apple juice

iTunes 11 is out! Not following my own advice against waiting a day to install new software, I went right ahead and installed it.

I like it. The interface is intuitive. There are a few places where I was expecting something to happen as I hovered my mouse over an object, and I realized it’s waiting for me to click on everything. (They’re not really menus, more like iOS-style sheets).

The Up Next feature is cool, though more limited (at least at first glance) than the iTunes DJ feature which seems to be gone.

Time will tell if I like the new Artist and Album cover layout, or if I find myself back in the traditional column view, but on the whole – a nice upgrade. I’m glad they waited to release the new version and tweak whatever wasn’t finished!

given how much this blog was originally about apple stuff, it is funny how little I post about all things Mac these days.

but, I wanted to give a little shout-out to iTunes, which received a major version upgrade last week. i would certainly recommended updating to this version when you have the chance.

the genius feature, while not new with version 9, is easily my favorite new function from the past few versions of iTunes. I think it gets a bad rap as it tends to repeat stuff if your library isn’t that large, and it doesn’t always stay within the same mood.

but on the whole, it makes interesting playlists quickly. i think through some serious manipulation of the smart playlists, you can make some pretty nice “radio-style” playlists… but it’s really not worth the effort when you can click the genius buttton and start listening.

i actually sent in an enhancement request to apple, something I’ve never done before with iTunes. I can’t imagine how much thousands of hours I’ve used iTunes, and this never occurred to me before.

what if you had the option to get “relative dates” when you shrink the last played or date added fields? Then, instead of seeing a whole list of dates and times, you would see last played as “Last month” or “Last week”.

A few months later, I don’t really care about the specific time of day, and I’d just like a quick visual for how long it has been since the last play.

(on a related note, I’ve long felt that instead of simply storing play count and last played date, storing every plays timestamp could lead to some interesting smart playlists, show me things that i’ve listened to 10 times in the past week, for example. as it currently stands, you can only pick things that have, for example, play counts greater than 10, and that the last play is in the last week)

Anyway, upgrade when you get the chance!

I’ve been really getting into my smart playlists lately, and I figured I’d share some of the joy.

Today’s smart playlist is: Morning of Quality

• Rating is between 3 and 5 stars
• Update!! Last Played is not in the last 1 Day (Gives you a new list all the time)
• Limted to 4 hours
• Selected at Random

This gives me a mix of good stuff to listen to all morning long.

Yesterday’s smart playlist: Four Hours of Stuff You’ve Never Heard Afternoon Discovery

• Play Count is 0
• Limted to 4 hours
• Selected at Random

Eventually Afternoon Discovery will be redefined as a “Least Recently Played” list, but for now, I have so much stuff to listen to!

I’m also going to bring these two playlists down to two hours each, and then add two more playlists to my daily listening.

This dude has some thoughts on smart playlists, as does this guy and here’s a whole site dedicated to Smart Playlists.

Needless to say, Smart Playlists are an incredibly powerful feature.

After I have my entire library rated, I’m going to move onto entering BPM info for at least all the dance/techno and hip/hop songs. There are some tools available to help you out. I’ll post about those when I get around to that project.

Happy Listening!