I said I would do it, and I’m a man of my word. I’ve downloaded, installed, used and abused iTunes from Apple. I trashed this app pretty hard last week, but in retrospect, I may have been a bit hard on it. The last time I used it was about version 4 or so, and the only thing I really used it for was loading up the iPod with tunes. So, I resolved myself to take fresh look at what can’t be ALL bad, considering the swarms of people who are using it, and, as I said, try to be objective as well.

Acquisition and Installation

The download for the current version, v7.5, is a whopping 41 megs, but considering that this is, similar to Windows Media Player, more than just a simple player, not yet in the realm of ridiculous. iTunes is a player, CD ripper/burner, iPod interface, web browser and file organizer. Versions for Mac as well as XP and Vista are available. Apple requires your email address to download, be sure to uncheck the boxes if you don’t want to add to the adverts in your inbox. Apple delivered the package to me at close to 1mB per second, quite fast, even for a commercial site. I’m aware that some people are not fans of QuickTime, but iTunes requires it. It’s included in the installer, nothing special need be done if you don’t have it yet. You can choose from 17 languages and are offered the usual: shortcut creation, file association and automatic update checks.

The “assistant” asks you what file types it should search for, but be careful here: iTunes offers to organize your music for you, but if you choose ‘yes’ your files and folders will be moved and renamed according to iTunes’ preference. I have my music meticulously organized alphabetically, if I’d chosen wrong, I’d be in tears and in no condition to write. iTunes lets you know that track info is sent to Apple for use in finding album art for you, but assures you that no record of the contents of your hard drive is saved. We hope. So, if you’re among the 100 million plus people who download music that isn’t “quite” legal, keep it in mind. You are also given an opportunity to go to the iTunes Store and open an account where you can buy and download thousands of albums or about 2 million individual tracks, album art and more. One related tidbit I thought interesting: The RIAA would have you believe that ripping “importing” CD’s, even for personal use on your computer or portable device, is not “fair use” and, therefore, illegal. However, Apple encourages you to do so. Hmm.

Interface and Features

First off, the playlist functions impressed me. That is, after my library was built. That was time consuming, to say the least. Ten minutes to add my ripped CD’s folders, which consists of about a gigabyte of mostly *.MP3s. Then, another hour or more (I wandered off) to “process” them. After that, I was making playlists like a mad thing. Of special note is the “party shuffle” playlist. This playlist randomizes all songs, displaying the next dozen or so songs queued up, as well as the previous few. As you use iTunes more, you can assign ‘ratings’ to each track, and iTunes will be sure that the the songs you like are queued up more often than ones you indicate you’re not fond of.  Provided the ID tags on your tracks are correct, iTunes can make playlists that just include ’90’s tunes, your top rated tunes, or just the ones that it notices you listen to the most. The UI wasn’t extremely intuitive, but it does a lot, so some getting used to is in order. I would, however, like to know why in the hell the switch to “mini player” is under the ‘advanced’ menu item rather than ‘view’ like every other bit of software ever made with a similar feature. Took me a bit to find it. It could use an ‘always on top’ toggle as well. Annoying to have to bring up the taskbar every time I want to skip a crappy song, but you can check an option that minimized iTunes to the systray, giving you some right-click capabilities.  Also, the lack of a ‘Stop’ button annoyed me. There appears to be no way to stop a track and restart it other than grabbing the slider and pulling it back to the beginning. You can switch views to automatically display only your music, only videos, TV shows, podcasts, or Internet radio stations. You can also easily modify ID3 tags, and modify volume level and EQ settings, which is very handy if your songs were ripped with different apps, and have different volume levels, and/or sound quality. A search function within the playlist views would be nice.

If you insert an audio CD iTunes will ‘import’ (rip) it for you and add it to your library. This was effortless and pretty quick, too. Burning CD’s was, shall we say, functional, but you’re better off using a program specifically designed for this, like Ashampoo. ITunes, will of course, synch your libraries with your iPod or iPhone, and you can even make ringtones for your iPhone from your tunes. Also of interest is the parental controls, which can be password protected to prevent unauthorized kidlets from downloading and/or viewing content that is age-inappropriate.

System ‘Friendliness’

Looking back at the review on the other players, iTunes stands out in one way in particular: This thing is a HOG. During the hour it was ‘processing’ my music it was gobbling up nearly 30% of my processor capacity, and this is a 3.4 gHz P4. In addition it ate up over 100,000K of memory. After the ‘processing’, processor use dropped to a more reasonable 2-3%, but memory usage was still 60,000K plus. The only thing I’m running that uses more is Firefox, which…just….keeps….growing….. In iTunes’ defense, after being left open for over 24 hours, and playing most of that time, it didn’t grow more than a couple K. Back on the offensive, this is, in my opinion, far more memory usage than I’d like to see in a media player. That 60,000 does not count the 2 sub-apps that load automagically, which account for another six or seven thousand K.

Wrap-Up

Pros: Free, fabulous playlist management, direct access to music store, some great features for individual track management.

Cons: UI needs work, resource-sucker.

All in all, this wasn’t reminiscent of the horrid experience I had with my last try at iTunes. The quick CD import and unmatched playlist features almost make me willing to leave this on the machine for a while. A big thanks to those of you who rang in on this.