Apple iTunes 5

Not content with unleashing the nano on an unsuspecting world, Apple has simultaneously upgraded its music management software.

Gone is the brushed metal effect and divider lines of previous versions, giving the whole app a much flatter and sharper appearance. One of iTunes' strengths has always been its browsing and search abilities, and iTunes 5 further improves this. As soon as you start entering a search term, not only does iTunes show those songs which have that term somewhere in their tags, but a new 'Search Bar' appears immediately above the browsing panes that allows you to define more precisely where in the file you want that information to appear. So, for example, if you begin to search for 'blue', you can click the Album button to tell iTunes you want that term to appear only in the album title.

There are a few other touches. A new Parental Control section allows you to disable access to podcasts, the iTunes Music Store and shared music, and it's also possible to restrict explicit content from the Music Store. Playlists can be now be nested inside folders to help keep the playlist pane clutter-free, and the new Smart Shuffle slider control is able to adjust the level of shuffled play.

New for Windows users is the ability to synchronise contact and calendar data from Outlook and Outlook Express to iPods, making the iPod a great read-only PDA.

Unlike Windows Media Player, which also handles photos and video, iTunes is limited to playing and organising music and, as a general rule, only synchronises with one player - the Apple iPod. It can't encode to WMA (although it can convert and import non-DRM WMAs) and works exclusively with the iTunes Music Store.

If you're wedded to Napster, want to handle more than just music, use anything but an iPod, then Windows Media Player 10 is still the daddy. For everyone else, iTunes 5 is the easier and more pleasant choice.

Author: Christopher Phin