One of the main cornerstones of Apple's dullard iPod launch last week was the announcement of iTunes 8 and its Genius recommendation. After fiddling around with the new app I can officially declare that the 'new' engine isn't even worth initialising. Not unless you have an unlimited iTunes Store access card, that is.
As predicted, the new feature is about as practically useful as a chocolate teapot, more suited to trying to pimp the contents of the iTunes Store than get me to 'discover' new acts. In fact, not only did it constantly try and get me to buy tracks that I already owned, but it has error-messaged several times and scarily now knows everything about my music library.
It's not all bad, though
I wouldn't want to overstate that last point, as I really don't mind, but I do mind that Genius is nothing new and yet Apple made a big deal out of it. Last.fm, iLike and The Filter all do the same thing. The on-the-fly playlist creation is, however, more interesting.
Indeed, as a whole, iTunes 8 aint all bad. I'm a really big fan of the new album and artist browsing. Cover Flow is a bit slow for me, and I much prefer the new, additional, method of browsing.
iPhone 2.1
And, on a related point from the keynote, I've installed the iPhone 2.1 firmware. At the moment, speed isn't particularly improved for me, and the 'more accurate' 3G only seems to result in less 3G coverage though that's down to O2 rather than Apple, of course. I'll be posting more about that later in the week.
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jmace86
September 15th 2008
1. I am in total agreement with you about iTunes 8. Genius is decent enough for creating playlists, but the iTunes store recommendations are pretty weak, often recommending music I already have in my library.
I also prefer the new album/artist browsing. Cover flow is great when you only have a few albums/artists, but once you have over 20 or so it becomes rather slow and tedious to scroll through them.
On the iPhone 2.1 update front, I have also noticed slightly less 3G coverage since the update, though at least my phone now depicts that more accurately!
I have definitely noticed a huge improvement in text messaging though, all the lag that was once so painfully apparent seems to be gone and my contacts list also loads much faster than it did pre-2.1. I have yet to have my iPhone crash since the update, but that could just be coincidence and I have not installed any new Apps recently so I cannot comment on the supposed improvement in 3rd-party App install speeds.
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