With the recent announcement of the new iPod Photo, Apple has also released an updated version of iTunes, bringing the snazzy MP3 play'in software up to version 4.7.
According to iTunes' help files, the following features are new in 4.7:
What's new in iTunes 4.7
Using iTunes 4.7 you can:
- View photos on your iPod photo
If you have an iPod photo, you can transfer photos on your computer to your iPod photo using the iPod pane in iTunes preferences.
- Easily spot duplicate songs in your library or playlists
Choose Edit > Show Duplicate Songs to see only songs with the same title and artist.
- Float the Mini Player window in front of all other windows
Make the iTunes Mini Player window float in front of all other windows using the new preference in the Advanced pane of iTunes preferences. You can also minimize the Mini Player to the task bar or system tray.
Finally! Two of the features I've been complaining about for a while; easy detection/removal of duplicate songs and an "Always on top" feature [which is pretty much mandatory in any MP3 application in the past X years].
Enabling the "always on top" feature is pretty straight forward:
Switching to "mini-mode" is as simple as right clicking the iTunes icon in your system tray (Windows) and selecting Switch to Mini Player from the contextual menu.
As always, iTunes can be downloaded from http://www.apple.com/itunes/.
Posted by peter on October 29, 2004 at 09:16 AMThanks for posting these changes. I couldn't find any info on the changes other than the ipod photo stuff so I was relucatant to download.
Now that I know about the duplicate song feature I will go and get it.
Do you know if apple posts these changes anywhere on their website so you can actually see what they are before you download?
Posted by: Bill Rawlinson at October 29, 2004 11:14 AMExcellent question. I'm sure they do, but I just downloaded and installed latest version and read the help docs.
A quick Google search turned up the following result: What's new in iTunes 4.7, although I reckon it isn't the best method of following the latest changes. I wasn't able to easily find recent updates anywhere in the iTunes section.
Posted by: peter at October 29, 2004 11:19 AMOne bad thing about the find duplicate songs - it returns matches on songs from albums and "Greatest Hits" type albums. I guess one could argue that maybe you would like to weed those out, but many times the song is different. Or perhaps it is a live version. Anyway, it would be nice if you could also make it check Album.
Posted by: Raymond Camden at October 29, 2004 12:11 PMMacworld also has a decent (albeit short) post on new features:
The first is the Show Duplicate Songs command in the Edit menu. It's not perfect in that it searches by track title and song only -- it doesn't also search by album title, so a live recording and a studio recording of the same song will be counted as duplicates. Regardless, it's nice to see some kind of duplicate finder built into iTunes.
So yeah, pretty much exactly what Ray Camden said.
New to iTunes [via Macworld]
Posted by: peter at October 29, 2004 12:53 PMPeter and I saw the iPod photo in the Apple store last night (Stonestown, SF), and boy is that a nice looking machine. Feels a bit bigger than my G2 iPod, however it's FAST. You can wheel through those photos at breakneck speed. Very nice and "modern" looking compared to the old iPod interface.
Posted by: Jen at October 30, 2004 10:20 AMOne bad thing about the latest 4.7 updater is that it breaks an app called iPodDownload, an iTunes plugin that allowed you to easily transfer songs from your iPod back onto your harddrive.
iTunes 4.7 disables "iPod Download" application [via Engadget]
Posted by: peter at November 2, 2004 11:32 AM