Having lusted over the original Mac iTunes since I first played with it two years ago, the rumors of a Windows port back in the spring brought a smile to my face.
So when those rumors became solid facts, it was with baited breath that I waited for its release. Well, iTunes has come to Windows (apparently Hell Froze Over
), and after playing with it for a few days I have to say it's looking good....
Background
Apple's 2nd Gen iPod
Although I've never owned a Mac, I've always admired them from afar - the asthetic design, the simple-yet-works-properly-with-the-hardware operating system, and the slightly cool aura that Apple manged to project onto their products. I'd toyed around with them when the opportunity arose, but it wasn't until approximately one year ago that I got my own bit of Apple hardware: The iPod.
I won't go on about how good this simple yet brilliant music player is; suffice to say that it's quite simply the best mp3 player out there. Full stop. When Apple released the Windows version, I had it ordered within the week, and was quite in awe of the hardware when it (finally!) arrived. Unfortuneately, Apple had decided to ship it with what can only be described politely as a piece of shit: MusicMatch jukebox. While I've managed this past year (mainly by using other software), the thought of having a decent music player that played nicely with my iPod was the main motivation for giving the Windows version a test drive.
Installation
Much has been made of iTunes's apparent incompatibilities, causing all sorts of problems. As far as my experience went, I suffered no problems at all. Installing iTunes on a moderate to low spec machine by today's standards (Celeron 900 with 320MB Ram, GeForce 3 gfx card running Windows XP) caused no more difficulty than the obligitary reboot Windows requires after installing virtually anything. The install process also installs Quicktime 6.4, which iTunes uses for all it's audio in/out, with version 6.4 bringing support for, amongst other things, Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), or MPEG-4 - more on this later.
(Update - Apple have released version 4.1.1 of iTunes for Windows, which apparently fixes many of these problems - get it from the Apple website.)
Running iTunes
iTunes running on Windows XP
If you're ever used iTunes before on a Mac, then you'll have no problem at all getting around the interface - it's exactly the same. If you're never used it before, then you'll also have no problem using it - Apple are the kings of UI design :-) However, a brief overview will be necessary for any 'newbies'. The main interface window is divided into two panels: the source list on the left, and the browser on the right, which is used by each source to show you what they contain. The play controls sit on the top left, and a multi-function info panel in the top center is used to tell you what is currently playing, the progress of CD rips, the spectrum analyser etc. Finally in the top right corner is the search box, which allows you to perform a search in your current source.
The different components of iTunes, such as the library, internet radio, playlists etc are listed in the source list on the left hand side. As these neatly divide the functionality of iTunes, it seems sensible to describe each one in turn.
The Library
Library view
The source that opens on startup, and the one you'll probably use the most is the Library source. This shows all the music on your PC that iTunes knows about, and allows you to view information on all this music in countless ways, from the obvious (Artist, Album, Track) to the completly obscure (Beats per Minute, for all you budding DJs). A browser can be toggled by clicking on the browse button in the top right. This adds 'Artist' and 'Album' lists to the top of half of the track list, allowing easy navigation by these categories. This browse button becomes a multi-function button; depending on the source being viewed it is used to burn CDs, import music and other tasks specific to a source.
To start playing a song simply double-click on it. Right-clicking on a song gives you a menu, which along other things allows you to view the info on a track. The information is split into four tabs: Summary, Info, Options, and Artwork.
Song info showing auto-complete
The first tab gives comprehensive information about the track, such as size, format, bit-rate, play count, and where the file's located on disk. The second tab allows you to view and/or edit your id3 tags, such as artist, album, track number and track name. Cunningly all the fields feature auto-complete, based on the rest of your library, so iTunes will auto-complete as you type if you have, say, another song by the same artist.
The third tab allows you to set all sorts of obscure volume and equaliser presets, while the fourth tab allows you to edit any artwork, such as album covers associated with the track.
Here you start to see some of the cosmetic differences between iTunes for Windows and it's older mac sibling. Windows iTunes uses native widgets in most (but not all) of it's dialogs, which although perfectly normal in a Windows environment, somehow look out of place alongside iTunes' otherwise Aqua/Metal interface. Maybe Apple want to remind us of the advantages of the 'proper' version?
Radio
Wolf FM - you love the Wolf!
The iTunes radio allows you to listen in to internet radio. However, while this seems quite a good feature, it is somewhat limited: you cannot add your own stations, and you can only listen to stations that use a streaming method that Apple approve. In short - you can't get any BBC radio stations, which makes it pretty much useless for me. But if you're into random American radio stations, it's quick and easy to use...
Music Store
Ahh, the much vaunted iTunes Music Store (iTMS). Well, it's only available in the USA at the moment, but before you dismiss it as some useless Yankie crap, it does serve a purpose - as it gives you a free 30 second preview of all 400,000+ tracks in it, it's a great way to sample music, either to try and check if that new song you heard is actually by Electric Six, or to get a sample of the new Strokes album. However, I'm not gonna go into it in any more depth, as that's about as much use as it is to us Europeans at the moment.
CD playing and Ripping
As you'll have gathered by now, playing and ripping CDs is intrgrated into iTunes and is very simple: Insert your CD, wait for the CDDB lookup to get your track names, and click Import in the top right. iTunes will rip your CD and encode it according to your chosen settings in the preferences. The speed of ripping is quite impressive - of course it is very hardware dependent (CD-ROM speed, CPU speed etc), but I managed 8-10x speed using a 40x speed Pioneer CD-ROM, ripping to 192Kbps mp3. It also will quite happily do this while playing the same CD, which is one better than a lot of other music jukeboxes.
As far as actual encoding music, you have four options: WAV, AIFF (basically WAV on a Mac), MP3 and the new kid on the block, AAC. WAV and AIFF are pretty straightforward - lossless compression, resulting in massive files but useful if you want to store a exact copy of your CD.
MP3 encoder options
iTunes' MP3 support is interesting, if not fantastic. It has three preset quality settings:
- Good Quality (128Kbps)
- High Quality (160Kbps)
- Higher Quality (192Kbps)
It also allows you to customise your own settings, with options for bit-rate, sample rate, mono/stereo/joint sereo channels, and a couple of extra options, as well as allowing variable bit rate (VBR) encoding. So far so good. However, while you can specify one of seven quality settings for VBR encoding, as well as a minimum bit-rate, this does not operate the same way that, say Lame does. Instead the minimum bit-rate 'drives' the encoding, so if you set the minimum to 32Kbps, then you'll end up with an MP3 that is 80% 32Kbps, with a small amount at 92Kbps, and a smaller amount at 112Kbps, and so on. So if you want a decent quality VBR MP3s, you've got to set your minimum bit-rate to at least 128Kbps, but then you end up encoding silence at 128Kbps, and massive files, which pretty much defeats the object of VBR - go figure!.
Visualisation
The final format, Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), is the new audio format for MPEG-4, the sucessor format to MPEG-2 (used in DVDs). AAC is supposed to give higher quality audio than MP3 at equivilent bit-rates, or, looking at it the other way, smaller files at the same quality. It's still relatively new, so while it is a standard, not many players/encoders exist yet. However it seemed only fair to give it a test.
While it does seem to sound better than an Lame-encoded mp3 at 128Kbps, I pretty much use VBR mp3 encoding, and AAC (or at least the version in iTunes 4.1) doesn't seem to support it, which doesn't make it very attractive for me. Plus I already have 8+ Gigs of music encoded as mp3s, and having a mix of two formats doesn't appeal to me, so I think I'll keep EAC/Lame as my CD ripper/encoder of choice. However, if you're starting from scratch, then AAC could be a valid choice.
iPod syncronisation
iPod sync'ing - it's so simple!
What I was really looking forward to. As it turns out, iTunes' iPod support is so simple it's genius: as soon as you plug your iPod in, iTunes pops open and syncs your library to the iPod. That's it. But that's all you want - a perfect copy of your library, including Playlists, Smart Playlists, play counts - the lot. As long as you plug your iPod into your PC to charge it it'll stay nicely in sync, and it doesn't take the half-hour to sync that MusicMatch does, or crash intermittently like Ephpod does. This may sound simplistic, but for something like this, the simpler the better.
Playlists and Smart Playlists
Creating playlists couldn't be easier: simpy drag a song from the browser to the source view. A playlist will be automatically created with the dragged song's name, and additional songs can be added by dragging them to the newly created playlist. Once you're got your playlist sorted out, you can (suprisingly) play it just like another source. If you want to burn it to a CD, you simply click the rather menacing Burn button in the top right, and insert a blank CD. iTunes can burn three types of CD an audio CD, mp3 CD or a data CD of the actual files - you select this in the preferences.
Smart Playlists
Finally, one of the best features of iTunes are it's Smart Playlists. These are basically playlists automatically generated from certain parameters you specify, for example All music by 'The Beastie Boys'
, or My top 25 rated songs
. However, the smart playlist feature allows parameters to be combined, allowing you to create complex playlists; and ability of iTunes to do so-called Live Updating on playlists allows them to change dynamically, as you update your library, making
playlists such as All 90's indie/alternative music
, or 30 random song's I've not listened to in the last 2 months
possible.
Conclusion
iTunes for Windows is virtually the same as it's Mac counterpart. Considering the quality of the OS X version, this is a great complement. It manages the same seamless support for CD ripping, burning, and hardware (OK, iPods), while retaining the same intuitive interface. A few minor niggles exist, such as the incostistent appearance of the interface, and the poor VBR support is quite annoying, but the many excellent features make up for it. Only one question remains: Is it too good?
iTunes was one of the 'killer apps' that Apple had on it's hardware - it certainly tempted me to want an Apple laptop - but now it's lost it's exclusivity. Apple's plan seems to be to use iTunes Music Store to push the sales of iPods, and from there more Apple computers. While this may will work in the US, until iTMS is rolled out in Europe and other parts of the world, Apple have shot themselves in the foot, by effectivley 'giving away' one of their best apps to the opposition - Windows...
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