Apple yesterday launched iTunes 9 as part of their “It’s Only Rock and Roll” event. I’ve now had the chance to sit and play with all the new features. Here’s a rundown of them, and my experiences so far:

UI

One of the first things you will notice in iTunes 9 is the updated “glossy” UI.

iTunes 8

iTunes 9

I have to say, I am not a great fan of it. Apple have decided to give it more of a look like an iTunes 8 window which isn’t activated. I constantly find myself clicking the window thinking it’s inactive, when in fact, it’s “ready to rock”.

Elsewhere in the UI, not much has changed. Buttons, playlists etc are all in the same place they were before – however the sidebar options have had a small icon refresh.

iTunes Store

The iTunes Store also got a make over – a very busy one. Compared to the store of old, there is far more content for the eye to absorb than before. In fact, it’s almost too much content. Clicking through to the App Store for example presents you with probably around 100 different app icons – it’s all a bit too much!

Apple have implemented a new navigation system though for the iTunes Store which is a great improvement over the previous incarnation. Now all the stores are constant and available as a horizontal static nav across all pages, rather than disappearing as part of any page.

When you hover + click over any of these buttons you also get the category options in a dropdown, which is also a very nice addition!

Social Sharing

iTunes 9 now also includes the ability to share albums via Facebook and Twitter. Apple have been quite cunning about this actually. You won’t find the option on any of your songs or albums in your playlists. The only place you can share music is from the iTunes Store.

You basically need to navigate to an album you like, and select the dropdown next to the price to grab the sharing options. What this does is share the album on your twitter, with a helpful link directly back to the iTunes Store… very well thought out! Bit of a shame though (even though I probably won’t use this feature) It would be best placed throughout all albums outside of the Store too.

Home Sharing

Home Sharing is another new feature of iTunes 9. Home Sharing is meant to make sharing content easy between computers and devices within the household. For example, you can share music purchases, movies, apps etc between 5 computers in your house with Home Sharing.

The trouble is, I’ve been doing this for about 3 years without the requirement for this feature. I have simply shared my iTunes ID with my wife, and she has happily listened to my purchases, used my iPhone apps etc etc and visa versa. Admittedly – some people may not want to do this, so Home Sharing does come into it’s own here, allowing potentially 5 different iTunes Store accounts to share each other’s content.

For me though, it’s still not far enough for Apple. I’ve waited for years for an iTunes server – one single repository in the home which holds all iTunes content, with the ability to cache locally some or all songs so you can take them with you on the move. I really don’t see the point in all this copying of identical content to multiple machines – it’s such a waste!

It is possible with network drives etc, but it can be problematic. Experiences here have been up and down – a genuine product from Apple in this area is definitely needed.

Improved Syncing

The one main nice addition here is the ability to download and organise your iPhone/iPod apps from within iTunes itself. Allowing you to effectively reorder your apps on multiple iPhone/iPod screens, and re-sync back to the device. It’s a very cool feature, mimicking the developer tools iPhone Simulator that has been around for a couple of years – although you cannot run apps within it.

One bug(?) I did find was the sort by date functionality of the Application section in the sync options. I don’t know what order Apple are syncing by, but it’s whacky! I am guessing it’s by very first release date, because it’s definitely not by when you first installed the app on the device, and it’s not by the most recently updated.

Apple have updated nearly all the sync option tabs for your iPhone or iPod, making it much easier for you to select the content that you want on your device, as well as adding new ways to pull events, genres etc.

Genius

So Apple’s Genius technology also got an update – adding Genius Mixes to the plate. Genius Mixes is meant to take the massive wealth of data that Apple has consumed from users since Genius’s inclusion with iTunes 8 last year, and play songs in your playlist together with other songs that fit. When I say together, I mean one after another – meaning “Song 1″ will mix nicely with “Song 2″ etc…

Not something I’m that interested in to be honest – I’m a fan of the original Genius toolbar as it helped me discover new music I might not have otherwise found, but that’s about it.

iTunes LP

iTunes LP is a feature I haven’t yet had the chance to check out. However it promises to be pretty damn good. Aiming for the more old-school market of music purchasers who loved owning the physical product, loved the liner notes, loved the artwork, iTunes LP tries to bridge the gap by giving a rich user experience and lots of extras to an album purchase.

User’s can flip through liner notes, select tracks to play from the album itself, rather than clicking through the normal playlist – plus much more. It promises to be very good. That said, it appears the offering is extremely limited at this time – with only 6 albums available to purchase in this new format.

iTunes Extras

Another feature I haven’t had a chance to play with yet is Extras. In a nutshell though, this feature gives you additional content with your movie purchases – specifically the type of DVD extras you would normally see.

What it isn’t

64 Bit – iTunes 9 has remained a 32-bit application, despite nearly all other standard applications for OS X being upped to 64-bit (other than the iLife suite). This is a shame because I think that iTunes more than anything could do with some 64-bit goodness.