iTunes 10 is here, and although there’s no need for a ‘review’ — you’re gonna download and use it anyway — here’s what I think of some of its new features. I will admit beforehand, that I started by writing its title. I don’t usually do such titles, but I really wanted to make it sound good.

The Icon

It’s a don’t-mind or hate it icon. I’ve yet to hear of anyone who absolutely loves the new icon. I don’t hate it. The best part of the Mac iTunes icon, is that you can change it to whatever takes your fancy. Already, we have Javier Ocasio work on a better rounded version, and Mattias Ekstrom who has created a more squarish ‘flurry like’ icon. I’ll be waiting for a few weeks before I change it to something different — if at all.

The Album Art Pop-up

Previously, when you clicked the album artwork panel at the bottom, it merely brought up a window with the artwork in large. If it was an enhanced podcast, you could click on chaptered links, but otherwise it was pretty much useless. With 10, the window springs out, with controls overlayed, much like the new QuickTime X window HUD. If it’s an enhanced podcast, you can even switch chapters.

Looks great on the desktop (though I don’t see geeks moving from apps like Bowtie).

Better Syncing

I love the fact that iTunes now shows you the steps remaining to complete an iOS device sync. So you know how long you have to wait. And you have to wait, now that iTunes 10 features the super slow device backup. Another thing about sync, is the dynamic nature of the capacity info bar. It changes according to what you’ve selected, so you won’t ever have to see the “not enough space” error. You can also click the titles to change between space used in bytes, or display a more ‘human’ value, that is, of number of items.

Is it just me, or does that look scarily similar to the iPhone app Foobi?

The traffic lights

I like the new window action buttons. Rather, I don’t hate it. I’ve never used the traffic lights on the iTunes window (have done so on other windows). As Layton Duncan puts it:

Notice the one button people actually know and use hasn’t moved at all. The red close button is where it always was. So why change it at all, what does this new orientation buy? It simply allows the title bar, which happens to be huge in iTunes, to be shrunk by 20 pixels, without affecting function. Small change, but, in this case, significant gain.

But never you mind! If you hate it, there’s a terminal command that will restore sanity to your iTunes title bar in a jiffy. This one comes to you courtesy Wolfgang Bartelme (@bartelme). Open your Terminal, and paste this in:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes full-window -1

Restart to see the title back back to normal. To return to crazy titlebar, which is how I like it, replace -1 with -0.

Flippy triangles are gone

As far as user interfaces go, Apple has really thrown out the rulebook on this one. It’s their own rulebook, so they have the right to do so, I guess. The flippy triangles that we’ve seen all over the Mac have been replaced by hover-sensitive “Hide” labels, which show up for Playlists, Devices and Genius. You can even double click Playlists or Genius label and it’ll hide/show the list. Again, odd UI, but works to clean up the mess.

The Monochrome

I don’t quite understand the reason for this. It’s not like iTunes has to emphasize visual content. It is, after all, just lines of text that point to sound files. I look at iTunes 9, look at 10, then look back at 9, and I wonder why. And while they’ve gone and desaturated the preferences’ icons as well, the Aqua controls within the preferences are still active.

Then again, iTunes has always been Apple’s playground for experimenting with user interfaces. If you’d like to have a good before and after look at iTunes 10 vs 9 (and previous versions), check out Garrett Murray’s iTunes UI changes page.

Ping

I almost forgot about this one, so you know how insignificant a feature this is for me. iTunes’ browser has never been my favourite. It’s too slow, doesn’t integrate with Safari, and doesn’t have tabs. So to use Ping in iTunes is going to be quite a pain. We’ll see how this develops, but for now I’m not that excited about Ping.

Album in List view

Jobs talked about this feature, probably because there wasn’t much to talk about with iTunes. I personally use the column browser (Cmd + B) to view my lists. This new view doesn’t detract me from it one bit. In fact, I would say it makes the whole view look extremely cluttered if you have a lot of songs that don’t belong to full albums.

…

Do I like iTunes 10? Well, it’s not a bad release, but I’m definitely not excited about this release. It’s not significantly slower than the previous version. It’s got some UI that I’ll probably grow to like. But overall doesn’t do much to change the way I access my media. You’re most welcome to leave your comments.

Sidenote: I hate to say this, but I came up short in staying true that list of ten. I could come up with only 8 things worth talking about. I’m keeping the original title anyway, mostly because I don’t want to write a whole new introductory paragraph.