappointing.

[luckylou7]

cphoffman42 said:

I don't think the issue with Genius recommending tracks you already own is due to them being from another source. It just recommended that I buy a track from the same album which I just bought from the iTunes store five minutes before. My guess is that this is a quirk that will be worked out, but in the meantime it's a bit weird.

As of now, it seems that after updating your library, whether from adding songs or changing metadata tags, you have to manually choose "Update Genius" from the Store menu for iTunes to refresh Genius information. Worked for me in the same situation as yours.

I'd think they'd make an automatic refresh at some point, and maybe they have already but I've failed to notice it or any setting to control its sensitivity/frequency.

[macguyfromtv]

Apple should buy Pandora and add it to its radio page... already has direct purchases thru itunes!

[Katarina]

iTunes 8 is a great multimedia player and I love it from the very beginning,but the real nonsense about this Genius thing is that you need an iTunes store account just to make it work... why not having your local genius that manages just your playlist and nothing more...
Maybe it's just an apple method of discovering what music do we hide inside of our hard disks that wasn't sold by apple.... or quite frankly music that we all downloaded from various torrent sites.
To paraphrase that famous apple 1984 ad...
In September 2008 apple computer will introduce Genius Playlists. And you will see why 2008 will be like 1984

[limweiseng]

NOT SO GENIUS.
Genius doesn't work with songs with many other languages songs from China, Japan, European, etc.
I thought Genius work based on reading the beat, speed, intensity or something.
There's a data grabbing by Apple when you active the so-called genius.
Guess it just grabbed data from many customers and put it into a database then use it for global genius but still do not cover many languages?
NOT SO GENIUS.