iTunes 5 review

Amid the hubbub about the iPod nano, you might have missed the fact that iTunes has just turned five. If you've already let Software Update get it for you, though, you'll have seen its new sleek interface.

The old brushed-metal chubbiness has been replaced by the same next-generation remake of the traditional Aqua design that Mail 2 showed when Tiger launched, albeit in a slightly darker shade of grey. Its lines are sharper and cleaner. It still has a grey bar along the top and bottom of the window, but it's a smoothly graduated grey rather than the chunkier effect of the brushed-metal interface. We think this works much better than before. It feels less like it's pretending to be a real-world device and more like an aesthetically pleasing and functional application. Everything is in the same place as before - well, with the sole exception of the volume slider, which sits to the right of the play control buttons rather than beneath them when the full window is shown. Even more subtly, the Artwork pane can now be set to show the currently playing song, regardless of what track might be selected.

Apple has reorganised the Preferences window. The Importing and Burning panels are now presented as tabs within the Advanced panel, next to its new General tab. Audio is now called Playback, and there has been a little bit of shuffling around of a few of the individual options. Things are essentially unchanged here, though. You might pause for a few seconds when looking for a specific preferences setting, but there's nothing that'll throw anyone.

What's really good about iTunes 5 is that it's more than just a makeover, although this release is admittedly more about refinement than new tricks. One welcome advance is the support for a hierarchical folder structure in the playlist panel. Rather than the flat playlist view that we've had until now (apart from the folder of shared network libraries), you can now put playlists into your own folders, organising them in whatever way makes the most sense to you. You can also nest folders in other folders. This is a welcome sign that Apple still recognises the advantages of the Finder-like, user-driven approach to organising data.

You can, of course, still browse your music in the normal ways, filtering with the search field and sorting in numerous ways. The search angle itself has been improved. When anything is typed into that field, a slim bar appears just above the main track list, showing buttons for flicking between different categories. On the right, you can choose All, Artist, Album or Name - just like the drop-down menu in the older search field (although lacking Composers). On the left, you can now opt to search everything (All) or restrict your search to music, audiobooks, podcasts, videos or booklets. Those last two should have stopped you in your tracks. iTunes does videos now? Well, not yet, but it does look like an announcement to that effect is due any day, possibly by the time you read this. The booklets filter option is slightly more obscure. There's a certain amount of speculation about this, but nothing concrete was known at the time of writing. Given that these are both in the interface in this release rather than waiting in the wings for a minor update, we expect Apple to announce something soon.

iTunes has always been easy and fun to use, but it's now showing a distinct maturity. The new look masks the fact that there's not (yet) that much in the way of anything dramatically new, but it's certainly an update everyone should get. It looks better and smooths down some of the rough edges of previous versions. In short, it has grown up.