I haven’t had much time to fiddle around too much with iTunes 8.0 but I do like the Genius sidebar. Basically, Genius will select similar songs based on a track you select in your iTunes library. In the main sidebar it will select songs from the iTunes store that you don’t own – it’s a great way of discovering music you might not otherwise have heard, although it is limited to iTunes tracks, so Uzimon but no Beatles for example. If you hit the “atomic” icon next to “Burn Disc” at the bottom of your iTunes window, Genius will create a playlist from songs in your library which you can then save this playlist to your library – pretty handy if, like me, you never have the time to compile playlists for every occasion plus its another way of rediscovering those tracks that you ripped long ago and now lie buried somewhere in those mounting gigabytes on your hard drive.
While we’re on the subject of iTunes, I was very impressed to find that episodes of ongoing TV series like the new season of AMC’s “Mad Men” are available the same week as broadcast. Yes, I could set my WOW box to record the series but it has been unreliable and WOW’s online programming guide is crap. Much easier to click “buy” on Apple TV and have the whole series on tap – and at $22.99 for the whole 13-part season, it’s a bargain compared to buying the box set, with the added duty and shipping.
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