| Apple iTunes 7 |
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We all were waiting for whatever new announcement's that Apple's CEO Steve Jobs was going to make this past week at an Apple media event. One of the announcements was an updated version of iTunes, version 7.0 to be exact. Along with the new version of the iTunes application, Jobs also explained new features to the iTunes Music Store. Two of the new features include games for the iPod Video and full-length purchasable movies. The first major change to iTunes is the revamped interface, which was a much needed change. The look is now much smoother looking as well as a new color scheme that really rounds it all off. On the traditional left playlist/music store navigation menu, the playlists and other features are now more clearly organized into nice little groups that make it feel a lot more friendly. iTunes 7 now also updates all of your song's album art covers by automatically downloading them from MTV's Urge music service. iTunes also now does an automatic "continuous playback" if you want of certain songs. What it does is scans your library for songs that it thinks shouldn't have a gap between their playback and it eliminates that gap. This is really good for "live" albums or classical music listeners.
Another major addition to the iTunes application is an iPod summary screen and added iPod connectivity features. Now when you plug in your iPod, a new iPod summary screen will appear that shows everything you need to know about your iPod. Everything from its name, serial number, firmware version, a hard-drive space allocation breakdown, and much more is on this summary screen. You now no longer have to go the Apple Web site to obtain firmware upgrades for your iPod because the new iTunes does it right from inside the application, which is a huge plus.
Apple has also added a whole set of games to its iTunes Music Store that you can purchase for $4.99 each. However, games are not new to the iPod, in fact, Apple has always had little games under the "Extras" menu on all iPods, but these new downloadable games blow those away. Some games include the popular Bejeweled, Tetris, miniature golf, Pac-Man, and much more. We've tested out the Bejeweled and Tetris games and they simply blew us away with their very nice 3D-looking graphics and excellent gameplay. A definite two-thumbs up to Apple on this aspect. You can, however, only play and download these games for one of the 5th generation iPods (Video iPods) and you cannot play them on the computer.
The new downloadable movies for your iPod Video or computer cost anywhere from $9.99 to $14.99. The higher price is for movies that are new releases and the lower price is for movies that have been out for awhile. iTunes 7 so far has about 75 full-length movies in its catalog, including quite a bit of family-friendly movies from Disney and Pixar, but there are many others too, including many "PG-13" and "R" movies. It took about 30-45 minutes to download a movie with the average size of about 1.5GB, 640-by-480-pixel movies, which is a pretty reasonable. The video's also look excellent on the iPod Video's LCD display, but it gets a little tiresome to watch more than one movie on such a little screen. One big downside of moves bought from iTunes is that you cannot burn them to DVD.
Parent's will be happy to hear that Apple has beefed up the parental options in iTunes 7. Parents can now block children from buying any explicit content from the iTunes Music Store, including certain rating movies. You can also disable certain parts of the iTunes application itself, such as the "podcast" library. In conclusion, Apple continues to make iTunes and its iTunes Music Store better and better with each new release and certainly iTunes 7 lives up to that reputation. The iTunes and iPod combination still remains the status quo in the MP3 player market and this review tells why. Both come together so seamlessly and without flaws. |
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