Apple's Clever iTunes 8

Every time Apple introduces another version of iTunes, it risks turning a large yet muscular media organizer and shopping center into a bloated, unnavigable mess, writes reviewer Matt Vella. iTunes 8 gets it right and adds some useful features like Grid view and a so-called Genius playlist creator. For the next version, however, Apple may need to pull another "leapfrog."

It's been more than seven years since Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Chief Executive Steve Jobs bounded onto the stage at the annual MacWorld conference in San Francisco and took the wraps off the first version of iTunes. And oh, what a difference (nearly) a decade makes: The desktop jukebox has evolved from a simple, no-frills MP3 manager into an ever-expanding media gateway offering music, TV, movies, podcasts and even video games for the iPhone and iPod.

Putting episodes of "Entourage" on the same digital shelf as Kanye West and "Ms. Pac-Man" may have been a stroke of genius. But with each new version, iTunes has risked pulling a Marlon Brando, morphing from a hunky heart-throb into a corpulent has-been. Apple's latest free update, iTunes 8, was released earlier this month, and its design clearly aims to deal with the bloat.

The biggest change to the application, aside from the addition of high-definition television shows to the online store, is a new focus on improving the user interface. A so-called Grid view, and an innovative Genius playlist-creator are the headliners in this upgrade. Both are aimed at improving the ways users access their music. Over two weeks of heavy use, I found that these features are mostly an improvement.

A Whole New View

The most immediately apparent change from iTunes 7.0 is Grid view, a new layout that brings together elements from Apple's iPhoto and from the iPhone. Album covers are set on a dark background and tiled in rows across the screen. Clicking on them once begins playing the album, while double clicking reveals all the songs contained therein. This setup is intuitive, particularly for iPhone and iPod touch users already used to tapping cover art to access an album's contents.
If, like me, you have an obsessive compulsion to keep album artwork accurate and organized, Grid view turns out to be a graphically appealing way to scan your record collection. (Unlike the three-dimensional CoverFlow of iTunes 7.0, which was more novel than useful, Grid view allows you to page through albums quickly rather than just slickly.) Users who don't care for artwork will, however, find row after row of placeholder icons, making Grid view somewhat useless.
In other instances, Grid view is an outright hindrance, adding unnecessary steps to the process of managing, say, podcasts. The traditional list view made it easy to delete multiple episodes, because it displays all the shows in the series. This isn't possible with Grid view, though thankfully it can be turned off for categories that don't lend themselves to a visual treatment.

Here You Go

Borrowing from the playbooks of Web sites like Pandora.com and Last.fm, a new Genius button creates playlists of between 25 and 100 songs that have a similar sound. In my tests, this worked pretty well, dredging up long-forgotten tracks from my music collection. Oddly, though, the service isn't consistent: Genius could not create a playlist based on "Hello Brooklyn 2.0" from Jay-Z's "American Gangster" soundtrack, reporting that the iTunes store didn't have enough data about the song. But it had no problem creating a playlist based on "Blue Magic," a song from the same album.

Overall, iTunes 8 manages to keep itself trim. But, as the application's features and content continue to grow -- HD audio and e-books are two types of media that could be added in the future -- designers will have to dream up more interface improvements to keep navigation simple. Introducing iTunes 1.0 in 2001, Jobs exclaimed, "We're late to this party, but we are going to do a leapfrog." It may be time for Jobs and company to start thinking like that again.