Today (Sep 9th) Apple Inc launched the latest update the iTunes, it’s media management tool for the iPod/Phone and sales desk for music, movies, television shows, applications, games and ringtones. The software includes a new ‘grid’ view for displaying albums and new feature called ‘Genius playlists’.

Right now the iTunes Download pages is serving up both 7.7 and version 8 themed pages so be sure to make sure you’ve got lucky and have the right page.

At 55.9 MB in size, the Mac version of iTunes is 7.5 MB larger than the 48.4 MB of iTunes 7.7.1. Let’s check it out.

First Run

As with almost ever iTunes upgrade, you have to sign the new and improved Software License Agreement.

Before you get to see the lovely new grid layout, iTunes has to play about with your Artwork. Grid view is not so impressive if you do not have all your artwork in order…

iTunes 8 loads up in grid view by default. The left-hand side is fairly unchanged. The right-hand side displays the Genius sidebar. You have to turn on Genius Playlists, we’ll go ahead and do that…

Turning on (a) Genius
After logging into the iTunes Store and signing away your privacy your local iTunes needs to tell the iTunes Store in the sky all about your embarrassing music collection.

While Genius is ‘turning on’ you can still use iTunes.

If you successfully turned on the Genius you’ll see this screen. Time to play with the Genius Sidebar.

Genius Sidebar
Heading back to the main ‘Music’ screen in iTunes you’ll see that you have the Genius Sidebar showing on the right-hand side. Select any track from your library and Genius will give you some suggestions of other songs that you so should go buy - from iTunes of-course.

Genius Playlists
Now this feature is much more fun, because you don’t have to spend your hard earned cash. Find a tune that you like and iTunes will make you a playlist of songs that you own/have in your library that go great together. I just had to try this out.

Okay, so the feature does not work for Disney Channel Original Movie (DCOM) soundtracks. Oh well.

Trying again with ‘real’ music pulls up a great list of Tunes that go great with Knocked Up by Kings of Leon

Not too sure if “Save Tonight” by Eagle Eye Cherry really goes all that well with Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl”

Rilo Kiley are cool. But I’m not sold on this playlist. The problem with this is that ‘great’ is a really subjective term. You can like a tune for a number of reasons - Genius Playlists won’t know that you are listening to Rilo Kiley because it reminds you of summer 2006 and you want to listen to other tunes you were loving back then and so on.

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