What Noisy Cats Are We

I hear people ranting and raving about iTunes on a regular basis.  Apple’s media player software has gotten criticism from all sides, and some of it rightly so.  With the recent release of iTunes 9, Apple has taken some steps to alleviate people’s concerns and show that they actually are listening to the criticisms.

There have been many write-ups on the new iTunes, and I am not here to do a full review.  I recently purchased the Snow Leopard upgrade for my little MacBook, and downloaded the iTunes 9 update from Apple for free.  There are three new features that I think deserve mentioning.

1.) The iTunes Store Wish List:  For many years, I have had an Amazon.Com Wish List.  Though their prices for music can be less than the iTunes Store (I always find it a good thing to compare and buy the least expensive when it comes to this), it has always been much more convenient to purchase directly from Apple.  For instance, we bought the first season of Sons Of Anarchy from the iTunes Store this past Friday night for $19.99 and it downloaded and we were watching it yesterday.  Awesome.  Anyway, the iTunes Store now has an ‘Add To Wish List’ function, and you can just bookmark away all the music, videos, and whatever else you want to buy there for another day when you actually have the cash to purchase.  Great feature.  (I would like to find a way to export all the music and videos I have on my Amazon.Com WishList and import to the iTunes Store wish list at some point, maybe.)

2.) The Automatically Add To iTunes Folder:  Maybe people have been complaining about a lack of this feature for years.  WinAmp always had it, and so have many other media players.  Apple has added this feature, and you can find documentation of it here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3832

3.) Play Next in iTunes DJ:  A lot of times I am listening to a random shuffle in iTunes and think of a song that I would like to hear.  There has never been a way to ‘play it next’ in iTunes, so this added feature, part of the new iTunes DJ, which I am trying to learn about now, has been a boon to my iTunes playing.

All in all, it is still lacking in some features that people want, like out of the box third part device support, &tc.  But for me, it fits the bill just fine, especially with it’s $0 asking price and pretty good Apple support for the product.