The release of iTunes 9 has included some social media additions, an iTunes store revamp, Genius features and some great extras for the iPhone. However, some rumored additions were left out, such as Last.fm integration and blu-ray playback.
Social Media Integration
You can now share music you are browsing in the iTunes store on Facebook and Twitter by clicking on the little arrow next to the song/album title. This sends an image of the album to Facebook and a Twitter message with the album name, both linking through to iTunes. Not an exciting addition as you can’t send social media messages from your music library or preview a track directly from your Facebook post, but a start at least.
iTunes LP
You may have noticed that some albums in the store have an “iTunes LP” badge on them, which is really a more advanced version of the “Digital Booklet” you would previously receive with purchases. The new Muse album for example, offers photos and videos and is presented quite nicely. You can see the LP home screen in the image above.
Genius Mixes
The Genius function has added Genius Mixes (featured in image above). iTunes will automatically create playlists based on your music genre’s. As long as you’re not expecting your own personal DJ, the mixes are actually quite good and even get you listening to some of that music you forgot about. You can find some more details on Genius Mixes here.
Home Sharing
Home Sharing is a welcome addition and moves towards a solution for those with more than one computer in the household (on the same wi-fi network). You sign into ‘Home Sharing’ with your iTunes account on multiple computers, which then allows you to share your music between them. You can only share between computers with one iTunes account, but there is a way around this if you wanted to take music from a friends computer in a quick and easy way.
All you need to do is sign in with your friends account details when you set up ‘Home Sharing’ (you can change these settings in the ‘Advanced’ navigation menu). Then just drag the music you would like from their library to yours, this will copy the music accross to your computer. This won’t affect any purchases you make as your ‘Home Sharing’ settings are kept separate to your regular iTunes account settings.
iPhone
The iPhone 3.1 firmware update coincided with the release of iTunes 9, with one long awaited feature… You can now organise your applications directly from iTunes instead of trying to move apps around your iPhone manually (image right).
Apple also introduced it’s Genius feature to the iPhone app store, where you can now view apps suggested to you based on your previous purchases.
Another not so welcome change is the comeback of long sync and backup times of your iPhone. Hopefully this is sorted in the next firmware update.
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