iTunes Overview

Introducing iTunes - digital music the Macintosh way.
(www.apple.com/itunes) "iTunes features a clean, powerful interface for importing music CDs to MP3 files, creating playlists, burning music CDs, moving music to your portable MP3 player, and listening to hundreds of radio stations on the Internet. iTunes does all this and more."
Available January 9, 2001 as a FREE DOWNLOAD.

http://www.macfixit.com/reports/itunes.shtml (link dead) - "Apple has released iTunes. It is a free application that acts as a central hub for managing music.

"iTunes based on SoundJam? Many have noticed certain similarities; not surprising considering Apple acquired the SoundJam code. Jeff Robbin, author of SoundJam, now works for Apple.

"iTunes installs the following:

• Apple CD/DVD Driver 1.4.3
• iTunes Control Strip
• RealAudio and Nomad related Extensions
• Beware the Documents : iTunes folder
  

"The current version of the software only supports creating CD-Rs on the new G4 Macs with internal CD-RW drives, but Apple expects to add plug-ins for third party CD burners in the next few months."

More info available from MacFixit's site at http://www.macfixit.com.

Import music from a CD, Search your music library in Real-time, Browse your library (by artist and/or album), Playlists, Burn CDs, Listen to Internet Radio, Play music, Visualize.

iTunes' features are demonstrated on Apple's site at www.apple.com/itunes.

Notes/Comments

Rip Speed - varies quite a bit; I've seen 2-3x on a G3, but my G4/450 DP hits 13x on many tracks, even with "play while encoding" enabled...

Add to Library - via the File menu, I added 232 songs to my library from my G4 over AppleTalk, it indexed them all in about 45 seconds.

Visual - the overall visual effect is generated by interacting three modules (first seems to be mostly shape, second is mostly movement, third is mostly color). You can get info on them, or change them manually, etc. Keyboard commands are:

c = info on visuals
q/w = scroll first visual
a/s = scroll second visual
z/x = scroll third visual
? or h = toggle help menu

To me, most of it looks like like Fantasia on a 60's acid trip. Some of the modules are even named "electric acid", "flower power", "tripping hard", and so forth...