Unsung features in iTunes 9

Jake Widman
Tuesday, 15 September 2009 02:17

Your IT - Entertainment

There's also no way to tell how long a Genius Mix is. You can download them to an iPhone, iPod Touch, or new nano, and one user with a 13,000-song library reported a 2.53GB Mix showing up on his Touch.

One note for those interested in exploring Genius Mixes: after you launch iTunes 9, you need to choose Update Genius from the Store menu. Then the Genius Mixes icon appears in the left column, under the Genius symbol.

Genius Mixes are nice, but the most welcome new feature for this user is the ability to nest criteria when making a Smart Playlist.

I sync my 3G nano to a Smart Playlist that draws from my Recently Added playlist and my general popular music playlist -- each of them Smart Playlists in their own right -- while excluding songs played in the last three weeks. In other words, I wanted a playlist that was EITHER from Recently Added OR from general pop, AND not played within the last 21 days.

Smart Playlists now let you nest criteria. (Click for larger image.)

To do that, I've needed two playlists, because the only options for Smart Playlist criteria were X AND Y AND Z, or X OR Y OR Z. Now, with nesting, I can make a single playlist defined as (X OR Y) AND Z.

For anyone who uses Smart Playlists, this is a huge advance in functionality. (Those who don't probably are wondering what the heck I'm talking about.)

The next handy new feature is the addition of a hot folder called Automatically Add to iTunes

iTunes 9 tour continues on Page 3.