When I got my iPhone 3GS earlier this year I switched back to iTunes as my main music player from Media Monkey. Although I thought MM was better than iTunes 8, the iPhone support wasn’t good enough. However, with the launch of iTunes 9, I’m glad I’ve switched back. Why? Because of 2 new features, one that’s been well documented and a second that I haven’t seen anybody else comment on.
The undocumented feature is the improved speed of iTunes 9 with large mp3 libraries. My iTunes library now contains over 30,000 tracks and navigating my library and editing files was unbelievably painful. With iTunes 9 editing mp3 files is so much faster. Before I wouldn’t bother trying to remove duplicates, add artwork or edit track information in iTunes as it would take forever. Now I can make very fast changes to files.
The other feature I’m a big fan of are the iTunes 9 genius mixes. The problem with having such a large library is finding the time to listen to all the tracks. I have a number of playlists setup to help but over time these just make the problem worse because I just end up listening to the same tracks over and over again in the same playlists. With the genius playlists I now get 9 extra playlists setup, although I’m not sure yet if they refresh over time.
What features do you like about iTunes 9? Do you use another mp3 player
